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Current Affairs58th anniversary of the Prague Uprising commemorated
Fifty eight years ago on May 5, 1945, Czechoslovak Radio called on citizens
to rise up against the Nazi occupying force. With this the Prague Uprising
began, and for five days Czechs took up arms against the German troops
until the Red Army arrived in the Czech capital on May 9. This, the end of
the Second World War, is being commemorated around the Czech Republic on
Monday.
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Current AffairsCzechoslovakia marks 57th anniversary of liberation
On May 5th, 1945, Czechoslovak Radio issued a call for people to rise up against the Nazi occupiers. The fiercest fighting
took place in Prague, where 1,700 Czechs lost their lives in the struggle for freedom. Rob Cameron and Olga
Szantova look back at the liberation of Prague.
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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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