Related articles

On Saturday the liberation of the west Bohemian city of Plzen by US troops on May 6, 1945 was remembered in a celebration entitled "Thanks, America!". A number of veterans of the liberation attended the event, as did Czech Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek, who said it was one of the most significant events in modern Czech history. Monday - Victory in Europe Day - is a state holiday in the Czech Republic.

Celebrations have been taking place in Plzen to mark its liberation by United States soldiers on May 6, 1945. American jeeps were driven around the centre of the west Bohemian city, while many people donned US Army uniforms. But organisers say the turnout was considerably lower than for the 60th anniversary last year. Some ceremonies marking the end of the war were also held in Prague. Monday - Victory in Europe Day - is a state holiday in the Czech Republic.

A number of ceremonies have been held in the Czech capital to mark the anniversary of the historic Prague Uprising, which began on May 5th, 1945, a few days before the end of World War II. One of the main events took place on Friday in front of the Czech Radio building on Prague's Vinohradska Street, the scene of some of the bloodiest battles of the uprising. In May 1945 around 30,000 of the city's citizens fought the Nazis over three days, with more than 1,500 losing their lives.

The appeal "Volame vsechny Cechy" - calling all Czechs - is probably the best known recording in Czech Radio's archive. A radio announcer calls on Czechs to rise up against the German occupation. The date is the 5th May 1945, in the dying days of the war, and the broadcast marked the beginning of the Prague Uprising. In three days of fighting, over three thousand Czechs lost their lives, before the Red Army finally entered the city. Much of the fighting took place right here, in the radio building in Vinohradska Street. This Friday, as every year,

The expulsion of more than two million ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II has long remained a source of tension in Czech-German relations and one of the most controversial chapters in Czechoslovakia's post-war history. On Wednesday, for the first time, the Czech government expressed a symbolic apology and regret over the post-war victimisation of thousands of Sudeten Germans, who had remained loyal to the Czechoslovak state and had been active in the anti-Nazi resistance. The gesture, approved unanimously by the government, has

The Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka paid a one-day visit to Prague on Thursday - and praised Czech counterpart Jiri Paroubek's efforts at reconciliation with anti-fascist Sudeten Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia after the war. Both Poland and the Czech Republic have made strides towards reconciliation with Germany in recent years, though the efforts are not to everyone's liking. Rob Cameron has more.

A handful of people gathered on Monday at Prague's Vinohrady Cemetery to mark the 60th anniversary of the death of Czechoslovakia's third President, Emil Hacha. It was an event that wasn't marked with pomp and ceremony: Emil Hacha remained in office throughout the German wartime occupation, and he is remembered by many as a symbol of wartime collaboration. David Vaughan reports.

Singled out for extermination by the Nazis along racial lines, only five out of every hundred Czech Roma are thought to have survived the Second World War. The majority were interned in the Czech-run camps of Lety and Hodinin, where hundreds of Roma—mostly children—died from disease, hunger and abuse at the hands of Czech guards, and from where thousands more were sent on to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps. As Brian Kenety reports, the European Parliament's recent call for the Czech state to tear down a pig farm built atop the Lety camp lent

On Wednesday morning the Czech President Vaclav Klaus was among a small group of people who gathered at the Russian Orthodox memorial chapel in Prague's Olsany Cemetery. They were there to remember a tragic and long forgotten episode that began just days after the liberation of Prague sixty years ago in May 1945. David Vaughan reports.

In recent days Czech towns have been commemorating the end of the Second World War. But among the events of 60 years ago that many prefer not to be reminded of, is the expulsion of the German minority (the so called Sudeten Germans) from Czechoslovakia. The expulsion was the culmination of the clash between Czechs and Germans in the lands of Bohemia and Moravia, which had erupted in such a brutal way during the German occupation. But now even 60 years after the war this event still represents a sensitive issue in Czech public life.