Brno, Oct 12 (CTK) – An exhibition on Czechoslovak pilots who served in the British Royal Air Force (RAF) during World War Two, called the Knights of Heaven, opened in the Morava pavilion at the Brno exhibition grounds on Thursday, Jan Kratochvil, one of its authors, has said.
It is devoted not only to the pilots, but also to all those who took part in the air force fight for freedom, Kratochvil said.
This covered roughly 2500 people who emigrated to Britain from the former Czechoslovakia.
The exhibition puts on display the photos of a number of the pilots, their uniforms, medals and other memorabilia.
There is also a legendary Spitfire fighter.
The exhibition lasts until October 26 and then it will be moved to the Brno museum of technology, then to Prague and eventually it will be wandering in Europe, the USA and Australia.
“It is the sense of the exhibition to look back at the past, realising that the current state is not taken for granted and that many people lost their lives for it. The least thing we can do is not to forget,” Brno Mayor Petr Vokral (ANO) said.
The exhibition shows not only pilots, but also aviation mechanics and other staff.
“This large-scale show has had no parallel since 1945 when a victory march and a parade of the returning pilots were held in Prague,” Kratochvil said.
Young soldiers were mostly fleeing from Czechoslovakia across Poland and France to Britain.
After the 1948 Communist take-over, they were persecuted and some of them even imprisoned. Only after the 1989 overthrow of the Communist regime they were celebrated as real heroes.
