The Muna site is a former POW camp from World War II, ammunition factory and storage plant in the neighborhood of Mikulovice (Czech Republic) close to the border of the Czech Republic and Poland. Nowadays, the forested region serves as an industrial park and an area of informal group of non-profit organizations Městečko neziskových organizací. There are 145 buildings of various sizes and age in the area of about 200 ha, most of them are heavily damaged or completely ruined.
It was decided to build the military ammunition manufacturing plant and depot in the forests between Mikulovice and Salisov hamlet in 1938 after occupation of Czechoslovak border regions by Nazi Germany. Initially, the project Heeres-Munitionsanstalt Niklasdorf development relied on local unfree labourers, later (from 1941) British and Soviet prisoners of war were employed on the site. [1]
There was cca 3 km long spur from railway station in Ondřejovice forking the Milulovice - Zlaté Hory railroad. It ended in a loop of radius 200 m and there was a train station with cargo platform. There were several epidemics in the course of the war, besides other epidemic typhus. [2] The site was used to collect Sudeten Germans before their expulsion to Germany after the end of World War II. Up to 52000 persons passed through the camp. [3]
The following years brought various tenants into Muna premises: training camp for the Czechoslovak police, an artillery military base that collected and stored trophy (German) and Soviet artillery material and also special school for training Greek guerrilla fighters. [4]
Between 1960s and 1990s, the Muna was managed by the army unit number 8189 and further buildings were built (mainly houses along the access road from Mikulovice). During this years, it served as storage of ammunition for hand guns, artillery and missiles (including anti-aircraft missiles). Nuclear weapon carriers were disposed here complying to SALT II treaty in the 1980s. The number of buildings peaked in mid 1990s (145 buildings). The area was double fenced with a high-voltage barrier which was never commissioned but its remainders are still to be found nowadays. [4]
The army left the area in 2005 and Muna property was transferred to Mikulovice municipality. The northern part (more densely developed and closer to the town center) is used as an industrial zone today, the southern part is cultivated by Městečko neziskových organizací. Some of the buildings were sold to private owners and some were destroyed and their material reused.
The Brontosaurus Movement (Jeseníky branch) initiated founding of the informal group Městečko neziskových organizací [4] in 2011. The members are non-profit organizations that own and maintain some of the local buildings. The number of members is increasing and currently includes:
The Brontosaurus Movement together with members of the Městečko neziskových organizací organized three years of Muna festival between 2010 and 2012, nicknamed the first forest festival in the Czech Republic. The attendance was around a few hundred people. [5]
The Sudetendeutsches Freikorps was a paramilitary Nazi organization founded on 17 September 1938 in Germany on direct order of Adolf Hitler. The organization was composed mainly of ethnic German citizens of Czechoslovakia with pro-Nazi sympathies who were sheltered, trained and equipped by the German army and who were conducting cross border terrorist operations into Czechoslovak territory from 1938 to 1939. They played an important role in Hitler's successful effort to occupy Czechoslovakia and annex the region known as Sudetenland into the Third Reich under Nazi Germany.
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Sudeten German uprising in September 1938 was a spontaneous rebellion of Sudeten Germans against Czechoslovak authorities in Sudetenland, but at the same time, an organized action orchestrated by Sudeten German Party (SdP) chaired by Konrad Henlein. Therefore, the uprising is also referred to as the Henlein's coup.
Přemysl Pitter was a Czech humanist, pacifist, pedagogue, social worker and evangelical preacher. He founded Milíč House in Prague, during World War II supported Jewish families and after the end of the war organized the “Operation Castles” in which he and his colleagues provided health and social care for children from German concentration camps as well as those from Czech internment camps. After the onset of the communist regime he was forced to emigrate. First he worked in Germany, where he provided pastoral and social support to the refugees in the Valka refugee camp near Nuremberg, later lived in Switzerland. Přemysl Pitter was named Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli government, in 1973 he was awarded The Order of Merit Ist Class of the Federal Republic of Germany and in 1991 President Václav Havel conferred upon Přemysl Pitter the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, in memorian.
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Václav Binovec was a Czech film director, screenwriter, and occasional actor. He was often referred to under the pseudonyms of Willy Bronx or W. Bronx, and also V. Vabin. Binovec set up the film company Wetebfilm in 1918, and began a career as a film director, launching the careers of actors such as Suzanne Marwille, Alois Sedláček and Jan W. Speerger. Among his notable earlier films are Krasavice Káťa (1919), For the Freedom of the Nation and Plameny života (1920) and Sivooký démon, Černí myslivci and Poslední radost.
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