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Current AffairsCzechs mark 65th anniversary of Munich Agreement
It's 65 years today since the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy
gathered in Munich to sign a document which would have lasting
consequences not only for Czechoslovakia but also the whole of Europe.
Under the Munich Agreement, Czechoslovakia's German-speaking border
regions were sliced off and handed to Nazi Germany, in what has been
described as one of the greatest betrayals of the 20th century. Rob
Cameron looks back at Munich 1938.
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WitnessJosef Skrabek - tragi-comedy in the Sudetenland in October 1938
Sixty-five years ago, at the beginning of October 1938, the Nazis marched
into the Czech border regions, known as the Sudetenland. With the Munich
Agreement at the end of September the British and French governments had
notoriously given Hitler the green light to annex these mainly
German-speaking areas. Overnight this had a huge impact on millions of
Czechoslovak citizens. At the time Josef Skrabek was ten years old, and
lived in the village of Valec in the heart of the Sudetenland. His father
was Czech and his mother German, one of many mixed families in the region,
for whom the events of 1938 were a painful blow. Here Josef Skrabek
remembers a tragi-comic episode as the village was waiting for the German
army to arrive.
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WitnessJosef Krettek: a pair of football boots and the Second World War
Josef Krettek lives in the little village of Bolatice, near the town of
Hlucin. People here call the area "Prajsko" - Prussia. They do
so because "Prajsko" - as part of Silesia - belonged to Prussia
for nearly 200 years. But after the First World War, Silesia was carved
up, and a small piece of it - Prajsko - was sliced off and given to the
newly-emerged state of Czechoslovakia. Twenty years later, Nazi Germany
marched in and snatched it back, and made the area's Czech-speaking
inhabitants German citizens. As a result, Josef Krettek and thousands of
other young Czech men were forced to join the German army. Josef Krettek -
now in his eighties - remembers his time as a Wehrmacht soldier - and a
much treasured pair of football boots...
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Current AffairsThe incredible story of the Czech spy who stole an RAF plane for the Nazis
While thousands of Czechs fought bravely for the Royal Air Force during
World War II, the British media has recently carried reports about one
Czech pilot who was far from a hero. Augustin Preucil was a Nazi spy who
managed to infiltrate the RAF before stealing one of their war planes for
the Germans.
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WitnessJiri Jes - a memory of Goebbels' last moments on the air
Although he is well over 70, Jiri Jes is still an active and highly
respected journalist and broadcaster here in the Czech Republic. But for
decades he was unable to work in journalism at all. Because his father had
been a member of parliament for a non-communist party in the years just
after the war, the entire family was on a political blacklist, and in the
1950s Jiri Jes even spent five years in a communist jail. He has always
been fascinated by radio, and has witnessed many of the major events of
the last sixty years as carried on the airwaves. The memory that he is now
going to relate for us goes back to the last days of the Second World War,
when he was here in Prague and remembers tuning in to an extraordinary
broadcast from Berlin.
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One on OneJitka Paterson Sigmund - a new life in England after the tragedies of war
Jitka Paterson Sigmund was born in Olomouc in north Moravia, where her
family owned a pump manufacturers called Sigmund Pumpy; in fact that's
where the name of the local football team, Sigma Olomouc, came from. After
the war Mrs Paterson Sigmund left Czechoslovakia for a year or two and
never returned. She is now a leading member of the British Czech and
Slovak Association. When I spoke to her at her north London home she
described the factory owned by her family.
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MagazineNicholas Winton in Prague
One of the most interesting events at the recent Karlovy Vary film festival was the premiere of a documentary film about Sir Nicholas Winton. He was the British diplomat who in the spring and summer of 1939, just after Nazi Germany had occupied Bohemia and Moravia, helped to save the lives of at least 700 Czech Jewish children, by sending them to families in Britain. The film, "Nicholas Winton - the Power of Good" is made by Matej Minac, who also recently made a very popular feature film, "All My Loved Ones", about Sir Nicholas's work. "All My Loved Ones" portrays the agonizing decision of the parents of a Jewish girl, who decide to send their daughter to England, knowing that they will probably never meet again. Today Sir Nicholas is an energetic 93-year-old and last week he was in Prague to meet some of his "children" - who themselves are now nearly all in their seventies. David Vaughan was at the event and brings this report.
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Current AffairsVeterans remember brave last stand by Heydrich assassins
A military band plays a slow march as Czechoslovak veterans lay wreaths outside the Church of Cyril and Methodius in Prague's Resslova street. Sixty years ago today, on June 18th 1942, hundreds of SS and Gestapo units surrounded the building. They were there to track down a group of British-trained Czechoslovak parachutists, who were hiding in the crypt of the church. Among them were Sergeant Jan Kubis and Sergeant Josef Gabcik, who three weeks earlier had assassinated the Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhardt Heydrich. For six hours, Nazi troops tried unsuccessfully to force their way into the crypt, using grenades, tear gas and even the fire brigade to try and drown the parachutists. But they never surrendered, choosing instead to take their own lives. Among the veterans attending Tuesday's ceremony was Frank Kaplan, who served with the Czechoslovak forces during the war and later settled in Britain. Rob Cameron asked him whether he thought Heydrich's assassination was justified, given the terrible reprisals that followed.
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