Many Desperate Czechs Trying To Cross Border

Northern Advocate, 13 March 1948, Page 7

Many Desperate Czechs Trying To Cross Border

LONDON, Fri. (11 a.m.). —Refugees from Czechoslovakia reaching Hof (Germany) said increasing numbers were trying to cross the border.

The Associated Press correspondent at Hof quotes one refugee as saying that Czech border guards fired on and killed an 18-year-old boy and wounded a woman trying to cross the frontier into Germany.

The refugee added that persons trying to escape were becoming increasingly desperate and were carrying revolvers and rifles.

people wearing Communist Party buttons.

President Benes will attend the state funeral service for M. Masaryk in the pantheon of the National Museum tomorrow, says an official announcement.

One group smashed a car through the gates at one frontier control point. Guards had not established heavier road-blocks.

The Prime Minister (M. Gottwald), however, will represent Dr Benes at the graveside and will deliver the funeral oration.

The correspodent says that 137 Czechs who reached the American zone in Hof in the past few days left for Schwabach to join 200 other Czech refugees. Peasant women with black shawls over their shoulders, uniformed officials, and family groups were among the estimated 100,000 people who waited in a two-mile-long queue to pass the bier of the late Jan Masaryk in Czernin Palace today, says the Prague correspondent of the British United Press.

Reuters correspondent reports that the Education Ministry has dismissed the famous conductor, Vaclav Talich, from his post as conductor and director of the State National Opera. The action committee of the Union of Czech Composers has forbidden seven of its members-of publish any compositions until their activities have been investigated. In New York the Communist Daily Worker, in an editorial on M. Masaryk’s suicide, says: “He was not, as the Press so cynically proclaims over his dead body, ‘a hero of the West.’ “He was, instead, a tragic victim of this ‘West,’ which is only another name for capitalist moneylords and - their faithful followers in upper-class society.” Under the headline: “MasarykVictim of Marshall Plan,” an article in the paper says it was the terror of the Marshall Planners, “manufactured and generated from here, which M. Masaryk was not strong enough to endure and defeat.”

Many mourners bought bunches of white 'mountain flowers from sellers who moved along the queue. M. Masaryk’s body was dressed in a blue business suit and lay on a simple bier in the Great Hall of the palace. Over 500,000 people filed past M. Masaryk’s body, says Reuters Prague correspondent. Officials ceased trying to close the palace doors at the specified time, owing to the huge crowds of weeping people still present. Officials announced: “You shall see M. Masaryk, even if it takes half the night.” The Associated Press correspondent says it was the people’s demonstration in honour of “Honza,” as M. Masaryk was familiarly known. Talk in the queue was unguarded and sharp, despite the presence of

Czechoslovakia has protested to Austria about the way the Austrian Press is presenting affairs in Czechoslovakia, and alleges that even the official Wiener Zeitung “has grossly insulted the Czechoslovak Republic.”