The Iron Curtain Foundation organized a debate in the underground (Slovak House in Prague 1), in which former President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus and Director of the Václav Klaus Institute Jiří Weigl spoke on the topic "15 March 1939 through today's eyes".
Klaus began by asking if anyone present personally remembered the events of March 1939 and recalled that it was the first time that the paths of the former Czechoslovakia diverged, when Slovakia did not wait for President Hácha to travel to Berlin.
On that occasion, he shared one of his experiences during his trip to Slovakia - when he finished talking with Robert Fico, they went out for a drink and the chief, when he saw them, said, "Well, that's nice. Mr Šimečka in Prague with Mr Fiala and Mr Klaus in Bratislava with Mr Fico. Here is the wine as a treat for our company."
"Today it is etiquette to recall only carefully 'sanitized history'," Klaus said, referring to the comparison between then and now.
He assessed that the war in Ukraine is unfortunately not being discussed in a rational way in the Czech Republic. "In our country, war-lust simply wins and we who say: Stop the killing and start negotiating, we are criticised," he said, adding that this also applies to the current Czech-Slovak split, where he believes the Slovak government has a more rational attitude than the Czech one. He said it was the most pro-Ukrainian government in the world. "I think the first task should be to stop the killing and the murdering. And the second is to find a way out of the impasse it is in today," he said.
He considers the idea of first returning everything to zero, when the conflict started, and only then starting negotiations to be childish and unrealistic. On the contrary, it must be based on the current state of affairs, Klaus believes, adding that the Czech Republic needs to be "de-blackened".
gnews.cz/kz-JaV_07
English 
Czech