Brig Gen (Rtd) Milan Píka passes away
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- Date: 21.03.2019
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Brig Gen (Rtd) Milan Píka (born on 28 July 1922), participant of the Western Resistance in WW2, who had lived in Slovakia since 1949, passed away on Wednesday 20 March 2019.
At the meeting with Defence Minister Peter Gajdoš who received him on the occasion of his 95th birthday at the MOD on 27 July 2017, Brig Gen Milan Píka said: “Slovakia saved my life and I am grateful to it that I can be here with you. Looking back at the time after my father’s execution, I could not bear to stay in my country of origin, Czechia. Slovaks have, besides common sense, a heart they speak and act with.”
Facing the Nazi threat at the outbreak of WW2, Milan Píka and his mother fled Prague via Romania to France. During his stay in France, he attempted to enlist in the Czechoslovak Army, but he was rejected on the grounds that he was too young to serve and that the French defences were collapsing as a result of German advances. He then managed to escape to England, where he voluntarily signed up for military service and wanted to serve as an air navigator with the Czechoslovak squadrons operating under the Royal Air Force (RAF). However, he was diagnosed with a congenital eye condition during a medical check, so he could not be assigned to flying personnel. For this reason, he was successively posted to the air staffs of the Czechoslovak Air Force units RAF, where he held junior administrative appointments until the end of WW2. While in the UK, he rose to the British rank of Flight/Officer (F/O) and the Czechoslovak rank of 2Lt of Aviation in Reserve.
With the end of WW2 he returned to Czechoslovakia where he continued to serve as an active duty soldier. As a member of the Czechoslovak Army, he was accepted to study law at Charles University in Prague. Thanks to his future law degree, he was posted to the Court Martial in Prague. No sooner had his father Div Gen Heliodor Píka, hero of the Czechoslovak Legion in WW1 and a prominent representative of the Eastern and Western Resistance in WW2, been arrested than the persecution of then Capt Milan Píka began. He, too, was arrested by the State Security Service (ŠtB) and was put on trial along with the Gen Karel Mrázek Group for their alleged involvement in the preparations to aid his father’s escape from prison abroad. However, for a lack of evidence and at the apparent intervention of the ruling party leaders who wanted to avoid presenting the case of parallel persecution of both the father and the son before the international community, he was acquitted of all charges.
Heliodor Píka, Milan’s farther, was executed on 21 June 1949 in Bory Prison, Pilsen. Milan Píka was stripped of his military rank and dismissed from the Czechoslovak Army on 1 June 1949. Forced to leave the Faculty of Law, Charles University, and banned from staying in Prague, he got a ticket to the Jáchymov uranium mines for a year, however, this decision was overruled, and he found refuge in Bratislava.
During the aforesaid meeting with Defence Minister Peter Gajdoš, Brig Gen Milan Píka said: “I was dismissed from the Army, I had no job, I had no friends in Bratislava, and I had no one to rely on. Yet, I knew if I wanted to live there, which was a necessity and a chance of rescue, I had to adjust myself [to circumstances]. Gradually, I found new friends at work and I began to feel myself at home in Bratislava. I tried to learn at least a little bit of Slovak. And, step by step, I focused my efforts on rehabilitating the reputation of my father. Just as I promised it to him a few hours before his execution.”
In Slovakia, he first worked in the Handlová coal mines, but most of his life he was employed as a boiler operator, a driver and an economist with Drevona, a wood-processing state-run plant in Bratislava.
Although the Higher Court Martial in Příbram overturned the ‘guilty’ verdict for Heliodor Píka in December 1968, it was not until November 1989 that his reputation was fully rehabilitated in the public. That Heliodor Píka remained rooted in the conscience of Czechs and Slovaks as a hero can be attributed to his son Milan, who certainly lived up to what his father had told him during the night before his execution: “Do not live to take revenge, be good to people, and, if possible, restore my reputation.”
Milan Píka’s reputation was restored as well. The rank of Captain was returned to him after a partial rehabilitation in November 1972. He was fully rehabilitated after November 1989 and promoted to Colonel (Rtd) on 30 May 1990. He lived to experience the greatest recognition of his operational service in WW2 and of his personal life and opinions after 1948 by being promoted to the most junior general officer rank, Brigadier General (Rtd), both in Slovakia and Czechia in May 2014.
At the meeting with Defence Minister Peter Gajdoš who received him on the occasion of his 95th birthday at the MOD on 27 July 2017, Brig Gen Milan Píka said: “Slovakia saved my life and I am grateful to it that I can be here with you. Looking back at the time after my father’s execution, I could not bear to stay in my country of origin, Czechia. Slovaks have, besides common sense, a heart they speak and act with.”
Facing the Nazi threat at the outbreak of WW2, Milan Píka and his mother fled Prague via Romania to France. During his stay in France, he attempted to enlist in the Czechoslovak Army, but he was rejected on the grounds that he was too young to serve and that the French defences were collapsing as a result of German advances. He then managed to escape to England, where he voluntarily signed up for military service and wanted to serve as an air navigator with the Czechoslovak squadrons operating under the Royal Air Force (RAF). However, he was diagnosed with a congenital eye condition during a medical check, so he could not be assigned to flying personnel. For this reason, he was successively posted to the air staffs of the Czechoslovak Air Force units RAF, where he held junior administrative appointments until the end of WW2. While in the UK, he rose to the British rank of Flight/Officer (F/O) and the Czechoslovak rank of 2Lt of Aviation in Reserve.
With the end of WW2 he returned to Czechoslovakia where he continued to serve as an active duty soldier. As a member of the Czechoslovak Army, he was accepted to study law at Charles University in Prague. Thanks to his future law degree, he was posted to the Court Martial in Prague. No sooner had his father Div Gen Heliodor Píka, hero of the Czechoslovak Legion in WW1 and a prominent representative of the Eastern and Western Resistance in WW2, been arrested than the persecution of then Capt Milan Píka began. He, too, was arrested by the State Security Service (ŠtB) and was put on trial along with the Gen Karel Mrázek Group for their alleged involvement in the preparations to aid his father’s escape from prison abroad. However, for a lack of evidence and at the apparent intervention of the ruling party leaders who wanted to avoid presenting the case of parallel persecution of both the father and the son before the international community, he was acquitted of all charges.
Heliodor Píka, Milan’s farther, was executed on 21 June 1949 in Bory Prison, Pilsen. Milan Píka was stripped of his military rank and dismissed from the Czechoslovak Army on 1 June 1949. Forced to leave the Faculty of Law, Charles University, and banned from staying in Prague, he got a ticket to the Jáchymov uranium mines for a year, however, this decision was overruled, and he found refuge in Bratislava.
During the aforesaid meeting with Defence Minister Peter Gajdoš, Brig Gen Milan Píka said: “I was dismissed from the Army, I had no job, I had no friends in Bratislava, and I had no one to rely on. Yet, I knew if I wanted to live there, which was a necessity and a chance of rescue, I had to adjust myself [to circumstances]. Gradually, I found new friends at work and I began to feel myself at home in Bratislava. I tried to learn at least a little bit of Slovak. And, step by step, I focused my efforts on rehabilitating the reputation of my father. Just as I promised it to him a few hours before his execution.”
In Slovakia, he first worked in the Handlová coal mines, but most of his life he was employed as a boiler operator, a driver and an economist with Drevona, a wood-processing state-run plant in Bratislava.
Although the Higher Court Martial in Příbram overturned the ‘guilty’ verdict for Heliodor Píka in December 1968, it was not until November 1989 that his reputation was fully rehabilitated in the public. That Heliodor Píka remained rooted in the conscience of Czechs and Slovaks as a hero can be attributed to his son Milan, who certainly lived up to what his father had told him during the night before his execution: “Do not live to take revenge, be good to people, and, if possible, restore my reputation.”
Milan Píka’s reputation was restored as well. The rank of Captain was returned to him after a partial rehabilitation in November 1972. He was fully rehabilitated after November 1989 and promoted to Colonel (Rtd) on 30 May 1990. He lived to experience the greatest recognition of his operational service in WW2 and of his personal life and opinions after 1948 by being promoted to the most junior general officer rank, Brigadier General (Rtd), both in Slovakia and Czechia in May 2014.
