Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 +0100Thu, 23 Jul 2026 18:56:04 +0200https://english.radio.cz/erstwhile-enemies-meet-behind-bars-8061494© 2026 Radio Prague InternationalThis week is the anniversary of the Prague Uprising, which began on the 5th May 1945, in the last days of the German occupation of Prague. At the time Antonin Sum was in his mid twenties. As a young Czech patriot he was active in the uprising, which saw heavy street-fighting against the residue of the German army of occupation. In three days nearly three thousand people were killed. On the other side of the barricades was the German General Rudolf Toussaint, the chief of the Wehrmacht forces in Prague. After the war Antonin Sum became secretary to the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, Jan Masaryk, but with the Communist putsch of 1948, as a democrat, he became an enemy of the state more or less overnight. Like thousands of non-communist Czechs who had held positions of influence, Antonin Sum was thrown into prison during the show-trials of the later 40s and early 50s. By a strange twist of history, one-time freedom fighters found themselves in jail with former prominent Nazis and collaborators, and it was there that Antonin Sum had the strange experience of meeting his erstwhile enemy, General Toussaint. Here he remembers that meeting. encr@radio.cz (Cesky Rozhlas)webmaster@radio.cz (CRo Webmaster) https://english.radio.cz/sites/default/files/images/sum_antonin.jpg?timestamp=1590285177 https://english.radio.cz/erstwhile-enemies-meet-behind-bars-8061494 Radio Prague International Radio Prague International radio.prague.int@gmail.com clean 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9