Witness Franta 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.
Franta Kocourek reports on military parade of German troops
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