Opening of the Exhibition “On the Cold War Front”

PRAGUE, February 24, 2009

– Today the Director of the City of Prague Museum Zuzana Strnadová, Director of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes Pavel Žáček, and exhibition curator Prokop Tomek introduced the exhibition “On the Cold War Front,” on view in the historic building of the City of Prague Museum until May 3, 2009. The unique exhibition, featuring the stories of agent-walkers (couriers) who transported important information and materals across the just risen Iron Curtain was opened this afternoon in the City of Prague Museum. Exhibition curator Prokop Tomek, who has been concerned with this topic and the fates of individual couriers for a long time, explained: „It started about ten years ago, when I first found in the archives falsified identity cards and other documents with which the agent-walkers were equipped, so that they could function on the territory of Czechoslovakia and carry out illegal activities. At that time there started to unravel before me the largely unknown and often very heated stories of those who functioned as agent-walkers.“ A series of lectures for the public and schools is part of the exhibition’s accompanying program:

• 3/10/2009: Martin Tichý – Life in refugee camps
• 3/17/2009: Adam Hradilek – The story of courier Miroslav Dvořáček
• 3/24/2009: Libor Svoboda – The fate of General Major Miloš Knorr, participant in the third resistance
• 3/31/2009: Prokop Tomek – The British intelligence service in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s