The case of murdered Michal Koch

The case of Michal Koch, a young man who died in Nový Přerov under circumstances that have never been clarified, busied the Czechoslovak press for a couple of months. The main protagonists of this story were so-called partisans, wannabe heroes who exhibited their “heroism” by carrying out acts of intense brutality and violence against in particular uncomfortable persons in the first post-war months. Three “partisans” who came to introduce “order” in Nový Přerov are apparently responsible for Koch’s death. Michal Koch, the nephew of the murdered, recalls the event in the following way: “My uncle was 27 years old. He was a grammar school graduate and was dating some girl in Přerov. I think he worked for the Czech gendarmes while studying. These partisans came to Přerov and they were acting cool. They put a silver-plated gun to his picture of Virgin Mary. But there was a decree that all guns were supposed to be handed in. So they took him to the parsonage with his parents and imprisoned them there. The parsonage was right next to our house so we could see what they did to them there. My mom gave them food through a crack in the fence. They burned the finger nails of his mother and father with a candle. And he was tortured by them quite sadistically. He then couldn’t speak anymore as they cut out his tongue. They then showed him to my parents. My mother asked him: ‘Miho, what have you done to us’? And they found out that he couldn’t talk because they cut off his tongue. He was all beaten up, blue all over his body. Then they finished him off and hanged him on a handle. Then they took him on a wheel barrow to the cemetery.”