Czech minister’s body exhumed to resolve doubts over 1948 death
The Czech Republic has reopened the Jan Masaryk case after new intelligence records emerged from the US, Britain and France.
Czech police have initiated the exhumation of the remains of former Czechoslovak foreign minister Jan Masaryk, whose death in 1948 remains shrouded in mystery. Masaryk, who was found dead under his apartment window shortly after the communist coup, was initially deemed to have committed suicide. However, lingering doubts have persisted.
The Office for the Documentation and Investigation of Communist Crimes, a Czech police unit, is now probing the case as a possible murder. Police announced the exhumation of the body at a cemetery near the presidential summer residence of Lany, west of Prague, early Wednesday. They expressed hope that the examination would shed light on the circumstances surrounding Masaryk's death.
Police spokesman Jakub Vincalek stated that the body's examination would be conducted "as fast as possible," though no further details were provided. The re-evaluation of Masaryk's death has been ongoing since the Velvet Revolution of 1989, four years before Czechoslovakia peacefully divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
New diplomatic and intelligence records from the United States, Britain, and France, discovered in early 2025, prompted the police to take up the case again. Jan Masaryk, son of Czechoslovakia's first president Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, served as foreign minister during World War II and after the war, representing the Czechoslovak exile government in London.
He declined to join the mass resignations of non-communist ministers that allowed the Moscow-backed government to seize power in February 1948.
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