The Last Cyclist (Poslední cyklista)

Abstract

About the Author: Karel Švenk, written also Karl Schwenk (1917–1945), came from a Czech-Jewish family, his father was a tailor. Švenk took part in the musically dramatic avant-garde group “Club of Unrecognised Talents” (Klub zapadlých talentů) in Prague from 1934 to 1938. In November 1941, he was deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto, and was among the young Jewish men sent to prepare the previously non-Jewish camp for the Jewish prisoners (so-called Aufbaukommando). He was the initiator of cultural activities in Theresienstadt, as a cabaret artist, comedian, songwriter and playwright. He wrote and staged the satirical plays Long Live the Life! (1943) and The Last Cyclist (1944). The song Anything Goes! also called Theresienstadt March (Všechno jde! or Terezínský pochod), his best-known music composition, became a secret ghetto anthem. Another of Švenk’s songs Why Does the White Man Sit in the Front of the Bus was preserved by the musician and Theresienstadt survivor George Horner (it was later arranged by David Post and recorded by the Hawthorne String Quartet). In October 1944, Švenk was sent to Auschwitz, then briefly to a factory, and later died in a cattle wagon on a subsequent transport to Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. A different source stated that he was shot by a Nazi soldier on a forced march.