On November 17th this year Czechs will celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the student demonstrations in Prague which sparked the Velvet Revolution. But this date had been symbolic for Czechs long before then. On November 17th 1939, in Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, all Czech universities were closed, 9 students and intellectuals were executed, and over 1200 students were sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. One of those students was Dr. Jakub Cermin, today aged 82. In this week's Talking Point, Jana Kotalik speaks with Dr. Cermin as well as Mr. Vaclav Straka, who was in the Czechoslovak legion abroad during World War II.
On September 1st 1939, Hitler invades Poland and Europe is at war. Meanwhile, the Czech lands had been occupied by Nazi Germany since March 15th, 1939 - when Bohemia and Moravia were proclaimed a protectorate of the Third Reich. But Czech resistance to German occupation was mounting in the fall of 1939. On October 28th - the anniversary of the founding of the first Czechoslovak Republic - in 1918, thousands of students demonstrated in Prague against the Nazi occupation.
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Vaclav Straka recalls these events with remarkable clarity. When the war broke out, he was abroad, helping to organize the Czech resistance army which fought alongside the Allies. He personally fought in France and England, before returning home in 1945. It was through Mr. Straka that I learned about the student resistance and in particular, the story of Jan Opletal, a medical student from Charles University, who was shot during the student demonstrations of October 28th 1939, and died several weeks later. He would become for Czechs a symbol of student opposition. Mr. Straka described how Jan Opletal's death in November 1939 affected the turn of events:
And the repression was cruel indeed. On the order of Adolf Hitler himself, on November 17th 1939, exactly 60 years ago, 9 students and intellectuals were summarily shot. Over a thousand students were taken from their residences in Prague and other cities and sent to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen near Berlin. All Czech universities were closed. These brutal acts represented an attack against the very soul of the Czech nation - a strike against its youth and intellectuals. One of the students taken to Sachsenhausen was Dr. Jakub Cermin, who today is president of the Czech Association of Freedom Fighters.
As Dr. Cermin explained, within three years, all of the Czech students arrested on November 17th were released by the Germans. But this came too late for the 18 students who died at Sachsenhausen. One young man, Pavel Svoboda, spent only one month in the camp with Jakub Cermin before being released and then escaping from the Protectorate to Britain, where he met Mr. Straka. Svoboda would be the first to recount abroad what had happened to the Czech students taken to the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen:
It was during these days, in 1941, that the International Students' Council in London declared November 17th International Student's Day . And importantly, news of the efforts of the Allies and Czech contingents abroad made its way back to Czechs living under German occupation. Edvard Benes, the former Czechoslovak president in exile, and Jan Masaryk - son of the founder of the first Czechoslovak state Thomas Garrigue Masaryk - broadcast speeches from London throughout the course of the war. I asked Dr. Cermin about these broadcasts. As it turned out, just evoking the name of Jan Masaryk brought on an emotional response:
And this is Jan Masaryk as he was heard by Czechs on September 8th, 1939:
And now, 60 years have gone by since these days. I asked Dr. Cermin what they do today to remember:
And quite remarkably, after 1939, November 17th would once more become a significant date for Czechoslovakia. In 1989, students again took to the streets in peaceful opposition - this time, to protest the Communist regime.
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