- Vojta Beneš
Vojta Beneš (
May 17 ,1878 –November 20 ,1951 ) was a Czechoslovak educator and political leader and brother ofEdvard Beneš .Vojta Beneš was born in
Kožlany ,Bohemia , then a province of theAustro-Hungarian Empire . Beneš began his professional life as an educator at various institutions, and from 1913 to 1914 visited the United States to study its school systems. Returning to the United States with his wife, Emilie, and their children in 1915, he criss-crossed North America agitating for Czechoslovak independence from Austria. For this and similar activities in the US duringWorld War II , he became known as "the CzechPaul Revere ."After freedom from Austrian rule and the establishment of the Czechoslovak republic in 1918, Vojta Beneš was active as both an educator and public servant. He worked as a provincial school inspector, and, from 1937, as the chief inspector of the national school system. A member of the Czech
social democracy , he served as a deputy in the Czechoslovak parliament from 1925 to 1935, and as senator in 1935, resigning the latter post upon his brother's election to the presidency the following year. Beneš was additionally an official of the Czechoslovak legionary community and of the union of Czechoslovak teachers.With the conclusion of the
Munich Agreement in 1938 and the subsequent Nazi conquest of Czechoslovakia, Beneš narrowly escaped to the U.S., where he began anew his campaigning for Czechoslovak freedom after nearly twenty-five years.After the liberation of Czechoslovakia by
Allied forces in 1945, Vojta Beneš returned to public life in his country, serving from 1946 to 1948 in the Constituent National Assembly. Following theStalinist accession to state power in 1948, Beneš, aided by the persuasive efforts of his daughter inIllinois , returned for the third and final time to North America with the help of the U.S.State Department . He died inSouth Bend ,Indiana , in 1951. His remains were eventually returned to his homeland and interred in a cemetery in Prague.He was the author of a number of works, including the war-time books "The Mission of a Small Nation" and "Ten Million Prisoners", an illustrated volume of poetry for children, "Naše Maminka" (Our Mother), and others.
See also
*
History of Czechoslovakia
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.