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Monument to U.S. president Wilson unveiled in Prague

A monument to former US President Woodrow Wilson was unveiled in central Prague on Wednesday, 70 years after the occupying Nazis tore down a nearby statue during World War II.

About five hundred people gathered outside Prague's main railway station -- once dubbed Wilson Station -- for the unveiling of the 3.5-metre (12-foot) statue commissioned by the American Friends of the Czech Republic society.

"Much of the damage that the Nazis caused can never be undone, but returning the monument of Woodrow Wilson to its proper place is a direct reply to Hitler," Prague-born former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright said at the unveiling.

Wilson, born in 1856, was US president from 1913 to 1921. He died in 1924.

He is celebrated in the Czech Republic and Slovakia for his role in the establishment of independent Czechoslovakia in 1918 as World War I brought down the Austro-Hungarian empire.

His landmark "Fourteen Points" speech to the US Congress in early 1918 backed freedom for peoples under the rule of that empire as well as imperial German and Russia....

Read entire article at AFP