In the Shadows of the Third Man: Political Kidnapping In Vienna and Radio Free Europe, Part One

After World War Two until 1955, Vienna, Austria, was divided into five occupation zones between the Soviet Union, USA, UK and France, and with the First District (Inner City) being patrolled by military units of all four allied powers. Graham Greene has written in his novella The Third Man:

At night it is just as well to stick to the Inner City or the zones of three of the Powers, though even there the kidnappings occur – such senseless kidnappings they sometimes seemed to us – a Ukrainian girl without a passport, an old man beyond the age of usefulness, sometimes, of course, the technicians or the traitor.

The Third Man film plays each week, Tuesday, Friday and Sunday in Vienna, at the English-language movie theater Burgkino, as it has for some thirty years. Below we will look at one political kidnapping in Vienna and its connection to Radio Free Europe.

Kiripolsky

Stefan Kiripolsky

Stefan Kiripolsky was born in Palarikova, Czechoslvakia on December 14, 1911.

During the night July 6-7, 1952, he and Helena Neumanova left their village in Czechoslovakia, crossed the Danube River in a small boat to Austria, and settled in Vienna as political refugees.

In December 1952, he started working as an “interviewer” at Radio Free Europe’s News and Info Service Field Office in Vienna. More ominously, he also started working with the United States Military Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), helping debrief other escapees from behind the Iron Curtain.

Unknown to Kiripolsky, the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service (StB) had an agents in place in Vienna, who were reporting on this activity, e.g., one agent code-named Cloves (Hribicek), started working for the StB at RFE’s office at the end of November 1952. The StB started an interest file on him in December 1952.

In January 1953, the chief of the First Department of the Intelligence Regional Administration in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, Lieutenant Colonel Stefan Pafco and his second-in-command Captain Vlastimil Kroupa wrote up a plan to kidnap and arrest Stefan Kiripolsky. In order to accomplish this task, a three-member team was expected to travel to Vienna, and the operation was to be carried out through cooperation with the Soviet counterintelligence service.  Then Deputy Minister of National Security, Prchal did not approve the plan and it was dropped at that time. Nevertheless, surveillance of Kiripolsky’s activities continued.

In August 1954, Kiripolsky wanted to go on vacation with Neumanova in the southern part of Austria, which meant he would have to travel through the Soviet occupied zone of Austria via Wiener Neustadt. He mentioned it to his supervisor, who advised him not to go.  In spite of the advice, they left for vacation.

Neumanova

In Wiener Neustadt, A Russian military officer stopped Kiripolsky and Neumanova at a railway checkpoint and took them from the train. The Russian officer was apparently expecting him to come through that point at about that particular tine.  Several other Russian soldiers were present. They put Kiripolsky into a Russian-made car and took him to Baden, Austria -- still within the Soviet Zone. Neumanova transported in a different vehicle.

During his first captivity, Soviet officers accused Kiripolsky of carrying out espionage activities against the USSR. The Soviets interrogated him repeatedly regarding personnel of the CIC in Vienna. He was transferred to Prague, Czechoslovakia

Kiripolsky was in the Bubenec area of Prague for 16 or 18 months during which time the StB as well as the Soviet KGB interrogated him. Kiripolsky was subjected to various methods of torture, including continuous nightlong interrogations.  He was placed in a small cell where he could not sit or lie down. From time to time his cell was filled with extremely hot air, which would suddenly be changed to extremely cold air.

On May 5, 1955 the Czechoslovak Attorney General accused Stefan Kiripolsky of high treason and espionage. In the trial, which took place on July 27, 1955 at the Military Division of the Supreme Court, Stefan Kiripolsky was condemned to the life sentence and his partner Helena Neumanova to five years prison. His prison sentence was later reduced to 25 years and then 15 years.

A May 2, 1957, a small newspaper article appeared in a Swiss newspaper on the topic of prisoners of war in Czechoslovakia.  Included in the names of prisoners was one Stefan Kiripolsky, “former co-worker of the Vienna office of the Munich radio station Radio Free Europe.” This article caused a stir within RFE, and on June 12, 1957, the RFE security officer traveled to Vienna to meet Karl Reinoch, the article's source of information. 

Reinoch explained that he was a secretary in the Austrian Consulate General’s office in Bratislava. On September 22, 1950 he was arrested on the street, taken to Prague, and placed in prison for investigative custody. He was accused of espionage. The prison was in the Ruzyn section of Prague. He remained there for three months during which time eight different StB officers interrogated him.  He did not know their names and stated that until 1955, StB personnel were known only by a number.

Reinoch said he first met former RFE employee Stefan Kiripolsky in May or June 1956 in Leopoldov prison. Kiripolsky had been there since the spring of 1956. For three or four months they shared the same cell, and Kiripolsky told him how he arrived there. Kiripolsky said that he had been employed by RFE in Vienna, and that he had an American chief in Vienna named Williams, who was not with RFE but with U.S. Intelligence. He mentioned that Williams spoke Slovak and had a cover name that Reinoch could not recall.

Kiripolsky also said that he had been accused of’ sending two agents into Hungary, which he admitted to Reinoch as having done. One of them reportedly shot and killed a border guard while crossing the border and he, Kiripolsky, also was charged with being involved with the murder.

Reinoch said that Kiripolsky told him that while he was in jail in Prague, he was told he would probably be sentenced to death.  But that they would consider giving him a chance for a prison sentence if he agreed to make a statement against RFE and the CIC at a press conference.

Kiripolsky agreed and was then taken to another area of Prague, where prisoners were wined, dined, and rested prior to making a public statement.  Those chosen to make statements were well briefed and rehearsed prior to appearing in public. Kiripolsky said he learned his role so well that he became too mechanical in his speech, and the StB finally decided he would not make a very good impression. They sent him back to his prison in Prague. After this episode he was never again approached by the StB to make a press statement or to work for them in any capacity.

There was no further word on Kiripolsky until Hungarian-born Tibor Karman visited the RFE Vienna office on April 13, 1965. Karman was the husband of journalist, Andrea Karman, the daughter of a former high-ranking Austrian civil servant. Mrs. Karman met Karman in Hungary, fell in love with him and tried to smuggle him out to the West via Czechoslovakia. 

All of the persons involved were caught, including Karman and an accomplice, believed to be Australian or British. They were sentenced to six months in jail.  Karman was returned to Hungary. As a result of direct intervention of then Austrian Foreign Minister Bruno Kreisky in Budapest, in October or November 1964, Karman was allowed to leave the Czechoslovakia.

Karman said that while he was in jail at Ilava, Slovakia, Karman met another prisoner: Kiripolsky. According to Karman, Kiripolsky looked hale and hearty. Kiripolsky was then working in the Ilava prison hospital to get better food. 

Stefan Kiripolsky was released from prison in the Prague Spring in May 1968. He never contacted the radios after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Stefan Kiripolsky died on July 6, 1992, exactly 42 years after he crossed the Danube River in search of freedom. Helena Neumanova died on February 19, 2001.

Photographs of Kiripolsky and Neumanova are courtesy of the Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, RFE/RL Collection.

Today there are guided tours of and a museum in Vienna devoted to The Third Man. For more information visit http://www.wien.info/en/sightseeing/tours-guides/third-man