Not a Person

Tall and grey, his face gaunt, his SS uniform rumpled and shorn of insignia, the condemned man last week faced his judges in the grim yard of Prague's Pankrac Prison. Ranged before him were the judge and jury who had tried him two days before. The yard was filled with spectators--some 3,000 hard-eyed Czechs. Prominent among them sat seven widows from a village once known as Lidice.

There was not another sound as the judge intoned (in Czech first and then in German) the eight-minute-long verdict of the people of Czechoslovakia against Karl Hermann Frank, the Sudeten German leader in the prewar Czech Parliament and later the Nazi "protector." Silently the people listened to the charges: treason, the murder of 300,000 Czechs, propagation of Naziism, and "co-responsibility" for the destruction of Lidice.

Then the long review was over. Karl Frank was led to the foot of a tall beam from which dangled a hangman's noose. A heavy leather belt was tied around his chest and two assistants hauled him to the top of the beam, where a white-gloved hangman fastened the noose around his neck. The assistants let go. A mild cheer broke out and was hushed by court dignitaries. Of all the eyes that watched, not one was softened by compassion.

"In the whole Czech nation," Karl Frank had once said, "there is not a person who would not hate me or be my enemy."

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