Exhibition on Czech victims of Nazi repression open to the public

Prague, 4 February 2025 – Under the auspices of the German Ambassador to the Czech Republic, H.E. Andreas Künne, the opening of the exhibition Czech Victims of Plötzensee took place at the Goethe-Institut in Prague on 4 February 2025. The exhibition was prepared by the German Resistance Memorial (Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand) in cooperation with the Security Services Archive.

The exhibition, which is open to the Czech public for the first time, commemorates the 671 murdered victims and presents the origins and scope of the anti-Nazi resistance in Bohemia and Moravia. Politicians, army officers, intellectuals, craftsmen and members of Sokol. The citizens of Czechoslovakia executed at the central execution site of the so-called Third Reich in Berlin-Plötzensee were – after the Germans – the second largest national group.

The exhibition was opened by the director of the Goethe-Institut, Ms Anaϊs Boelicke, who inaugurated the Memories programme series, which will run this year against the backdrop of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. In his opening speech, German Ambassador H.E. Andreas Künne highlighted the importance and significance of commemorating the victims of the anti-Nazi resistance in the context of current events in Europe.

“In Berlin’s Plötzensee prison during World War II, 671 Czechoslovak citizens died at the hands of the Nazis, 611 of them because of their involvement in the resistance. As a rule, they were guillotined or hanged. Our exhibition presents less than two dozen of them,” said the author of the exhibition, Jan Boris Uhlíř, PhD, from the Security Services Archive.

“I recommend this exhibition especially to the young generation. It is very important to remember the stories of these heroes and to know that we also owe our freedom today to the resistance fighters whose sacrifice will not be forgotten. We are glad that as an archive we can participate in this exhibition, which presents a number of important materials from the 141 fund that we manage”, added Miroslav Urbánek, Director of the Security Services Archive.

The opening of the exhibition was attended by a number of distinguished guests from the diplomatic corps as well as relatives of the victims of Nazi repression. Among the members of the ÚSTR Council, the opening was attended by its Chairwoman, Mrs. Monika Mac Donagh Pajerová, and Vice-Chairman, Mr. Michal Klíma. The exhibition has already been presented at the Memorial of the German Resistance in Berlin and was briefly presented in the Parliament of the Czech Republic.

The exhibition is freely accessible to the public in a new graphic and spatial arrangement from 5 February to 30 April 2025 at the Goethe-Institut (Masarykovo nábřeží 32, Prague 1) and will be accompanied by a rich accompanying programme with a series of film screenings, discussions, interviews with descendants of the executed, as well as activities and worksheets for schools.