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Czechs in HistoryJosef Horak, a twentieth century Czech hero
I was recently involved in making a film about Lidice, the Czech village that the Nazis wiped off the map in June 1942. In the course of my research I met many people from and connected with the village, including relatives of Josef Horak, one of only two men from Lidice to survive the Nazi massacre. The following programme tells his story.
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WitnessRuth Rulcova: the shock of an English cup of tea
A few days ago - for the first time - Ruth Rulcova had the chance to meet the man who saved her life in 1939. In that strange time between the German occupation of Prague in March and the outbreak of war in September, Sir Nicholas Winton was a British diplomat in Prague. He decided to help Czech Jewish children to get out of Prague while there was still time. In all he arranged for 700 children to be taken in by families in Britain. Their parents and relatives who stayed at home nearly all perished in the gas-chambers of the east. Ruth Rulcova was one of those children. Here she remembers her first impressions on arriving in England.
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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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WitnessHana Greenfield - lucky to be alive?
In 1942 Hana Lustigova, now Greenfield, was a teenager in the town of Kolin, east of Prague. Along with her mother and sister, she was sent by the Nazis to the Terezin Jewish Ghetto. This was just after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, who had ruled occupied Bohemia and Moravia with unsurpassed brutality. Hana, with her mother and sister, only narrowly avoided being sent straight to the gas chambers of the East among 1000 other Czech Jews, sent as a so-called Punishment Transport in retaliation for Heydrich. That was sixty years ago this week. Although her mother was murdered in Auschwitz, Hana survived. By a tragic irony, it is quite likely that the Cyklon B gas that killed her mother and millions of other European Jews was manufactured in Hana Greenfield's hometown of Kolin. She is sometimes asked if she feels lucky to be alive. Here is her response. More
Current Affairs Holocaust survivors gather in Kolin to remember "special transport"
The brutal reprisals for the assassination 60 years ago of the Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia - Reinhardt Heydrich - are well known. Two villages - Lidice and Lezaky - were razed to the ground, their inhabitants shot or sent to concentration camps. But almost unknown is the fact that 1,000 Jews from the town of Kolin were rounded up and transported to the camps, never to be seen again. A handful were spared that "special" transport, among them the writer Hana Greenfield, who was later sent to Terezin, Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. This weekend she will join a group of 40 Jews from six congregations around the world, who will gather in Kolin to remember the dead.
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WitnessHana Greenfield - lucky to be alive?
In 1942 Hana Lustigova, now Greenfield, was a teenager in the town of Kolin, east of Prague. Along with her mother and sister, she was sent by the Nazis to the Terezin Jewish Ghetto. This was just after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, who had ruled occupied Bohemia and Moravia with unsurpassed brutality. Hana, with her mother and sister, only narrowly avoided being sent straight to the gas chambers of the East among 1000 other Czech Jews, sent as a so-called Punishment Transport in retaliation for Heydrich. That was sixty years ago this week. Although her mother was murdered in Auschwitz, Hana survived. By a tragic irony, it is quite likely that the Cyklon B gas that killed her mother and millions of other European Jews was manufactured in Hana Greenfield's hometown of Kolin. She is sometimes asked if she feels lucky to be alive. Here is her response. More
Letter from PragueUproar at plans to make Terezin 'porn film'
Over the last few weeks the Czech papers have been full of a man called Robert Rosenberg, and a rather unusual film project. Rosenberg is a porn star turned producer, and two weeks ago the Czech tabloid Super claimed he was planning to make a hard-core sex film in the former Terezin concentration camp. The paper even superimposed images of people indulging in graphic sex acts over pictures of the fortress's grim red-brick walls, to help those readers with little or no imagination. Unsurprisingly the report caused uproar - around 140,000 Jews from across Europe were herded into the Terezin ghetto, thousands died there, and almost 90,000 were later sent to Auschwitz. More
Witness Zuzana Ruzickova on the power of music
And now for the first in our new weekly mini-series, in which David Vaughan lets people speak for themselves. People who have experienced moments of drama, excitement or tragedy at first hand recount a single, unforgettable episode in their lives. In the first of the series, we go back to the dark days of World War Two.
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Current AffairsFilming at Terezin banned following porn film outrage
A strict ban on video and film cameras was introduced on Monday at the Czech Republic's Terezin memorial, in response to claims in a tabloid newspaper that a porn actor-producer was planning to use the former concentration camp as the setting for his latest erotic film. The Czech tabloid Super claimed on Saturday that porn star Robert Rosenberg was working on a new film called "The Way It Was," featuring shots of SS officers having sex with female prisoners. Unsurprisingly, Terezin's mayor as well as groups representing former political prisoners are outraged. has more.
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