Corner of the Peczek Palace Memorial
Plaque commemorating Vod?ík's birthplace
Poetry monument in Vod?ík's honor
A brief introduction
Every year on September 8, World Journalists' Day is dedicated to the memory of Julius Vod?ík, the writer, journalist, and fighter against the fascist regime in Czechoslovakia, This holiday is set up to commemorate the Czech anti-fascist fighter, journalist and writer Julius Vo?ík, who was hanged by the German Nazis in Berlin's Bl?chensee Prison on September 8, 1943. Although he was only forty years old when he died, his monumental masterpiece, "The Report under the Gallows," which he wrote in Prague's Pankratz Prison after his arrest, has been remembered by the world for all eternity.
In September 2019, my friend and I made a special trip to Prague, with the help of the Czech Vod?ík Association, to carefully search for the places where Vod?ík lived, worked and fought. Years have passed, history has changed, and today, Vod?ík landmarks are either visible or hidden in the city.
Dushkovo Street 20: Birthplace
Dushkovo Street is a long, straight street in the Smykhov district, which continues on a curved line near the cemetery of the Little Strana. But more than a hundred years ago, this was already the end of the street. Dushkovo Street 20 is a five-storey building, February 23, 1903, Voychik was born on the first floor of this building.
The building in front of us, the stone facade is yellow, the door on the left side of a **** there are three rooms, the first and the second is the year of the Vorchek family apartment, the two windows in the middle of the wall there is a stone memorial plaque, the shape of an open book, which is written in the year of Vorchek was born.
Vor?ík was able to memorize many of the poems in Neruda's Flowers of the Cemetery at an early age, and in Neruda's writing, the cemetery at Little Strana was a picturesque place. From the window of his house, on the opposite side of the street, there is a green hillside with a house called "Petramka", in which Vor?ík often imagined the musician Mozart composing many years ago. From the house, there is an upward slope from which Vor?ík can see the high walls of the Linhof machine building factory where his father worked. Through the site visit, I was able to visualize Vod?ík's upbringing and thus gain a deeper understanding of him.
Vod?ík grew up in such an environment - on the one hand, he was inspired by the literature and art given by Neruda and Mozart, and on the other hand, he witnessed the hardships of the workers living at the bottom of the social hierarchy, which prompted him to become an idealistic, *** passionate young man who not only loves literature and art, but also cares about the people's plight, and opposes the injustice of society. On the other hand, he witnessed the hardships of the workers at the bottom of the society, which prompted him to become an idealistic and passionate youth who loved literature and art and cared about the people's hardships and opposed social injustice. It is easy to understand why this child, who was gifted in writing, poetry and drama from his childhood, founded the weekly general magazine Slavs at the age of twelve, became an organizer of the ***** movement at the age of fifteen, joined the Czechoslovakian ****Julius Volchek Society at the age of eighteen, and tirelessly pursued his literary research and creativity even during the most intense period of the underground struggle. However, I wonder, if he had not taken up arms against the fascist invasion, if he had not joined the revolution in pursuit of a better society, then Vor?ík would have devoted his life to the literary work of his country, as he himself had set as his "long-cherished ideal," because he believed that in literature the voice of the people could be heard, and that this voice would bring people out of the darkness, and that this voice would be the voice of the people.
1133 ?itu?i Street: the place of arrest
?itu?i Street is located in the 14th district of Prague, not far from the Pankrac prison. Since the 1930s and 1940s, the area has been built up with new housing estates, which, unlike the old buildings, were given modern comforts, and on April 24th, 1942, at around ten o'clock in the evening, Vod?ík was arrested by the Gestapo in the new building at 1133 ?itu?í St.
Today, the new building at 1133 ?itu?í St. is located in the 14th district of Prague, not far from Ponkrátz Prison, and is a place where people are arrested.
Today, this residential neighborhood is tree-lined and quiet, and the buildings that were built earlier have not changed much, not even the house numbers. Push open the half-open half-closed iron gate, down five concrete steps, reflected in front of us is a row of dark yellow and light yellow four-story building. We found the room where Volchek was arrested, the first room on the first floor of the rightmost building.
It was here that night, seventy-seven years ago, that the shocking arrest took place. The owners of the house at the time were a tram worker, Yelenek, and his wife, who, after the fall of Czechoslovakia, had joined the underground resistance to fascism, and whose home had become a stronghold for Vor?ík's clandestine contacts with others. That night the Gestapo pounced on their door, tipped off by Dvorak, a spy who had infiltrated the ****. There were six men in the house ****, and nine heavily armed Gestapo men broke down the door without realizing that Vorchik was standing in the shadows behind them. The Gestapo cornered the five men in one place and pointed their guns at them. Volchek, who had two handguns, wanted to shoot, but chose to stand up for himself after a two- or three-second hesitation and threw his two handguns, both of which already had their safeties turned on, onto the bed, and bounded away. Years later, Volchek's choice was questioned, with many believing he should have shot to resist arrest.
But when I read what Voychik himself and others have written about the capture, I came to admire Voychik's choice at the time. Voychik was a calm and composed, daring to dedicate himself, have faith, will, perseverance, at the same time in him, there is a kind of intellectual high morality. I think Voychik's choice was based on two points: firstly, he probably felt that if he shot, the Gestapo would certainly return fire, and the two sides would most probably put the lives of the five men in danger, and they might be killed before him; even if he shot himself, the sound of the gunshot would attract the attention of the Gestapo, and they might still be killed; secondly, Voychik did not want to be arrested by the others and get away with it, and then he would have to bear the moral blame for it. Then he would have a moral scolding and a conscience for the rest of his life, and he would have to live and die with his other comrades***.
Voychik described Yelenek's home as incredibly neat, with photos on the walls, and furniture and bookshelves that were simple, sleek, and up-to-date. As I looked out, one window was open, its veil dancing in the autumn breeze. Meanwhile, from the raised platform to the left of the iron gate came the sound of children playing, laughing and chasing in the sunlight, oblivious to the fact that there had been a dark, horrible night here.
Peczek Palace: The Torture Chamber
In the center of the city, near Václav Square, is a beautiful building called Peczek Palace, which now houses the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade. On the corner wall of the Peczek Palace is a bronze memorial plaque with Vod?ík's aphorism "People, wake up" on one side and a statue of an anti-fascist activist on the other side, with the years 1939-1945 marked on the side. After the German invasion in 1939, the private house of the millionaire Peczek was occupied by the Nazis and the German Gestapo command in Prague was located there. 1939-1945, this beautiful building became a place of persecution of anti-fascist volunteers.
On the night of his arrest, Vod?ík was taken to the Peczek Palace, where he was subjected to an extremely brutal interrogation. We enter the Peczek Palace and walk down to the basement level, which was once the waiting room in the torture chambers set up by the Gestapo, and is now a monumental memorial. Kurvanyk, who gave us a tour, is a retired colonel and vice-president of the Czech Union of Freedom Fighters.
I saw interrogation rooms filled with all kinds of instruments of torture, dark and cramped single-occupancy detention rooms, and a stretcher used to carry stunned or even dead volunteers. ...... What shook me to my core was that when I walked into the infamous "movie theater," Kurvanik suddenly changed his face. Nick suddenly changed his face, pointed the talking stick in his hand at me, ordered me to sit down on the row of dark brown benches without backrests or armrests, and asked me to stand up straight, with my legs together, my hands flat on my knees, and my face facing the blank wall - then I realized that he wanted me to see for myself how the Gestapo interrogated and tortured the volunteers here. interrogated and tortured the aspirants. Voychik had described the details: the so-called "cinema" was a waiting room, a spacious room with six rows of benches, where the people on trial sat upright on the benches, and in front of them was a bare wall, like a movie theater screen, and then the Gestapo made the people on trial look at the wall and "play a movie" of the past over and over again in their heads. "Play the movie". Volchek said, "I have watched the movie about myself here hundreds of times, thousands of times I have watched the details of this movie, and now I try to narrate it." Which brings us to the image of the world-famous work, Report from Under the Gallows, written with the tip of a pencil on a scrap of paper each time he returned to Pankratz Prison after being interrogated at the Peczek Palace.
I asked Kurwanik if the row of benches I was sitting on was left over from that time or copied later. He tells me that these are the same benches that Voychik and so many other aspirants sat on back in the day, a physical object, a legacy of history. Looking at the faded benches with holes of different sizes, caressing the texture of the wood itself and the scratches left by the people, I was strongly shocked. Perhaps some of the historical heritage should let people touch, just like in the Pechék Palace "movie theater", only to sit on the benches, in order to feel in this "hell on earth", how the aspirants for the ideal, for freedom, for the future to pay for the blood and life.
Hole?ovice Station: a monument
Hole?ovice Station is a combination of a train station and a subway station, and is crowded with people. When the station was first built, it was called "Vor?ík Station", but after 1989 it was given its current name. At that time, in honor of Voychik, the two marble columns in the station hall were made into a monument with a relief of Voychik's head in profile and a quote from Voychik.
But today, when I stepped into the station and came to the monument, what I saw was unsettling. Since the system changed Julius Vor?ik profile, the Czech Republic, a wave of negativity Vor?ik, some people believe that Vor?ik is an altar, was a myth, so his statue was removed from the National Museum, the station near the Vor?ik Park also changed the name. Before going to the station, I visited the original Voychik Park, and in any case, the statue that used to stand in front of the park is still there, only moved to the Orsany Cemetery, but the bas-relief of Voychik's head in profile at the station was dug up, and today only a little outline remains. The silhouette is frightening, with the eye area so abrupt, as if it were gazing out at the world with wide-open eyes. I stood for a long time in front of the damaged relief, feeling that it is not objective or fair for a hero of anti-fascism who died a heroic death to bear the consequences of being mythologized by posterity, and that all kinds of myths created by the modern society are unacceptable. It is a good thing that another marble monument engraved with Voychik's famous words still rests: "We were born for joy, we fought for joy, and we will die for joy. Therefore, never let sorrow be associated with our name."
The monument to Vod?ík is hidden at the station of Hole?ovice, and it is comforting to know that a monument to Vod?ík's memory, a poem, stands to this day in a street garden in a quiet residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Prague. This monument also has a relief of the side of the head of Vor?ík, the most moving is the monument engraved with a short poem: "He is not dead, he is still alive, shines everywhere, everyone."
Not far from the monument, there is a small river hidden in the green trees, the river murmurs, flowing into the distance. I looked down on the river and thought about the passage that Voychik wrote in Report from Under the Gallows: "I love life, and for the good of life I put up a fight. People, I love you, and I am happy when you return the same love to me; I am miserable when you do not understand me. If I have ever offended anyone, then forgive me! If I have ever comforted anyone, then forget me!" Seeking out Voychik landmarks in Prague seems like the most apt closing statement that Voychik has ever prepared for us.
At this point, I felt the murmuring river flowing through my heart ......