Prague, Feb 25 (CTK) – Writer Jachym Topol and auxiliary Prague Bishop Vaclav Maly as well as playwright Helena Albertova and writer and historian Zora Dvorakova received the titles Knight and Dame of Czech Culture from Culture Minister Ilja Smid on Sunday.
The awards were presented within the Mene Tekel international festival against totalitarianism and in support of national memory.
All the decorated personalities opposed the totalitarian regime or were persecuted by it.
Actress Anna Letenska (1904-1942), who died in the Mauthausen concentration camp two months before the premiere of her last firm, and actress Jirina Stepnickova (1912-1985), who spent almost ten years in a Communist prison after a failed attempt to cross the border for the West in the 1950s, were decorated in memoriam.
Albertova was in 1962-1973 a wife of actor and playwright Pavel Landovsky, later dissident and signatory of the Charter 77 anti-communist manifesto.
Dvorakova was prevented from working in her branch during the “normalisation” era, restoring the hard-line communist rule in the 1970s after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Topol was active in the underground movement, he wrote lyrics and poetry under the communist regime. He was also editor-in-chief of the cultural magazine Revolver Revue, distributed illegally until 1989. After the fall of communism, he worked as an editor of the weekly Respekt and daily Lidove noviny. Now, he is the programme director of the Vaclav Havel Library.
“The society that forgets the past has no future,” former anti-communist dissident and activist Maly said in his speech.
The annual decorations were given for the fourth time in a row.
