2005-05-26T13:06:25+02:00 Radio Prague http://www.radio.cz/en/current/women urn:uuid:1def4b51-0b2c-5d56-90ef-f7a8bc6b6ec4 2005-05-26T13:06:24+02:00

Jaroslava Moserova is a woman of many talents. She is best known to many Czechs for her translations, in particular the novels of Dick Francis. For several years she was also a Czech senator and prior to that a member of the lower house of parliament, and also Czech ambassador to Australia and New Zealand. As if that weren't enough she has also had a long career as a burns specialist and was the first doctor to treat Jan Palach, the Czech student who set himself alight on Wenceslas Square in 1969. But here Jaroslava Moserova remembers back to a time before all that, when she was a little girl, growing up in wartime occupied Prague.

urn:uuid:7307276e-8fef-5ba4-99e2-321beb40d606 2005-05-19T12:16:44+02:00

Dr Milena Hubschmannova is the Czech Republic's foremost scholar of Romani, the ancient language spoken by millions of Roma across Europe. At the time of the German occupation she was a little girl, living with her family in Prague's New Town, close to Wenceslas Square. Here she recalls two memories from that time. They seem unconnected, but both show how in war the smallest chance can mean the difference between life and death.

urn:uuid:539459fe-720f-54ba-b76f-f150cdb14734 2005-05-12T13:06:06+02:00

My grandmother Marie Velingerova, the daughter of a Czech industrialist, was 27 years-old when the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia in March of 1939: like most Czechs, she was filled with dread. Married, a mother of two, she worked as a clerk at her family's store, and for some time life went on as normal. Then came the assassination of the Nazi "reichsprotektor" Reinhard Heydrich by Czech patriots. Here she recalls the mood that day and some personal events that followed.

urn:uuid:0b4dd6fc-4827-5a3d-abde-56f03071f933 2005-05-05T13:58:45+02:00

Zuzana Ruzickova is one of Europe's most renowned harpsichord players, and has made dozens of recording during a career spanning over a half a century. But 60 years ago, after three hellish years in Nazi concentration camps, she feared she might never play again. Here she recalls coming home from the War to her hometown of Pilsen in west Bohemia, when she was 18.

urn:uuid:02fcfbff-4dfe-5d64-858f-ceb42fadcabb 2005-04-28T15:07:59+02:00

The retired teacher Ludmila Seidlova was a teenager during the Second World War. In her choice of profession she was inspired by her father who was headmaster at the so-called "Teachers' Institute" in Panska Street, just off Prague's famous Na Prikope Street. Ludmila Seidlova lived with her family right in the school, originally built by the Piarist Order in the 18th century.

urn:uuid:69176432-af78-5da2-a2a2-1733a7ee9d08 2005-04-20T23:59:59+02:00

If the film Casablanca had not been fiction, perhaps Sam would have played "As Time Goes By" for the Prague-born writer Lenka Reinerova. In 1941 she was one of many thousands of refugees who found themselves trapped in the Moroccan port as they tried to escape occupied Europe for the New World. Lenka Reinerova was born 88 years ago into a German-speaking Prague Jewish family.