The remarkable story of the Czech wartime politician Ladislav Feierabend
Vee and I enjoy having friends of different ages and backgrounds. Everyone has a story but some have very special stories to tell.
We recently had lunch with a dear Czech friend of 84 whom we have know for around 30 years. Hana Ludikar is the widow of Marcel Ludikar (1920–2003) who flew with the Czechoslovak 311 Squadron as a component of the Royal Air Force during World War Two. As then part of Coastal Command and flying Liberators, Marcel was wireless operator/air gunner in the aircraft which sunk the “Alsterufer” [an account here], an exploit regarded as the biggest success of the squadron during the war.
Many years later in the early 1980s, Marcel was of great help to me in my researches for the book I was writing on the life of Karel Kuttelwascher, the Czechoslovak fighter pilot with the greatest number of victories in the war and Vee’s father [see more information here].
But, if the war record of Hana’s husband was distinguished, the story of her father was remarkable. Dr. Ladislav Feierabend (1891-1969) was an economist who led the co-operative movement in inter world war Czechoslovakia. He was swept into politics by President Beneš after the Munich Accords of 1938, becoming Minister of Agriculture. When the Nazis occupied his country in 1939, he remained in the government but also became a prominent member of the resistance.
Discovered by the Gestapo in 1940, Feierabend fled in a dramatic escape and joined Beneš’ government in exile in London where he served as the Minister of Finance. Most of his family was sent to concentration camps but miraculously survived. His father was in his 80s when released but died a few days after returning home. His wife – Hana’s mother – was in Ravensbruck.
Feierabend represented the Czechoslovak government in July 1944 at the International Financial Conference in Bretton Woods in the USA, where the post war global monetary system was designed. Having returned to Czechoslovakia at the end of the war, he refused to serve in the post-war government because of the influence of the Soviet Union and, when the Communists seized power in 1948, Feierabend again narrowly escaped arrest and fled into exile with his wife and children. The family ended up scattered across Europe and America.
Hana has three children and four grandchildren, living in Britain, Canada and the Czech Republic. After the ‘velvet revolution’ and the collapse of communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989, the family finally had their property restored to them and Hana now spends several months each summer back in Prague in the home where she was born.
Ladislav Feierabend wrote his memoirs which were published in three volumes in Czech. Hana herself has handwritten a private memoir in English for her children and grandchildren. It is an amazing story.