A group of historians, educators and archivists – including from Czech Radio – has rolled out a digital app designed to stimulate students’ interest in using primary sources. The overall aim of the HistoryLab project is to develop students’ historical literary and critical thinking, and help teachers craft interactive, multimedia lesson plans.
The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes has launched an
interactive map showing where victims of the 1968 invasion met their
deaths. It details the victims’ names and where, when and how they died
in connection with the Soviet-led invasion between August 1968 and August
The map’s co-creator, historian Milan Bárta, said that while people initially died in big cities, later victims met their deaths on country roads as the result of traffic accidents as soldiers were barred from entering cities and withdrew to the regions.
Link to map (in Czech): https://obetiokupace.dejepis21.cz/
Union leaders at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes
(ÚSTR) have called on Senators to reject the election of former interior
minister František Bublan to the institute’s council.
ÚSTR's Miroslav Vodrážka and Petr Blažek argue that the former minister tried to dissolve the institute and therefore is not suited to join it. Bublan has denied that assertion.
Senators have the authority to appoint ÚSTR’s seven council members. Four candidates are proposed by civic initiatives, two by the Lower House of Parliament and one by the Czech President.
MPs have proposed Bublan and the historian Eduard Stehlík. The Senate is due to choose the councilors this coming week.
The Czech Republic’s Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes has launched a new project to help teachers in primary and secondary schools make history classes more engaging. Called Obrazy války or Images of War, it focuses on the period of the Second World War and provides teachers with alternative study materials, based on photographs and film clips.
The short-lived secret organisation Světlana formed in 1948 grew to become the largest anti-Communist group in Czechoslovakia, boasting several hundred members at its peak, operating in more than a dozen cells, mainly in Moravia. That’s one version of events. Many long believed that Světlana was not only infiltrated by the State Security force, or StB, but was in fact a creation of it – part of operations to ensnare “counter-revolutionaries”, those sympathetic to what is now known as the Third Resistance movement. Other questions remain as to whether
Whether it was in the show trials of the 1950s or reporting from the Middle East, an undercurrent of anti-Semitism was present in the communist propaganda apparatus in Czechoslovakia. At least that is what a new website aimed at teachers in secondary schools and just released by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes reveals.
Protesters this week braved freezing temperatures to protest the pending demolition of what they regard as one of the best examples of so-called Brutalist architecture from the 1970s in the then Czechoslovakia. They argue that the latest episode is one of many recent ones and epitomises the failure of local and national heritage authorities to properly protect a broad swathe of monuments in Prague and the rest of the country.
The Czech Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes has handed out its annual awards for contribution to freedom and democracy. Among this year’s recipients is the Belarussian opposition politician Vincuk Viačorka, or the Slovak photographer Tibor Kováč, who captured images of the Soviet invasion of the Slovak city of Košice.
Culture Minister Daniel Herman will sign a new agreement on film
co-production during a five-day visit to Israel beginning Tuesday. The
agreement will outline specific conditions for co-producers and classify
joint-projects as 'national' films within their territory,
opening the door to additional financial support from public funds. The
agreement is to be signed in Israel’s Parliament on Wednesday.
During his visit, Minister Herman will meet with his counterpart Miri Regev and also tour a watchtower in Jerusalem by famous Czech architect Martin Rajniš. The tower was built for Jerusalem Design Week in June.