Likvidace mužských řádů v českých zemích v 50. letech ve středoevropském kontextu, aneb Ochráníme vás před hněvem pracujícího lidu
The removal of male orders in the Czech lands in the 1950s in a Central European context or We Shall Protect You from the Wrath of Working People.

Summary/Abstract: April of last year marked the sixtieth anniversary of Operation K, the so-called Czech St. Bartholomew’s Night, when on the order of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party armed units of the State Security police (StB), the National Security Corps and the People’s Militia attacked holy male orders in Czechoslovakia on the night of 13-14 April 1950 and deported the friars to concentration camps. The second stages of Operation K followed fourteen days later, when the monasteries were definitively dissolved (until the collapse of the communist regime in 1989). Some monks were interned in camps with a stricter regime. The younger monks had to go to forced labour camps. In the course of the 1950s, more than 350 of them were convicted in trumped-up trials. Most communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe adopted a similar approach to monks even though each had its own specific characteristics. In the text, we present a comparison of the fate of monks in Czechoslovakia whilst taking account of differences in the Czech lands and in Slovakia, Hungary and Poland.

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