Czech Science Café: Vojtěch Kyncl: The Aftermath of WWII in Czechoslovakia

Presenter: PhDr. Vojtěch Kyncl, Ph.D., Institute of History, Czech Academy of Sciences

February 6, 7PM in the Cinema

The defeat of the Nazi Third Reich was an impatiently awaited result of the European nations’ struggle for freedom. The last weeks of the war at the turn of April and May 1945 were connected with fighting operations of the American and Soviet armies which gradually liberated Czech cities one by one. The historical events were caught on camera by official army film crews and amateur enthusiasts who captured the “Zero Hour” in Prague, Brno and Pilsen. A wide range of film material is kept until this day in the archival collections and we will have the opportunity of commemorating the historical moment of the defeat of Nazism thanks to a short (15 min) compilation accompanied by recordings from Czech Radio, including unique shots from Pilsen.

The new era of peace brought with it a revelation of amassive range of material devastation and, primarily, human suffering. Czechoslovakia lost over 360 000 victims, of which only 12 000 were soldiers. 75 000 people returned to their homeland from concentration camps in very bad health, while 200 000 citizens died in the camps in inhumane conditions. The efforts of Czechoslovakia to punish the Nazis for their barbaric extermination war began in 1942 and ended with the death of the last known perpetrator in 2013. The introduction of the new book “Beasts. Czechoslovakia and the Prosecution of Nazi War Criminals” will show not only the seventy years of attempts at dealing with Nazism according to criminal law on the level of international politics, but also a handful of cases which Czechoslovakia, Eastern and Western Germany and Austria dealt with over the Iron Curtain in the 1960s and ‘70s. Two of the cases concerned American citizens who were murdered and their killers were caught in West Germany and Austria twenty-five years later.

Including introduction of the new book:

VOJTĚCH KYNCL: Beasts. Czechoslovakia and the Prosecution of Nazi War Criminals