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Karel Weirich is perhaps an unfamiliar name to most Czechs and to most of the world. Yet this modest man contributed in large part to keeping the world informed about the plight of Bohemia and Moravia under Nazi occupation. And he also helped to save the lives of hundreds of Jews living in Italy during WWII. The exact number is not known.

In this week’s Czech History we will be looking at three civic initiatives to try and save aspects of the country’s past where the state and other institutions have failed to deliver. The projects all relate to aspects of Czechoslovakia’s totalitarian past, in particularly as regards the Jáchymov complex of uranium mine camps, though the history of the Uherské Hradiště prison, and the Svatobořice internment camp go back a lot further in the past. Leading members of projects aimed at regenerating all three sites got together recently at a seminar

Czech historian Prokop Tomek is the co-author, together with Ivo Pejčoch, of a new book about the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia that started in August 1968 with the invasion of Warsaw Pact forces and ended in 1991 when the last troops withdrew.

Last time in Czech History, Michal Pullmann discussed his research into Czechoslovak society in the 1980s. In this second in a two-part special, he reflects upon the public role that historians play more generally in the Czech Republic today. I met him in his office at Charles University’s Institute of Economic and Social History, so it seemed only natural to start by asking him about his teaching:

Michal Pullmann is head of the Institute of Economic and Social History at Charles University in Prague. In this first of a two-part edition of Czech History, he discusses his research, which has focused most recently on the last years of communism in Czechoslovakia. When I met Pullmann in his office recently, I started by asking him about his book Konec Experimentu (The End of The Experiment), which examines the influence of Soviet Perestroika on different groups in Czechoslovak society in the late 1980s. My first question was how Perestroika was

Czech football legend Josef Masopust died on Monday, June 29. In tribute, Radio Prague is rebroadcasting this edition of Czech History from February 2011.

Germany’s use of long range rockets towards the end of WWII in a desperate but vain attempt to turn around the tide of the war, is a well known episode in history. So is the fact that many of the German experts were drafted in by the victors to help with the United States and Soviet rocket programmes. But a late Czech chapter in the attempt to develop new super weapons and rockets is little known and still shrouded with questions.

Just over a week ago around 300 schoolchildren from the West Bohemian city of Plzeň crowded into its art nouveau masterpiece, now serving as its main cultural centre, to hear from around a dozen men around 75 years older. The former US and Belgian soldiers were among those who 70 years earlier had fought their way through Europe and landed up, sometimes fleetingly, in Plzeň at the end of World War II.

In this week’s edition of Czech History we look at the situation in Bohemia and Moravia in late April and early May 1945 in the run up to commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII. We draw on the recollections of US soldiers Czech resistance fighters, and forced labour and concentration camp workers seeking to return home as the hostilities ended.

Czech historians and researchers are trying to benefit as fast as possible from a new open access policy to the former Soviet archives in Ukraine. One lesson that has been learnt from nearby Russia is that doors that open one day can slam shut soon after.