Druhá aféra „Nepolapitelného Jana“ Nezdařená provokace tajných služeb proti Janu Smudkovi v roce 1947
The Second “Elusive Jan” affair The unsuccessful secret-service provocation of Jan Smudek in 1947

Summary/Abstract: This study is dedicated to the post-war persecution of Jan Smudek, who is known primarily for his thrilling escape from the country to join the resistance in the spring of 1940. During the war, he served in the Czechoslovak foreign army in the West. After the conflict ended, he returned to the country and became the national administrator of a factory in Rossbach (now Harnice v Čechách) near the town of Aš. In 1946, he unsuccessfully stood for parliament as a candidate for the Czechoslovak People’s Party, and he made no secret of his critical attitude to the political conditions that prevailed in the “Third Republic”. In February 1947, the Defence Intelligence group (Obranné zpravodajství – OBZ) led by Bedřich Reicin attempted to implicate him as part of a completely fabricated “anti-state” group, which was apparently operating in the Jáchymovsko region. To this end, they used Štefan Csiffary, an adventurer of dubious reputation who fled from the Czechoslovak Republic for family reasons before Christmas 1946. In the American zone of Germany, he accidentally came across a Czechoslovak UNRRA patrol unit, which he thought was part of “Prchal’s Army”. He was enticed back to Czechoslovakia, where he was arrested. Through his acquaintance, Dagmar Novotná, Corporal Ludvík Kala, an agent provocateur working for the OBZ, attempted to persuade several people (including some foreign soldiers, especially RAF officers) to take part in illegal activity. After this proved unsuccessful, he visited Jan Smudek directly with Novotná and asked him for help in crossing the border to Germany. On 11 February 1947, Smudek was arrested in Čerchov. The case against him, however, had a lot of formal defects and the actions of the Czechoslovak security services were distinctly unlawful in nature. Smudek was eventually only convicted of a misdemeanour in an administrative procedure, for which he received a sentence of 14 days in prison. The entire case had been followed by the media and non-communist deputies of the National Constituent Assembly. Despite this, those who had been guilty of illegal action were not punished, and in many ways the “Smudek Affair” inspired the subsequent “Mostecká Affair”, which occurred in the autumn of 1947. Shortly after the communist putsch of February 1948, the “Elusive Jan” escaped aboard for a second time and he did not return to the country until the 1990s. He died in 1999 in Díly u Klenčí pod Čerchovem.

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