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Czechs in History"Calling all Czechs, calling all Czechs!" - the Prague Uprising remembered
Last week marked the 59th anniversary of the final days that led-up to the
end of the Second World War. In Bohemia those fateful days were defined by
the Prague Uprising, which saw some 30, 000 take up arms in the Czech
capital against their German occupiers. Though the Nazi grip on Bohemia
and Moravia began to weaken, the threat of newer Nazi atrocities grew with
every passing hour.
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Current AffairsThe Battle of the Airwaves: the extraordinary story of Czechoslovak Radio and the 1945 Prague Uprising
Welcome to a special programme to mark the 58th anniversary of the end of
the Second World War, a national holiday in the Czech Republic. The
anniversary has a special significance in Prague, because it was here that
some of the last shots of the war in Europe were fired, long after most
European cities had been freed. The liberation of Prague by the Red Army
on the 9th May 1945 was preceded by three days of fierce fighting in the
streets of the city, and over 3000 people lost their lives fighting for
Prague's freedom. In the uprising, the radio and the very building from
which we are now broadcasting, was right at the heart of events.
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WitnessErstwhile enemies meet behind bars
This week is the anniversary of the Prague Uprising, which began on the 5th May 1945, in the last days of the German occupation of Prague. At the time Antonin Sum was in his mid twenties. As a young Czech patriot he was active in the uprising, which saw heavy street-fighting against the residue of the German army of occupation. In three days nearly three thousand people were killed. On the other side of the barricades was the German General Rudolf Toussaint, the chief of the Wehrmacht forces in Prague. After the war Antonin Sum became secretary to the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, Jan Masaryk, but with the Communist putsch of 1948, as a democrat, he became an enemy of the state more or less overnight. Like thousands of non-communist Czechs who had held positions of influence, Antonin Sum was thrown into prison during the show-trials of the later 40s and early 50s. By a strange twist of history, one-time freedom fighters found themselves in jail with former prominent Nazis and collaborators, and it was there that Antonin Sum had the strange experience of meeting his erstwhile enemy, General Toussaint. Here he remembers that meeting.
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