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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is holding an open day on Wednesday, which is the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe and a state holiday in the Czech Republic. Visitors will be able to enjoy a rare opportunity to view the interior of the Černín Palace, including what was once Jan Masaryk’s apartment, between 10 AM and 4 PM. The building’s gardens will host an event featuring live music celebrating Croatia’s accession to the European Union in July. The Senate will also be open to the public on Wednesday, from 10 AM to 5 PM.

A number of ceremonies in Prague taking place throughout Sunday commemorated the 68th anniversary of the Czech uprising against the Nazi occupation at the end of World War Two. Defense Minister Vlastimil Picek and Prague mayor Bohuslav Svoboda attended a remembrance ceremony for those who died during the uprising, which was started by the Czech resistance on May 5th, 1945. President Miloš Zeman and top-level politicians attended the traditional ceremony in front of the main Czech Radio building on Vinohradská street, where the first conflict between the German SS units and members of the resistance and Czech police took place and 89 people died during the fighting. The Czech Radio broadcast on May 5 calling for Czechs to defend Prague is said to have set-off the uprising.

Celebrations in the west Bohemian Plzeň marking the anniversary of its liberation by American troops on May 6, 1945 have been taking place since Friday. On Sunday, Plzeň is hosting a traditional procession of historical military vehicles, gatherings of war veterans and re-enactments of military life during World War Two.

A home in Dolní Vilémovice that belonged to the family of Czech hero Jan Kubiš, a British-trained paratrooper who, together with his Slovak colleague Jozef Gabčík headed an operation to kill Nazi Reichsprotector Reinhard Heydrich, will open as a museum on June 22. Included in the permanent exhibition will be items that were found just recently during renovation of the site: previously unknown letters, photographs and part of a military uniform were discovered under a stairway. Jan Kubiš and fellow soldier Jozef Gabčík pulled off their daring attack against the ‘Hangman of Bohemia’ on May 27, 1942. Heydrich died several days later of his wounds. Kubiš, Gabčík and another five paratroopers were later surrounded at the Church of St. Cyril and St. Methodious on Resslova Street in Prague and paid for the assassination with their lives. Kubiš was wounded and died in hospital; the others committed suicide to avoid capture.

The Czech government is going to back a motion in the lower house to establish a remembrance day of the victims of Romany Holocaust, the news agency ČTK reported on Saturday citing government documents. A group of MPs from several parties want to introduce March 7 as the Remembrance Day of the Victims of Romany Persecution during WWII; on that day in 1943, the first transport of Bohemian and Moravian Romanies was sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp. In total, nearly 9,000 Romanies were murdered in the Holocaust, nearly 90 percent of their pre-war population.

All ministries have expressed consent with the idea; however, the Foreign Ministry noted Holocaust victims are remembered on January 27. Should a special day be established to honour Romany victims, the ministry said, it might be necessary to also remember victims from other ethnic or social groups persecuted during the war.

The police on Wednesday closed several streets in central Prague, including the busy Národní třída, after a WWII artillery grenade was found at a construction site. No buildings in the area had to be evacuated. The police’s explosives squad transported the grenade to a safe location where it could be detonated, a police spokesman said. The unexploded artillery grenade was unearthed at a construction site near the Národní metro station where a new shopping mall is being built; the operation of the metro was unaffected by the find.

Clean-up work has begun in the town of Pardubice near the mineral oil refinery Paramo on Monday. According to pyrotechnical experts there may be up to 180 unexploded bombs from Allied air attacks during World War II in the soil. In case the bombs are discovered local authorities are prepared to evacuate the area within two hours. As many as 10,000 people may have to be evacuated from their homes, and trains going through the town may have to be stopped and potentially re-routed.

Efforts to commemorate ethnic Germans murdered by Czechs during a wave of post-war expulsions have frequently led to heated debate in this country. One such controversy is the subject of Jan Gebert’s debut documentary Stone Games, which follows a vocal campaign by a group of locals to remove a monument to eight Sudeten Germans killed in the north Bohemian town of Nový Bor in 1945. The protesters are led by an eccentric would-be politician – and their cause attracts the attention of national figures, including now presidential candidate Miloš

A memorial plaque dedicated to Czech servicemen who fought in Britain’s RAF during the Second World War was unveiled in a Catholic church in Jihlava on Friday. The plaque bears the names of 22 men from Jihlava and the surrounding area who served as pilots, bomber crews or ground personnel. There are some 1,500 WWII veterans living in the Czech Republic today, according to a veteran association.

German President Joachim Gauck arrived on Wednesday for a one-day working visit in the Czech Republic, the first in his capacity as president. On Wednesday morning, he met with his Czech counterpart Václav Klaus at Prague Castle and later with Prime Minister Petr Nečas. After his meeting with Mr Klaus, the German president praised Czech-German relations as the best they had ever been. On Wednesday afternoon, accompanied by President Klaus, he travelled to Lidice - a village which the Nazis razed to the ground in 1942 in retaliation for the assassination of Nazi governor Reinhard Heydrich. In Lidice, all 173 men were executed, women and children were sent to concentration camps, while some of the children were selected for re-education in Germany. After the war, only 143 women and 17 children returned to the country.

The visit to Lidice was on the agenda at the German president’s request and he became the first German head-of-state to visit the site of the village. Mr Gauck laid wreaths at the graves of those killed in the massacre and at the Lidice memorial.

General Tomáš Sedláček, a World War II veteran who spent nine years in communist jails, died on Monday aged 94. A respected soldier, he fought both on the western and eastern fronts of the war before landing a life sentence by Czechoslovakia’s communist court. But his faith in freedom and democracy never waivered, and after 1989, he took up the cause of those who suffered under communism.