† 13. 5. 1995: The murder of Tibor Berki

22 October 2012

7 minute read

13 May 1995: In Lety by Písek, Czech President Václav Havel unveiled a monument to the Roma people who lost their lives to racist hatred and violence at the concentration camp there during WWII. On that day he spoke, not for the first time, of the fact that the fate of the victims of the Holocaust remains a permanent warning to us all.

“If we do not face up to racist evil at the moment of its first, apparently innocent, manifestations, it will grow into a phenomenon that is truly dangerous, serious, and threatening to all of society, and we risk not being able to face up to that evil later on – or only being able to face up to it at the cost of more human victims… Even today, we sometimes hear people calling ‘Gypsies to the gas chambers’. Even today, we can observe indifference to these calls, quiet support for those who are yelling them, cowardly spectators, the renewal of divisions between people according to their ethnic origin. All of this must be faced up to again and again, because it is the tried-and-true territory of racism,” Havel said. (See theentire speech, available in Czech only)

Murderers massacre Roma man in front of his children

On the night of that same day, another event occurred in Žďár nad Sázavou that was directly linked to the unveiling of the monument at Lety and Havel’s words. Perpetrators broke into the Berki home and murdered Tibor Berki, a Roma father of five children, at 11 PM. After violently breaking into the dwelling, the four racists (aged 17 – 21) started to demolish the appurtenances and furniture with a baseball bat and with an axe they found in the house. Tibor Berki, the owner of the home, did his best to prevent the violent spree. One assailant repeatedly struck him with the baseball bat on the nape of the neck and in the head. He died of a brain hemorrhage while being transported to hospital.

Berki was massacred in the presence of his family members, including children. “The guy with the bat wanted to bash me too, but I moved out of the way and he just got me on the shoulder. I started yelling out the window for help. Luckily the neighbor across the street called an ambulance and police. If I hadn’t yelled for help, they would probably have killed the children too,” Berki’s wife Anna said.

“Father started to defend us with his bare hands, but he didn’t have a chance. It all took about five minutes. The second guy, without the bat, grabbed an axe with an iron handle from the kitchen and started breaking up the furniture. He chopped everything up so crazily the splinters were flying. He also swung at me, but I ducked. Then he went after Father,” Berki’s son Jaroslav described the events.

“Let’s get some Gypsies”

The family’s ethnic affiliation (Hungarian Roma) was the deciding factor for the perpetrators. The assailants, who did not know Berki personally, were seen in a pub beforehand, where they agreed to go “get some Gypsies”. Unlike previous racist cases, the media coverage emphasized the fact that according to the opinions of their neighbors, the police, the regional state prosecutor, and the town hall, the victims were a respectable family. Berki was a person who took care of his family, went to work (in a bakery), and had a clean criminal record.

Benevolence for the perpetrators

At the time Czech society took a more or less benevolent approach toward perpetrators of racially motivated crimes, and the approach of the justice system, police, and politicians was all but indifferent. This was reflected in the courts’ verdicts in the case. Legislators and ministers slightly improved their approach to the issue as a result of Berki’s murder.

“Their neighbors, the police, and the state prosecutor inform us that the skinheads come from ‘good families’ and that this was just a children’s game. However, whenever a Roma boy so much as steals something, whether he is from a ‘good family’ or not is never discussed,” said Jana Chalupová, then-head of the public relations Office of the President of the Republic. (Seethe Human Rights Watch study “Roma in the Czech Republic -Foreigners in their Own Land”)

A matter of Czech democracy

“The death of Mr Berki, whose brains were beaten out of his skull by skinheads in front of his own children, is an obstacle to Czech democracy. If that comparison seems strong, imagine the ‘whites’ in the minority and baseball bats cracking open non-Roma heads,” commented sociologist Ivan Gabal at the time.

In the annual report on the state of human rights in the Czech Republic during 1995 we can read that the Czech Republic “has not yet succeeded in ensuring protection for Roma people from violent actions of discrimination and racism which have been on the rise recently and have resulted in deaths and serious permanent injury. The obligation to protect minorities from racial violence is not being fulfilled through either prevention or repression in the fields or education or security. The state has a tendency to respond only after violent racist acts are committed, usually through the courts and verbal proclamations, not through active political prevention.”

Epilogue: Not a racist murder

Zdeněk Podrázský (21) was charged with the crimes of murder, trespass, and violence against a group. Martin Komár and Jan Nevole, who were both 17, were charged with trespass and violence against a group. Jan Vosmech, also 17, turned himself into police several days after the murder. Podrázský and Komár were taken into custody during the investigation. The state prosecutor sought the highest possible sentencing for their racially motivated attack, but the first-instance court decided that racial motivation had not been proven in the case, as the perpetrators had not shouted any abusive racist slogans during the attack.

The Regional Court in Brno sentenced Podrázský to 12 years in a maximum-security prison on 13 December 1995. He also had to pay CZK 22 876 to the health insurance company for services provided as a result of his actions. Komár was sentenced to 18 months in a medium-security prison. Nevole was sentenced to six months in prison and Vosmech to two months in prison, both suspended for one year.

On the basis of an appeal filed by the state prosecutor, on 23 May 1996 the High Court in Olomouc sentenced Podrázský to 13 years in a maximum-security prison and Komár to 40 months in a medium-security prison. The other sentences remained intact. In his verdict, Judge Ivo Kouřil reasoned that the perpetrators could not have attacked the Berki family because of their nationality or race because Roma people belong to the same Indo-European “race” as Czechs.

Human rights and Roma rights activists were outraged by this verdict and made no secret of their concern that it was a dangerous precedent. Ondřej Giňa, then a staffer with the Czech Government Office for Nationalities (Úřad vlády pro národnosti), phrased it well: “The court found that this was not a racially motivated murder. If the court is not able to find for racial motivation in such a brutal case, then in ordinary cases where someone is attacked by skinheads on the street, those assailants might be convicted of mere assault in the best-case scenario.”

The Czech President and government ministers condemned the murder of Tibor Berki. The government proposed stricter punishments for racially motivated violent crimes and the establishment of a new police division to exclusively work on extremism.

The Roma Civic Initiative (Romská občanská iniciativa – ROI) welcomed this ministerial decision to more thoroughly punish racially motivated crime and, together with other Roma organizations, proposed the government establish civic monitoring over the implementation of the decision. “We welcomed the decision, even though it has come late in the game – of course it would have been worse if it had not been made at all, if the government and others had continued to behave as they have for the last four or five years, which was as if under the slogan ‘this doesn’t concern us, this doesn’t happen in our country,’ ” declared ROI chair Emil Ščuka.

Ondřej Giňa was also critical, saying that in his view “Klaus ignored the previous cases and only spoke up when Berki was beaten to death. As a result, some legislative measures have been adopted, but this effort is to just improve the work of the courts, the police, and the state prosecutors. The state has made no effort to concern itself generally with the problem, but has focused only on the work of institutions. Nothing changes until someone dies. There are so many problems here that are receiving no attention whatsoever, and the police and society overall remain passive.”