The summer school for students was organized by the Museum of the Memory of the XXth Century in cooperation with the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes from 11 to 12 June 2024 in the village of Svatý Jan pod Skalou near Beroun and was attended by nearly sixty students from the CH Gymnasium. Doppler from Prague. The central theme of the summer school programme was totalitarian practices and communist forced labour camps in the 1950s. On this site, in a former Benedictine monastery, one of the worst communist forced labour camps and prisons was established at that time. For the next thirty years, the StB police school and the MV archives were located here.
Jan Samohýl and Kryštof Zeman, the lecturers of the Museum of Memory of the 20th Century, used various activating didactic methods during the programme. In addition to an introductory lecture, they worked with teaching sheets, discussed the topic of the life of the torturers and gave a guided tour of the Great America Quarry, also known as the Czech Mauthausen prison camp. The summer school also included a tour of St. Ivan's Cave and the local museum. On the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the forced nationalisation of the farms in nearby Hostim, a lecture on the collectivisation of rural areas in Czechoslovakia was held in the local restaurant U Krobiána by historian and director of the Museum of the Memory of the Twentieth Century Petr Blažek.
The students were active and visibly interested in the topic. So it is obvious to us that this topic, presented in connection with a specific place, is very important for the young generation. We would like to continue this summer school as part of our museum's activities in the years to come.
Student Reflection:
"We always thought we knew quite a bit about our history. But in the last two days we have learned quite a bit about the dark history of our state. It seems to us that our view of the world and how lucky we are in life has changed in part." (Vojtěch Krysta, Jonáš Fiala)
"Communism is not such an old ideology. It is a period of terror, torture and immense sadness that has tarnished our country and left scars in our hearts. And we must talk about it because we must pass it on. We see it as an important task. As emotionally and extensively as the speakers at summer school. That's why I'm glad that I will be able to pass on this information, because I already know communism more intimately and understand what it has done." (Ema Gýnová)
"Some older people say how much better it was under communism. How peaceful and calm it was then. It never occurred to me that things like labor camps, where people were tortured and tormented, took place at the same time. Suddenly that time doesn't seem so relaxed to me anymore." (Kristýna Bendová)
"It is certainly important to know about the history of our country. The program on this topic was very educational, and even with some difficulty we each took away new knowledge. We highly recommend it!" (Nikol Knotová, Kateřina Valoušková)
"It was great! Emotionally quite demanding, but that's just necessary, we liked the interactivity of the lectures and the fact that it was not just an ordinary session." (Marek Soviják, Ondřej Ibl)
We share the atmosphere of the summer school with you in the photo gallery below, taken by our colleague Jan Procházka from ÚSTR.
