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Current AffairsArchitects ordered to apologise to former communist teacher
Three former students from the Faculty of Architecture at Brno's Technical
University were ordered by a Moravian court on Thursday to apologise for
libel against their former teacher some fourteen years ago,
during the turbulent days of the Velvet Revolution. The student body
leaders labelled communist party representative Jan Snasel an
"arrogant demagogue" and an "opportunist". More
WitnessIvan Plicka: in the wrong place at the wrong time during "Palach Week"
It's exactly fifteen years since one of the events that accelerated the
fall of communism in Czechoslovakia. January 1989 was the 20th anniversary
of the death of Jan Palach, the student who had set himself alight on
Prague's Wenceslas Square in protest against the Soviet occupation. All
through the week starting from the 15th January thousands of people
gathered beneath the statue of Saint Wenceslas with flowers, to remember
Palach's sacrifice. Their quiet protest was put down by police in riot
gear using water cannon, a gross over-reaction that helped to turn many
Czechs against the regime. The young architect Ivan Plicka was a chance
witness of the demonstrations that are now known as "Palach
Week", and as he now recalls, he almost found himself being arrested.
More
Talking Point14th anniversary of Velvet Revolution
During the second half of the 1980s, the tension that was created after the
1968 Soviet-led invasion in Czechoslovakia had eased, especially after the
introduction of Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika reforms in the Soviet
Union. The Czechoslovak leadership, however, still headed by Gustav Husak
who came to power after the '68 invasion, was suspicious of movements
intended to "reform communism from within" and continued to
embrace a hard line. But by 1988 there were organized demonstrations
demanding change and with the fall of the Berlin Wall and weakening
communist governments in other neighbouring countries, it was not to be
long before Czechoslovakia too would be freed from its oppressive regime.
More
Current AffairsNew book examines Czech students' role in demise of Communist system
A new book entitled "Students and Communist Rule between 1968 and
1989" has just appeared on the bookshelves. The aim is to highlight
the special role Czech students played not only in overthrowing the
communist regime fourteen years ago, but throughout the totalitarian era.
More
One on OneIska Lichter: remembering a time when "we all got along"
Iska Lichter was born Jindriska Zofie Roudnicka in the town of Kolin, in
1930. The daughter of a Jewish father and a gentile mother, she lived a
normal life until 1939 and the Nazi occupation. Her parents divorced -
deliberately - to avoid the family being persecuted. Her father sent the
family to the countryside, he himself went to his mother's town of
Podebrady. He was deported to Terezin in 1942 and later sent to Auschwitz,
from which he never returned. Iska, who now lives in Colorado, says hardly
a day goes by when she does not think of her father, and her life before
the war.
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WitnessKaterina Vondrova - a night to remember on both sides of the globe
Translator and interpreter Katerina Vondrova left communist Czechoslovakia
with her parents in 1981 when she was just ten years old. The family moved
to Sydney, Australia and Katerina went to primary and secondary school
there, without knowing whether she would ever be allowed to visit her
native country again. She was in her final year of high school, preparing
for a university course in Australia, when something happened on the other
side of the globe that altered her plans and determined her future life.
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