The below is a picture of the public execution of Herta Kašparová, a German Czech Nazi collaborator, Trest, Czechia, 13 September 1946
Herta Kašparová was a 23 year old Czech citizen, born in the town of Trest. She came from a German speaking family, and was fluent in German. After Nazi Germany invaded and annexed Czechslovakia in 1938, bilingual Czech and German speakers became useful to the German authorities, and as the War became more encompassing and resistance movements emerged in the Czech lands, Kasparova became useful to the Gestapo as a translator and investigator.
Kasparova’s undoing came in the final few days of the War. As the Soviets approached her home town, she returned to be with her family. In the confusion of the final few days of the War, local Czechs rose up and took control of Trest. As a well known collaborator family, the locals targeted her house, looting it. At this point, Kasparova claimed at her later trial that one of the looters, a man who had bullied her for her club foot when she was younger, dragged her out into the yard of her house, bent her over a workbench, threw up her skirt above her waist and anally raped her. Once he’d finished, they dragged her and her family over to the schoolhouse, where they’d rounded up the other German Czechs. There the Czechs tormented their former neighbours for a number of hours, lynching some, beating others, and raping some of the women. Unfortunately for the Czechs, one of the German sympathisers escaped, and managed to get to a local Wehrmacht barracks to raise the alarm. The German soldiers responded quickly, keen to ensure their compatriots weren’t massacred, even though the end of the war was only days away. The well armed German soldiers quickly freed the other Germans and arrested a number of Czech men. Kasparova then stepped forward and identified the Czech men who had attacked her and others – neighbours of hers she’d grown up with. These young Czech men were then taken out into the school yard, and shot or bayoneted by the Germans.
A few days later Soviet forces entered Trest as the War ended. Kasparova realised she couldn’t stay in Trest as a well known collaborator, so escaped to neighbouring Austria. And there she may have started a new life, as so many did who had worked with the Nazis. Unfortunately for her, in February 1946, she was recognised, and was arrested by the Soviet occupation authorities, who passed her over to the Czech authorities to deal with.
At her short trial in Trest, Kasparova tried to defend herself by claiming she did not know the Germans would execute the young men, and that one of them had raped her earlier that day. The Court, perhaps unsurprisingly, did not accept her defence or claims, and quickly sentenced her to death for collaboration and causing the death of 8 Czechs.
She was taken to the execution place set up for her in Trest a few short hours after the verdict. The method of execution used in Czechslovakia at that time was pole hanging. This was a form of short drop hanging, where the condemned was hoisted up a pole by a pulley around their chest or arms. The hangman then placed a noose around the condemned’s neck. At the point of execution, the pulley ropes were released and the condemned would fall a short distance- perhaps a foot or so, and be suspended by their neck. The death could either occur by slow strangulation, or if the hangman was merciful, he would dislocate the neck of the condemned for a shorter death.
When led to the pole where she’d be hung, in front of a crowd of some hundreds of on lookers, Kasparova’s nerves failed her, and she collapsed, begging for her life. She had to be dragged to the pole, and was hoisted up, with the noose put round her neck. As a collaborator, she was not given a hood, and the hangman was instructed to not break her neck after the drop – the death was to be a slower and more painful one. The signal was given to execute Kasparova, and she dropped a few inches and started to slowly strangle to death on the end of the rope.
As a small, slight young woman, unconsciousness and death took many minutes to come for her. She suffered for at least 15 minutes, writhing and gasping for breath, urinating and defecating in her death throes (you can see a pile of her feces which fell from between her legs at the bottom of the pole).
So an agonising and humiliating death for Herta Kasparova. Perhaps, as an active collaborator for a uniquely horrible and genocidal regime, many will think she deserved such a death – particularly since she was responsible for the deaths of 8 of her fellow countrymen, which she quite possibly did out of revenge for the mocking and humiliation of her disability as a youngster – but also (if she is to believed) for the brutal rape she also suffered.
It is a hard one, as she was definitely more personally culpable than those who collaborated in less significant ways, to save their skins and those of their families. Many thousands did that across Europe at the time. And its important to remember Kasparova was in all likelihood a naive young woman. Many who did worse than her escaped death. Others were of course summarily executed, and often also in brutal and painful ways.
My own personal view is she didn’t deserve the death she received. Hanging by slow strangulation is a cruel death, and I suspect she probably was a victim of sexual violence as so many women were at the end of the Second World War in particular. Does that justify her actions? Of course not – if she’d stayed silent and not identified her attackers she would have likely survived the War – maybe having been expelled from her home. Her mistake was a final act of revenge on those who had insulted and humiliated her and her fellow Czech Germans. She paid for that with her life.
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