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Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, on a personal visit to the Czech Republic, unveiled a plaque in Terezín on Friday honouring 26 members of her family who were sent to the Jewish ghetto in the town during WWII and suffered and perished at the hands of the Nazis. Albright, who is 78, only learned of her Jewish heritage in the 1990s. On Thursday, the former secretary of state visited the town of Letohrad where her father had lived.

The former factory in the small east-Bohemian town of Brněnec, where Oskar Schindler saved 1,200 Jews from the Nazi Holocaust, has been a sorry sight for years. The former textile factory, heavily polluted with chemicals, has long been abandoned and has gradually fallen to ruin. Now, with the Czech Republic’s State Environmental Fund releasing funds to help clear up ecological damages, there is hope of seeing the landmark restored.

Among the numerous events commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII is a photo exhibition from the Auschwitz Album - a collection of photographs taken inside a Nazi death camp. The collection, on view at the Prague House of Photography, is a horrifying record of the extermination of Jews in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp, which had never before been shown to the Czech public.

Israeli ambassador on Wednesday recognised Anna Bohatá as the “Righteous among the Nations”, which is the highest Israeli tribute to non-Jews who saved the lives of Jews during the Second World War. Mrs Bohatá, along with her husband, hid a Jewish girl in their home in Ukraine. After the war, the family returned to Prague and took the girl with them, helping her to establish her own family. Altogether 115 Czechs have received the “Righteous among the Nations” tribute.

The Constitutional Court has rejected claims from the Jewish Community that land confiscated in Brno during WWII be returned under a Holocaust restitution claim. The claims centre on land that was later returned after the war but sold at a disadvantageous price in the 1950s. Police later built an exercise and recreational site on the land. Lower courts had previously found in favour of the Jewish Community and demanded that part of the land be returned. The Constitutional Court ruled however that the case did not come under the laws governing the restitution of property confiscated during the Holocaust because the land had been returned but was later sold. The Jewish Community said the sale had been forced and the price paid was eroded due to the currency devaluation that followed a few years later. The Municipal Court will now have to deal with the claim again after taking the Constitutional Court’s comments on board.

Czech historians and researchers are trying to benefit as fast as possible from a new open access policy to the former Soviet archives in Ukraine. One lesson that has been learnt from nearby Russia is that doors that open one day can slam shut soon after.

The Bubny Railway Station in Prague, which saw tens of thousands of Czech Jews leave for the ghettoes and Nazi death camps, is set to become a new Holocaust Memorial. A ceremony at the future Memorial of Silence on Monday was attended by Czech Culture Minister Daniel Herman, representatives of the Israeli, US and German embassies as well as Holocaust survivors. I spoke to Tomáš Bouška, coordinator of the Shoah memorial and first asked him about the special “sculpture” being unveiled:

This is the second of a two part special which focuses on American genealogist and amateur historian Paul Polansky and how he brought to Czech and worldwide attention the existence of the Czech camp for Roma at Lety during the Second World War.

Scores of survivors and dozens of chairpersons and deputy chairpersons of European parliaments attended a ceremony honouring victims of the Holocaust at the former Terezín concentration camp in Central Bohemia on Tuesday. The event was timed to coincide with a ceremony at Auschwitz marking the 70th anniversary of its liberation. The Nazis transported up to 100,000 Jews from Terezín to Auschwitz and other death camps between 1940 and 1945, while around a fifth of those interned in Terezín met their deaths there.

Czech President Miloš Zeman has called on the world to deal with Islamic radicalism the same way it ultimately had to deal with Nazism in the 1940s. The comments were made at Prague Castle before dozens of European leaders as part of events marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.