The Normandy Omaha Beach and Utah Beach Memorials: A Methodological Model for the Anticommunists in Prague?
(All photos Muriel Blaive) I visited the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer and I was stricken at how easy and effective it is to present complex historical events to the wider public in a way that is both engaging and multifaceted. Contrary to the arguments often heard in Prague on the part of the self-proclaimed “anticommunists”, to admit that there was collaboration does not amount to denying that there was oppression. Only in the mind of anticommunists is the world so black and white. In real life, there was all at once collaboration and resistance, repression and compromission, measures of hatred and approval towards the regime – under both Nazism and communism, and really under any form of dictatorship anywhere.