Přemysl Votava: Prague cried on Valentine’s Day
14.02.2022 16:25 | Comment
It was Wednesday, February 14, 1945, a weekly protectorate day, shortly after noon when the sky opened. That day, the hundred-towered Prague cried. 77 years ago at st. On Valentine’s Day, people often died on the threshold of their lives.
Among them is the 17-year-old gifted pianist Eva Ladová, daughter of the painter Josef Lada. The young Eva was killed by an American bomb near Emmaus while searching for her parents. Prague experienced only a drop of the horror that people experienced during the wars in Warsaw, Stalingrad, Dresden and elsewhere.
On that day, over 60 American B-17 flying fortresses dropped 152 tons of bombs on Prague. The raid claimed 701 lives, 1,400 wounded, 200 houses destroyed, and several others damaged. The area around Charles Square, Nové Město, Vinohrady, Nuslí suffered the most… The Benedictine monastery Na Slovanech, founded by Emperor Charles IV, burned down completely. in 1347, the Vinohrady synagogue in today’s Sázavská Street also burned down. According to witnesses, sunny, almost spring weather prevailed over Prague. Proof of the futility of this raid on Prague is that not a single industrial building has been destroyed! On the contrary, this raid served Nazi propaganda.
You will not find a monument to the victims of this raid in Prague. Maybe a reminder board somewhere. Politicians will not lay wreaths, television will not have a two-hour program for this event. The real reason has never been credibly clarified by the Americans. Instead of apology only guesses, guesses…
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Even that possible navigational error has cracks. According to historians (JB Uhlíř and J. Kaplan in the book “Prague in the Shadow of the Swastika”), he already had a navigational error over the Netherlands, over Erfurt it was already 120 km south of Dresden. At the time of the February raid on Prague, it was a few days after the Yalta Conference (February 4-11, 1945), which decided on the post-war world order.
On the same day, the USAAF and RAF carried out a raid on Dresden, a building gem that burned on the Elbe for several days. 30,000 people did not survive the raid. The question mark remains here as well. In February 1945, Germany grinded for the last time. Soviet troops had already fought 150 km from Berlin and, together with the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps, liberated Slovakia.
It was not the only raid on Prague, in March 1945 Prague was the target of American raids on engineering facilities in Liben and Vysočany. There the Americans hit exactly. Hundreds of victims as well… A similar raid was carried out in the last days of the war on the Pilsen Skoda, just a few days before the welcoming of the US Army in Pilsen.
Some wise man once said, “History is not, unless it is remembered! “Let’s stick to it !!
(source of information: historians Jan B. Uhlíř and Jan Kaplan “Prague in the Shadow of the Swastika”)
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author: PV