Střetnutí příslušníků Pohraniční stráže s kurýrem Josefem Maškem aneb neznámý příběh ze Šumavy padesátých let v dobových souvislostech
The clash between Border Guard officers and courier Josef Mašek, or An unknown story from 1950s Šumava in the period context

Summary/Abstract: In the 1950s it wasn’t only people wishing to live in freedom or searching for salvation from the repression of the Communist regime who streamed across the Iron Curtain – so did those who had decided to take on the totalitarian regime. This most frequently occurred within the framework of Western organised intelligence groups. They sent into Czechoslovakia what were called couriers (the State Security dubbed them “cross-border agents”), tasked with espionage missions, building an illegal resistance network and leading persecuted individuals to safety. The ever more closely guarded frontier between the two worlds therefore became an exposed “front line” of the cold War. The study focuses on an event that took place on the Czech-Bavarian border on the night of 13 to 14 July 1950, when courier Josef Mašek, alias Josef Marek, attempted to cross it near the German settlement of Schnellenzipf. On the Czech side, around 200 metres from a border stream, he ran into a Border Guard patrol from the unit at Kunžvart (today Strážný), comprising private first class Josef Příhoda and private Vojtěch Švarc. Mašek was killed in a shootout and later secretly buried under a false identity. Using the available sources, the author recreates this tragic event and the background to it as well as placing the case in the broader context of the intelligence operations of Czechoslovak anti-Communist exiles in the early 1950s. His research also succeeded in uncovering Josef Mašek’s final resting place.

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