A new exhibition is being prepared in Ploština, a tragedy occurred there on April 19, 1945

Zlín – After the winter break, work continues on the reconstruction of the memorial at Ploština in the Zlín region, which is a national cultural monument commemorating the burning of the local clearing settlement at the end of World War II. Construction workers are carrying out earthworks at the site of the future customer center, checking boreholes for heat pumps, and addressing the technology for foundation strengthening. At the same time, specialists from the Museum of Southeast Moravia in Zlín are continuing their work on preparing the exhibition's script. They face a difficult task of expressing the local events clearly and emotionally in the new exhibition, said museum director Pavel Hrubec. The Ploština memorial is managed by the museum, and the new exhibition is expected to be completed next year; the reconstruction began last September.

The clearing settlements scattered across the Vizovice Hills became a refuge for members of the partisan movement at the turn of 1944 and 1945. Nazis shot or drove 24 people into flames at Ploština on April 19, 1945, and set fire to ten of the twelve houses. This was retaliation for the local people's assistance to the partisans. Several houses in Ploština were rebuilt in 1947, and in the same year, a newly built chapel was consecrated, on the pillars of which are plates bearing the names of the martyred clearers. In 1975, the National Cultural Memorial of the Resistance was established at Ploština, and in 1985, an exhibition on the struggle against fascism and for liberation in the Zlín district was opened in one of the newly built farmsteads.

One of the authors of the upcoming exhibition is museum historian Ondřej Machálek. "The fundamental line of the exhibition starts with the story of the clearing settlement, of which hundreds grew in the cadastres of Wallachian villages. The roots of settlement will be shown in the exhibition through archaeological finds, and the local fauna and flora will also be represented. We will glance at the face of the original Ploština, which was captured in a photograph by ethnographer Karel Chotek in the summer of 1944," said the historian.

The most important part of the exhibition will be the events of World War II and the circumstances that led partisans, members of the 1st Czechoslovak Partisan Brigade of Jan Žižka, into the Wallachian Mountains, against them the Zlín Gestapo, special SS units, and the anti-partisan unit Josef. "The moment of the settlement's burning must be addressed minimally in the exhibition due to the lack of authentic objects. However, the photographs of the burned buildings and the silent hall with the names of all the victims are sufficiently emotional and telling. Because Ploština was unfortunately not the only place affected in this way, stories of others, such as Juříček's mill, Prlov, or Vařákovy paseky, will also be shared here," Machálek stated.