New website remembering Czechoslovaks in Gulag forced labor camps launches

Historian Adam Hradilek, head of the research project, said the USTR has been focusing on Czechs in the Gulag Soviet forced labor camps since its foundation in 2008.

He said dozens of eye witnesses and the relatives of the victims of the Soviet repressions were interviewed and many documents, pictures and hand-written memories from family archives were obtained.

USTR historians have been studying the topic in archives both at home and abroad, including former Soviet republics. The USTR also has a digitization office in the Ukrainian city Lviv where its experts work with documents from various parts of Ukraine.

Cablova said the new website has a link to an online version of the Guide through the Empire of Evil written by Vladimir Bystrov who died in 2010. The online guide presents a big part of the gulags in Siberia and it started operating on May 20, exactly 75 years after Bystrov’s father was abducted to the Soviet Union.

Marta Bystrovova, Bystrov’s daughter, said her father worked on the guide many years not only because of his own father, but also because he wanted the unpleasant truth to be known.

The USTR also coordinates the Last Address in the Czech Republic, which remembers the victims of the communist regime.