Democracy versus Nazism in Czechoslovakia
The Mykura UK Family Archive shares the family story of the Mykura Czech citizens who were political refugees in Czechoslovakia, and later lived in the UK.
See decades of 20th century history in one family, with reference to children as well as adults. See items from the Mykura UK Family Archive which illustrate their story. See history in family documents and photos before and after World War Two, in Czechoslovakia and in the UK. Based on the family archive, this is therefore a partial story.
1930 Czechoslovakia
1945 United Kingdom
The archive reveals aspects of history eighty-five years after the Munich Agreement, some of them less well known. The Mykura refugee story tells us more about the role of women in the workers’ sports organization ATUS in Czechoslovakia. We highlight the forgotten role in Czechoslovakia of the UK Member of Parliament (MP) David Rhys Grenfell (D. R. Grenfell). He escorted Franz Mykura’s group of refugees on to the ship taking them from Poland to safety in the UK.
See how the two Mykura parents’ inspiring achievements in Czechoslovakia were dashed by Nazism in 1938 and then largely unspoken in the family later in the UK. Fifty years after her death in 1965 no one in the Mykura families in the UK knew about Franziska Mykura’s anti-Nazi political work in the 1930’s. That was a re-discovery, thanks to Sokolov Museum in the Czech Republic.