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Nearly six hundred Czechs and Slovaks volunteered in Britain during the Second World War to be parachuted back into their homeland to infiltrate and support the anti-Nazi resistance. During the ‘critical period’ of 1941-1943, some 300 soldiers were parachuted in behind enemy lines: during the drops, over 90 percent of these men died. Now a new memorial is planned in their honour in a remote part of northern Scotland. I spoke to the honorary Czech consul in Edinburgh, Paul Millar, to find out more:

In the days and weeks that followed the end of the Second World War, 31-year-old Josefina Napravilová noticed that there was a job that needed to be done and without any fuss set about doing it. It was a time of chaos – families had been broken up and the lists of missing persons were frighteningly long. Many of those on the lists were children. Through sheer determination and endless detective work, Josefina Napravilová managed to reunite several dozen of these children with their families. For decades, Josefina saw no particular reason to tell

In this week’s One on One, Dominik Jůn talks with Ondřej Matějka, a young man with a passion for a historically significant region of the Czech Republic.

Today in Mailbox: Czech paratroopers Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš and the presence of Czechoslovak troops in exile in Leamington Spa, UK, during WW2; the mysterious belly button of Czech supermodel Karolína Kurková. Listeners quoted: Alistair Pamphilon, David Brauchli.

Martin Brown is an English historian with a particular interest in twentieth century Czechoslovak history. His mother is Czech and he speaks both languages fluently, enabling him to move effortlessly between sources in both Czech and English. Martin was recently in Prague for the launch of the Czech version of his appraised study of the Czechoslovak government in exile in London during the Second World War. The book “Dealing with Democrats”, published by Peter Lang, is anything but a dry study of diplomatic history. Instead it offers intriguing

The first of some 4,500 remains of German soldiers and several hundred civilians, who died on Czech territory during the Second World War, were buried in the west Bohemian town of Cheb last week. The local cemetery will become the last of several German military burial grounds in the Czech Republic. For some this is a sign of true reconciliation but others feel that the soldiers, who once invaded Czechoslovakia on Hitler’s command, should not be buried in Czech soil.

Milan Hauner is a leading Czech historian whose area of expertise is World War II, Germany and Czech-German relations. He himself was born during the war, in 1940, to a Czech-German couple who were both deaf. In this edition of Panorama, Professor Hauner, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin, outlines aspects of his own, fascinating family history – starting with his grandfather Vilém Julius Hauner, a leading military historian, translator and anti-Nazi journalist.

A German association started burying the remains of 5,500 German soldiers and civilians killed during World War II in Cheb on Wednesday. The remains have all been discovered over the last ten years. A spokesperson for the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgraberfursorge said that the first 330 soldiers would be buried on Wednesday. The rest would follow over the next two or three weeks, he added. The graveyard in Cheb is still largely unfinished and is expected to be inaugurated in 2010. The Czech Republic was one of the last battlegrounds in World War II, with Prague the last major city to be liberated. Liberation brought reprisals against German soldiers and to many of the estimated three million German-speaking civilians who had lived in the former Czechoslovakia.

Today in Mailbox: Radio Prague monthly competition prizes; how to find programmes on our website; a recent poll on “what Czechs feel most ashamed of”. Listeners quoted: S. J. Agboola, Francesco Reda, Christopher Larkosh, Lynda Marie Hauptman.

Early Thursday morning, Brigadier Stanislav Hlučka, a revered Czech pilot who served in the RAF during the Second World War, died aged 88 in a military hospital in Prague. We take brief a look at the life of this much-decorated anti-Nazi resistance fighter, who found himself imprisoned by the communists after the 1948 coup.