English Translation

Copy. Appendix 2/13 Emanuel Moravec: Address to March 15, 1942. Ladies and gentlemen! Memories are always a reckoning and therefore the desire of man and the people is to make this reckoning in the form of memories something positive, a work, a building – not a negation, something useless and debris. Where the memories are a gloomy balance of errors, losses and disappointments, it is difficult to breathe. The twenty years of the history of this country, Bohemia and Moravia, presented before March 15, 1939 a reckoning full of terrible fears and an uncertain morning. The inhabitants of Bohemia and Mähren lived there without future in these twenty years. It is an old truth that the one who stands up against the gods is used to be beaten with blindness. The same fate tends to meet those who oppose the development, the history, the voice of blood. Munich was a milestone in European history, a milestone that pointed out that the path is over all that we can now freely address as a past and a time taken. However, if we want to set the first milestone on the broad path that the new, strong Europe has taken, we have no choice but to take boldly and quickly after 15 March 1939. This day of commemoration presents the first event in the drama of the great struggle for free Europe, which is taking place today in front of our eyes. France and England betrayed us in Munich in September 1938 and in mid-March 1939, not quite 20 weeks after this betrayal, the Czech people, under the leadership of the President Dr. Hácha, charged us with the treacherous West.