Academic

Why We Fight

By Laura Appleman

As today's Memorial Day, I thought it would be the right time to honor someone who gave her life for democracy over 60 years ago.  Milada Horakova was a Czech freedom fighter, democratic MP and campaigner for women's rights, who battled against both the Nazis and the Communists.  On June 27th, 1950, she was hanged by the Communists on trumped-up charges of treason and espionage, despite appeals for clemency from world figures including Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein.

A new opera in the Czech Republic shines the spotlight on Horakova's show trial, using her own words decrying the brutalist regimes of facists and dictators:

"I have declared to the State Police that I remain faithful to my convictions, and that the reason I remain faithful to them is because I adhere to the ideas, the opinions and the beliefs of those who are figures of authority to me. And among them are two people who remain the most important figures to me, two people who made an enormous impression on me throughout my life. Those people are Tomá? Garrigue Masaryk and Edvard Bene?. And I want to say something to those who were also inspired by those two men when forming their own convictions and their own ideas. I want to say this: no-one in this country should be made to die for their beliefs. And no-one should go to prison for them."

On this day, especially, we should remember Milada Horakova, along with all the Americans who gave their lives to preserve democracy and our way of life. 

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on May 26, 2008 (boomark / email).