"A well-mannered - even if slightly rebellious - slave will never get along with a man who has fought for his freedom by his own efforts and with the commitment of his life." Tomáš Pecina
***
Yesterday I saw the premiere at Cinema City Metropol in Zličín. Its lasting message is still valid today. Against evil, the only force that evil respects is strength. Eternal "muddling through" without concrete actions cannot lead to victory, only to repeated defeats. The film brilliantly shows the unity of character, thought and action. The resistance group of the Mašín brothers was offered a film by Hollywood and made millions of dollars. They didn't have time, they wanted to join the fight in the US Army as soon as possible. More proof of their great character! The Mashins were not soldiers, they gave the order themselves. They demonstrated incredible moral maturity and strength of character. These qualities can only be appreciated by those who recognize these values themselves. How many such people will be among the honoured at Prague Castle?
From an interview with the actor Oskar Hes, who plays Josef Mašín: "What can get me out of my chair is the hypercorrectness, hyper-sensitivity and weak-mindedness of some people. It annoys me how many young people take everything personally, or get caught up in their own thoughts and solve something just to solve something. We live in freedom and prosperity, but a lot of people around me are on anti-depressants. It seems to me that they're having a bad time and then they give up. In my bubble in Prague, young people don't have an existential crisis, they have a spiritual crisis. They don't know what to fight for. We used to have a given enemy, now we don't have one and we are an enemy to ourselves. We lack motivation. We have to find a reason to do something, to work, to bring children into the world, to live."
***
"The brave father who, before his execution, told his wife to raise his sons to be patriots, became a great role model for his offspring. In 1945, President Edvard Beneš even awarded them the medal for bravery for their involvement in the May anti-Nazi resistance. After the communist coup in February 1948, Ctirad and Josef Mašín understood that a new totalitarianism had taken hold of our country, this time in a red version. True to their father's legacy, they began to fight the communists. They understood that they were serious criminals who had taken over our country, murdering innocent people, torturing them, imprisoning them in camps comparable to the Nazi ones. You can't compromise with evil, pretend it doesn't exist and ignore it. It must be confronted. And the Mašín brothers did it. Some of their deeds may be considered questionable from a contemporary perspective, but they did not start the terror, they only resisted it. If it had not been for the bloody Red dictatorship, there would not have been the anti-communist resistance of the Mašín brothers."
Central Bohemian regional representative Michael Pánek
***
I wonder why our army has never defended the country in the last 100 years?
The years of discussion also reveal the Czech character - not to fight, not to risk, to survive at any cost, to preserve our "pubs, huts and gardens". The others must fight, we will only join the victor. It all started with "not fighting" in 1939, when the whole country wanted to fight. The breaking of the soul of the nation was completed in 1948 and the communist "normalisation". It is good that the film shows us what the real struggle of man against man is. In war, you don't "philosophize" if you want to win. The liquidation of the enemy, the members of the Communist Party, was justified. It increased the group's chances of survival. In war, you don't ask who is who. The two liquidated fulfilled their oath to serve the Communist Party "to the death". If someone uses the term "good daddy families", the same is true of most Wehrmacht members. Let's not forget that the communists murdered children too - see the Dáblický children's cemetery where the mother of the Mašín brothers was thrown into a hole and where the remains of her born or unborn children of prisoners lie. Being seriously ill, she was denied medical care in prison, and the heating was turned off (in winter). The mother of the Mašín brothers and wife of Gen. Josef Mašín died a martyr's death.
The Mashins acted on the same principles in the fight against the enemy as their father did in the Three Kings resistance group in the fight against the Nazis. Here, today's opponents of the sons of Gen. Josef Mašín and any German victims of the Three Kings in their resistance activities would certainly not advocate for their victims. By the way, Gen. Mašín had to be forcibly disarmed when he refused an order to surrender and wanted to command his artillery battery in the fight against the German occupiers in 1939.
Why do we have a "Czech lion" in our coat of arms, who never lived on our territory and whose qualities we can only dream of, except for the ability to "feast and siesta"?
Our life is about unwritten duties to ourselves, to our surroundings and to future generations. The Mašín family was fully aware of them and deserves full recognition. It has already received it from the homeland and all decent citizens. It is of the highest value, greater than the highest state honours. These are awarded to them as a matter of course when the country is represented by persons and characters worthy of them. JŠ
Read more...