The Last Thing (Posledná vec)

About the Author: Leopold Lahola, whose real name was Leopold Arje Friedmann (1918–1968), was a Slovak prose writer, poet, playwright, screenwriter, director and translator of Hebrew. He belongs to the second generation of World War II among Slovak prosewriters. Even thoughhewas a talented painter, as a Jewhewas not allowed to complete his studies at the Faculty of Arts in Bratislava after the establishment of the Slovak State. He went through dramatic events of military labour service in the Slovak army (see Emil F. Knieža’s → The Sixth Battalion, On Guard!). He volunteered to be interned in a labour camp for Jews in Nováky to share the fate of his mother and brother. After the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising, he participated in the resistance. When hewas injured, at the end of the war he served as a war correspondent. He began as a playwright who expressively interpreted the experience of war events. He initially had success in theatre (The Four Sides of theWorld, 1947), andworked as a screenwriter (White Darkness, 1948; Wolves’ Lairs, 1948). After the Communist coup in February 1948, he was criticised and misinterpreted. In 1949, he emigrated to Israel where he worked as a director, then eventually settling in Munich in West Germany. At the end of the 1960s he was able to implement his work projects in Czechoslovakia. He died suddenly while filming The Sweet Time of Kalimagdora (1968). Before the war he devoted himself to writing his own poetry and translating Hebrew poetry. Abroad, he engaged in screenwriting and directing. Shortly after the war, his only prosaic book, a collection of short stories, The Last Thing, came into being but it could not be published. Lahola’s prose brought a deep and expressive focus on suffering, violence, as well as the absurdity of the war and the Holocaust. The author placed both events in a historical context, placing emphasis on depicting existentially motivated violence and dehumanised images of man.