Memory of Nations Awards honour those who resisted Nazi and Communist regimes

On Thursday evening the annual Memory of Nations Awards were handed out to honour five individuals from Czechia, Slovakia and Ukraine who resisted the Nazi and Communist regimes.

Among the recipients were Marie Susedková, who spent two and a half years in communist labour camps to help her cousin, Anna Šestáková, who refused to inform on her family and friends despite pressure from the Communist authorities, Pavel Eli Vaga, who as a twelve-year-old boy hid with only his sister in the Slovak mountains to avoid Jewish transports, Marie Henzlová, who supported the partisans during the Second World War amid great danger, and to Ukrainian dissident Myroslav Marynovyč, who spent seven years in a labour camp and five years in exile in Kazakhstan during the 1970s and 1980s.

The award ceremony in the National Theatre in Prague ended with the playing of the Ukrainian national anthem.