The First World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS) was held in 1947, in Prague, the capital of the then Czechoslovakia.
The World Federation of Democratic Youth had decided to celebrate its first festival there in remembrance of the events of October and November 1939, when thousands of young Czechs rose in demonstrations against the occupation of the country by Nazi Germany. This caused a wave of repression that included the closing of all the superior schools, the arrest of more than 1850 students, and the internment of 1200 in the Nazi concentration camps. The WFYS also paid tribute to the Czech cities of Lidice and Ležáky, which were eradicated as a response to the assassination of the German governor Reinhard Heydrich, nicknamed The Butcher of Prague.
The WFYS was officially inaugurated before a crowd of 17,000 at Strahov Stadium on the afternoon of July 25, 1947. The blue flag with the emblem of the World Federation of Democratic Youth was raised and, for the first time, the Song of Democratic Youth, composed by Anatoli Novikov with lyrics by Lev Oshanin, was heard.
This was the longest Festival in its history, lasting almost four weeks.
The motto of the festival was Youth Unite, Forward for Lasting Peace!.
Famous quotes containing the words festival, youth and/or students:
“Three times a year all your males shall appear before the LORD your God at the place that he will choose: at the festival of unleavened bread, at the festival of weeks, and at the festival of booths. They shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed; all shall give as they are able, according to the blessing of the LORD your God that he has given you.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 16:16,17.
“When he became all eye when one was present, and all memory when one was gone; when the youth becomes the watcher of windows, and studious of a glove, a veil, a ribbon, or the wheels of a carriage, when no place is too solitary, and none too silent.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Separatism of any kind promotes marginalization of those unwilling to grapple with the whole body of knowledge and creative works available to others. This is true of black students who do not want to read works by white writers, of female students of any race who do not want to read books by men, and of white students who only want to read works by white writers.”
—bell hooks (b. 1955)