Czechoslovaks in the Gulag III: Book Presentation
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: December 10, 2019, 19:00 – 21:00
On Human Rights Day this year we mark the 80th anniversary of the start of waves of refugees from Czechoslovakia to the Soviet Union. The majority of the 8,000 refugees ended up in the Gulag, where 1,000 of them died. Selected stories of those refugees are the focus of the third edition of the successful series Czechoslovaks in the Gulag, which is being published in a co-edition by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and Czech Television.
During the evening, as in the book, the fates of Czechoslovak citizens persecuted and executed in the USSR from the Bolshevik revolution to the end of Stalin’s era will be explored. The evening is dedicated to the memory of Heliodor Píka and Jakub Koutný, who saved thousands of their compatriots from Gulag camps and themselves met their deaths in Communist prisons in Czechoslovakia.
Among those in attendance will be the publication’s authors, Jan Dvořák, Jaroslav Formánek and Adam Hradilek, as well as relatives of the victims, who contributed to the preparation of the book.