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Czech LifeAn Englishwoman who has lived in Prague for over six decades – ‘war bride’ Ivy Kovandová
Ivy Kovandová is one of the few remaining so-called war brides in the
Czech Republic. ‘War brides’ are Englishwomen who married Czechoslovak
pilots or soldiers stationed in the UK during WWII – an estimated 10,000
soldiers and about 2,500 pilots from Czechoslovakia fought alongside the
allies, and many of them married local women. Some of those women
accompanied their husbands back to their native land after the war. But
most left Czechoslovakia due to the strain that the arrival of the
communist regime placed on their lives, or simply because they felt lost
and homesick. Ivy Kovandová, however, still lives in her cozy apartment in
Prague’s Vršovice neighborhood and says she has never even considered
leaving. Just a few weeks ago, she celebrated her 90th birthday. I recently
visited Ivy at her home, where she told me all about her adventurous life
over cake and coffee. More
Czech BooksCharles Ota Heller: a soldier at the age of nine
In the last days of World War II, nine-year-old Ota Heller picked up a
revolver and fired it at a German soldier. He did not wait to see if the
man was still alive. For decades afterwards he talked to no one about the
experience, and only recently has Ota Heller – or Charles Ota Heller, as
he is now called – felt able to return to his memories of the war,
collecting them in his book “Out of Prague”. In this week’s Czech
Books he talks to David Vaughan. More
Current AffairsVillage commemorates arrival of parachutists who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich
The village of Nehvizdy, in central Bohemia, on Wednesday commemorated the
70th anniversary of the start of Operation Anthropoid, the targeted killing
of the Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich. Two Czechoslovak commandoes who
carried out the killing, landed near the village on the night of 28
December, 1941. More
Czech HistoryThe bombing of Prague from a new perspective
For all the suffering that Bohemia and Moravia endured during WWII,
relatively little of the damage was physical. Prague escaped the terrible
bombing that left so many of the ancient cities of Europe wasted. There
were incidents, however - two in particular in the last year of the war
that brought large-scale destruction and great loss of life. More
Current AffairsSurvivors remember first transport to Terezín in winter of 1941
It's exactly seventy years since the first transport of Czechoslovak Jews
left Prague, bound for the garrison town of Terezín, transformed by the
Nazis into a ghetto and concentration camp. Some 140,000 Jewish men, women
and children were sent to Terezín, known as Theresienstadt in German; most
of them were later killed at Auschwitz. A number of events were held this
week bringing together Terezín survivors, one of them on Thursday evening
at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. More
SpecialEva Jiránková –A remarkable life
In today’s Special our guest is the charming Eva Jiránková, born in
1921 to a notable Prague family in the early years of the First Republic.
As a junior, Jiránková was a competitive skier and as a young woman she
graced the covers of popular Czech magazines – something of a charmed
life. But that all that ended in September 1942 when her husband, Miloš
Jiránek, was arrested by the Gestapo, and spent the next years in
internment and concentration camps. More
Current AffairsCommonwealth representatives mark Remembrance Day in Prague
The military section of Prague’s Olšany Cemetery filled with foreign
uniforms on Sunday as soldiers of the Commonwealth of Nations marked
Remembrance Day, and commemorated the sacrifices of their countrymen who
lost their lives on Czech territory during the Second World War. More
SpotlightPetschek’s Palace, once the headquarters of the Nazi secret police
If you’re not looking for it then you’ll probably overlook the rather
nondescript building of the Ministry of Industry, near the top of
Prague’s Wenceslas Square. If, however, you are one of the few who read
Prague’s street-side memorial signs, you get the full impact of what the
dirty grey, rough-hewn building called Petschek’s Palace means to modern
Czech history: “In the time of the Nazi occupation,” it reads, “this
building housed the torture chambers of the Gestapo. Fighters for the
freedom of our country fought, suffered and died here. We will never forget
their memory, and will be loyal to their legacy. PEOPLE, BE AWARE”. More
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