The New Town Hall will host a seminar on secret burial sites of victims of communism and Nazism
More than thirty years after the fall of the communist regime, there are still mass grave sites in the Czech Republic where the remains of victims and opponents of totalitarian regimes of the 20th century are secretly buried. One of the most famous is the burial site in Prague's Ďáblice. The seminar, which will be held on 23 June 2022 at the Prague City Hall, aims, among other things, to discuss the shape of these places of memory and how to commemorate them with dignity.
"Taking away the names and identities of those executed and the ability of their families to know the location of their graves - that was both revenge and cowardly insurance. In this way, the repressive forces of totalitarian regimes erased not only the traces of the people they liquidated, but also of their crimes. Giving at least a name back to the dead is the least we can do," said Hana Kordová Marvanová, a councillor of the capital city of Prague. She is one of the organizers of the seminar. In addition to the museum, the seminar is organized by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, the Association of Former Political Prisoners and the Documentation and History Cabinet of the Czech Prison Service.
The event takes place within the framework of the ÚSTR research project Secret burial place of opponents and victims of the Nazi and communist regimes in Ďáblice - history, memory and present. It also follows the project Names of the Dead.
"Discussion panels and a documentary film will deal not only with the dark history of burials in Ďáblice and other places, but also with the possibility of exhuming the remains of the secretly buried and identifying them. I hope that this project foreshadows a long-term cooperation with the Museum of Memory of the XXth Century," said Ladislav Kudrna, director of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes.
In the 20th century, not only paratroopers from the Silver A paratroopers, the priest Josef Toufar or Zdena Mašínová were buried here in unmarked graves, but many other nameless victims of the Nazi occupation and the communist terror of the 1950s. "I have read in the archives desperate letters from people whose loved ones disappeared after their arrests in the vortex of communist interrogations and prisons. Sometimes they did not bother to tell their relatives whether they were still alive or not. I see them as messages for us to try, if possible, to give the victims of totalitarian regimes a dignified burial and a grave," said historian Petr Blažek, who is working on the history of the Devil's Burial Ground in the project.
The seminar, which is being held under the auspices of Councilwoman Hana Kordová Marvanova, will begin on 23 June 2022 at 1 pm in the large hall of the New Town Hall on Mariánské náměstí in Prague 1. After the opening, there will be a screening of the film by director Martin Vadas, Bodies Don't Give Out, and at 2 pm the first discussion panel will begin, devoted to the history of secret burials. At 16:00, the second panel on the issue of possible exhumation of remains and their identification will begin.
To participate in the seminar you need to register on the website mpxx.cz: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSchvdQFeJD1QhCw6rvjmyw6R1d2dkZIdIWCR70cqab17dn5Bg/viewform?fbzx=6684773445293383629.
A detailed programme, including the names of the speakers, is available on the museum's website here: https://www.muzeum20stoleti.cz/seminar-dablice-a-dalsi-tajna-pohrebiste-23-6-2022/.
The event is financially supported by the City of Prague.