A Saint Today, a Swine Tomorrow! Czechoslowak 20th Century Life Stories

The traveling panel exhibition of the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial presents visitors with 15 selected life stories of Czechoslovak prisoners, of whom approximately 4,500 were interned in the Flossenbürg concentration camp complex. Thanks to biographical research, destinies have been discovered that will impress the visitor not only with the great divides of life caused by imprisonment in the concentration camp. These people experienced major turning points in Czechoslovak history: from the founding of the state in 1918 through occupation and Nazi terror, the post-war years culminating in the communist coup, the "Prague Spring" and subsequent "normalization", to the "Velvet Revolution" in 1989.

The newcomers will see, for example, the life of a Jewish painter from Prague, a Sudeten German communist, a Pilsen historian, a bilingual radio journalist, a diplomat in the service of President Beneš, a South Bohemian Roma woman or an American film director with Slovak roots. He will also get acquainted with the fate of the Moravian peasant Radomír Faltýnek. In 2012, he received a high military award in Prague – the Golden Linden Award. In 1945, he returned from a concentration camp and took over the farm from his parents, who were murdered by the Nazis shortly before the end of the war. Only a few years later, as a "kulak", he was subjected to repression by the new communist regime and was eventually forced to hand over his fields to the state. "A saint today, a swine tomorrow!" With this quote from a poem by Karel Havlíček Borovský, Radomír Faltýnek reminds us during the ceremony of receiving the award how fast times can change.

The exhibition is designed so that when looking at various life stories, a mosaic of destinies consisting of many layers emerges and shows the destinies of prisoners in the context of the history of the 20th century.