SNP80:Light Machine Gun from WWII on Display in Rimavska Sobota Museum in August

Rimavska Sobota, August 1 (TASR) - The Gemer-Malohont Museum in Rimavska Sobota (Banska Bystrica region) is exhibiting a light machine gun from World War II during August to mark the 80th anniversary of the Slovak National Uprising (SNP), Jan Alac, museum's deputy director and head of its documentation and collection management department has told TASR. The museum obtained the ZB 30J light machine gun in 1962 thanks to the initiative of its then director Eugen Wagner. The weapon got to Rimavska Sobota from the Artillery Technical College in Martin (Zilina region). The machine gun was a mystery for museum staff at the time, as it contained inscriptions in Cyrillic, the national emblem of interwar Yugoslavia and information about the arms factory in Kragujevac as the manufacturer. "Nevertheless, the characteristic look of this weapon indicated a connection with interwar Czechoslovakia, the Czechoslovak arms factory in Brno and its light machine gun 26 Model. This model was exported to plenty of countries and used in several wars. Our collection item, the ZB 30J, is its modernisation, a light machine gun intended for export to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in the interwar period an ally of Czechoslovakia," explained Alac. Weapons for Yugoslavia were manufactured in the Czechoslovak arms factory as of the turn of 1936 and 1937, with the license for their production being later granted to Yugoslavia as well. Some of the weapons were manufactured directly in Yugoslavia with the help of experts from Brno, in a factory based in the town of Kragujevac, the territory of today's Serbia. The exhibit from the collection of the Rimavska Sobota-based museum also comes from this series. ko/mcs