Alice Glasnerová
Alice Glasnerová: timeline
Erwin Kohn: timeline
Dora Kleinová: timeline
Helena Petranková: timeline
The Komenský Hospital in the Second World War
The Second World War
The Noel Field connections
The Slánský Trials
Prison regimes
Original documents
Publications
Bibliography
This website gathers together all the information and research I have about Alice Glasnerová and Erwin Kohn, and those closely connected to them, in the hope that future generations who are interested in this period of history will have access to it. The site is under construction; it may take me several years to finish!
As well as the information directly concerning Alice, Erwin and two of Alice’s closest friends, Helena Petrankova and Dora Kleinova, I have included the story of my research into their lives, as documented in the blog I wrote during the research process: www.lookingforalice.com
The photographs fall into two collections: Alice’s own photographs and those I took when visiting the places during my research.
Liz Kohn, 2021
Alice Glasnerova 1905-
Alice was a committed communist, who volunteered in the Spanish Civil War, worked to help refugees escape Europe during the Second World War and returned to help build the Communist government in Czechoslovakia after the war. She was an idealist, who believed passionately in equality, freedom, democracy and international cooperation.
The Communist Party betrayed her, imprisoning her for five years and convicting her of espionage, as part of the Czech show trials, also known as the Slansky Trials. Her conviction was overturned and she rebuilt her life, remaining loyal to her ideals and believing there was still hope for Communism, until 1968 and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, when she ended her membership of the party.
Her marriage to Erwin Kohn, my father, ended in 1950, after her first arrest. Although
deeply in love, the two were separated by the difference in their political views;
a division that represented the dilemma of Czechoslovakia itself -