{"title":"Our Class: XIV Lessons from History (Nasza klasa: historia w XIV lekcjach)","authors":"Tadeusz Słobodzianek","doi":"10.1515/9783110671056-074","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671056-074","url":null,"abstract":"Theatre Adaptations: Reading premiere: Theatre Confrontations Festival (Konfrontacje Teatralne), Lublin (2008). World premiere: London National Theatre (2009). Polish theatre premiere: Na Woli Theatre, Warsaw (2010). Other theatre adaptations (selected): Studio 189 Theatre, Toronto (2011); Lliure de Gràcia Theatre, Barcelona (2011); Katona Theatre, Budapest (2011); Bungaku-za Theatre, Tokyo (2012); Son of Semele Ensemble, Los Angeles (2013); PICT Theatre, Pittsburgh (2013); Galeasen Theatre, Stockholm (2013); Núcleo Experimental Theatre, São Paulo (2013); Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, Vilnius (2013); Cameri and Habima Theatres, Tel Aviv (2014) and many others.","PeriodicalId":425657,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Polish, Czech, and Slovak Holocaust Fiction","volume":"58 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131749343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Concert on the Island (Koncert na ostrově)","authors":"Jaroslav Seifert","doi":"10.1515/9783110671056-018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671056-018","url":null,"abstract":"About the Author: Jaroslav Seifert (1901–1986) was a member of left-wing oriented artistic circles in between the world wars. He also worked as a journalist for many years. In the 1950s and 1960s, he supported his colleagues who were imprisoned authors, and he openly backed the liberalisation of Czechoslovakian cultural life. In 1969, he became the chairman of the Czech Writer’s Union, but this was soon dissolved by the new generation of ruling Communist authorities. In some periods of the Communist regime, publication of his works was officially limited, so his texts were also printed abroad or in samizdat. In 1977, Seifert signed the human rights manifesto Charter 77. Besides writing poetry, he worked as a translator also in cooperation with other particularly educated professionals; e.g. The Song of Songs with Stanislav Segert (Píseň písní; 1958, revised 1964). As a famous Czech poet, he wrote a book of his memoirs All the Beauties of the World, which was, after some changes, also allowed to be accepted by an official publishing house in 1982. He became the only Czechoslovakian holder of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1984.","PeriodicalId":425657,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Polish, Czech, and Slovak Holocaust Fiction","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130939669","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Lilies of Erika (Erikine ľalie)","authors":"Erika Erikine ľalie","doi":"10.1515/9783110671056-061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671056-061","url":null,"abstract":"About the Author: Vincent Šikula (1936–2001) was born in the village Dubová near Trnava in Western Slovakia. He studied at the Music Pedagogical School in Bratislava, later at the State Conservatory. For a short time, he worked at Folk Art School in Modra near his birthplace. Later he was the editor of the literary review Romboid. At the same time, he worked as a screenwriter in Slovak film production. His first books, based on natural narrative, provide an entertaining way to the authentic experiences of sensitive heroes where a strong relationship with humans, nature and lasting values of life dominate. Musical motifs are a significant component of his prose. He wrote poetry and prose, his works for children and youth are also important. Several of his works were also filmed, for instanceWith Rozárka, There Is No Pub on Every Hill and Holiday with Uncle Rafael.","PeriodicalId":425657,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Polish, Czech, and Slovak Holocaust Fiction","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122166069","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Plague in Athens (Mor v Athénách)","authors":"J. Kolar","doi":"10.1515/9783110671056-079","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671056-079","url":null,"abstract":"About the Author: Jiří Kolář (1914–2002) was a graphic artist, poet, essayist and translator. He came from Kladno, and he called himself “a simple worker”. He started his creative career in the early 1930s with surrealist poems, later belonged to the left-oriented artistic and literary Group 42. Due to the Communist coup in 1948, he was banned from 1949 to 1957. In 1950, he wrote one of his substantive books of poetry → The Liver of Prometheus. He spent eight months in prison in 1953 for this “subversive manuscript”. For which, among others, he used the text by the Czech writer Ladislav Klíma and the short story By the Railway Track (→Medallions) by Zofia Nałkowska. At the end of 1950s, he gradually concentrated on artistic work and visual experiments. His visual poetry and collages won him world fame with dozens of exhibitions. His entire work was exhibited in the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1975 and in other major Western museums of modern art. In the 1970s and 1980s, again, he could not publish except in samizdat or exile. In 1977, Kolář signed the human rights manifesto Charter 77 and while on a scholarship in West Berlin, the Czechoslovak government decided to force him to emigrate with no permission to return. He lived in Paris from 1980 to 1989, and afterwards he regularly travelled between Paris and Prague. From the late 1990s, due to his declining health, he stayed in Prague and spent his last years in a Prague hospital.","PeriodicalId":425657,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Polish, Czech, and Slovak Holocaust Fiction","volume":"89 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123808769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lily of the Valley: Rudolf Dilong’s Forbidden Love (Konvália: Zakázaná láska Rudolfa Dilonga)","authors":"Rudolfa Dilonga, Denisa Fulmeková, Rudolf Dilong","doi":"10.1515/9783110671056-062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671056-062","url":null,"abstract":"About the Author: Denisa Fulmeková (1967) studied journalism at the Faculty of Arts at Comenius University in Bratislava (1985–1989). She has worked as an editor in cultural reviews, from 1997 to 2004 she was editor-in-chief in the esoteric magazine Orientácia. She has been a freelance writer since 2004. She has published poems, reports, short stories and novels. Fulmeková’s works use devices of popular literature and often focus on the lives of contemporary Slovakian women, their hopes and illusions.","PeriodicalId":425657,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Polish, Czech, and Slovak Holocaust Fiction","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116787936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Christmas Legend from the Ghetto (Vánoční legenda z ghetta)","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/9783110671056-015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671056-015","url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":425657,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Polish, Czech, and Slovak Holocaust Fiction","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115733672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Earth Under Your Feet (Zem pod nohami)","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/9783110671056-032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671056-032","url":null,"abstract":"About the Author: Mikuláš Kováč (1934–1992) was a Slovak poet, playwright and author of children’s books. He graduated from High School for Industrial Studies in Zvolen in Central Slovakia (1953) and studied pedagogy at Comenius University in Bratislava. He did not finish his studies for health reasons. Kováč spent almost his whole life in Banská Bystrica in Central Slovakia where he worked as a local government official, a manager in the puppet theatre, a journalist in newspapers and for Slovakian radio. He participated in writing the script of the film Build a House, Plant a Tree (1979, Postav dom, zasaď strom) directed by Juraj Jakubisko. From 1980 he drew social security benefits for being on disability.","PeriodicalId":425657,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Polish, Czech, and Slovak Holocaust Fiction","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129835736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Night of the Living Jews (Noc żywych Żydów)","authors":"żywych Żydów, Igor Ostachowicz","doi":"10.1515/9783110671056-072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671056-072","url":null,"abstract":"Content and Interpretation Igor Ostachowicz’s novel has caused fierce discussion among scholars of Holocaust literature, just as it has polarised and divided the broader public. This is due in large part to the author’s strategy in presenting the subject, considered by many to be controversial, offensive, and inappropriate. Night of the Living Jews presents the fictional story of a Warsaw resident who becomes entangled in the history of the Holocaust as he is visited by living corpses of Jews exterminated during the war. By the conceit of the novel, they have remained all these years under the rubble and in the cellars of modern-day Warsaw, the inhabitants of an underground city. The story culminates with a scene set in Warsaw’s biggest shopping mall, Arcadia, where the main characters must fight for their lives. In this way, Ostachowicz’s strategy for representing history takes its cues from popular culture, most explicitly from the horror film Night of the Living Dead (1968), but there are also allusions to Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards (2009) (Sobolewska, 2012). The motif of living corpses is thus linked to the notion of Jews who want not so much to avenge themselves (as in Tarantino’s film) as to change their future fate. The ludic aspect of the plot is reinforced by comic portrayals of Jews who cannot find their way in the everyday reality of a world dominated by commercial culture. Gradually, however, they give in to its charms (they go shopping, for instance). The writer does not shy away from the use of slapstick: in one scene, for example, a Jewish boy on a shopping spree loses his hand. The controversy generated by the novel is due primarily to its rejection of the prevailing form of Holocaust memorialisation, which is to say, the serious approach that people are accustomed to. It is this aspect of Ostachowicz’s novel, on its surface, that has elicited reactions of disgust and even outrage. On the other hand, by provoking readers in this way, the novel focuses our attention pre-","PeriodicalId":425657,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Polish, Czech, and Slovak Holocaust Fiction","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128878967","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}