Květen 1945 v Krkonoších: narativy pamětníků aneb od koho byl kdo osvobozen
May 1945 in the Krkonoše Mountains: narratives of witnesses or from whom was who liberated

Summary/Abstract: The area of the Krkonoše Mountains and the nearby was for several centuries a region in which both Czech and German-speaking inhabitants coexisted. Radical socio-demographic changes came with the year 1945, when the vast majority of German-speaking inhabitants were displaced on the basis of the principle of collective guilt for the Second World War. The subject of the article is the analysis of narratives relating to May 1945, which is perceived and celebrated as “liberation” in the Czech ethnic-language context, while in the German context as the beginning of the post-war trauma associated with involuntary leaving home. The subject of the analysis will be primarily the contemporary memories of the May events, but also the period press and other sources reflecting on the changes in narratives of the end of the war over the last 75 years. The aim of the text is to interpret the reception and retrospective reflection of the period events, whose perception and interpretation changes over the course of time and time, i. e. to capture the way in which the phenomenon of “liberation” is presented, transmitted and retrospectively perceived within the Czech and German ethno-linguistic context over the course of 75 years.

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