Prague's mass graves - Ďáblice, exhumations, the politics of memory

A story from 2019 in Prague, reported with Niels Bula for Germany's Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, broadcast on TV and radio. Long-read text below.

For decades the land at the northern wall of Prague’s vast Dablice cemetery was a rubbish dump, overgrown and neglected. Few knew the significance of this spot, or were willing to talk about it. But after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, it became a site of quiet political activism. Volunteers began clearing the bushes and scrap away - and in doing so made visible the sunken edges of the mass graves.

The numbers are disputed, but are in the tens of thousands. A convenient place to dump inconvenient people - at first the pits were filled with the bodies of resistance fighters killed during Nazi occupation, then, in a grim twist of fate, Gestapo officers shot in 1945. One regime was replaced by another, and from 1948 trucks began to arrive at the northern gate of Dablice from the Communist regime’s prisons. They brought not only bodies of political prisoners, but those of small babies born in the jails. Some had lived for less than a day. In far greater numbers, though, were the bodies of society’s discarded people: the homeless; suicides; body parts from dissections; foetuses.

It is this that makes exhumation of Dablice’s mass graves such a difficult prospect. There are just so many people. Many of the records were lost in a suspicious fire at the cemetery’s archive in the 1960s. Giving evidence to the Czech parliament, prison historian Ales Kyr described around 70 shaft graves with 40 coffins in each, layered with wooden planks and lime clay. And before you do the maths, do not assume one body per coffin - it’s thought there were often two, even three.

Despite the problems exhumation poses, a small group of people persist in their campaign, hoping to see a memorial established. Zdena Masinova wants her mother’s body to be placed in the family tomb. Instead it is here in Prague. A cluster of little headstones sits at the mass grave site - those babies and children from the prisons whose names have been found since 1989 - and adjacent to these a stone bears her mother’s name (also Zdena).

It is only by chance that she knew the location. In her Olomouc apartment, she tells MDR of her desperate search round Prague in 1956, being turned away from prisons and hospitals. Officials told her she would never be given her mother’s remains.

“I was standing on a pavement, feeling completely helpless, when a passer-by came up to me. He told me to go to Dablice.” The large cemetery is in Prague 8 - now a half-hour tram ride from the centre. Twenty-year-old Masinova made her way there, only to wander lost again. Once more, a stranger came to her aid.

“He was hesitating for a long time,” she recalls. “But he brought me to the office, by the main gate of Dablice, and opened a book with a plan of the whole cemetery.” It contained the list of prisoners buried there. She saw her mother’s name. “He said he had seen a cargo truck come with about 40 bodies that day, or the day before.” Her mother, he said, had been put in one of the children’s pits.

Sworn to secrecy, Masinova could not publicly mark the spot during the Communist era, but over the years she would covertly lay flowers there anyway. It wasn’t until the 1990s that she could begin fighting to rehabilitate her mother and other relatives.

The campaign to exhume the graves is helped by Dablice’s link to the famous Czech assassins of Nazi chief Reinhard Heydrich. In a line-up of national heroes, Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik loom large. Trained by the British, they and their comrades were parachuted into occupied Czechoslovakia in 1941, killing Heydrich in June the following year. In recent years historians have come to believe that the parachutists’ remains are in Dablice’s mass graves - and yet few in Czech society are aware of this.

Jiri Linek, a campaigner with the Organisation of Former Political Prisoners, was born on the street named after Kubis. It intersects with Gabcik’s. “These names are so well-known in our nation,” he reflects, walking around the northern edge of Dablice with us on a grey December day. “But without finding the remains of the bodies, we can’t make a memorial adequate to what has happened.”

Linek dismisses worries about whether exhumation is even possible at this site. With modern DNA matching, it is “not that hard. Maybe not cheap, but not so hard.” They’ve done it in Poland, he points out, and gestures at the hollows in the ground next to us. “You have hundreds of people here and nobody knows who they are. Because the basic idea of all that was that they deprived you of your human rights, even after your death.” Families should be able to lay flowers somewhere, he says sadly.

He wants to name every person. For Linek, the job won’t be finished until each human dumped here like rubbish has a plaque on the wall. And not just the victims - society must learn about the wrongdoers too, he thinks. “If the founder of the Communist secret police is also there? Well, we can put the name up, with an explanation of who the man was.”

Walking with Linek through the cemetery grounds is politician Pavel Zacek, a strong advocate of the proposed memorial. As an historian he studied the anti-Nazi resistance in Czechoslovakia - but then became interested in the Communist era.

“Dealing with the past can be a slow process, but it is a very important part of the transformation from totalitarian past to democratic future,” he says. And is that transformation finished in Czech society? Zacek’s response is adamant. “No. While we have the Communist party in parliament, while we still don’t know the names of the victims - it is still not a finished process.”

2018 saw communist politicians enter the Czech parliament, partly on the back of widespread anger over the alleged corruption of prime minister Babiš. The resulting tension means unresolved aspects of the country’s authoritarian past - such as Dablice - are easily politicised. Every year a ceremony is held to remember the child victims - organised by an group called ‘BezKomunistu’, whose stated mission is to “remove communists from public life”.

Until now the government has steered clear of the exhumation question. But Zacek insists that Prague City Council can’t afford to do this alone - a view shared by the Director of Prague cemeteries Karel Kobliha. In a statement he said that exhumation would “take a really long time, and cost hundreds of millions of koruna”. “We do not think it is impossible - but it has to be done by the government,” he added.

Milena Johnova is the non-partisan city councillor who arranged the milestone meeting with Masinova back in 2018. Talking to MDR in her offices in Prague’s City Hall, Johnova admits that the situation is “really challenging”. “There was no serious attempt to pull together information about the cemetery - it’s split up in unknown places.” She emphasises that this is just the first step - they are assembling a panel of experts to begin the long research job.

In frosty Olomouc, Masinova recalls her surprise when the authorities started listening to her plea to recover her mother’s body. In the 1990s she had appealed to the mayor; to the first president Vaclav Havel. “Everybody ignored me”, she remembers with bitterness.

There is a particular urgency for Masinova to see her long campaign succeed - she turns 87 this year. But it’s for the next generation that she wants the memorial. She fears young people aren’t being educated about their own history, about the dangers of authoritarian rule - and is well-qualified to speak on this topic. The Masin family is famous for its resistance to both the Nazi occupation and the Communist regime. Masinova herself was interrogated in 1953. The walls of the Olomouc jail in which she was held - dragged down the stairs, blindfolded - are visible from the apartment where she lives now, alone.

“The next generations might have to repeat what we went through, even though it might look differently,” she says, looking out at the prison walls. “It’s going to be a tragedy.” But the renewed interest in Dablice has brought her some comfort. “It is important to stay on guard and inform people how authoritarianism can affect one person, or a family, or the whole society,” she concludes. “I hope all that’s happened will not be forgotten.”