The Banned Czech University
On 17 November 1939, in retaliation for the demonstrations that followed the death of the student , the German authorities abruptly closed every Czech institution of higher education at once. Nine students and officials were executed without trial, more than 1,200 were deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and nearly 15,000 students lost the right to study.
A Charles University professor, brutally stripped of his chair, must decide what to do with his knowledge and his students. The departments are sealed shut, the Gestapo keeps watch on former teachers, and any national instruction becomes an act of defiance.
To go on teaching underground at the risk of deportation, to go into exile and join the Czech academics taken in abroad, or to leave the lectern for the resistance: every path puts his life on the line.
Faced with the brutal closure of the universities, what does the Czech teacher do?
The Czech universities remained closed until the end of the war. Many teachers and students chose to carry on in secret, in private study circles and clandestine seminars, despite the constant risk of arrest: preserving the transmission of national knowledge was seen as a form of cultural resistance. At the same time, hundreds of Czech students made their way abroad; Oxford welcomed exiled students from Charles University, supported by Beneš's Czechoslovak government in London. The date of 17 November has since been commemorated as International Students' Day.
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