Milan Paumer

Milan Paumer (April 7, 1931 – July 22, 2010) was a member of a militant Czechoslovak anticommunist resistance group that attracted worldwide fame – and notoriety – for killing seven men in the early 1952s in robberies of money and arms and for evading the biggest manhunt in the history of the Eastern Bloc. His five-man group, the Mašín Gang, carried out raids against state institutions in Czechoslovakia before being forced to flee to the West in October 1953.

In 1948, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia seized power in a coup d'état and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was established. Paumer and the Mašín brothers decided to begin a campaign of armed resistance. They formed a group that became known as the "Mašín Gang" and began by carrying out minor acts of sabotage in the area around their home town, such as burning fields and defacing posters of Joseph Stalin. They decided to obtain weapons and in 1951 they raided two police stations, killing two policemen in the process. In a subsequent raid on a security van carrying a payroll to a manufacturing plant, the gang succeeded in stealing around a million Czechoslovak crowns but killed the van's cashier during the raid.

Escape to the West In October 1953 the five members of the Mašín Gang embarked on an escape to the West to avoid imminent arrest by the Communist authorities. Paumer had been drafted into the Czechoslovak military but was alerted by a coded message from the Mašíns telling him that "The wedding is next Saturday". They made their way across the border to East Germany but fell afoul of a railway ticket inspector, who reported his suspicions of the group to the police. An attempted ambush by the East German police ended in a shootout that left one policeman dead and resulted in one of the Czechs, , being captured. The remaining four escaped from the scene and went on the run.

Their escape has been described by Czech-American author Jan Novak as the greatest story of the Cold War.

The controversy over Paumer's activities resulted in him being cold-shouldered for many years by members of the post-Communist Czech government. It was not until 2008 that he was officially recognized by the government, when the then Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek presented him with an award. The decision led to a major controversy; a poll commissioned by Czech Television found that nearly half the population regarded the Mašín Gang as criminals. The Czech Communist Party demanded that Paumer be stripped of his award and put on trial, while members of the left-wing Czech Social Democratic Party suggested that Paumer and his colleagues were "not good role models" for a time when the country was fighting terrorism. Historians and commentators noted that many Czech people are still ambiguous about the Communist past, particularly as Paumer and the Mašíns were virtually alone in forcibly resisting the regime of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.