After twenty years of growth, labor shortages threaten to derail the economies of Central and Eastern Europe. Since the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia joined the EU in 2004, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007, their economies have been boosted through a combination of capital from multinationals and cheap and well-educated local workers.
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A new report on how EU member states address the legacy of the Holocaust claims that several Central and East European countries are seeing widespread historical revisionism and are downplaying of World War II crimes. The report was published two days before January 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which marks the anniversary of the liberation of Nazi Germany’s most notorious death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered.
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The Czech nouvelle vague cinema is back in vogue. Fifty years after Warsaw Pact tanks quelled the political and cultural reform movement in Czechoslovakia, Europe has rediscovered the genius of Czech filmmaking from the 1960s. Movies like Loves of a Blonde, The Joke, and Cremator have withstood the test of time and still capture the imagination of viewers and art critics alike. In the past year, Czech New Wave film festivals have been organized on all continents. In 2018, Czech cultural centers from Brussels and London to New York and Bucharest featured many movies directed by the nouvelle vague generation, drawing large crowds.
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