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An icy gale and drizzling rain pound upon new grass and gravel near the Vojna Memorial: located in the Pribram region of Central Bohemia Vojna was a prison camp that first housed Nazi criminals, then opponents of Czechoslovakia's Communist regime. Ironically, prisoners jailed there included some of Czechoslovakia's finest, who had fought for their country during the war, only to ultimately be branded as traitors and western spies. Today, Vojna serves as a most chilling reminder of one of the darkest chapters of Czechoslovak history.

One of the main functions of the Council of Europe is now the European Court of Human Rights. But that court has a backlog of nearly 80,000 cases. We asked Aaron Rhodes - the head of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights whether the Council is still meeting the goals for which it was created:

She is blond, she is young and she is the first female airline captain in Hungary. Ildiko Czigany had to set high standards to accomplish her life's dream - flying more than 4,500 hours to qualify for the post. And Ildiko seems to have broken the ice in Hungary, now there are three more female candidates aiming to land in this still male-dominated career.

Poland's politics are causing some bemusement among voters. The prime minister - who is not a member of the ruling party - has submitted his resignation but remains in his post because the resignation was rejected by the president. And now the Prime Minister has joined another political group. Some say the latest developments could easily be entered into the Guinness Book of Records.

The idea of neighbourhood watch - local people keeping on eye out for crime in their neighbourhood is well established in many countries - but it's quite new to Slovakia. However in the northern city of Zilina, citizens have decided to join forces with police to help make their city a safer place.

Members of Slovenia's minorities groups such as Roma and people from other parts of the former Yugoslavia are often victims of xenophobia and racism. But Slovenia's Ombudsman has taken up their cause. He wants Slovene's to see the problem and has mounted an exhibition which will be shown across the country.

A small ceremony took place this week in Prague to commemorate a tragic and little-known episode in the country's past. As the Red Army advanced into Czechoslovakia in 1945, hundreds of Russian émigrés - who'd found refuge in the country after the 1917 revolution - were abducted by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, and taken back to Russia. Rob Cameron has been speaking to Vladimir Bystrov junior, whose grandfather was one of those abducted, and who's involved in a committee set up by his father, called They Were The First.

The countries of Central Europe played different roles during the war. What was left of Czechoslovakia after the Munich Agreement a few months earlier, when the main European powers allowed Nazi Germany to annex huge parts of the Czech borderlands, split in March 1939 - Slovakia broke away to form what rapidly turned into a Nazi puppet state, and Hitler occupied the Czech part of the country, declaring the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Further south, Hungary actively collaborated with the Nazis and the "liberation" of the country

One of the most controversial figures of Slovak wartime history remains Jozef Tiso. To this day the president of the first distinctly Slovak state often comes in for both praise and criticism. He brought Slovaks statehood, but at the bitter price of allegiance to Nazi Germany. But both Tiso's defenders and critics often forget that Tiso was not the decisive element in creating a new state.

Slovenia's struggle against occupation during the Second World War was made complex by internal divisions between partisans and anti-communist nationalists. Radio Slovenia International talked to historian Dr. Marjan Znidaric, director of the Museum of National Liberation, about this fateful period in Slovenian and European history: