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| Europe | |
| Czech Republic: Citizen groups honor WWII Resistance heroes | |
| 2007-06-30 | |
A week prior, on June 18, a similar group gathered at a church on New Town’s Resslová street to remember the seven Czechoslovak Resistance fighters who died there 65 years ago during a shootout with the Gestapo. Though separated by time and place, both tragedies were the fallout from one morning in May 1942 when resistance fighters attacked a Nazi convoy in Prague 8. As a result of that day’s events, one Nazi despot died, thousands of civilians were murdered and the future of the nation was cemented. “We are talking about the assassination of the most important officer of the Third Reich,” says military historian Michal Burian of the killing of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich. “The Czech nation paid a bloody tax for this deed, but it had declared its resistance to the occupation clearly in front of all the world.” But undercutting both remembrance ceremonies this month was a growing swell of protest that the government has failed to properly commemorate this episode of history. Speaking at the memorial ceremony in Ležáky, Senate Chairman Petr Pithart told the Czech News Agency that a planned memorial chapel at the site of the razed village has yet to be built. And years of stalling mean there’s still no proper memorial in Prague 8 to the two men who assassinated Heydrich. Plans for one have snagged on disagreements over the nature of the memorial and its location. Fed up with waiting, two citizens’ groups secretly erected their own illegal memorials June 10 and 18. The two plaques were placed near the site of the assassination. | |
| Posted by:mrp |
| #2 It's been 53 years,but I don't think that the Soviets would have been interested in a commemeration of the assassination of occupiers. I don't know that I would agree with memorializing an assassination, but certainly a memorial to the town that was razed certainly is in order. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2007-06-30 21:29 |
| #1 I have to wonder at the timing of this, it's only been 53 years, surely there's been plenty of time to honor these heroes before now? So "Why Now"? |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2007-06-30 12:50 |