Czech border guard who helped freedom-seekers
Joseph Hasil, born in 1924 in the Bohemia region of what was then Czechoslovakia, was a German conscript in Dresden during World War II and later part of an underground network that smuggled people out of the country when it was controlled by Communists.
In the postwar years, he was officially a border guard for Czechoslovakia. But he worked secretly helping to smuggle those in danger from the communist regime across the Czech border into Germany.
“In 1948 the part of Czechoslovakia that is now called the Czech Republic was experiencing a very dark period in its history,” Vlasta Bukovsky, 88 and now living in Canada, said in an email. “Joseph Hasil was a local man who offered to help my mother and me escape across the border to Germany and to freedom.”
Border guards tracked them in the snow and started shooting, but Hasil got them safely across.
“By the Grace of God we made it across the border,” Bukovsky said. “I was 18 years old at the time and Joseph Hasil saved my life. I have never forgotten his bravery.”
In 2001, Hasil was awarded the Medal of Heroism by Václav Havel, the first president of the Czech Republic, according to an emailed statement from the Consulate General of the Czech Republic in Chicago.
Hasil, 95, died of natural causes Nov. 15 in Amita Health Hospice Care in Elk Grove Village, according to his granddaughter Julie Hodek. He had come to the Chicago area in the mid-1950s and lived for many years in Berwyn.
He was born in the town of Zabradi, one of eight children, raised by a single mother in extreme poverty, his family said. When very young, he began working as a live-in farmhand, able to visit his family only on weekends.
During the war, Hasil and many other Czechs were sent to forced labor camps in Germany, according to his daughter Jean Hodek. His work in Dresden included cleaning up rubble following the February 1945 Allied bombing of the city.
Hasil escaped his German captors and made his way back to Czechoslovakia, where he became a border guard. In 1948, after the Communists came to power, he began to help those fleeing oppression get through the Sumava Forest to reach safety in the American
zone of Germany. For their skill in threading through the dense forest at night, guiding people to safety, he and others were sometimes nicknamed King of the Forest, his family said.
“Former border guard Hasil helped dozens of people cross the border to the West at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s,” the consulate said in its statement. “He continued the resistance despite the persecution of his loved ones by the Communist regime and despite the threat to his own life.”
In 1948, Bukovsky and her mother lived near the border and were in danger because they were hiding a journalist critical of the communist regime. Hasil offered to help them escape.
“On December 6, 1948, a cold and snowy night we started our journey,” Bukovsky said. “Unfortunately some border guards saw the footprints in the snow and were under orders to shoot anyone who attempted to cross the border. We heard them and I was hiding behind a tree and a searchlight fell on my face. Shooting started and one of the border guards fell down dead. Joseph shouted at us to drop everything we were carrying and run. He is and always will be my hero.”
Hasil was eventually betrayed and sentenced to nine years in prison. But he escaped after about 18 months, his daughter said. He made his way first to Munich in Bavaria and made contact with U.S. Army intelligence.
According to his daughter and granddaughter, he and others continued to cross the border into Czechoslovakia to help political prisoners, priests, and mothers with children escape into Germany. During one crossing, his brother Bohumil, also a freedom fighter, was killed in a gunbattle, they said.
In the mid-1950s, Hasil emigrated to the United States. His trip included an unplanned stop in Boston, where he worked for a few months before traveling on to Chicago.
He washed dishes and did carpentry before eventually landing a job as a patternmaker at what was then the Fisher Body plant of General Motors in Willow Springs. He retired in 1986.
He became a United States citizen not long after arriving here, thanks in part to his connection to the Army. It was one of the proudest days of his life, his daughter said.
In addition to his daughter and granddaughter, Hasil is survived by another daughter, Linda Bueghly; a son, Josef Vavra; and a sister, Anezka; eight other grandchildren; and seventeen great-grandchildren.
His wife, Elsie, died in 2015. Another daughter, Joanne Ebeling, died in 2007, and he was also preceded in death by two grandchildren.
Visitation is planned for 10 a.m. Monday, Nov. 25, in the Czech Mission of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, 9415 Rochester Ave., Brookfield, followed by 11 a.m. Mass.