Second World War National Memorial in Hrabyně

The Second World War National Memorial was built in the 1970s. It original name was Ostrava Operation Memorial and its purpose was to commemorate the largest military operation on the Czech territory, because the heaviest fighting took place near Hrabyně. The memorial was also meant to express the strong and permanent connection between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. The Memorial’s foundation stone was laid on 20 April 1970 and the event was attended by the then president of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic Ludvík Svoboda and the commander of the 4th Ukrainian Front Marshall Yeryomenko. The construction itself began 1976 and the Memorial was opened in 1980, on the 35^th anniversary of the liberation of Czechoslovakia. It was originally designed exclusively as a place of piety, while museum collections were kept at a chateau in Kravaře. However, since 1992 it has been a part of the Silesian Land Museum, which uses it for organising exhibitions related to the Second World War.

The Memorial’s main building consists of two concrete wedges symbolising the vanguards of the Czechoslovak and Soviet armies during the offensive in Ostrava Operation. Its interior houses the permanent exhibition Time of Ruin and Hope (Doba zmaru a naděje), which presents the chronology of the most important military and political events of the Second World War connected with Czechoslovakia, as well as the fate of the local population. Near the main building, there is also an administrative building, a large area where new recruits used to take their oaths of enlistment, an exhibition of military technology and a symbolic cemetery with the names of 13 thousand fallen Soviet and Czechoslovak soldiers, as well as the inhabitants of Moravia and Silesia killed during the Second World War.