Updated 26.1.2024: As long as I am here, the state exists, said Consul Vochoč, and continued to issue passports. He saved thousands of people during the war - Vladimir Vochoch was convicted in a mock trial after 1948. He was based on the principle that there is a legal norm, but there is also a human norm. He spent almost 7 years in prison. He died in obscurity. The Czech Embassy in France did not allow a memorial plaque to be placed at its headquarters. It was placed at the US Embassy building. JŠ
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Jan Antonín Bata saved dozens of Jewish families from death in Nazi concentration camps. Yet he was not awarded the Israeli title of Righteous Among the Nations. Bata is seen by Czechs as a legend of the shoe industry, but also as a collaborator with the Nazis - regardless of the court's acquittal last year. In the new Czech film ÚSVIT, Jan A. Bata is again slandered, like Tomas Bata in the film BOTOSTROJ by the communists in the 1950s...
Jan A. Bata saved 2000 Jewish families, Přemysl Pitter saved hundreds of Jewish and German children, Raul Wallenberg saved hundreds of Jews. The Czech Post did not issue portraits of Jan Bata or Přemysl Pitter on stamps, unlike Sir Winton.
We are still a country that does not like to acknowledge its great heroes, preferring foreign ones. A sad testimony to our smallness, immaturity and provincialism. Woe to the country that does not honour its heroes. When it needs them again, it will not, and deservedly so. Positive role models and examples create new heroes, the opposite of new cowards. JŠ
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