Word: pankrac
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...niceties of diplomacy, letters between heads of state are not made public until both governments agree. By "the time the White House got Prague's approval, the Czechs had already trumpeted the "humanitarian" explanation that it was Laurabelle Oatis' plea that got her husband out of Pankrac Prison...
...cell in Prague's grim Pankrac prison one day last week, one of the world's most celebrated political prisoners got unexpected visitors. Two U.S. Embassy officials called on Associated Press Correspondent William Oatis, 39, who had been in prison two years on a spying charge. They left two oddly matched articles-a pair of Argyle socks knitted by his wife, and his passport. The Embassy was acting on the suspicion that Oatis might need both for traveling. Fourteen hours later he did. Oatis was taken before a Czech Communist official and told that he had been freed...
...From Pankrac, Oatis was taken to the U.S. Embassy in Prague, and after breakfast with Ambassador George Wadsworth, was driven to the U.S. zone of Germany. To newsmen who met him at the border, Oatis, thin and pale, seemed bewildered. On his face was the look of utter confusion that imprisoned men often wear when first confronted with the outside world again. Newsman Oatis had been cut off so completely that he did not know Eisenhower was President, that Stalin was dead, that he himself had become a symbol for the free press of the West. When one reporter greeted...
...condemned, Rudolf Slansky, Vladimir Clementis and nine other alleged Communist fomenters of "Zionist" and "Jewish nationalism" went to the gallows.* As dutifully as they had confessed to all manner of errors and evil, they had waived their right of appeal. They went to their deaths in the same grim Pankrac prison where they were tried...
Next day, in the courtroom of Prague's Pankrac prison, sentence was pronounced. Moscow-trained Rudolf Slansky, onetime secretary general of the Czechoslovak Communist Party was condemned to death by hanging. So was Vladimir Clementis, onetime Foreign Minister, who left the safety of the U.N. to return home, and was double-crossed when he got there. Nine others would also be hanged on some lonely dawn. Three of the accused were let off with life imprisonment on the ground that they had been forced to take orders from higher-ups. Said Prague's official Communist organ, Rude Pravo...