One year on: Czechia marks the first anniversary of the 2023 Faculty of Arts shooting
On December 21st 2023, a series of horrific events transpired at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. The fourteen deaths in the heart of Prague, the deadliest mass attack in Czechia’s history, shocked the country and the world, and forever tainted a place of learning and vibrant student life with tragedy and grief. One year later, Czechia prepares itself to commemorate the events of that day for the first time. In the intervening months, what has changed for the Faculty of Arts?
The sequence of events on that December day began not in Prague, but rather to the west of the city, in the Central Bohemian village of Hostouň. On the 21st, the first victim of the murderer, the 24-year-old student David Kozák, was in fact his own father, whose body was later found by Kozák’s mother. Her call to the police, in tandem with a call from a concerned friend, initiated a police manhunt.
Kozák was at the time already known to the police, although he was only one of many suspects in the investigation of the murder of a father and his infant daughter in the Klánovice Forest six days earlier. The two were later identified as the prior victims of Kozák, killed completely at random.
At 1:23 pm, the young man entered the Faculty of Arts building on Jan Palach Square, going to hide away and prepare his weapons in a fourth-floor bathroom. Seven minutes later, two police units also entered the building, one of the locations where they suspected Kozák might be.
Over an hour later, the carnage on the fourth floor began, with the first emergency calls reaching the police at 2:57 pm. Tomáš Hercík, at the time a third-year history student, described to Radio Prague his memories of the first signs of trouble:
“When we were going from seminar to seminar, there were already some rumours circulating around the building that the police were downstairs. The janitors were there, and the police were probably asking about someone, so we just thought that someone had probably stolen books again or hadn't returned them...
“About a minute or two before the class, a classmate said that the another classmate had written to him that there was shooting upstairs, that there was someone with a gun up there. I didn't see the text message personally, so the lecturer interrupted the class and the conversation turned to what was going on. When we all found out what was going on according to the text message, I went up there to help. My friend [later] described it to me, because I really don't remember exactly how fast I ran out of the classroom. I guess I was a bit confused.”
Tomáš Hercík’s quick and selfless run to the fourth floor, where he went from room to room warning students and staff, has been hailed as heroism. Radek Šimík, an associate lecturer who was teaching at the time, recalled his experience:
“One student was giving a presentation when we noticed that something strange is happening, and that there were police cars outside of the window. Until then, we didn't hear any shooting at all, actually. We did hear shouting in the corridor, which we later on found out were the police coordinating themselves within the building … We did get suspicious about that. We thought there were police cars outside of the building, so it's being taken care of. That's what we thought. We were thinking the shouts were the problem, and that there is an intruder who is maybe just shouting and misbehaving. Only maybe after ten minutes of this happening, we heard the first shots, which eventually we found out were among the last shots of the shooter.”
The police responded very quickly; from 3:02 pm onwards, officers converged on the faculty to begin the search for the perpetrator and the evacuation of students. At 3:19 pm, Kozák’s suicide brought an end to the violence, but the heartbreak had only just begun. His actions at the faculty had left behind fourteen deceased, not including himself, and twenty-five injured.
The news of the shooting spread quickly, although it took time for the names of the victims to be released. Among them were two members of staff: Lenka Hlávková, head of the Institute of Musicology, and Jan Dlask of the Department of Germanic Studies. Messages of condolence quickly arrived from leaders around the world, including from US President Joe Biden and Pope Francis. People gathered at the university to pay respects, light candles and grieve together, and Czechia began to mourn.
A year has now passed, so how have the events of December 2023 changed Charles University? Milena Králíčková, the university’s rector, spoke to Radio Prague about the response of the university’s leadership, and how the shooting has affected the ancient institution:
“It definitely did change the institution, not only the Faculty of Arts, but the whole institution. And it affected plenty of students as well as academic staff and other staff, not only at Faculty of Arts. One thing is for sure, it's not over. We are still in touch with parents and families of our past students and colleagues. We are in touch with those who were injured physically, but we are also in touch with plenty of them who were injured psychologically. We need to deal with it as a whole university.
“We have built a centre of resilience, which covers plenty of different activities. We are much stronger now in issues of safety; we provide education for our students as well as staff. We organise different kinds of trainings. I wish that we would be strong enough to take care of all people who are affected. We are in touch with plenty of colleagues from abroad, like for example Norwegian colleagues from Utøya, who are telling us that even though we will try our best, we have to be ready for the fact that there are people whose needs are not covered, sometimes because we don't know what their needs are.”
Within the building of the faculty itself, security has naturally been scrutinised and improved. Ondřej Dufek, spokesman for the faculty, outlined some of the changes.
“The Faculty of Arts and the entire Charles University and its rectorate took a number of security measures immediately. These measures have been developing throughout the year. I can mention, for example, the introduction of a crisis information and call system, which can inform a large number of people about a potential danger in a short time. We have already tested this system several times, we are still fine-tuning it, and it is an important part of our preparedness at the faculty.
“We are planning to reconstruct the gatehouse, which should have a better view of the entrance to the building, and it should be safer for the gatehouse staff themselves … A fundamental part of building security is actually the preparedness of all the users of the faculty buildings, which means various training courses and exercises, such as first aid courses, evacuation exercises and the like.”
The tragedy also prompted a national conversation about Czechia’s gun laws, specifically the matter of how dangerous individuals can easily and legally gain access to firearms and accessories like silencers, without alerting the authorities. Current legislation was criticised for its leniency. David Vichnar, who was present at the faculty on the day, was the spokesman for the petition ‘To all who care’, which this year has striven to change the law. He spoke to Radio Prague about the petition back in September:
“By all available sources and evidence, we are led to believe that the current Czech gun legislation is remarkably loose and benevolent, compared to other EU countries and countries of the so-called civilised world.”
The public outcry has borne fruit; earlier in December, the Czech Senate passed an amendment to the gun law that will oblige arms dealers and shooting ranges to report suspicious clients to the police. This measure is a forerunner of a massive overhaul of firearms legislation, which will come into force in 2026.
Life this year gradually returned to the corridors and classrooms of the faculty, but what happened there cannot be undone. Speaking on the state of the building after the attack, Radek Šimík:
“So the building was sealed off for a few months. It took about two months to reopen, but the fourth floor only got reopened in September, I think. On the floor where all this happened, I happened to have quite a few colleagues from a neighbouring department, the literary studies department, who all have offices on the fourth floor. They were basically homeless for half a year. It was difficult, of course, to concentrate on work, while trying to look for other places to work or working from home.
“The police checked each single room, so they broke into the rooms, even into rooms that were locked, and thereby destroyed many of the doors. Those had to be renovated. The rooms themselves where the shooting took place, those went through a more serious renovation. The faculty, I think, has done an excellent job in that they opened the rooms where the tragedy happened, and out of two of these rooms, they made what they call ‘silent places’, which are open to everybody to enter, light a candle and spend a few silent moments remembering the deceased.”
Broken doors can be fixed, rooms can be redecorated, but the emotional damage is still present within the student body and among the staff. The faculty has taken steps to offer hybrid teaching, and to assist students who cannot face the prospect of being in the building or in certain rooms. Tereza Havelková, a long-term colleague and friend to one of the victims, spoke to Radio Prague about the psychological burden weighing on the faculty, but also the support that staff and students have received:
“Well, it is a process, obviously. A year is not a long time, right? I think we are still in the process of recovery. I think the events are still weighing quite heavily on us, but we have now returned to the fourth floor. We were not there for about eight months. We were in different premises. Now we have returned to our old rooms that have been renovated. It’s a bit of a new start, but of course, it's also returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak. We all have to negotiate that.
“There's been an immense amount of support. There have been groups, all sorts of therapy offers. I think we've been very well taken care of. But again, of course, different people need different amounts of therapy. I do know of students who have also been going to individual therapy sessions. Some people have been going to group therapy. There are different ways how people have been dealing with coming to terms with the events.”
Radek Šimík also acknowledged the toll that the shooting took on the administrative members of staff, who had to deal with the tragedy over the Christmas period and well into the New Year:
“I had a conversation with a colleague of mine who is a secretary at two or three departments in the faculty. We were talking about this at our pre-Christmas meeting ... I was asking her what it's like for her, and I was expecting a relatively easy-going answer … But then she started telling me about how she had to start working from day one after this happened, that she had no chance to work with her emotions, and that the emotions only started getting released in the autumn. For three quarters of a year, she had to suppress all of it. I know there were a lot of people like this.”
The spectre of December 21st clearly still hangs over the Faculty of Arts; for its staff and students, the tragedy is not in the past, but still the present. It seems that Charles University has done right by them, offering support and making changes to its security and teaching environment, and in an official statement described itself as “hurt, but not broken”.
Yet this first anniversary is sure to reopen the psychological wounds of that day for many people. Among the events planned for this anniversary week, including a silent commemoration on Jan Palach Square, and fund-raising concert entitled Rok poté (‘One Year After’), we can hope that there will be some healing for those wounds.
