(b) Monster Trials, Arbitrary Executions, Internment of Civilians, etc.
A notorious reason for imprisonment, and even execution, was the possession of the so-called Russian Manifesto dropped by Russian aeroplanes, being a proclamation of the Tsar to the people of Bohemia promising them the restoration of their independence. Mr. Matějovský, of the Prague City Council, and fifteen municipal clerks were sentenced to many years’ imprisonment for this offence in February, 1915. In May, 1915, six persons, among them two girls, were condemned to death in Kyjov, Moravia, for the same offence. On the same charge also sixty-nine other persons from Moravia were brought to Vienna and fifteen of them sentenced to death. One of the Czech girls who were executed for this offence was a Miss Kotíková, aged twenty-one, who, according to the Arbeiter Zeitung of September 8, 1917, refused to say from whom she had received the manifesto, and through her heroic attitude saved the lives of others.
Without a fair trial and without evidence, the editor of the National Socialist organ Pokrok in Prostějov, Mr. Joseph Kotek, was sentenced to death on Christmas Eve of 1914. The sentence was passed at noon, confirmed at half-past four and carried out at half-past six. As no one could be found to act as hangman, Kotek was shot. The reason given for the verdict was that the accused editor of the Pokrok, which was suppressed as being dangerous to the State, delivered a speech at a meeting of a co-operative society in which he said that all Czechs were unanimous that they knew that Austria was losing the war and that they prayed to God that her downfall might be soon. He was further alleged to have said that it was doubtful how Europe would be divided after the war, but that in any case the Czecho-Slovak countries would be made independent as a wedge between Germany and Austria, and that if Germany won the Czechs would be germanised, like the Poles in Germany. The accused admitted that he did speak about the reorganisation of Europe, but not in the words used by the prosecution. But, as the Arbeiter Zeitung said, even if he did say what the prosecution alleged, as a civilian he should never have been sentenced to death by a military tribunal. According to Czech papers, Kotek was buried among ordinary criminals outside the cemetery. The grave of the innocent martyr was not even marked with his name, and his wife was not allowed to visit it, because the military authorities forbade the sexton of the church to allow any one to see the graves of those executed for high treason.
Dr. Preiss, the manager of the Czech bank, Živnostenská Banka, which has its branches in Galicia, Rumania, Serbia and elsewhere, and four of his colleagues were imprisoned, because the Czechs would not subscribe to Austrian war loans and Dr. Preiss had done nothing to induce them to do so.
As regards the horrors of the internment camps, in which over 20,000 innocent Czechs, men, women and children, were confined, we will only quote the revelations of the Czech National Socialist deputy Stříbrný, who declared in the Reichsrat on June 14, 1917:
“This war was begun by the Austrian Government without the consent of the Austrian Parliament, against the will of the Czech people.
“In Bohemia, the most brutal cruelties have been perpetrated by the Austrian authorities against the Czech population. An anonymous denunciation suffices to bring about the arrest and imprisonment of any Czech man, woman or child. Thousands of Czech citizens have simply been seized and placed in internment camps on the ground that their political opinions are dangerous to the existence of Austria.
“Such prisoners were led away from their homes handcuffed and in chains. They included women, girls and old grey-haired men. They were conveyed from their homes to internment camps in filthy cattle trucks and were cruelly ill-treated with a strange persistence. On one occasion forty-three Czechs, who were being conveyed to a camp of internment, were killed on the way by a detachment of Honveds (Hungarian militia) which was escorting them to their place of imprisonment.
“The conditions under which the Czechs were interned at the Talerhof Camp, near Graz, were absolutely outrageous. They were beaten and tortured on their way there. Immediately after their arrival many were tied to stakes and kept thus day and night in absolutely indescribable sanitary conditions. Many were done to death by their guards. When the thermometer showed 20 degrees of frost, old men, women and girls were left to sleep in the open air, and mortality increased amongst them to a frightful extent. Two thousand unhappy victims of Austria’s brutal tyranny lie buried in the cemetery attached to the Talerhof Camp of internment. Of these, 1200 died of epidemics.”
Other information concerning the same camp of Talerhof fully corroborates this statement. In a letter to his friends, a Czech interned at Talerhof wrote as follows:
“Many of my friends died from bayonet wounds; out of 12,000 at least, 2000 have so perished. The majority of us did not know why we were interned. Many were hanged without a trial on mere denunciation. Human life had no value for them. The soldiers had orders to strike us with bayonets for the slightest movement....
“We were covered with insects. One day an order was given that everybody should undress to be rubbed with paraffin. Some ladies who objected were undressed by force before our eyes, since men and women slept together, and the soldiers rubbed them with paraffin.
“A Ruthene who protested against the ill-treatment of women, who were forced to do the lowest work, was bayonetted. He was lying for five days between two barracks more dead than alive. His face and body were all green and covered with lice and his hands were bound. Then the Austrian officers and soldiers ill-treated him till he died.”
In consequence of the general political amnesty, over 100,000 political prisoners in Austria were released. Thousands of them emerged from prison or internment camps reduced to mere skeletons by the systematic lack of food.
According to reports published in the Austrian press, one of the Ukrainian prisoners, named Karpinka, was left in solitary confinement without any fire in winter, so that his feet were frost-bitten and had to be amputated.
A Czech named Jarý, who was condemned to twelve years’ hard labour, came out with consumption contracted through the rigour of his imprisonment. Many others were reduced to such weakness through starvation that they had to be carried out of the prison.