Related articles
Current Affairs"Hitler watercolor" goes up for auction on Czech website
Years before becoming one of the worst mass murderers of all time, Adolf
Hitler struggled to make ends meet as an artist. Paradoxically, while the
exact whereabouts of the German dictator's remains are uncertain, there is
a busy trade today in the paintings he made in the early 1900s, which
nobody was interested in buying at the time. Recently a watercolor
purported to be by Adolf Hitler went on the auction block on a Czech
website.
More
Current AffairsBreakthrough in the investigation of WWII massacre in Velke Mezirici
As the Second World War came to an end in 1945, numerous atrocities were
committed in towns across Czechoslovakia, as the Czech people rose up
against Nazi occupation. Investigations into the Nazi massacre which
occurred in the final days of the war in Leskovice have revealed that
those responsible for several of these crimes are still living in Germany
today. Now, police have made a number of discoveries about another such
slaughter in Velke Mezirici, which have brought detectives closer than
ever before to finding out the truth about events.
More
One on OneJiri Stransky - duty-bound to tell young generation about Communism
Rob Cameron's guest on this week's One on One is the writer, film-maker and
chairman of the Czech PEN club Jiri Stransky. Jiri Stransky's family was
persecuted by both the Nazis and the Communists - Jiri himself was
imprisoned by the Communists on two occasions for speaking out against the
totalitarian regime. He's now involved in a project to teach schoolchildren
about the injustices of Communism.
More
PanoramaThe 17th of November: Remembering Jan Opletal, martyr of an occupied nation
On the 28th of October, 1939, Czechoslovak Independence day, Czech students
took to the streets to demonstrate against the Nazi occupation. The
protest
was brutally suppressed - with shots fired at random into the crowd. One
student leader, Jan Opletal, was seriously wounded, and later succumbed to
his injuries. Thousands turned out for his funeral procession, and
protests
again turned violent. Hitler ordered a swift and brutal clampdown. On the
17th of November, nine students, seen as the ringleaders, were executed
and over a thousand were sent to concentration camps. The anniversary is
marked worldwide as International Student's Day and has a further
significance for Czechs. It was the 50th anniversary of these events, in
November 1989, that sparked the Velvet Revolution, the beginning of the
end of communist rule. In today's special programme, we recount the events
that led the Allies to sacrifice Czechoslovakia in the vain hope of
preventing war, and the martyrdom of Jan Opletal. More
PanoramaCzechoslovakia: 'Island of Democracy' and refuge between the wars
Czechoslovakia was one of the few states in Europe between the wars with a
genuine parliamentary democracy. The First Republic, as it became known,
was a multiethnic one: apart from Czechs and Slovaks, nearly a quarter of
its people were ethnic Germans; the Tesin region in the north had a large
Polish minority, while South Slovakia and Ruthenia were home to some
three-quarters of a million Hungarians. Up until the Munich Pact of 1938
and subsequent Nazi occupation, Czechoslovakia was a magnet for refugees
from Hitler's Germany, communist Russia, Ukraine, and elsewhere, says Dr
David Kraft, curator of the new exhibit "Exile in Prague and
Czechoslovakia 1918-1938". More
SpecialFranz-Ulrich Kinsky - the aristocrat suing the Czech Republic for over a billion dollars in property
The Kinskys are one of the oldest Czech noble families, with the first
recorded mention of their name in the 13th century. But today Franz-Ulrich
Kinsky is a figure of controversy in the Czech Republic, where he has filed
over 150 lawsuits against the state and individuals; he is seeking the
return of more than 1.4 billion dollars worth of property he says was
illegally confiscated after World War II.
More
Current AffairsThe complex legacy of the president many would prefer to forget
A handful of people gathered on Monday at Prague's Vinohrady Cemetery to
mark the 60th anniversary of the death of Czechoslovakia's third
President, Emil Hacha. It was an event that wasn't marked with pomp and
ceremony: Emil Hacha remained in office throughout the German wartime
occupation, and he is remembered by many as a symbol of wartime
collaboration. David Vaughan reports. More
