A Christmas Legend from the Ghetto (Vánoční legenda z ghetta)

Abstract

About the Author: František Kafka (1909–1991) came from a cultivated Czech-Jewish family, his father was a doctor. Kafka graduated with a degree in law from Charles University in Prague in 1933 and worked as a lawyer and journalist. In October of 1941, he was sent with the transport of the Czech Jews to the Lodz Ghetto (Litzmannstadt Ghetto). Only 80 people from 1000 Jews survived in this transport. Kafka was deported from Lodz to the forced labour camp Skarżysko-Kamienna and later to Częstochowa where he was liberated in January 1945. After the liberation, he crossed the Tatra mountains to Poprad in Slovakia and joined the Czechoslovak Army Corps that was a part of the Red Army. In April 1945, he became secretary in the first Czechoslovak postwar government, established in Košice. From 1945 to 1954 he was an official in the Ministry of Industry in Prague. After a severe illness, Kafka retired in 1961. He concentrated on researching at Jewish Studies, German literature in the Czech lands (Werfel, Kafka, Brod, Weiskopf) as well as translating (Franz Kafka’s letters, Franz Werfel, Peter Lotar) and writing. His son Vladimír Kafka (1937–2005) wrote poems, on the topic of the Holocaust among others.