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Special“Red stars over Bethlehem”: 90 years of Czech and Czechoslovak presidents
We have heard plenty in recent weeks from the two candidates in this
year’s Czech presidential elections. But what about their predecessors?
The Czech Republic and previously Czechoslovakia have had ten presidents
since 1918 when Czechoslovakia was founded, and in this programme we let
some of them speak for themselves through Czech Radio’s archives.
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PanoramaThe 17th of November: Remembering Jan Opletal, martyr of an occupied nation
On the 28th of October, 1939, Czechoslovak Independence day, Czech students
took to the streets to demonstrate against the Nazi occupation. The
protest
was brutally suppressed - with shots fired at random into the crowd. One
student leader, Jan Opletal, was seriously wounded, and later succumbed to
his injuries. Thousands turned out for his funeral procession, and
protests
again turned violent. Hitler ordered a swift and brutal clampdown. On the
17th of November, nine students, seen as the ringleaders, were executed
and over a thousand were sent to concentration camps. The anniversary is
marked worldwide as International Student's Day and has a further
significance for Czechs. It was the 50th anniversary of these events, in
November 1989, that sparked the Velvet Revolution, the beginning of the
end of communist rule. In today's special programme, we recount the events
that led the Allies to sacrifice Czechoslovakia in the vain hope of
preventing war, and the martyrdom of Jan Opletal. More
Current AffairsThe complex legacy of the president many would prefer to forget
A handful of people gathered on Monday at Prague's Vinohrady Cemetery to
mark the 60th anniversary of the death of Czechoslovakia's third
President, Emil Hacha. It was an event that wasn't marked with pomp and
ceremony: Emil Hacha remained in office throughout the German wartime
occupation, and he is remembered by many as a symbol of wartime
collaboration. David Vaughan reports. More
WitnessFranta Kocourek - courage in the face of occupation in March 1939
We don't usually use archive recordings for Witness, but today we'll make
an exception. This year is the 65th anniversary of the tragic day in March
1939, when German troops marched into Prague, beginning six years of Nazi
occupation. At the time, Franta Kocourek was one of Czechoslovak Radio's
star reporters. Four days after Bohemia and Moravia had been declared a
"Protectorate of the German Reich", he reported live on the huge
military parade that the Germans had organized on Prague's Wenceslas
Square. He made no attempt to conceal his sense of horror at this show of
Nazi military might. This was the first of many acts of defiance that soon
led to Franta Kocourek being arrested. He died in Auschwitz in 1942, at
the age of forty. Part of his live report from the balcony of the Hotel
Sroubek on Wenceslas Square, on the 19th March 1939, survives to this day,
and has become legendary in the history of Czech broadcasting.
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