By Dominic Swire

For the Post

Less than 20 years since the Velvet Revolution, many young Czechs are in danger of growing up ignorant of their country's recent past, say some concerned educators. The problem, they explain, is that the second half of the 20th century is conspicuously absent from many history lessons.

"Why do you think the Communist Party is doing so well here?" asks Jana Švehlová, a retired academic specializing in political psychology. "I ask my students how many think [state control] could happen again, and in some of the classes half the students raise their hands."

Svehlová has recently finished a tour of Czech schools and universities, lecturing on the plight of political prisoners and their families who were expelled from Czechoslovakia during the political purges of the 1950s. She was invited to give the series of talks by Jeden svět na školách (One World in Schools), a branch of the Czech human rights organization People in Need (PIN), which has taken it upon itself to assist schools in teaching about the difficult — and uncomfortably recent — history of communist Czechoslovakia.

Although the Education Ministry claims that history lessons do cover the communist era, Kateřina Suchá, a project coordinator at PIN, explains that this is not the case. "Many teachers don't know how to approach the subject and they have no support from their colleagues or the general public, so history lessons usually end with the last days of the Second World War." As a result, she says, "Czech children often know more about the Romans than about the history of their own country."

In response to this problem, Jeden svět has put together a collection of 16 documentary films covering the communist era that they offer to schools. So far, they've given 1,500 videotapes to 270 schools.

"Our experience," says Suchá, "is that documentary film is a very good instrument to get students to think about new issues and initiate discussion."

Toward this end, they recommend film screenings followed by a discussion with a guest speaker who has had direct experience of living under the communist regime. This can include dissidents, former political prisoners or even members of teachers' families.

Based in Washington, D.C., where she earned her doctorate in political psychology with a specialization in state terrorism, Švehlová moved her work to the Czech Republic specifically to get the education system to deal with this issue. She often talks about the plight of the families of political prisoners. "I feel nobody really knows or cares what happened to the children," she says.

While most people know about the show trials of the 1950s and Milada Horáková, the only woman in Czechoslovakia to be executed for her political beliefs, few know what happened to her daughter, who now lives in the United States.

"After they arrested her mother," explains Svehlová, "the secret police came to her apartment and said, 'Pack your things and get out of here in two hours.' But who knows about this, and who knows what happened to all the other children of the lesser-known political prisoners?"

Švehlová herself, born in Czechoslovakia, knows what she's talking about. Her father flew with the British RAF during the war and was arrested in Czechoslovakia shortly after the communists gained power in 1948. He was sent to work in the uranium mines, where he spent 10 years. "When I was in eighth grade, the school principal called me to his office. Although I had straight As, he said, 'I'm sorry, but you can't go to school any more; you have to find a job.' I was about 14. So I got a job as a laborer in a factory. In 1966, I asked nine times to go and visit my birthplace in Britain. Nine times they said no, but the 10th time they said yes. So I went and never came back."

Following the Prague Spring in 1968, there were rumors the government was going to start arresting former political prisoners again, so Švehlová's father dropped everything, took his briefcase and left for England. "At passport control the officer said, 'Where's your visa?' and my father replied, 'When I came to fight for you in 1939 you didn't ask me for a visa.' And the man said, 'Welcome back, sir.'"

Many families that had no direct experience with communism may not understand all that happened. For those that do, Švehlová says, communication can be difficult. "Often parents don't talk about their experiences because they don't want their children to be affected, and often the children don't ask questions because they don't want to hurt their parents."

"My aim is not to point fingers ... my aim is to begin a debate, because I feel that we can't understand the present if we can't understand the past."