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The British writer, director and film producer, Stephen Weeks, is fascinated by the past and he relishes exploring the unexpected and sometimes uncomfortable details that tend to be left out of the history books. This is certainly the case in his novel Daniela, which is set mainly in Prague in the last months of World War Two, and is steeped in historical detail. In the week’s Czech Books Stephen Weeks talks to David Vaughan about the book.

It is quite likely that you will never have heard of the Czech teacher, religious thinker, pacifist and humanist, Přemysl Pitter, but he deserves to be remembered as one of the great Czechs of the 20th century. Pitter touched the lives of thousands, and his work helping children during and just after the Second World War, matches the extraordinary achievements Oskar Schindler. In a new biography of Přemysl Pitter, the writer and journalist Pavel Kosatík puts his extraordinary life in context. We find out more in Czech Books with David Vaughan.

Czech film director David Vondráček is to receive a prize for his film “Zabíjení po česku,” which roughly translates as “Killing Czech style” in Frankfurt, Germany, on Sunday. The Franz Werfel Human Rights Prize has been awarded by the German foundation, the Centre Against Expulsions. The film deals with Czech murders of German civilians at the end of WWII. In particular it concentrates on the murder of 763 civilians by members of the Czech army and revolutionary guards at the town of Postoloprty in the north of the country. The film was screened in prime time by Czech Television.

Czechoslovakia was one of the first victims of the Nazis, with the march into the Sudetenland in I938 followed by the occupation of the rest of the country in March 1939 and an increasingly oppressive regime for most of the population. The backlash at the end of WWII was harsh and violent. And that backlash against the Nazi occupiers, Sudeten Germans and Czechs believed to have collaborated in some way is the subject of US historian Benjamin Frommer’s book “National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia.”

A gruesome find has made headlines in the Czech Republic: police have uncovered human remains in what appears to be a mass grave in a field near the village of Dobronin, in the Jihlava region. Fifteen Germans are said to have been brutally murdered there by the locals in the turbulent days after the end of World War II. The discovery is the first piece of evidence pertaining to this long-forgotten massacre and has once again re-opened a dark chapter of Czech-German history.

Hundreds of people attended a commemorative ceremony on Sunday on the site of Ležáky, one of the two Czech villages that the Nazis razed to the ground 68 years ago in retaliation for the assassination of Nazi governor Reinhard Heydrich. The children were either transported to concentration camps or resettled with German families whilst all 52 adults were killed and Ležáky was razed to the ground on June 24th 1942, just two weeks after the destruction of Lidice. Speaking at the ceremony President Vaclav Klaus said it was important for future generations to learn the lessons of the past, to realize the full meaning of expressions such as statehood, freedom and sovereignty and be ever ready to defend them.

In May 1945, millions of Czechs could breath freely again after six years of Nazi occupation. The German defeat brought about the end of the Nazi rule of terror, and the re-establishment of Czechoslovakia. But for thousands of ethnic Germans, the end of the war meant the beginning of a new ordeal. They were expelled from the country, and many of them were killed during the first day of peace. In this edition of Czech Today, Radio Prague talks to Marie Ranzenhoferová, who survived one of the violent expulsions, known today as the Brno death

Attending a military parade in Moscow to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the end of WWII, Czech President Vaclav Klaus said he did not regard present-day Russia as a security threat and regretted the fact that some people in the Czech Republic persisted in viewing it as such. The president noted that the presence of Western statesmen and soldiers on Moscow’s Red Square this year – for the first time since the war -was a clear signal of a shift in relations towards greater trust and cooperation.

Czechs are marking the 65th anniversary of the end of WWII with commemorative ceremonies, exhibitions and cultural events. In Prague President Vaclav Klaus, political leaders and war veterans gathered at a memorial on Vítkov Hill to pay tribute to those who laid down their lives in the fight for freedom. Commemorative gatherings also took place at Prague’s Olšany cemetary, where the remains of foreign soldiers who died on Czech soil are buried and as well as Czechs who lost their lives in the Prague uprising. On the occasion of the anniversary the city of Prague unveiled a memorial to the legendary Czech pilot František Peřina who took part in the Battle of France and later served in the RAF. He received many medals for valor, among them the Czechoslovak War Cross, the Order of the White Lion and the French Legion d’Honneur.

This week marked the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Plzeň and West Bohemia by General Patton's Third Army. In a special programme to mark the anniversary, Rob Cameron travelled to the spa town of Konstantinovy Lázně, former headquarters of the US Army's 16th Armoured Division, where he spoke to George Thompson - a veteran of the fighting in West Bohemia, Charles Noble - son of the commander of the 16th Armoured Division’s Combat Command B, and George Patton Waters, grandson of the legendary General George S. Patton.