![]() The layout reveals a central square, common to concentration camps of the period, for holding daily roll calls, in a process historians say was often used to intimidate and humiliate inmates. Tar marks in the soil have been left by the insulation in the huts’ walls. Wine or beer bottles have been among the items dug up in the network of narrow trenches, indicating that inmates were allowed to consume alcohol. Conditions inside the huts were spartan, with no heating in the bathrooms.Īlthough the plans specified concrete floors, the excavation has found no evidence of this, suggesting the flooring may have been made of soil. However, the stark reality is revealed in the planning documents, which set out provision for three wooden barracks with a capacity of 40 inmates each, housed eight to a room, with simple kitchen facilities. “They wanted to leave no evidence, just as every common criminal will hide their own traces.” “It’s typical of camps built by the communist or Nazi regimes that if a demolition was carried out, it was done thoroughly,” said Hasil, who is now calling for a memorial plaque on the spot. Jan Hasil, of the academy’s Institute of Archaeology, discovered the original plans for the Prague facility – along with contemporary aerial photos confirming its existence – in the archives of the local municipal district during preparations for the excavation.įoundations of the camp, previously unknown to Prague historians, were discovered during a dig. ![]() It is the first time archaeologists have uncovered an installation in Prague built by the communist regime, which fell from power in the 1989 Velvet Revolution – although a similar camp was excavated last year in rural Bohemia, close to the site of a former uranium mine also served by forced labour. ![]() The existence of the camp in Prague’s popular Letná park was previously unknown and had escaped the notice of Czech historians and official bodies dedicated to chronicling the Czech Republic’s 20th-century experience with totalitarianism.Īll traces of the encampment were comprehensively erased before the official unveiling of the statue – consisting of 14,200 tonnes of granite and officially titled “a monument to love and friendship” – on a strategic hilltop overlooking Prague’s medieval city centre on May Day, 1955, two years after Stalin’s death.īut its foundations have been exposed by a team from the Czech Academy of Sciences in excavations ordered in advance of the construction of an artificial lake on the site by Prague city council. The gargantuan structure was commissioned after the communists seized power in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and unleashed a wave of Stalinist terror and show trials. ![]()
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