Display unicode characters in zos shell

Hi all,

I have a shell script that has several strings with \uxxxx characters distributed within. I would like to display these characters when I execute the script and echo the strings. I am running on zos in an sh environment. Some strings look like this:

"Chcete-li pou\u017e\u00edt"   <--- Czech.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to do this?

Update: the strings that I am working with are actually java source code according to this site. Unicode Character 'LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH CARON' (U+017E)

Does anyone know what format I need this to be in in order to have the characters displayed in a shell script?