Abstract
THE account given in the first issue of the British Medical Students Journal of events which led to the formation of of the new International Students' Federation andVjf.TOhe rebirth of the Czech universities is grin but irtppiring reading. On November 17, 1939, the Qpumans closed the Charles University at Prague, shotfaine heads of the student organisations and sent many male students either to concentration camps or to enforced labour in Germany. In memory of these and other early sacrifices, this day was celebrated in Britain and elsewhere as International Students' Day, and by the end of the War it was being celebrated all over the world as a day of remembrance and renewed resolve. The Czech students in exile in Britain wished that the first peace-time celebration of this day should be held in Prague, and, in November 1945, they invited students from fifty-one countries to be their guests. Some four hundred students accepted this invitation, and the article pays a tribute to the Czech students- and, indeed, to the whole population-for their reception of so many visitors only six months after the liberation of the country. Working in cooperation with the National Union of Students, a preparatory committee had already drafted the constitution of the new International Students' Federation. Co-operation with the World Federation of Democratic Youth and with the World Youth Conference held in London in November 1945 ensured further progress. The Prague Congress in 1945, an account of which is given, expressed the hope that the new International Students' Federation would be finallyybtnstituted during the summer of this year.
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International Students' Federation. Nature 158, 512 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/158512a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/158512a0