Pardubice supports the modernization of the Memorial Zámeček

photo: www.zamecekpardubice.cz

Pardubice - The Pardubice Memorial Zámeček, which served as a Gestapo execution site during World War II, is likely to be restored. The Pardubice city council today supported the conceptual plan for the reconstruction and modernization of this national cultural monument. A new building is expected to be constructed in the memorial area. Total costs are estimated at 15 million crowns, but European funding is available for the project.

The memorial area is intended to serve not only to commemorate the victims of the second state of emergency, who were executed on site, but also to preserve the memory of the victims of the Nazi regime from the regions of Pardubice, Hradec Králové, and Kolín. The plan for the city was developed by Vojtěch Kyncl and Blanka Jedličková from the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The cost estimate comes from them.

The idea for the new design is divided into four levels called Memory of the Time, Memory of the Dead, Memory of the Missing, and Memory of the Living. Visitors will be able to view a film projection about the rise of Nazism up to the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, attend lectures, or visit an intimate concert in the new memorial. A stylized living room with two libraries, a library of perpetrators and a library of victims, is planned for one part.

The exhibition will also include authentic occupation artifacts such as emptied coffins or torture devices, photographs, as well as period protocols and lists of the executed. The existing plaque bearing the names of the victims may be replaced by steles with the names of the victims and descriptions in the area behind the current stone memorial. The site will also commemorate the transports of Jewish residents and victims of bombings. The outdoor space is planned to be used for further education. The outdoor exhibition should address, for example, the Geneva Convention of 1949.

The national cultural monument is located next to the Foxconn factory. From June 3 to July 9, 1942, 194 people were shot at the Pardubice execution site. In addition to the residents of the annihilated Ležáky, the victims came from Pardubice, Kolínsko, Čáslavsko, and Hradecko. The current commemorative form of the execution site dates back to 1949.