STATE SECRETARY FOR THE RUSSIAN PROTECTOR IN THINGS AND IN MORAVA, PRAGUE, inv. 2750, sig. 109-14/53

Page 133

English Translation

114 i -2- An agreement was signed in Ottawa yesterday in the UK, Canada, Australia and Nueseeland, which provides for a significant extension of the British Empire's pilot training plan. Ostiront: Only local combat activity, rest before the turn. 15 minutes of talks with the homeland: you hear the statements of the Czechosl. Minister of Justice Jaroslav Stránský: "Today we want to deal with the legal side of the violations that are being committed today and even before the attack on Heydrich in Techechoslovakia. You can believe me that not only from a moral point of view, but also from a purely legal standpoint, even if one adheres to the legal clauses of the German Reich or the Protectorate, today no wet executions are carried out but rather mass murders in the protectorate. Although Heydrich was always referred to as the Nazi executioner, this description does not yet meet the true nature of this man, for even if one is ascribed to the work of an executioner and perhaps detests him and disgusts himself before him, a executioner is only a man who carries out his profession on a legal basis.He always only does his duty and never did anything abominable, but what is happening today in the protectorate is no longer a right to stand, it is no right at all, but rather a coldly thought-out massacre, which is carried out after certain lites and a very specific selection of the persons coming in contact. You have surely also noticed that the victims of the German Mordluet are looking for the best face points, separately- according to profession, status, confession, etc.. In these shootings there is no court, no defense and also no judgment. Moreover, we are convinced that, apart from the people who have been announced, a large number of other less well-known techechen, who come from the peasant and workers' ranks, will be murdered if not, without their names entering the public sphere. And what concerns Aie's accusations, which are alleged against all executed, are, quite apart from the fact that they are only conceived and predetermined by the Germans, not in the least valid from the point of law either. There is no law that would impose the death penalty on the unlawful possession of weapons, the omission of duty or the good of an attempted assassination.And in this more limited case, not only the accused is punished with death, but also his innocent family, countless women and children, whose only crimes are that they have not betrayed and denounced their husbands or fathers. I don't want to mention the many thousands who came with life, but languished in German concentration camps only because they were honest nationalists or perhaps descended from Jews. Believe me, dear friends in the homeland, that such a legal method is still new and heard in a time of crime. The murder of the techechic national lists does not have the shadow of a real grudge, the Nazis like to turn it as they want. This way of creating respect for oneself in a oppressed country is an unprecedented one, it therefore lacks a real name, we can only call it "Nèmòina" (not superlative, actually "German"). We know,