import unicodedata


def remove_accents(input_str):
    """
    taken from https://stackoverflow.com/a/517974/3375944
    :param input_str: string with accented letters
    :return: string without accented letters
    """
    nfkd_form = unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', input_str)
    return u"".join([c for c in nfkd_form if not unicodedata.combining(c)])