1952: Jan Bula, Czechoslovakian priest
May 20th, 2019 Headsman
Catholic priest Jan Bula was hanged on this date in 1952 at Jihlava
A Rokytnice pastor, Bula (English Wikipedia entry | the more detailed Czech and German) put himself in the gunsights of the postwar Communist state by defying its strictures on proselytization and commenting publicly against them.
Although perhaps a gadfly from the state’s perspective he was by no means a dissident consequential enough to have merited his eventual treatment; however, he was cruelly rolled into a notorious 1951 show trial called the Babice Case. Occasioned by a fatal raid launched by anti-Communist terrorists, the Babice trials targeted a huge number of ideological enemies and eventually resulted in 107 convictions and 11 death sentences.* Bula was among them, speciously condemned a traitor for complicity in the attack — a move that also opportunistically accelerated a case that state agents had for some time been attempting with little success to construct by means of entrapment.
“We human beings do not love God enough,” he wrote in a letter to his parents before his hanging. “That is the only thing for which we must ask forgiveness.”
The Catholic Church is currently considering this modern martyr for beatification.
* After the Cold War these sentences were retrospectively overturned or reduced, and a judge in the Babice case, Pavel Vitek, was prosecuted for his role in it.
On this day..
- 1527: Hans Hergot, immovable type - 2020
- Feast Day of St. Baudilus - 2018
- 1622: Sultan Osman II - 2017
- 1691: Mark Baggot, Jacobite spy - 2016
- 1799: Simon Taylor, for indulging in drunkenness - 2015
- 1795: Ignac Martinovics and the Magyar Jacobins - 2014
- 2001: An adult actress stoned to death in Evin prison - 2013
- 1881: Po'olua, "darkened in my mind" - 2012
- 1943: Wilhelm H., pensioner and vandal - 2011
- 1987: Edward Earl Johnson, "I guess nobody is going to call" - 2010
- 2001: Zhang Jun and his gang - 2009
- 1820: Karl Ludwig Sand, a curious strand of German history - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Activists,Capital Punishment,Czechoslovakia,Death Penalty,Execution,God,Hanged,History,Martyrs,Power,Religious Figures,Treason,Wrongful Executions
Tags: 1950s, 1952, catholicism, cold war, communism, jan bula, jihlava, may 20, priests
