The Hands of World Revolution
Ever since 1951, Richard Belcredi had been working as a reporter for Radio Free Europe in Munich. It was a dangerous occupation, since the radio was then a thorn in the side of the Eastern bloc countries. Eastern spies tended to intimidate the radio's workers by various means, and would even execute several kidnappings and assassinations. Richard Belcredi recalls he has avoided one such incident by pure chance: “Back then my wife was down with a serious illness, and I had an evening shift. Another reporter comes and tells me: 'Go home, Richard, your wife is sick. There's nothing happening anyway. We'll pull through till midnight without you.'" A moment after his departure, a bomb exploded under his office's windows. It had been set up by the Hands of World Revolution group, led by an infamous terrorist Illich Ramiréz Sanchez who went by the name Carlos. The group has been hired for the attack by Romanian intelligence. “The office was completely blown apart. The explosion tore off half of the secretary's face. The shockwave was so strong that it pushed the other reporter under a desk. There was also an announcer there, I think he lost sight in one eye. The reporter fell unconscious, and when he woke up, he said: 'Richard, are you crazy? What are you doing?' They thought it was me. In any case. the office had been utterly destroyed,” he recalled.
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Richard Belcredi
Dr. Richard Belcredi was born in 1926 in Brno-Líšeň. He comes from an important noble family, which in 2010 celebrated its 1,000th birthday. He spent his childhood in the chateau in Brno-Líšeň. In 1938 his father Karel Belcredi signed the declaration of patriotic Czech noble families which defended the interests of the Czechoslovak Republic and the integrity the state borders. After the Munich agreement and the subsequent German occupation this act resulted in his property becoming forcibly taken under German administration. Although the property was returned to the family after the war, it remained theirs only until 1948. After the communist coup d'état, all family members were forced to emigrate and all their property became confiscated. The only person to remain was his brother Ludvík, who was sent to a labor camp and who was being humiliated by the communist regime for his origin and property until the end of his life. Richard Belcredi settled in Munich, where he became a reporter for Radio Free Europe, and did this work for the following thirty years. In 1981, he luckily avoided the bomb attack at the building of RFE, which was carried out by Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, aka Carlos, on the order of the Romanian secret service. While in exile, Richard always fought against the totalitarian regime, and he served as a secretary of the expatriate community called Opus Bonum, which organized the well-known Franken seminars, and together with Pavel Tigrid and others he was smuggling banned books to the Eastern Bloc countries. He was able to return home only after the collapse of the communist regime after long forty years. For some time he served as an ambassador in Bern. At present he lives in the chateau in Brodek u Prostějova, which has been returned to him in restitution and whose last owner from the family was his uncle Gustav Kálnoky. His parents did not live to see the return to their homeland and are buried in Vienna.
