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Concept
Heliodor Píka
Summary
General Heliodor Píka (3 July 1897 – 21 June 1949) was a Czechoslovak army officer who was the first Victim of judicial murder of the Czechoslovak Communist show trials.
Heliodor Píka was born in a village of Štítina in Austrian Silesia, near Opava, then Austria-Hungary. During World War I, Píka served as a Czechoslovak legionnaire in the Russian theatres. He was captured at Berestechko on 5 October 1916, during the Russian campaign but by 1917 he had returned to duty as a member of the French Army and would later serve with the Czechoslovak Legions in France. By 1920, when the Legion was disbanded, Píka had risen to the rank of lieutenant.
After the war, Píka studied at a French military academy, graduating in 1920.
In the 1930s, Píka acted as a military attaché to Romania and Turkey. In 1938, in a bid to prevent the occupying German forces from using Czechoslovak Army matériel, he disposed of it by selling arms to the militant Haganah organization in Palestine. (Selling arms to non-state actors was forbidden by international conventions but the Czechoslovak foreign affairs department granted its approval.) He would later travel to the Balkans, from where he arranged defections of Czechoslovaks and Hungarians from German-occupied territory.
In 1941, during World War II, Píka was appointed chief of the Czechoslovak Military Mission to the Soviet Union (in Moscow). Loyal to the London-based government of exiled Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš, Píka supported their democratic policies despite Soviet opposition. Píka was under constant pressure from the Soviets to betray Beneš, but despite attempts at blackmail, Píka remained loyal throughout his tenure, which lasted until 1945.
Following the war, Beneš promoted Píka to deputy chief of the general staff of the Czechoslovak Army, where he was responsible for the arms industry.
Official source
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