New Nieman Fellow Tells of Escape From Czechoslovakia Before Trial

On last May 30, when most students in the University had nothing more serious than impending final exams to worry about, Dana Adams Schmidt was in a somewhat more critical situation. Schmidt, then New York Times correspondent in Prague and now a Nieman Fellow here, had just had his name mentioned in an indictment that was to result in the biggest single political trial in Czechoslovak history.

Schmidt was accused of acting as a courier for two of the defendants name in the incitement, one of whom was later sentenced to death and the other to 15 years imprisonment. He filed his story of the indictment, in which he gave himself an interview had denounced the charges against him as unfounded, then decided that it would be best for him to leave the country immediately before the Communist government decided to use him as a witness. On the chance that border guards would not yet have been alerted to prevent his departure, he loaded his wife and dog into his car and headed for the German frontier. He crossed the border unchallenged, and was in Germany the next day to write the story of his escape.

Schmidt first went to Czechoslovakia for the Times in April, 1949, and during the year that he spent there he noticed that there was a "gradual tightening" or restrictions on foreign newspapermen and a persistent campaign to eliminate all "Western influences" form the country.

Czechoslovakia, Schmidt things, is a forced transition for Western to Soviet Russian forms of existence." In that transition, everything Western in condemned, and during the latter part of Schmidt's stay, the only information he received form official government sources was an occasional press conference devoted solely to castigation of Western countries.

Though no restrictions were placed on travelling, except in border areas and near the uranium mines, Schmidt found it almost impossible to get information when he did go anywhere. "Generally, government officials wouldn't talk to you, and private people were afraid to," he said.

Not Many Converts

Regarding the degree of support which the Communists command in Czechoslovakia, Schmidt cited the difficulty of testing public opinion in a totalitarian state. "The Communist organizations have gained membership since the 1948 coup," he speculated, "mostly because of opportunitists who joined for personal advantage. The membership of the Communist Party itself has probably been reduced by the purges. I don't think they've many converts; they have probably lost converts among the industrial workers, who resent the speed-up and shock-worker campaigns."

A great majority of the confirmed anti Communists, as far as Schmidt was able to determine, have no hope of an internal revolution that could overturn the present regime, and look to a general East West war as the best chance for bringing Czechoslovakia into the Western camp.

While at Harvard, Schmidt will study mostly in the History department, with a view to supplementing his knowledge of European affairs. He will concentrate especially on Russia and Communism.

He also hopes to take a writing course that will help him with the book he is writing on his experiences in Czechoslovakia. His apartment is cluttered with letters and documents which he is just beginning to boil down into book form.