The WW2 Prague Uprising A frequent question on my walking tours is whether the centre of Prague was bombed during World War Two because it looks so old. I answer this question more fully on my World War Two Walking Tour but in summary, yes it was bombed but no the majority of any damage … Read More
Memorial to the Victims of Collectivisation When you take individual private companies and bring them under State control that’s called Nationalisation. When you take an entire sector of production under State control that’s called Collectivisation. In post-1948 Czechoslovakia the theory for agriculture was that as the State now owned the company or the land it … Read More
Famous Czechs – Miloš Forman Ask the average person what film directors they have heard of and it will be a pretty short list including Alfred Hitchcock and Steven Spielberg I imagine. Now ask your average Czech person and they’ll probably reel off a dozen names off the top of their head without even thinking. … Read More
WW2 Memorials – Josef Skalda There are thousands of memorials in the city and a large number relate to events and characters of World War Two. As I was passing this particular memorial I happened to notice that there was a lot of detail with a word that I had never seen before – SŤAT. … Read More
Memorial to Eleven Ice Hockey Players Surely one of the strangest memorials to the communist era is at Pšstrossova 24 in the New Town. It states that eleven ice hockey players were arrested in March 1950 and sent to prison. In fact several of these guys were either Olympic silver medallists in 1948 and/or ice … Read More
Famous Czechs – Jan Zajic To set the scene you have to understand that the August 1968 invasion of Prague by Warsaw Pact countries extinguished the Prague Spring freedoms. Any political or social reforms were cancelled and Czechoslovakia regressed to its 1950’s state. As was increasingly common in the late 1960s, the method of the … Read More
Famous Czechs – Karel Hašler Every year thousands of people are walking up or down the Old Castle Steps at the back of Prague Castle and at the top of the steps they walk past (and briefly look at) a sculpture of a man with his legs crossed, leaning against the wall and playing a … Read More
1948 Communist Coup All over this website on the historical and political posts as well as many of the attractions you’ll see me refer to the “Communist takeover” or the “Communist coup d’etat” which is still referred to historically as “Victorious February” by our local communist party. It’s worth taking some time to see where … Read More
Book Review – Prague’s Stolpersteine Stumbling Stones Defiant in Their Memory 2008-2021 On March 24th 2019 an email arrived into my inbox with a single word in the title – Stolpersteine. The purpose of that email was to engage with people who had written about Stolpersteine (I’d called them Prague Stumble Stones) and suggest linking … Read More
