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In the course of a life that spanned over 90 years, the writer and translator Heda Margolius Kovály survived the very worst that the twentieth century could bring: first Auschwitz and then the anti-Semitic show trials in 1950s Czechoslovakia, in which her husband was sentenced to death and executed. Heda Margolius Kovály died in 2010, but her moving account of her life, Under a Cruel Star, continues to be read widely. She also wrote a second book, a detective story set in Stalinist Prague. The book is a novel – taking inspiration from Raymond Chandler

Visiting Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Thursday met for talks with the Speaker of the Czech Chamber of Deputies, Jan Hamáček. They discussed security in the Middle East, the migrant crisis in Europe and bilateral cooperation. Hamáček said Czech-Israeli relations were on an excellent level and the two countries could collaborate in a number of spheres such as defense. Later in the day the Israeli president and his Czech counterpart Milos Zeman paid homage to Holocaust victims at the National Cemetery in Terezin and attended the opening of an Israeli-Czech business forum.

Preparations are being completed for a conference in Prague later this month focused on journalist Karel Weirich, who was a correspondent of the Czech New Agency in the Vatican and Italy and saved the lives of 200 Czechoslovak Jews during WWII. The conference takes place on October 26, two days before Weirich is set to receive the state honour the Order of the White Lion in memoriam. A recently published book has brought attention to the reporter, who was himself imprisoned for his activities helping Czechoslovak Jews interned in Italy.

A mass public drum session to remember the first Jewish transports from Prague on 16 October, 1941 was held in the Czech capital on Friday. The event took place at the former Bubny railway station, from which around 50,000 people were sent to their deaths. Called Drumming for Bubny, it was organised by the Memorial of Silence and DOX Centre for Contemporary Art.

A team doing research at the former Terezín concentration camp in north Bohemia have just presented remarkable findings in the form of previously undocumented inscriptions made by Jewish prisoners in the walls of the fortress. The Czech-German group behind the ongoing Ghettospuren (Ghetto Traces) project had previously discovered valuable items in attics and cellars at Terezín.

We have often drawn from Czech Radio’s sound archives in our broadcasts, as they make up one of the richest radio archives in the world, offering insight into the history of this country going back well over eighty years. In the last four years I have been working with journalism students from the Anglo-American University in Prague to explore some of the recordings lying long forgotten in the archives. This year a group of my students came across a moving and unusual – even experimental – drama documentary made in 1967 by the English Section of

Jana Kotaishová grew up in the countryside of Southern Moravia, but when she married a Palestinian refugee over three decades ago, she embarked on a life that was far removed from the security and continuity of rural life in the Czech Republic. She has written a remarkable book, telling the story of her own life and of the lives of three generations of her husband’s family, drawing directly from their own memories. David Vaughan talked to her about the book.

The praise quickly started to flow after news of Sir Nicholas Winton’s death at the age of 106 was announced on Wednesday afternoon. Bravery, humility, and his deep humanitarianism were some of the words used in tributes paid by British and Czech prime ministers and Czech president Miloš Zeman.

In this Special, we pay tribute to Sir Nicholas Winton, the Briton who helped save the lives of 669 children by arranging their evacuation from Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia. Sir Nicholas died on Wednesday at his home in the UK at the age of 106. The original story was produced by Rosie Johnston in 2009, when the journey of the original kinderstransports from Prague to London was re-enacted.

The former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright on Friday paid a visit to the Terezín Memorial where she unveiled a plaque to members of her family who died in Nazi concentration camps in WWII. The former US secretary of state only found out about her Czech roots when she was 59-years-old and has since made an effort to trace her family’s tragic past in Czechoslovakia.