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Lukáš Přibyl’s series of documentaries, ‘Forgotten Transports’, depicts a lesser-known side of the Holocaust, played out in locations a lot less notorious than Belsen or Auschwitz. The films have been subject to an overwhelming amount of critical acclaim ever since the final installment, ‘Forgotten Transports to Poland’ was premiered in March this year. Just before Lukáš Přibyl set off to Paris to promote the cycle there, I asked him to tell me a bit about the project:

Czech Cardinal Miloslav Vlk has criticized Pope Benedict XVI for his decision to lift the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson. The British bishop has publicly denied the use of gas chambers during World War Two and the scale of the Holocaust. On Saturday, Lidové noviny reported that cardinal Miloslav Vlk spoke out against the Pope’s decision to reinstate Bishop Williamson on his website, saying the step had been taken ‘too lightly’. Cardinal Vlk added that, as a Catholic bishop, he categorically condemned anti-Semitism. On January 24, the Vatican reinstated Bishop Williamson, who had been excommunicated for 20 years. The move drew criticism from Jewish leaders, and some within the Catholic Church.

A ceremony was held at the Czech Senate on Tuesday marking Holocaust Memorial Day. Hundreds of people who survived Nazi concentration camps attended the memorial, held on the 64th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Others in attendance were the Czech Republic’s chief rabbi Karol Sidon, the head of the Czech Roman Catholic church, Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, and the new minister of human rights and minorities, Michael Kocáb.

The Czech Republic has been marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which comes on the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in occupied Poland. Numerous events have been taking place across the country and in Prague in particular. Dominik Jůn spoke with Zuzana Tlášková of the Jewish Museum in Prague to find out more.

During the Second World War, over 140,000 people were imprisoned in the Terezín ghetto north of Prague. Their only crime was to be Jewish. One in four died in the ghetto itself, and most who survived later perished in other Nazi camps. But despite appalling overcrowding, there was still a semblance of normal life in Terezín. The ghetto’s streets still had names; people would still go to work in the morning, and come home to their cramped barracks at night. And against the odds, Terezín had a thriving cultural life. This included theatre, a fact

“I’m now going to write down some of the things which have happened over the last few days. I’ve got such a short memory, I’m afraid, and this is a way of making sure that I don’t forget.” These are the opening lines of a diary that was written in 1945 by a young woman as she gradually emerged from the hell of the concentration camps, hoping, against the odds, to see her husband again. The woman’s name was Hana Pravda, and she died in London on May 22 this year at the age of 92. Hana spent much of the second half of her life in Britain, where she

If you stumble across a little brass plaque on a walk in Prague’s Old Town next week, then the chances are it is going to be a ‘kámen zmizelého’ (‘stone of the vanished’). The project, organized by the Czech Union of Jewish Students, will eventually see stones commemorating victims of the Holocaust embedded in pavements all over the capital. The idea comes from Germany, as does the man making the memorials, Gunter Demnig. But the project coordinator at the Czech end is Petr Mandl. I met him on Wednesday morning to ask first about the name of the

A former Roma concentration camp in South Moravia was turned into a holiday resort in the 1960s. Now the site is set to become a documentation and educational centre with a permanent exposition on the Romany Holocaust – the first institution of its kind in the Czech Republic.

This Monday, Sir Nicholas Winton, the British stock exchange clerk who quietly saved more than 650 Czech Jewish children from the Holocaust and told no one for more than 50 years, turned 99. In Prague, the occasion was marked by representatives of Czech Railways as well as the Film Academy of Miroslav Ondříček in Písek. Together, they announced an ambitious new project called The Winton Train, which will retrace the route of the original Prague-London kindertransport which saved so many. Young filmmakers, inspired by Mr Winton’s deeds, will be

Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day victims - a day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews who perished during the Second World War - was marked in many parts of the Czech Republic - in synagogues, at public gatherings and in private, by families whose lives were directly affected by the Holocaust. Anyone passing through Prague’s Náměstí Míru on Wednesday could stop to take part in a public reading of the names of Holocaust victims. The event was organised by the Terezín Initiative Institute, the Czech Union of Jewish Youth