Hradec Králové prepares educational trail about Barium resistance group during World War II
In Hradec Králové, a new nature educational trail may be built based on the response to a trial run of a tour about the wartime activities of the resistance group, Barium. The project is being prepared by a team of historians from the Czechoslovak Legionary Community and the Museum of East Bohemia.
This year marks 80 years since Josef Šandera, Josef Žižka, and Tomáš Býček were active in the Hradec Králové region as part of the Barium resistance group. Among other activities, the group planned an armed uprising at the end of the Second World War in October 1944.
Jan Hrubecký and Vladislav Severin are two of the researchers in charge of the tours and commemorations of the resistance in the region, aiming to bring this forgotten story to the attention of contemporary visitors.
"Barium was a Czechoslovak paratrooper unit sent from Italy that parachuted near Vysoká nad Labem in the Hradec Králové region in early April 1944. It operated in Hradec Králové until the beginning of October of the same year."
"It was one of the most successful intelligence parachute groups sent by our government-in-exile in the UK," explains Mr. Hrubecký.
"The event commemorating the Barium group was attended by approximately fifty participants. Representatives of the Žabek family, whose members sheltered Barium paratroopers during the Second World War, also came from a settlement in Poland near Žamberk."
The more than four-kilometer walk also reminded participants of the town's history during the Protectorate. Mr. Hrubecký continues:
"This is also the purpose of today's event: to remind ourselves of the places—whether they are parts of the city where we went to school, where we enjoy going to the pub with friends, or where we may have rented accommodation—yet we may not know that they were sites of hidden resistance or conspiracy apartments."
"Or, conversely, they were places where members of the Gestapo in Hradec Králové lived."
Based on the response to the trial, a nature trail tracing the footsteps of the Barium Paratrooper unit could be opened in Hradec Králové.
