The Petschek Palace    <=|   10   <==|  
    the Petschek Palace made use of its outburst for escape, including even the chief Dr. Gerke.  About 700 of Gestapo people fortified themselves in the Petschek Palace.  Only in the morning of May 9. 1945 they evacuated the building and fled in American captivity.  The reign of the Nazi safety police over the Czech countries definitively came to an end when the tanks of the Red Army arrived in Prague.
    The Nazi occupation represented the most tragic period in the latest history of the Czech nation.  In the course of the World War II about 360.000 of our inhabitants lost their lives, 195.000 were tortured in concentration camps or were bleeding on the place of execution.  Almost 200.000 victims of our nation go to the account of Gestapo, SD and Himmler's dead men's union SS.  The executive office of Gestapo, having lived more than six years in the Petschek Palace, had inscribed themselves with bloody letters into our national history.
    The crimes of Gestapo and Nazis dare not be forgotten and all those who live must fight against the most different kinds of new-fangled Neonazists whose representatives call for revenge.  In BRD the war criminals were not punished consequently.  The chief of Prague Gestapo, the war criminal Dr. E. Gerke not punished at all and until his death on November 2nd, 1982 he was living quite legally in  BRD.  The West-German authorities had given up the punishment of the former representative of the chief of the Prague Gestapo and the president of the Martial Court J. E. Illmer for reputed lack of proofs.  The past is still alive and the fight against the neofascism which is spreading again in BRD, keeps being topical. That's why even nowadays the words of our national hero J. Fučík do not lose zhier validity: "My People, I loved you. Be On the alert!"