September 20, 2005
A memorial to Czech victims of the Shoah is to be unveiled soon at a Jewish cemetery in the Czech town of Usti nad Labem. The memorial will be erected on 9 October following 10 years of debate over how and where to memorialize the town’s former Jewish inhabitants. The US$ 30,000 memorial, a granite Star of David half-sunk in the ground, is the work of local architect Michal Gabriel and is being paid for in part by the town, with the majority to be funded by the country’s Jewish communities.
Meanwhile, approximately 500 people have attended a concert of neo-Nazi bands in the Czech Republic. According to media reports, Saturday’s concert in the town of Krtetice has been the largest meeting of supporters of extremist groups in the Czech Republic so far this year. The police did not intervene in the event, where undercover witnesses said participants chanted racist slogans such as the Nazis' “Sieg Heil” and the name of Rudolf Heß, Hitler’s deputy party leader.
