80 years, 80 candles, 80 institutions. UWB commemorates the end of World War II and the victims

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. Therefore, the Embassy of the State of Israel approached important institutions shaping cultural and social life to jointly light 80 symbolic candles - one of them is the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen.

The loss of millions of lives during World War II is commemorated on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which falls on 27 January. In the Garden of Remembrance at the Old Synagogue in Smetana Gardens in Pilsen, the rector of the University of West Bohemia, Miroslav Lávička, together with photographer and lecturer at the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art at the University of West Bohemia, Radovan Kodera, paid tribute to the victims.

"Today we honoured the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and commemorated the indelible tragedy of the Nazi atrocity. It is our duty - as individuals and as a society - not to forget. I appreciate that we can light one of the 80 symbolic candles. But it is not just about remembrance - it is also a message that we must always stand firm against evil. At a time when some relativise, downplay or deny the dark places of history, universities must defend the truth all the more vigorously, promote critical thinking and protect the values on which our society is based," said the rector of UWB.

Radovan Kodera from the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art at UWB initiated the creation of the Garden of Memories, where more than two and a half thousand stones bearing the names of Jewish victims from Pilsen and its surroundings who perished during the Nazi occupation lie. He had been preparing the memorial since approximately September 2000, when he organized the description and placement of stones symbolizing the lost lives of the Jews of Pilsen in the so-called Auxiliary Synagogue in the vicinity of the Old Synagogue. These were planted in separate fields and described mainly by pupils and students of secondary schools. The placement of the fields was designed by the artist Petr Novák and they are designed so that it is possible to pass between them. The names of the deceased could also be written by their relatives and other members of the general public.

The stones lie in the open-air area of the synagogue. Due to the rain and sun, the inscriptions on them regularly fade over time. "This is an opportunity for people to remember the names of the victims repeatedly by renewing the inscriptions on the stones," said Kodera.

After Prague and Brno, Pilsen was the third Czech city from which Jews were deported to the ghetto. "First, in January 1942, they were gathered in the Sokol Hall in today's Štruncové sady. These were adults and children who came not only from Pilsen, but also from Rokycany, Manětín or Kralovice. These people were subsequently transported to Terezín in three mass transports marked R, S and T," described Radovan Kodera. A total of 2 604 Jews left Pilsen at that time, but only 209 survived to the end of the war.

Other reminders, not only in Pilsen, are the so-called Stolpersteine (Stones of the Disappeared). Whoever wants to read what is written on them must bow his head. These brass paving stones with the names and details of deported persons near the places where they lived are placed all over the Czech Republic. Today we can find more than 90,000 Stolpersteine in a total of 26 countries.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day falls on 27 January because it was on this day that the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. The date serves as a symbol of the liberation of all Nazi concentration camps.