Word: kladno
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Dates: during 1939-1939
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Czech Government officials jittered -though the population stayed calm - when Heinrich Himmler, dread chief of all Nazi police, suddenly appeared in Prague. Reasons given for Herr Himmler's visit were several and varied. Some said he was there to clean up the messy shooting at Kladno of a German policeman; others said that the Nazis were preparing to abolish the protectorate, at least take over its police. Nazis denied both rumors, said Police Chief Himmler was in Prague for "a brief inspection tour." By week's end Himmler was back in Berlin...
...Kladno, 18 miles northwest of Prague, live Czech coal miners and steel workers.* The town was known in free Czecho-Slovakia as a Communist stronghold and since the German occupation has been the centre of a quiet but effective sabotage campaign against German rule that has everywhere tried the short tempers of the new masters of Bohemia. Bilingual Czech waiters have suddenly "lost" their knowledge of German when waiting on German customers. Czech school children have mimicked the German Army goose step-and grownups have had to pay for the mimicry with jail terms. Czech girls who date German soldiers...
...night last week German Police Sergeant Wilhelm Kniest was shot dead in a Kladno street, and the Nazis took advantage of the incident to throw their weight around. (Several days later a Czech policeman was killed at Nachod, 80 miles northeast of Prague. There the Nazis ordered only a "strict inquiry.") An official (German) version of the Kladno killing was that the sergeant was shot by a cowardly, unknown Czech. An unofficial (Czech) version was that he had been shot by another German policeman after a drunken brawl over a girl's favors. In Nachod, Germans claimed the Czech...
Whatever the truth, the Nazi machine went into action in Kladno in a big way. Next day virtual martial law was clamped down. Doors and windows of all houses had to be closed between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. Theatres, schools and public halls were closed. The Czech police were mustered in the public square, stripped of their arms and imprisoned for "nonfulfillment of duty." Later they were released and sent to other parts of the country. Heavily armed German patrols roamed the streets with orders to fire^at open windows. Day later, 2,000 reinforcements with machine guns, armored...
Meanwhile, Nazis held a memorial service in Kladno for Sergeant Kniest, before giving him a martyr's funeral this week in Leipzig, his home city. Adolf Hitler sent a wreath. Kladno was first given 24 hours, later 48, to produce the killer or else suffer "further measures." The Czech Unity Party, only Czech political organization still existent in Bohemia and Moravia, declared such "acts of force are a crime against the entire Czech people," called upon Czechs to cooperate in apprehending the slayer. The Czechs wanted it understood that murder was not in their plans. While Kladno wondered what...