The giant memorial in Hrabyn is reopening to the public after years of repairs

Hrabyně (Opavsko) - The Giant Memorial of World War II in Hrabyně, which is among the largest structures of its kind in the Czech Republic, will be reopened to the public after years of renovations. The first interested visitors can visit it on April 29. This is despite the fact that the work will not be officially completed until this autumn. "Due to the great interest of the public and veterans, we have decided to start operating the exhibition earlier," said Milan Freiberg, the spokesman for the memorial, to ČTK today.
    He added that this year three floors will be accessible to the public. "In the coming years, we are preparing to make more interesting spaces of the memorial accessible," said the spokesman. He pointed out that the new exhibition not only commemorates the wartime events of World War II in the territory of the former Czechoslovakia but also the activities of Czechoslovak soldiers in the Middle East, Africa, and it also addresses Czechoslovak pilots in England.
    It also reflects the life of the civilian population in the occupied territory. "The exhibition is supplemented by several types of multimedia. Visitors will have more than a dozen corners with information and nearly three dozen plasma screens offering period documents, photographs, and film sequences," the spokesman listed, noting that a documentary film by Evald Schorm, which many visitors know from the original exhibition, will return to the memorial.
    Renovations also affected the area surrounding the building, which lies directly along the road connecting Ostrava and Opava. The symbolic cemetery surrounding the memorial has also been reconstructed. "The original 13,000 plates with the names of Soviet and Czechoslovak soldiers and civilian victims have been reconstructed and reinstalled," Freiberg added.
    The concrete giant memorial was opened in 1980 as the Memorial of the Ostrava Operation. It became part of the Museum of Revolutionary Struggles and Liberation in Ostrava. Since 1992, it has been part of the Silesian Land Museum. It was closed to the public for reconstruction in 2005. Renovations began a year later. They cost 192 million crowns, which were largely covered by the Ministry of Culture.