American Memorial on Ypsilonka

diameter

ACCEPTANCE and GREAT THANK YOU

Interesting place.

It's almost home

I was quite disappointed that they cut down the trees in the photos. Although the monument is better to see, the place has lost a bit of atmosphere.

A place to meditate on thinking about human life.

In 1947, Ypsilonka received an ornament - a stone pyramid, hexagonal and ten-meter, made of polished granite. In addition to the large red number 1, denoting the First Infantry Division, it contains the names of 639 fallen American soldiers who died from February 8 to May 7, 1945. The building was paid for by the US Embassy and on April 27, 1947, was ceremoniously unveiled by then-Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk. , General Ludvík Svoboda and US Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt. A year later, after the communist coup in February 1948, the monument became undesirable and was to be removed, as were dozens of other monuments and memorial plaques on the western border. However, the land with the memorial had diplomatic status, which meant that it was seen as a sovereign territory of the United States of America and the granite pyramid was therefore not the property of Czechoslovakia. Symbol of resistance to communism For the next forty years, Czechs and Slovaks came to pay homage to the monument, rejecting a one-sided communist interpretation of history. The authorities at the time, especially the State Security, did everything to make access to the monument as difficult as possible and to make life uncomfortable for the people. Fast-growing thujas were planted around the monument to obscure the view, the access road was often loaded with rubble, earthworks and land reclamation work were constantly carried out, and the StB set up a surveillance room in the warehouse of a nearby gas station. On important days, such as May 8, visitors were checked, photographed and sometimes taken to the office in Cheb to explain. State security recorded the license plates of cars, even those who just braked and threw a flower into the memorial area. Problems at work and at school followed. This undignified situation ended right after the revolution in 1989, the place was reverently arranged and the visitor can read the names of the Americans who liberated Europe, including Czechoslovakia.