Archive: History | Second World War Second World War
Prague & Lima mark 90 years of diplomatic relations with donation of historic tank
Prague and Lima have been marking the 90th anniversary of diplomatic
relations this week through a number of events, including a ceremony in
Lima preceding the return of an historic Czechoslovak-built tank to the
Czech Republic. The LTP 38, as it is known, was built for Peru in the
1930s, designed specifically for high terrain. Originally, there were 24 of
the armoured fighting vehicles. More
Israeli author Tom Segev launches Czech translation of his Simon Wiesenthal biography
The Israeli author Tom Segev is in Prague to launch the Czech translation
of his acclaimed biography of the Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal. Entitled
Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends, Tom Segev’s latest work offers a
critical yet compassionate look at the complicated man who devoted his life
to tracking down Nazi criminals. Radio Prague spoke to Tom Segev during his
Prague visit, and asked him how different the real Simon Wiesenthal was
from the myths he himself helped create. More
Jerri Zbiral: finding a new path to Lidice
Anniversaries give us the chance to think again about the meaning of events
and their relevance today. Next month it will be exactly 70 years since the
destruction by the Nazis of the Czech village of Lidice in June 1942. The
facts and figures are well known, and even in the shadow of huge numbers
later killed in the Holocaust, still remain shocking: 340 people were
murdered, including 88 children and all but two of the men of the village.
They were killed systematically and in cold blood in a calculated attempt
by the SS to prevent Czech insurgency. The extent to which Lidice later
became a tool of communist propaganda, using rhetoric that equated Nazi
Germany with the “West”, is also well known, and for many Czechs, the
memory of Lidice still remains tainted by this legacy. So what can Lidice
mean to us today, now that all but a handful of the survivors are no longer
with us and with memories of both Nazism and Communism fading? David
Vaughan brings us a special programme. More
“Sala’s Gift”: a whole war in a tin box
You will probably not have heard of Gross Sarne, Brande, Blechhammer or
Schatzlar, but these are places that should be remembered. They were all
Nazi slave labour camps in World War Two. The last on that list, Schatzlar,
or Žacléř as it is known in Czech, was in what is now the Czech
Republic, in the part of north-eastern Bohemia annexed by the German Reich
in 1938. Few people in this country, even among the inhabitants of
Žacléř itself, know that the camp even existed, but a new book should
help to put that right. The daughter of one of the survivors has just been
in the Czech Republic, to launch the Czech edition of her book “Sala’s
Gift”. The book tells her mother’s story, drawing richly from Sala’s
own memories and from several hundred letters that, against all odds,
survived the war. David Vaughan tells the story. More
An Englishwoman who has lived in Prague for over six decades – ‘war bride’ Ivy Kovandová – Part II
In the previous episode of Czech Life, we brought you the first part of the
life story of Ivy Kovandová – one of the so-called war brides, English
women who got married to Czech soldiers or pilots during World War II and
then followed their husbands back to their native Czechoslovakia. Today, it
is time for the second part of Ivy’s story – which starts with her
arrival in her husband Oldřich Kovanda’s home country. More
Jan Kaplan: Operation Anthropoid more appreciated as years go by
As part of an exhibition linked to the 70th anniversary of the Lidice
massacre in June, Prague's Dox Centre for Contemporary Art is currently
hosting a video installation by the London-based Czech documentary maker
and editor Jan Kaplan entitled 10:35. The name refers to the time of day
that the operation to assassinate the Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia
– which preceded the Lidice atrocity – reached its climax in a Prague
suburb on May 27, 1942. The UK-based Czechoslovak paratroopers who carried
out the attack later met their deaths in a church in the city. More
A long-forgotten story of survival from WWII comes to light
A black and white photograph of a smiling Jewish girl unearthed in a
photographer’s studio some years ago has led a young Czech journalist to
piece together the dramatic story of a large group of Jewish children who
were smuggled to Denmark to escape the Holocaust. While the story of the
Nicolas Winton children is well known, this one is only just coming to
light and will hopefully reunite long-lost friends scattered around the
globe. The freelance journalist who is singlehandedly tackling the task is
Judita Matyasova whom I invited to the studio. She began by telling me how
it all came about. More
An Englishwoman who has lived in Prague for over six decades – ‘war bride’ Ivy Kovandová
Ivy Kovandová is one of the few remaining so-called war brides in the
Czech Republic. ‘War brides’ are Englishwomen who married Czechoslovak
pilots or soldiers stationed in the UK during WWII – an estimated 10,000
soldiers and about 2,500 pilots from Czechoslovakia fought alongside the
allies, and many of them married local women. Some of those women
accompanied their husbands back to their native land after the war. But
most left Czechoslovakia due to the strain that the arrival of the
communist regime placed on their lives, or simply because they felt lost
and homesick. Ivy Kovandová, however, still lives in her cozy apartment in
Prague’s Vršovice neighborhood and says she has never even considered
leaving. Just a few weeks ago, she celebrated her 90th birthday. I recently
visited Ivy at her home, where she told me all about her adventurous life
over cake and coffee. More
Charles Ota Heller: a soldier at the age of nine
In the last days of World War II, nine-year-old Ota Heller picked up a
revolver and fired it at a German soldier. He did not wait to see if the
man was still alive. For decades afterwards he talked to no one about the
experience, and only recently has Ota Heller – or Charles Ota Heller, as
he is now called – felt able to return to his memories of the war,
collecting them in his book “Out of Prague”. In this week’s Czech
Books he talks to David Vaughan. More
Fighter against dictatorships: Cardinal Josef Beran
Archbishop, later Cardinal, Josef Beran, become a symbol of opposition to
totalitarian regimes. He was dubbed the archbishop who refused to be
silenced. The punishment for speaking out was imprisonment first under the
Nazi occupation and then the Communists. More
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