On this day in 1968, America awoke to the news that Soviet tanks had rolled into Prague. It took nearly a week to crush Czech resistance, and during that week brave men and women - many of them students - operated hidden broadcasting stations from which they told the world what was happening. Many of the broadcasts were repeated in different languages. I will never forget hearing one station after another going off the air, some without warning, some with the broadcasters saying that the Russians were at the door.
I couldn't find recordings of any of those underground broadcasts, but I did find one of Radio Prague broadcasting while the battle was raging outside its doors.
And a note to the people who tweet with the hashtag #Resistance: THAT's resistance, you twerps.
I was about to enter my sophomore year in high school on this day in 1968, and relatively sheltered from world events. These photos stun me. 1968 and not when Hitler started his push into other countries that would result in WWII? We are barbarians, past, present and future.
That was the thing that stunned me when I learned about the Holocaust. This horror had been perpetrated by the people who gave us Bach, Beethoven, Goethe and Leibniz. I couldn't write them off as barbarians who were totally different from us. If they could do this, anybody could do this. WE could conceivably do it.
I was about to enter my sophomore year in high school on this day in 1968, and relatively sheltered from world events. These photos stun me. 1968 and not when Hitler started his push into other countries that would result in WWII? We are barbarians, past, present and future.
ReplyDeleteThat was the thing that stunned me when I learned about the Holocaust. This horror had been perpetrated by the people who gave us Bach, Beethoven, Goethe and Leibniz. I couldn't write them off as barbarians who were totally different from us. If they could do this, anybody could do this. WE could conceivably do it.
ReplyDelete