Anti-communist fighter keeps dividing Czechs after death (Feature)

By Katerina Zachovalova Aug 5, 2010, 1:46 GMT

Podebrady, Czech Republic - On the day of Milan Paumer's funeral, two dozen posters with his photograph appeared in his hometown of Podebrady.

'A murderer remains a murderer,' the slogan read.

Paumer, who belonged to a resistance cell which took up arms against the communist regime, keeps dividing Czechs even after his death last month at age 79.

'It does not surprise me at all,' said his friend Nick Carroza, an 85-year-old US Air Force veteran, who attended Paumer's funeral on Wednesday. 'You have these two different factions. They have their ideas and they are not gonna change.'

Paumer and his friends have said they chose to escape the Iron Curtain so they could join the US army and fight communism.

While two members of the group were captured and later executed, Paumer and brothers Josef and Ctirad Masin reached West Berlin despite a massive manhunt. But the young men killed six people, including a civilian, in preparation for and during their escape.

To this day, historians, politicians and the public are split over the question of whether the group had the right to shoot their way out to the West. While some see the thrilling Cold War drama as an act of heroic resistance, others view Paumer and the Masins as cold- blooded killers.

'He is a symbol of liberty, democracy and friendship,' said Milan Brezina, a 37-year-old military history fan. Dressed in a historic US army uniform, he took part in a convoy of World War II-era US army jeeps paying respects to Paumer.

'If this country had some hundreds or thousands of Paumers, the history would have developed in a different way,' Brezina said.

Sitting at a bus stop in Prague, a group of four middle-aged men, who declined to give their names, held widely opposing views.

'They had other choices,' one said. 'Many people escaped but did not kill anyone.' Another man griped that 'only an idiot' could honour Paumer and the Masins. 'They were no heroes,' he said.

The controversy has hindered efforts to award the trio a top state honour. The Czech Senate has repeatedly nominated them, but neither of the Czech Republic's presidents, Vaclav Havel and Vaclav Klaus, would honour them.

Former premier Mirek Topolanek, who had embraced an anti-Communist rhetoric while in office between 2006 and 2009, was the first Czech leader to award the Masins and Paumer. In 2008, nearly two decades after communism fell, he presented them with a newly-established premier's medal.

Sticking to one side of the deep divide, some right-wing politicians have since followed in Topolanek's footsteps.

Prime Minister Petr Necas' new centre-right cabinet interrupted its session so the conservative premier and several ministers could personally bid farewell to Paumer in the spa town of Podebrady, 55 kilometres east of Prague. The cabinet pledged to pass a law recognizing anti-communist fighters.

'A number of historians view Milan Paumer and the Masin brothers as controversial figures. They blame them for the human victims,' Necas told the mourners. 'I consider this interpretation incorrect and unfair.'

Wounded in a hip, Paumer barely survived the 1953 escape, which eventually brought him to the United States. He joined the US army, trained with special forces and was deployed in the Korean War. The Ballad of the Green Berets, a patriotic US marching tune, was among the music played during the farewell ceremony.

After retiring from the army, Paumer settled in Florida where he worked at, among other things, a plane engine plant. He moved back to the Czech Republic in 2001 and toured schools with a talk about the grueling escape.

'He was the advocate going through the countryside, teaching the students,' Paumer's friend Carroza said. 'Instead of drugs it was (a warning against) communism.'

Paumer died on July 22, never waking up from heart bypass surgery.

Missing at his funeral two weeks later were the Masin brothers, who have refused to visit their native land since communism collapsed in 1989. They say the Czech Republic has not done enough to sever its ties with the painful past.

'They promised to return to a free Czech Republic in which they would be happy living - and that is not the case,' said Sandra Masin, Josef Masin's 41-year-old daughter. A slender, tall ex-opera singer, she arrived for the funeral from Cologne in Germany, where she works for a family business.

The presence of Czech government and parliament leaders at Paumer's funeral did not persuade her. It was not enough for her father and uncle to return home.

'(The politicians) are here in order to change things,' she said. 'They are not here to show that is already done. It is not a done deal.'