General Heliodor Píka memorial tablet - Opava (North Moravia)
N 49° 56.319 E 017° 54.167
33U E 708283 N 5535849
Bronze memorial tablet dedicated to one of the first victims of communist trials in Czechoslovakia, hero of the WWI and WWII General Heliodor Píka, you can find on the wall close to Opava Town Hall.
Waymark Code: WMJ64Y
Location: Moravskoslezský kraj, Czechia
Date Posted: 09/30/2013
Views: 37
Bronze memorial tablet dedicated to one of the first victims of communist trials in Czechoslovakia, hero of the WWI and WWII General Heliodor Píka, you can find on the wall close to Opava Town Hall.
In the early morning of 21 June, 1949, General Heliodor Píka, a hero of World Wars I and II, became the first Czechoslovak to be executed by the new communist regime. The name of Heliodor Píka had been nearly forgotten by the end of the communist era. One of Czechoslovakia’s most highly decorated and impeccably educated officers, he served as the Moscow attaché through the Second World War. He grew wary of the Soviets’ plans for post-war Czechoslovakia however, and his wariness proved well founded. After the communist coup of February, 1948, Píka was arrested for treason, sentenced by show trial and hanged – the first of more than 200 judicial executions that continued through the early 1950s.
General Píka’s body was never found. His life and service however was resurrected when the communist archives opened and since there has been a great deal of attention given to a man who the army now recalls as one of its finest.
General Heliodor Pika
- Born July 3, 1897.
- Began his military career in 1915 as a domestic guard in Opava, north Moravia. Joined Czechoslovak legions against the Austro-Hungarian empire in World War I the next year.
- Studied at a French military academy after the war, where he graduated in 1920 to join the Czechoslovak Defense Ministry.
- Appointed military attache to Romania and Turkey, returning to the Defense Ministry in 1938.
- Fought with clandestine units against Hitler's 1938 occupation of Czechoslovakia.
- Sent to the Balkans by Czechoslovak president-in-exile Edvard Benes in 1939 to help Czech and Hungarian refugees.
- Promoted to chief of the Czechoslovak army's mission to the Soviet Union in 1941, where he ran afoul of communist authorities by pushing the policies of the democratic Czechoslovak government-in-exile.
- Served as deputy chief of staff in the Czechoslovak Army after the war, until communist hard-liners accused him of treason following the 1948 Communistic putsch.
- Hanged on June 21, 1949.