Josef Hora - Victory Memorial - Mrázov, CZ
Posted by: 
haggaeus
N 49° 57.622 E 012° 49.888
33U E 344466 N 5536478
A WW II victory memorial in Mrázov village, now belonging to Teplá town.
Waymark Code: WMCJ5P
Location: Karlovarský kraj, Czechia
Date Posted: 09/11/2011
Views: 58
The memorial has quite interesting history:
Before WW II, the village was settled by native Germans and its name was Prosau. The locals have built the memorial as a memory to the natives who didn't return from WW I.
After WW II, the German inhabitants were forced to move into American and Soviet occupation sectors in Germany. The new Czech settlers have rebuilt the memorial: the German eagle was replaced by a Czechoslovak lion, and instead of the list of the fallen there was placed a plaque with a poem of
Josef Hora Den (The Day) celebrating the victory day:
Dni svetly, v nemz se vyplnilo
o cem jsme snili po sest let
Dni k nemuz rostlo vase dilo
a do nehoz se menil svet
jsi tu! A Cechy promenene
zas tvar svuj maji v sir i v dal
Vytesan pevne do kamene
nas povzdech zakonem se stal
Dni Svetly! Osvoboditele
delnici svetlych pristresi
Zas ruda krev nam proudi v tele
zas jsme, Staline, Benesi!
Considering the plaque placement on a vandalized WW I memorial, the poem gets into quite grotesque and morbid context - in the last line there is a praise to the president Benes (who issued the decrees legalising the transfer of ethnic Germans out of Czechoslovakia) and to Stalin (approving the transfer with other Allies at the Potsdam conference).