Publication date: 
2025/01/27
Holocaust Memorial Day will take place on Monday 27 January. Rector of the CTU Vojtěch Petráček accepted the invitation of the Embassy of the State of Israel in the Czech Republic and today at 13:00 he lit a candle at the stones of the disappeared, the so-called Stolpersteins, in Prague's Pařížská Street. The Embassy of the State of Israel addressed important personalities in the Czech Republic, representatives of institutions that shape cultural and social life, to join the "80 Candles" activity, commemorating 80 years since the end of World War II.

Why did the rector of CTU light a candle in Pařížská Street? The stones here are dedicated to Lora and Štěpán Michael Winternitz, a mother and son who lived at 5 Pařížská Street. The Nazis killed them both, Lore died at the age of 40 in Auschwitz, the boy was taken to a concentration camp at the age of six and died two years later. The name Winternitz is closely associated with the present Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering, which is why the nuclear physicist Petráček chose these stones.

The connection is through Pavel Winternitz, a Czech-Canadian nuclear physicist and mathematician. He and his family left Czechoslovakia after the occupation by Warsaw Pact forces in 1968. After 1989, he visited the Czech Republic regularly, established close contacts with Czech and Slovak scientists (which in many cases were never broken) and was active at the Czech Technical University. In 2006, Professor Winternitz received an honorary doctorate from CTU.

Rector Petráček thus joined those who today lit one of the eighty candles donated by the Israeli Embassy in the Czech Republic at the memorial stolpersteins under the motto: 'Let us together light a light for all the lives that were forcibly ended during the war.'