Witness | All stories

Colonel Petr Uruba is a former Czechoslovak pilot who fled to England in 1939 and joined the RAF. His plane was blown off course during a bombing mission over France, and he was forced to land in occupied Normandy. Captured by the Germans, he was court-martialled: as a subject of the Reich fighting for the Allies he was guilty of treason. He managed to escape the death sentence, and was sent to a series of POW camps, ending up in the infamous Colditz. Now 86, he recalls returning to London in 1945 and witnessing the scenes of jubilation on

Jiri Vydra is a painter and sculptor who loves to share his gift with others, driven by his own, very personal sense of spirituality. For years he has been working with children, and with his own childlike enthusiasm he has helped to inspire hundreds of children to express themselves through painting. Some of his most extraordinary and inspiring work has been with the mentally disabled, with children who spend most of their lives shut away in homes. Jiri Vydra's cottage in the rolling Brdy Hills is just a few kilometers from one of these homes,

Jiri Dienstbier has quite a curriculum vitae. He went from being a political prisoner and then a stoker under the communists to Czechoslovak foreign minister after the revolution. Then from 1997 to 2001 he was United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in Jugoslavia. But Jiri Dienstbier's original profession was journalism, and - in the 1960s - he worked as a foreign correspondent for Czech Radio. Even that was a sign of the easing of the restrictions which ended with the Prague Spring of 1968, he says; in the 50s the Czechoslovak media

Every year, the Czech branch of UNICEF has a campaign asking people to contribute to a collection for a specific country in the third world. This year, it is focusing on Rwanda where thousands of children have been left alone to take care of themselves and their siblings. Pavla Gomba was part of a UNICEF mission to Rwanda last month, where she travelled to very remote villages to talk to people about their daily lives and experiences. The most striking meeting was with Bonne Annee. His name translates as Happy New Year because he was born on New

Tomas Vachuda was four years old when his family went to America in 1968 on what was to have been a vacation. In August Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia and the family stayed. They didn't see their homeland again for over twenty years. Now Tomas is in his late thirties and is back in his hometown. He runs the Prague office of an international consultancy firm, coming and going between the United States and the Czech Republic. Here he recalls his return in 1990 and how his early childhood memories were confronted with the reality of post-Velvet

As this month's huge NATO summit in Prague draws nearer, memories of the street fighting of two years ago during the city's IMF/World Bank conference again seem very fresh. Thousands of anti-globalisation protestors converged on the Czech capital and, although most protests were peaceful, there were also several dramatic and violent clashes with the police. At that time the Scottish journalist Nick Carey was working here at Radio Prague. He was out in the streets covering the demonstrations and suddenly found himself in a frightening situation,

Leos Rejmont is a doctor serving in the Czech Army. When the Czech Republic decided to send a field hospital to Afghanistan earlier this year as part of the ISAF mission to guarantee security in and around Kabul, he volunteered to take part. After five months with the 6th Field Hospital in Afghanistan, Leos Rejmont is now back home in Prague. The Czech-run hospital is to remain up and running till the end of the year, and then a smaller group of Czech doctors will continue to work as part of a 20-strong international medical team. The Czech medical

Since 1995 Laszlo Sumegh has been working as a streetworker to help young boys who have found themselves drawn into prostitution in the Czech capital. He has set up the foundation "Sance", which from a tiny office just off Wenceslas Square offers the boys some basic support. He provides condoms, medical attention and often just someone to talk to. Nobody knows how many boys are involved in prostitution, but large numbers are to be seen every evening around Prague's Main Station. Some 60 boys and a handful of girls regularly visit Laszlo Sumegh's

Iveta Durdonova is a young journalist from Prague. She joined Czech Radio four years ago as an editor and producer in the department broadcasting for and about the Czech Republic's Roma minority. She is one of only a handful of Romany journalists working in this country's mainstream media. In the course of her work Iveta has witnessed a great deal, but none of her experiences have had quite the same impact as a conference that she was sent to cover just a few months after she started at the radio. Here she recounts that memory.

Lidija Grebo fled her home in war-torn Sarajevo in 1992, to start a new life in the Czech Republic with her two teenage sons. She's been living here ever since and now works for a non-profit organisation called Slovo21, which helps minorities and promotes tolerance in Czech society. In this week's Witness, Lidija recalls her journey from Sarajevo to Belgrade, and the first time she set eyes on Prague: