It  is 5th March. The time is shortly before 7 in the morning. The year is the second after the end of the biggest war. You could be with me at this time, as our imaginations can make it possible. Let us picture our location then. We are standing on the outskirts of a small and industrial place in northern Bohemia, in a town named V. Because of the place and season, it is cold. It is still dark but we believe the scene could be lighted a bit thanks to a little snow, as it is covering the ground and on the tops of buildings. Actually, what we can see is an open urban space by the main road, no larger than some hundreds of square yards. This is supposed to be a spot where one of the main roads is leaving the inner town’s congestion, crossing the rail line and slowly heading outside the periphery.

So here we are for now in V. on 5th March, the second year after the war. Don't you think it is easy to form an image of such a place and time, even if it is out of billions of possible places and times? Please, just follow me then. It is a flat and spacious area right in front of you, lined with some brick factories and industrial objects, linking the horizon with black masses of manufacturing halls and chimneys. There are also a few colonies of family houses and buildings spread around the area. To evoke some authentic atmosphere in your mind too, know that the objects and space in your scope could seem to be in chaotic order, just randomly spread around in a black and white stark manner. It is a simple hardly-organized area formed with some fences and two streets running off the main road. The space is occasionally obscured by trees dominating it with the blackness of naked trunks and branches. Branches that when moving in freezing blasts of wind, bring the only sounds we could hear. To help you, I draw a plan of the area and put it below the text.

Yes, you would be right when guessing we are not coming to the start of our story with this late winter scenery without any purpose. I would not bring you here to impress you with the grey melancholy cliché that this place is radiating now. I do not mean to make an interesting play of this random past image out of billions. You suppose right: there was something going to happen here very soon, in V. on March 5th of second year after the war. Actually, this is a place where you can follow me to focus on one of the most notable events of a far-reaching historical case and process.  It concerns dramatic events in the collapsing coexistence of three ethnic parts of Bohemian society when WWII came to an end.

Are you still patient with my little illustration of how to discover such a past through my imagination game? Well, if so, then you could remark correctly, we must see some people involved at our grim place if something is going to happen there. Thank you for learning fast in the historical field; there could be a past, yes, but it is still people who make it History, like we two through our imagination and chat are doing now. So let us keep going, please... 

 

Finally, we get a view of some people gathering and moving more and more at one of V.’s oukirt´s spots when time is reaching 7 am on 5th March. Concretely, we must see some people standing by the little gate house of one of the factories, perhaps most of them outside an entrance. I can not give you information on how many people we should imagine being there to make our idea more clear. I have not found this fact. Anyhow, we can see tens of them for sure. These were men as well as women, most of them wearing black coats with high collars, huts or skullcaps; maybe it would surprise you to see nearly all women are still wearing traditional veils. We can envision the look of them according to the three only known photos taken in V. later on this day, when events culminate and there was a mass of people gathered on another place in town in number of thousands already.

There is no detailed description of this gathering left in archives to enlighten our imagination further. It would be better when we imagine that these people are standing some distance from us then, as to still be partially covered by dark. They are probably not speaking much. We cannot know their exact actions nor hear their talk, if there is either. We may guess they are still sleepy and mourning, perhaps moving a bit to warm up from time to time. Before we can understand the motivation of their standing in such unfriendly weather, we should make one thing clear: if we can hear their native language, it is for a certainty Czech and Slovak people.

 

Please do not worry. I do not mean to bring you to a crime scene or the place where some heavy accident is going to happen. Do not get ready for some shooting or bloody catastrophe here. It is nearly two years since the big war is over. Even though this was the biggest war ever and there is still much violence around, things tend to calm down again. However, you can still find dramatic situations. Actually, there will be seven cases of law violations in association with crowds gathering on 5th March of the second year after the war in V. to be investigated officially later. But, for now, let us follow what was going to happen first, at the beginning. 

 

You would not need to study the details of 5th March in V. as carefully as I to recognize that these people must be waiting for something. Otherwise they would be already working for almost one hour as the morning shift starts at six in the morning. For sure, if we were looking closely, we would have to catch the moment where something happened to make the crowd move and become alert at once. This moment came unexpectedly. It was as people got sight of an old man who appeared on the scene. Actually, he had to show up on a different spot than the people waiting, on the edge of an area we came to observe together. The man was walking on the street about a hundred yards or so before the street joins the main road and fifty yards to the gate of the factory gathered with people. Streets run among the factory area and are covered with trees, however there has to be a moment when people viewed the old man sooner or later, alone or being alerted by others. On my plan of the scene which I put below the text, you can see the letter “A” for people gathered, “B” for an old man approaching them, and a red line to show the corridor where they could see each other.

Morning 5th March in Varnsdorf plan 

Before we pay attention to the people alerted by the man´s coming, let me help you to draw this man first, please; or, let me just say how you should imagine him for now as we need to keep our image moving and there will be plenty of time and opportunity to tell you much about this man later. The man we see now appearing on scene is a tall and strong man, his figure perhaps even darkened by the blackness of his heavy winter coat. However, please, follow my picture as far as you can, as the only information about the old man´s look I have comes from a far witness of the event. I have not been successful in attaining a photo of this old man yet.

 

Let us go on. We miss just a few seconds as people realize that this man is approaching. Even we cannot see the people in the crowd because of the reason mentioned above; we feel there is tension and emotions rising among them now. There is hostility in the air, some nervousness of what will happen next. We find people frozen and sense things get serious now. People perhaps stop talking at all, just waiting for what's next. On the other side, it is obvious that the old man is heading for the factory before him but is aware of the people waiting in front of it. We can imagine him being surprised to see people there because he probably could not see their gathering before.

The conclusion of what happened at the scene is easy: the crowd and old man were enemies; or to say more precisely, something made them enemies in this situation. Simply, people were gathered in front of the factory for some reason and this had been in contradiction to the old man´s original wish to enter the factory. There was something happening which positioned people against each other. It will not come as a surprise to you that this something had old and complicated history. The situation we observed in its very beginning here was just one of many events leading to the numerous manifestations of people and finishing with the strike in V. and vicinity just a few hours later. Actually, the coming confrontation of the crowd and the old man was just the first direct incident making 5th March, the second post-war year in V., the biggest event of this sort in the post-war regime of the resuscitated republic of Czechoslovaks.

Anyhow, let us interrupt this commenting for now. Let things calm down before we can come to picture them again if you will stay interested. It is not my purpose to start our spectacle of the past too quickly. We had better make a little break now. It is for our own good, as usual, sorry. It is better to deal with methods of how to follow the story first.