Auiam's Fotothing

Freedom is always paid by blood. Nobody can get it by twaddle.

http://www.geocities.com/cz.hucin/20070601janbenes.htm

Tribute to Major Jan Benes
Born on 26th March 1936 in Prague,
Died on 1st June 2007 in Oboriste.
Extraordinary is, what was in between.

Jan Benes was an author of many novels and several historical books; political prisoner of Czechoslovak communist regime; and the Green Beret volunteer. He served 20 years at the US Department of Defense. After return to Czechoslovakia in 1992, he continued in his work for democracy and freedom.

The happier of us have a close person, who is responsible for our mind setup. Jan Benes' life was determined by the personality and life of his father, Bohumil Benes.

Architect and a career officer of the Czechoslovak Army Bohumil Benes participated in liberation of Czechoslovakia as a member of Russian Legions [Czechoslovak Legion was a part of former army of Austrian-Hungarian Empire, which contributed to establishment of independent Czechoslovakia. The history of Czechoslovak Legion is described in "March of 70,000".] during WW1. Czechoslovak legionnaires, who eye-witnessed the development of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia after 1917, and had personal experience with the Bolshevik methods of usurpation of power, were well aware of the dangers of ingoing totalitarian regime in Russia. Since the independent state of Czechoslovakia was established in October 1918, when legionnaires were still on their march through Siberia, most key positions in the new state administration were already filled with career Austrian-Hungarian Empire bureaucrats.

However, Czechoslovak legionnaires still participated in public life and were treated with respect. In 1936, when Jan Benes was born, his father Bohumil Benes worked on the project of Czechoslovak fortification system against the Nazi Germany. He was one of three authors of Czechoslovak fortress concrete. This patent was eventually never tested in the defense of young Czechoslovak democratic state. Czechoslovakia, after the death of its first president Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, did not have another strong and confident, western-oriented leader. Czechoslovakia handed over borderline Sudety area, which was occupied by ethnic Germans, to the Nazi Germany in 1938, and lost its fortification system without a single shot. Occupation of a helpless nation, which decided not to defend its own freedom and independence, followed in a few months. Bohumil Benes then started to support the Slovakian National Uprising and smuggled arms and ammunition through the Protectorate border to the Bandera's groups in Slovakia. Many betrayed Czechoslovak pilots managed to escape from the Nazi Protectorate and joined the Royal Air Force. [Memorial in Runnymede lists all names of the Dead and the Missing RAF servicemen and women, including RAF volunteers from the occupied nations. You can find there Czechoslovaks also.] On 11th September 1943, the Nazis executed Wenzel Kraft, Jan Benes' grandfather from his mother's side.

Shortly after the WW2, Jan's parents staying on the bridge, looking down on the river Vltava, discussed the current situation in Bolshevik Russia: "Something like this can never happen here, we are a civilized nation…" Communist coup in February 1948 turned their lives upside down.

High voltage electric fences with barbed wire on the top, minefields, and heavily armed guards who did not hesitate to shot dead everyone who wanted to escape (yes, just their duty), went up along the border.

Jan Benes graduated from the "United High School" in 1951 after all secondary grammar schools were closed due to the Nejedly's communist school reform. First Republic teachers started to disappear from the schools and universities during early fifties. In 1953, the year when communist monetary reform beggared entire nation except the Communist Party and its highest officials, the Masin brothers' resistance group [Barbara Masin: Gauntlet www.gauntletinfo.com] chased by 24.000 Soviet troops, escaped through Eastern Germany to the West Berlin and joined the US Army, where they handed over the plans and contact persons for the anti-communist coup in the Czechoslovak Army. This plan was never launched.

In 1955, Jan Benes finished his studies at the Academy of Beaux Arts. Two of his school projects were later placed into the Czechoslovak exposition at EXPO 1958 in Brussels, and rewarded. He was not allowed to go there and get the prize. In 1956, Jan Benes was recruited to the paratroop unit and served his obligatory military service. In the end of this service, in 1958, he was arrested and sentenced to 25 months for undermining of combat moral of the troops, interference with political education of the troops, illegal arming, and stealing military underwear. He served this sentence mostly in uranium mine Bytiz [According to Frantisek Lepka's book "Cesky uran, nezname politické a ekonomicke souvislosti" (Czech uranium, unknown political and economical relations), published in 2003, average productivity of uranium slice in Jachymov mining region was 0,76 kg/sqm. The most productive slice ever was Bt-4 in mine Bytiz, which had 100kg/sqm. Level of radioactivity in Bytiz was therefore extremely high.] in Pribram region. This experience was a real eye-opener for a young son of a career officer. Jan Benes wrote Second Breath, a book about this communistic concentration camp, in 1963. Ideological Department of the UV KSC (Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia) banned its publication in 1964. Finally it was published in the USA, Orion Press N.Y. in 1969. Graham Green then wrote Jan Benes, that any book about a prison camp is apt to fall under the shadow of Solzhenitsyn, but Second Breath is a better book than Ivan Denisovitsch. Second Breath is really an extraordinary book. Something, what you'll always have in mind, if you start to look into the howling crowd, in the middle of events, where people are barely able to figure out what is actually going on and who is taking over the power, which "lays in streets". 22-year-old Jan Benes for sure did not expect to meet pilots, who had served in the RAF, behind the fence of a communist concentration camp.

During the sixties, while he was working as a stage technician in the Prague Puppet Theatre, he managed to publish novels "Do vrabcu jako kdyz streli" (Shooting into the Sparrows) and Situace (Situations). Jan Benes started to write for exile magazine "Svedectvi" (Testimony). Book of novels Disproporce (Disproportion) was published in 1965, but banned for sale, because of his incoming arrest. His family was expelled from the officer's house as a consequence of Action "B – Bourgeoisie". The family lived in a squat in Prague, close to the river Vltava.

In 1966, Jan Benes married Sarka Sefranka. After collecting more than 300 signatures on a petition against the imprisonment of the Russian writers Sinyavski and Daniel, he was held 11 months in custody. He was arrested ten days after the wedding, for the crime of treason - subversion of the socialistic social- and state- system, and an attempt for deceit. According to H Schwarz's "200 Days in Prague", the ill-famed trial Tigrid - Benes - Zamecnik, and involvement of the head of the state and the Communistic Party in fact launched the events of the Prague Spring. Lawyer of the Amnesty International, Dr. Sieghart, was expelled from Czechoslovakia during Benes's trial. Pregnant Sarka was brutally interrogated by the StB. Pressure on the family was immense. Benes was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but was released on 22 March 1968, due to the amnesty by president Novotny, as the last political prisoner in Czechoslovakia.

In 1968, after the Soviet invasion, Jan and Sarka Benes emigrated from Czechoslovakia to France. They returned in January 1969, during the Palach's week [Jan Palach burnt himself to death to protest against the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, with an intention to wake people up from the general apathy. Massive demonstrations occurred in January 1969. What followed, is called 'normalization' – massive repressions, and career conditioned by consent with the Soviet invasion.], to support the public resistance against the Soviet invasion. In October 1969, after massive wave of emigration, Czechoslovak government eventually invalidated all passports and closed the borders. Jan Benes got a message, that he will be arrested again. There was nothing to wait for. Children were at grandparents at the moment, phone lines did not work. They came to France without kids, and it took many years till they could see them again. UDV (The Office for the Documentation and the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism), led by Irenej Kratochvil, did not bother about interrogation of this crime against humanity. The communistic bureaucrats, who left the high piles of Benes's applications unanswered, just obeyed the instructions. When you are leaving a totalitarian state, you must expect that the regime will fight back. "My Father did not Fall for Anything", "Triangle with Madonna", and "After You Slept With Me You Will Cry" were published at this time.

Jan Benes worked in various blue-collar jobs, for example in crane maintenance for Danlz Machine Corporation, before he became a Research Fellow in International House at Harvard University in 1972. After the beginning of the War in Vietnam Jan Benes tried to join the US Armed Forces, but was refused as too old for regular service. In 1974 he began to work for the Department of Defense, the Defense Language Institute, at Foreign Language Center in Monterey, California, as a teacher of Czech language, geography and history. He went through all the training with the Green Berets as a volunteer and participated in many missions, mostly abroad. Jan Benes finally found a country he could be loyal to.

After the Velvet Revolution, Jan Benes returned to Czechoslovakia. In 1992, it was too late to influence the chain of events after the series of too velvet takeovers, because the handover of power was already done. Jan Benes published his principal books such as Crime of Genocide, Indolence, American Causerie, Marked by Darkness, Dead is My Godmother, and Time Smells by Dreams. In his life, he had published almost 3000 articles in various newspapers. Jan Benes never gave up his work for democracy and freedom.

Ill-famed detention (in March 2001) and trial (since May 2004) with BIS officer Vladimir Hucin, became the breaking point, where Czech justice system was tested. What actually changed, if the same state prosecutors keep playing volleyball with the same judges in the court backyard, even with the same ball as before, protected from the public by an iron grille?

Maybe it is time to ask Vaclav Havel, in whose deep drawer was buried John's and his students' reform of Czechoslovak military, which was handed over in 1992. Maybe it is time to drag it back into God's light.

Sir Martin Gilbert mentioned Jan Benes' influence on the events during the Prague Spring and formation of Czechoslovak dissent in his "History of the Twentieth Century".

For all those, who feel being setup by this man

Salute and Bon Voyage…

…See you on the Other Side



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Fact Sheet
Books:
1963 Do vrabcu jako kdyz streli [Shooting into the Sparrows], short stories collection
Situace [Situations] short stories collection
Druhy dech [Second Breath] a novel, banned by Ideological Department of the CC CPCz
1964 One of his stories included into The Oxford Classic, Short story collection
1965 Disproporce [Disproportion] book banned for sale, because of incoming arrest
1969 after the Soviet occupation his books Muj otec nepadl za nikoho, [My father Perished for No-one] a novel, novel Trojuhelnik s madonou [Triangle with Madona], short stories collections Az se se mnou vyspis budes plakat [After You Slept With Me You Will Cry], as well as Na Miste [On the Spot], were banned. Disproporce published, but again, never met sale
1969 English translation of Druhy dech [Second breath] in the USA,Orion Press N.Y.
1971 English tlansl. selected short stories, under the title Blind Mirror, Orion Press, later in German tlanslation in Fisher Verlag
1971 Na miste 68-Publishers, Toronto, Josef Skvorecky's Exil Publishing House
1972 Ve znameni lva [In the Sign of Lion]
Study Czechoslovaks in foreign wars
1973 Az se se mnou vyspis budes plakat, Index Koln, another exil publisher
1974 Always Dubiety [study about Cz.gold for Sen. Moynihan commission.]
1974 Druhy dech and its translation as Zweiter Atem, first Czech edition of the novel and its German translation, konforntation Zurich, Switzerland
1977 Zelenou nahoru [Kiss me I Am Bohemian] a novel, 68-Publishers, Toronto
1977 Testimony in U.S. Senate about situation of forcibly separated families in Czechoslovakia
1979 Trojuhelnik s madonou, published in 68-Publishers
1984 Bananove sny [The Banana dreams] short stories collection, Konf. Zurich
1986 Zadne kviti [No Fleurs] Rozmluvy London, short stories
1986 The Economical and Political Affairs of Czechoslovakia [Head of the authors team, Defense Language Institute material] The Geography and History of Czechoslovakia, another DLI text book.
At that time also working as co-author for two Cz. Defectors, for their books, later published in the U.S. and for former Nazi prisoner Jan Filipek, on his book In the Shadow of Gallows, as well as for defected major of the Red Army Papiashvilli
1989 Zlocin genocidy [The Crime of Genocide] Study about parallel history 1938/1953 of Lithuania and Czechoslovakia, POL Verlag Wuppertal
1991-1993 Reedition of all titles in Czech Republic
1995 Indolence [Indolency] True story about my 1967 trial. Primus Prague
1966 Balada o Ludimiru [Separate part from Zelenou nahoru]. Primus
1997 Americka causerie [American Causery] Primus
1997 American Pitaval [Cs. Spisovatel, Praha]
2000 Smrt kmotricka [Dead is My Godmother]
2001 Ve znameni temna [Marked by Darkness] History of Soviet secret Services activities against Czechoslovakia since 1918
2001 Moji vybusni zlotvori [My Explosive Monsters] My biography through automobiles my family or I owned during my life
2002 Zelenou nahoru [reedition by Family Books Club]
2003 Psove a jine anomalie [Dogs and other anomalies] Our family dogs history
2004 Cas vonel snem [Time smells by Dreams] history of soviet and Cz. Communist Party. Primus Praha
2006 Druhy dech [another reedition of that novel]
In years 1970 up to 1989 about 3000 articles in various Czechoslovak exile papers, couple of translations in Hungarian, Lithuanian, Slovenian and Russian exile periodics.

Translations:
John Barron The MIG Pilot
couple of Mrs. Steel books
one Agatha Christie
articles for various Czech papers.
Movie scenarios and TV dramatizations
1963 Honba [The chase] from my original short story] Cy. State film [banned]
1964 Rito na celou noc [Job for whole Nigh], absolvent movie directed by Mr. Kadar Jr. at Prague film Academy
1964 Cas plyne i v nedeli [Time is Running in Sunday Too] Cy TV, Prague
1968 Tridni nepritel [The Class enemy] National theatre Prague, after occupation banned
1969 Dlouhe dopoledne [Long Midmorning] CzTV, Prague, banned first broadcasting 1990.
Awards:
Literary Price of Cz. Ministry of Defense 1963
Literary Price of Union for Cooperation With the Army 1964
Literary Price of the Red Banner newspaper 1964, but awarded short story was never published there.
Rockeffeler Foundation Award for free Writing 1974
Kiwanis Award 1988
About the author
The Art of Jan Benes [Columbia university Press 1973]
Jan Lukes Stalinske spiritually [1975] Stalin's Songs
200 Days in PragueHarry Schwarz and other autors about Cz. Movement 1968
Lusty Prague (Harry Schwarz pod jm. Mankoff)
sir Martin Gilbert in his A History of Twentieth Century and others.