Prague, April 14 (CTK) – A latest book by several historians which describes the joint resistance of Czechoslovaks and Poles against the totalitarian regime after World War Two has been launched.
It examines how the cooperation of the two countries’s opponents of the regime was formed. It culminated by a joint international opposition group in 1981.
From the Czech side, the work was performed by Petr Blazek from the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (USTR).
The historians will unveil the book called Defying the Border on April 25.
From the start, the Czechoslovak and Polish opponents were linked by the interest in the fates of political prisoners.
At secret meetings in the forests at the guarded Polish-Czechoslovak border, they exchanged information and Samizdat literature.
The cooperation started after World War Two, but it only gained a technical official form in 1981.
At that time, the representatives of the Polish Workers’ Defense Committee and the Czechoslovak Charter 77 dissident manifesto signed a secret cooperation agreement, which gave rise to the Polish-Czechoslovak Solidarity.
“It is symbolic that both Polish and Czech historians, Lukasz Kaminski, Petr Blazek and Grzegorz Majewski, took part in the publication devoted to the Polish-Czechoslovak Solidarity,” the Polish Institute, which organises the event, said.
Kaminski is a former director of the Polish National Memory Institute and Majewski represents the Polish-Czechoslovak Solidarity.
Along with historians, the book includes the contributions by Czech and Polish participants in the meetings.
The book is released in a Polish and Czech versions. It will be unveiled in the Vaclav Havel Library on April 25.
On the next day, the Polish Institute stages a meeting on the anniversary of the Committee for the Defence of Unfairly Prosecuted with the participation of Polish representatives of a similar organisation in Poland.
