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Current AffairsMarking the Holocaust
The Czech Republic has been marking International Holocaust Remembrance
Day, which comes on the anniversary of the liberation of the
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in occupied Poland. Numerous events
have been taking place across the country and in Prague in particular.
Dominik Jůn spoke with Zuzana Tlášková of the Jewish Museum in Prague
to
find out more. More
MailboxMailbox
This week in Mailbox: the proposed exhumation of the remains of the Danish
astronomer Tycho Brahe, the history of Charles University, a link to the
latest edition of Czech Books, the government’s approval to sell the
Czech national carrier. Listeners quoted: Swen Gummich, Klaus Jurascheck,
Abigail Hirsch, Aloisie Krasny.
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Czech BooksLisa Peschel: rediscovering the forgotten theatre of Terezín
During the Second World War, over 140,000 people were imprisoned in the
Terezín ghetto north of Prague. Their only crime was to be Jewish. One in
four died in the ghetto itself, and most who survived later perished in
other Nazi camps. But despite appalling overcrowding, there was still a
semblance of normal life in Terezín. The ghetto’s streets still had
names; people would still go to work in the morning, and come home to their
cramped barracks at night. And against the odds, Terezín had a thriving
cultural life. This included theatre, a fact that gripped the imagination
of the American theatrical historian, Lisa Peschel. She has spent years
trying to find out more about the texts that were written and performed in
the ghetto. Her detective work, in close cooperation with survivors, has
yielded an astonishing amount of material, and Lisa has now edited a book
that brings some of these texts together. Published in Prague by Akropolis,
the book is in Czech and German, but Lisa promises that there will soon be
an English edition too. She told me more about her fascinating - and
important - research.
More
Czech BooksHana Pravda: a love stronger than death itself
“I’m now going to write down some of the things which have happened
over the last few days. I’ve got such a short memory, I’m afraid, and
this is a way of making sure that I don’t forget.” These are the
opening lines of a diary that was written in 1945 by a young woman as she
gradually emerged from the hell of the concentration camps, hoping, against
the odds, to see her husband again. The woman’s name was Hana Pravda, and
she died in London on May 22 this year at the age of 92. Hana spent much of
the second half of her life in Britain, where she had a long and very
successful career as an actress. But it was a career that had been brutally
cut in two by the Second World War, and had begun at a very different time
and place: in the early 1930s in her home city of Prague.
More
Current AffairsHolocaust victims remembered by new ‘Stones of the Vanished’ project
If you stumble across a little brass plaque on a walk in Prague’s Old
Town next week, then the chances are it is going to be a ‘kámen
zmizelého’ (‘stone of the vanished’). The project, organized by the
Czech Union of Jewish Students, will eventually see stones commemorating
victims of the Holocaust embedded in pavements all over the capital. The
idea comes from Germany, as does the man making the memorials, Gunter
Demnig. But the project coordinator at the Czech end is Petr Mandl. I met
him on Wednesday morning to ask first about the name of the project:
More
Current AffairsEducational centre to open at former Roma concentration camp
A former Roma concentration camp in South Moravia was turned into a holiday
resort in the 1960s. Now the site is set to become a documentation and
educational centre with a permanent exposition on the Romany Holocaust –
the first institution of its kind in the Czech Republic.
More
Current AffairsWinton Train to retrace route of kindertransport that saved the lives of hundreds of Jewish children
This Monday, Sir Nicholas Winton, the British stock exchange clerk who
quietly saved more than 650 Czech Jewish children from the Holocaust and
told no one for more than 50 years, turned 99. In Prague, the occasion was
marked by representatives of Czech Railways as well as the Film Academy of
Miroslav Ondříček in Písek. Together, they announced an ambitious new
project called The Winton Train, which will retrace the route of the
original Prague-London kindertransport which saved so many. Young
filmmakers, inspired by Mr Winton’s deeds, will be among those who will
take part in the journey.
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