Military Training Areas as Scenes for Forced Migrations in the Czech Lands, and Their Commemoration

• Authors: Kovařík David

Title variants

CS

Vojenské újezdy jako dějiště nucených migrací v českých zemích a jejich komemorace

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

The study deals with the displacement of selected groups of inhabitants from areas that were occupied by the army and used for training and other needs of it as military training areas in Bohemia and Moravia in the twentieth century. These displacement operations affected about seventy thousand inhabitants between 1904 and 1954. In addition to the description of particular displacement operations, the study also deals with the fates of inhabitants, affected like this, as well as of depopulated and desolate villages and settlements, which mostly were demolished and razed to the ground in the subsequent years. The displacement of inhabitants from military training areas is an example of forced migration in which each period and each political system applied different procedures in relation to residents in the affected areas. While the displacement of affected inhabitants at the time of the Nazi occupation entered into the national memory as an example of the persecution of Czech citizens and it was publicly commemorated in the subsequent years, further displacement operations after the year 1945 were, by contrast, tabooed and those affected were not allowed to commemorate these events publicly. This different experience became evident in the creation of collective, or cultural memory, and it also influenced diverse forms and ways of commemorating the forced migrations from military training areas.

Keywords

EN

Collective memory; forced displacement; extinct settlements; military training areas in the Czech lands; commemoration

• Publisher: The National Institute of Folk Culture
• Journal: Národopisná revue (Journal of Ethnology)
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 31
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 42 - 52

Contributors

author

Kovařík David