Kristallnacht
Last night, Caroline and I were on our way to meet Jirka for dinner when we wandered into a neo-Nazi celebration commemorating Kristallnacht.
Holy. Fucking. Shit. That definitely qualifies as one of the scariest moments of my life.
We didn't even know who they were until later, but their appearance was scary enough on its own. There were several dozen of them (possibly more--it was hard to tell among all the spectators and protesters), and they were all dressed in black hooded jackets with masks covering their noses and mouths, so all you could see of them was their eyes.
They were blocking the street that we needed to walk down, but Caroline and I tried to go another route. Nevertheless, when we were only a block or two away, we heard a loud explosion like gunfire or (most likely) firecrackers, and then all of them took off running in our direction--through restaurants and shops and into the streets. Thinking that there was a real threat to our well-being, Caroline and I held hands and dashed across the street and up through Wenceslas Square.
When we got to Jirka, he told us that it is an annual event in which Prague's skinheads gather in the Old Jewish Town and make a spectacle/try to get a rise out of people. There was another group of people gathered to protest the skinheads, and they were wearing yellow stars of David on their jackets.
We also saw policemen prepped for a riot, in vans with windows and doors protected by wire. But as far as I know, despite the obvious inappropriateness of the demonstration, nothing got out of hand.
Caroline said that there seems to be a lot of neo-Nazis in Eastern European countries, which is something I really know nothing about. But it does seem odd to find them in nations that were invaded and occupied by Nazi forces.
Of course, all of the demonstrators last night seemed very young--certainly too young to remember World War II and probably too young to remember Communism. They perhaps know very little about their own history and the evil they're perpetuating. One hopes that's the case, anyway.
Holy. Fucking. Shit. That definitely qualifies as one of the scariest moments of my life.
We didn't even know who they were until later, but their appearance was scary enough on its own. There were several dozen of them (possibly more--it was hard to tell among all the spectators and protesters), and they were all dressed in black hooded jackets with masks covering their noses and mouths, so all you could see of them was their eyes.
They were blocking the street that we needed to walk down, but Caroline and I tried to go another route. Nevertheless, when we were only a block or two away, we heard a loud explosion like gunfire or (most likely) firecrackers, and then all of them took off running in our direction--through restaurants and shops and into the streets. Thinking that there was a real threat to our well-being, Caroline and I held hands and dashed across the street and up through Wenceslas Square.
When we got to Jirka, he told us that it is an annual event in which Prague's skinheads gather in the Old Jewish Town and make a spectacle/try to get a rise out of people. There was another group of people gathered to protest the skinheads, and they were wearing yellow stars of David on their jackets.
We also saw policemen prepped for a riot, in vans with windows and doors protected by wire. But as far as I know, despite the obvious inappropriateness of the demonstration, nothing got out of hand.
Caroline said that there seems to be a lot of neo-Nazis in Eastern European countries, which is something I really know nothing about. But it does seem odd to find them in nations that were invaded and occupied by Nazi forces.
Of course, all of the demonstrators last night seemed very young--certainly too young to remember World War II and probably too young to remember Communism. They perhaps know very little about their own history and the evil they're perpetuating. One hopes that's the case, anyway.