Prague Journal

Monday, May 16, 2005.

The Czech world-cup hockey victory celebration at Old Town Square this afternoon drew at least 100,000. The hockey team rode into the square on top of a big tour bus, as fans chanted and waved flags and banners. The scene reminded me more of a pep rally than a victory celebration – cheerleaders waving pompoms and dancing to the music onstage. There were no marching bands and presidential speeches, but each player was introduced – to loud chants and applause, the trophy was held high, and champagne was uncorked and spewed onto the crowd. The players left as they had come, standing on the roof of the bus and waving to the crowd, as the bus made its way down Paris Street toward the Continental Hotel, followed by throngs of fans.

Earlier today, a statue of Czechoslovakia’s controversial post-war president Edvard Benes was erected despite condemnation from Germans expelled by him after the second world war. The sculpture was unveiled outside the Czech foreign ministry in the presence of the Republic’s new prime minister Jiri Paroubek, whose center-left government narrowly won a vote of confidence last week. But the decision to honor Benes – whose post-war decrees led to the forcible expulsion of 2.6 million ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia – prompted an angry response from some German politicians. Edmund Stoiber, the premier of Bavaria, and the leader of the rightwing Bavarian Christian Social Union party, told the Association of Expelled Germans the sculpture was “damaging.” He dubbed the Benes decrees “unconstitutional” and “an open wound in Europe.” The association wants to build its own monument to those forced out of central Europe in the chaotic aftermath of the war. According to government documents declassified in 2002, some 30,000 were killed as they tried to escape Czechoslovakia to neighboring Austria and Germany.

posted by JWinn @ 4:58 PM