THE FINAL JOURNEY
OF FRANZ KAFKA'S SISTERS

GRZEGORZ   GAZDA

A collage showing Franz Kafka and his sisters.
Clockwise:   Franz Kafka, Elli Kafka, Ottla Kafka, Valli Kafka.
(courtesy the web page: http://www.kafka.pl/prace/siostry.htm)


                                                                                                               Through me into the city full of woe;
                                                                                                               Through me the message of eternal pain;
                                                                                                               Through me the passage where the lost souls go

                                                                                                                                                  (Dante Alighieri: Divine Comedy) ¹⁾


Magic Prague, Esoteric Prague, Golden Prague... ²⁾. The capital of the Czech Republic bears these names and nicknames not without reason. It is a truly extraordinary and fascinating city, a cultural palimpsest of texts written throughout the centuries, texts that have magnificently been preserved until our times. "An old in folio of stone pages" – as V. Nezval wrote ³⁾. A Slavic city with over a thousand years of history, but a city which at the same time, due to historical conditions, has belonged rather to the culture of the West. The capital of the Czechs in which, however, an important part has always been played by foreign ethnic communities. This article, however, is no place to present historical panoramas and details. Our subject matter goes back to the turn of the 20^th century, so let us stop at that.

* * *

An important plot in the complicated story of Prague's culture is constituted by the biography and the work of Franz Kafka. Born in Prague (in the very heart of the city, in the house at ul. Mikulaąska 9, nowadays: U radnice 5), in Prague Jewish cemetery at the Žižkov (Nový židovský hřbitov, ul. Jzraelská 1) he was buried (on June 11, 1924). Kafka, in most reference books called a German or an Austrian writer ⁴⁾, spent all his life with his family in this Czech city (when he was not travelling, of course). In a letter to Oskar Pollak Kafka even wrote: "Prague won't let go. It won't let go the both of us. The little mother has got claws. (...) We ought to set fire in two places, in Vyszehrad and Hradczany, because in this way we would free ourselves" ⁵⁾. The future author of "The Process", now considered one of the greatest writers of the 20^th century, thus has just been as much a German writer as he's been a Czech and Jewish artist – because those three cultures and three traditions made up the uniqueness of his work. In fact, knowing his biography, his studies and fascinations, his friends, his knowledge of Czech and Yiddish, one does not even have to prove the above. It also most clearly stands out in the books of his friend, and after 1924 the world promoter of his work, namely Max Brod (b. May 27, 1884 in Prague, d. December 20, 1968 in Tel Aviv, where he was buried ⁶⁾ ), the author of a biography Franz Kafka (published in 1937), a historical and literary study called Der Prager Kreis (1966; The Prague Circle) ⁷⁾ and an autobiography Streitbares Leben (1960, Brave Life).

So – when in Prague, one can hardly not walk the route of the several addresses of Franz Kafka's; his private addresses (beginning with the aforementioned Mikulaąka, through 22 Golden Street to Schönborn Palace at 15 Tržǐstě Square at the Mala Strana), his father's shops, school buildings and bureaus including the Assicurazioni Generali building at Václavskie Náměsti ⁸⁾, where he shortly worked. One can also try to reconstruct the places in which the action of Kafka's prose takes place, though this is not so easy since the world he created does in fact "exist" beyond the real space-time continuum. However, both the aforementioned Krejči and Ripellino mark the route to death of Joseph K. whom two hangmen lead to the quarries at Strachow, through Karl's bridge (with the island of Kampa below, according to Ripellino), or through the Legion Bridge (with Marksmen Island below), and (according to Krejči) farther up, along ul. Holečka, to Hřebenka quarries.

Visiting Prague one cannot but visit the cemetery in Žižkov and Kafka's grave. We stand at a modest tombstone decorated by a high cubist polyhedron (designed by the architect Leopold Ehrmann who also renovated the synagogue at Smichov). In front Franz's name and below the names of his parents can be seen: his father Hermann's, and his mother Julia's. At the very bottom of the granite stone, on a separate marble plaque an inscription reads: "Na pamět' sester vyznamneho pražského, židovského spisovatele Franza Kafki zahynulych za nacisticke okupace v létech 1942-1943" ("To the memory of the sisters of the renowned Prague Jewish writer Franz Kafka murdered during the Nazi occupation in 1942-1943"). The names of the three sisters and their birth dates follow: Gabriela Hermannova, Valeria Pollakova and Ottilia Davidova. And it is here that this article really begins – because I have decided to explain and analyze in more detail this laconic and dramatic inscription of the small marble slab.

* * *

The story of the Kafka (on his father Hermann's side) and the Lőwy families (on his mother Julia's side), at least as it may now be reconstructed, goes back to the second half of the 18^th century. The 19^th century family histories were presented more or less accurately, according to the family tradition, by Max Brod in the writer's biography, published in 1937 ⁹⁾. Members of those families, who lived for many years in Prague and other small Czech towns, included a rabbi, an accountant, a country doctor, a traveller, a butcher, a member of the Czech parliament and even a president of the Spanish Railways who was awarded many medals and orders. Franz's father owned a wholesale haberdasher's shop. His mother took care of the household and unrelentingly helped her husband in his trade. Franz, born on July 3, 1883 (in the house at ul. Mikulaąska 9 on the northeastern side of the Old Town Market) was their first child. Two of his younger brothers, Georg (1885-1887) and Heinrich (1887-1888) died in infancy. Later, in an old, partly Gothic, partly Renaissance building U Minuty in the Old Town Market (the Kafka family lived there from June 1889 till September 1896), three sisters were born: Gabriele, or as the family shortened her name, Elli (September 22, 1889), Valerie, or Valli (September 25, 1890), and Ottilie, or Ottla (October 29, 1892).

Due to the daily toil of their parents, the children were brought up by their cook and nanny, and later several governesses. One of them, coming from a mixed Czech-Jewish family, Marie Wernerova, called Slečna (Miss) who spoke only Czech, remained in the Kafka household until her death in 1918 and played a specially important part in the raising of the four children. She became their sensitive confidant and kind guardian, which, in a house dominated by the authoritarian father, gave to their everyday life more of a family atmosphere. As Max Brod writes (a judgment he probably based on the conversations with the writer's mother):

"with sisters Franz played little, the age difference was too great, which sometimes contributed to quarrels between the children on some family occasions. Only on his parent's birthday did little Franz compose theatrical scenes for the sisters. They were presented to the family and this custom was observed until they all grew up; many of these plays and poems the sisters remembered for a long time afterwards. (...) Franz himself never acted in those, he only was the author and the director. Later he suggested to his sisters that instead of his scenes they might put on short plays by Hans Sachs ¹⁰⁾ which he also directed" ¹¹⁾.

However, both during his school and the university years Franz never shared any personal matters with his sisters. His years of childhood and maturity were formed by friendships and contacts with his peers (some of those friendships survived for many long years), or by lonely observation and reflection. From a later, fully mature perspective revealed in Letter to Father (November 1919) we can clearly see that Franz painfully and dramatically relived – so to say – his family's psychological drama "directed" by his father, a drama of which he and his sisters were the subjects.

"My sisters were only partly with me. Happiest in her relation to you was Valli. Being closest to Mother, she obeyed you in a similar way, without much effort or suffering too much harm. But you accepted her also in a friendlier way, simply because she reminded you of Mother despite there being little of the Kafka material ¹²⁾ in her. But perhaps this was precisely what you wanted; where there was nothing of the Kafka element, not even could you ask for anything of the sort; nor did you have the feeling, as did the rest of us, that something was getting lost here which had to be saved by force. Besides, you may never really have liked the Kafka element as it expressed itself in women" ¹³⁾.

And later:

"Elli is the only example of someone almost completely successful in breaking out of your orbit. I expected it of her the least when she was a child. She was such a clumsy, tired, timid, morose, guilt-ridden, overly humble, malicious, lazy, greedy, stingy child I could hardly look at her, certainly not speak to her, so much did she remind me of myself, so very similarly was she under the same spell of our upbringing" ¹⁴⁾.

Franz devotes most attention in this truly psychoanalytical vivisection to Ottilia, because his youngest sister became in the writer's mature life his closest friend, an empathic witness to his feelings and emotions, provident and practical in financial matters ¹⁵⁾. Thus in Letter to [the] Father Franz describes her:

"About Ottla I hardly dare to write; I know that by doing so I'm jeopardizing the entire hoped-for effect of this letter. Under normal circumstances, that is, if she is not in any particular need or danger, you feel only hatred for her; you even admitted to me that, in your opinion, she intentionally causes you constant suffering and annoyance and while you are suffering because of her she is satisfied and content. A kind of a devil then she is. (...) You do see us together often, (...) whispering and laughing, now and then you hear your name mentioned you get the impression of impudent conspirators. (...) But we truly do not sit together to plot against you, but rather to discuss with all our might, in fun, in seriousness, in love, defiance, rage, disgust, surrender, feelings of guilt, with all the strength of our heads and hearts, this terrible trial which hangs between us and you, in all its details, from all sides, on all occasions..." ¹⁶⁾

Relations between Franz, Gabriela and Valeria changed when sisters founded their own families and freed themselves from their father's authoritarian rule. One could say that although these contacts were conventionally bourgeois they were characterized by mutual solidarity and assistance in difficult moments of life. The eldest sister, Gabriela, married (November 27, 1910) Karl Hermann, one year her junior, from Siřem (Zürau in German), a small town lying about 100 km west of Prague on the river Bląanka ¹⁷⁾. As Franz presented her transformed personality in Letter to Father:

"But this all changes when at a young age – this is the main thing – she left home, married, had children, became cheerful, carefree, brave, generous, unselfish, hopeful." ¹⁸⁾.

Valeria got engaged to Josef Pollak (b. 1882) on September 15, 1912, and their wedding took place a few months later, on January 12, 1913. The biggest problem for the family was Ottla, who fell in love with Josef David, a doctor of law (like Franz), a Czech Catholic and nationalist. The family long tried to talk the girl out of this marriage and in this case Ottla could count only on the approval of her brother (since even Brod believed the idea to be doubtful) ¹⁹⁾. All in all, the wedding finally took place on July 15, 1920, and the Davids' first child, Vera, was born nine months later, on March 27 of the next year.

Meanwhile, the Kafka family's life went on as usual. The sisters were taking care of their own families and problems, and they bore children. The Hermanns had a son, Felix (b. December 8, 1911) and two daughters: Gerti (b. 1912) and Hanne (b. 1920). The Pollaks also had two daughters: Marianne (b. September 19, 1913) and Lotte (b. 1914), while after Vera the Davids had another daughter, Helene (b. 1923) ²⁰⁾. When Franz moved out of his parents' house (he stayed for a while at Valli's and Elli's when they travelled, and later he finally began living on his own at Bílkova 10, for a short time in 1915, later for two years at Dlouha 15, still later at 22 Zlatna (Golden) Street and ultimately, in March 1917, he moved to an apartment in Schönborns' palace) his attitude towards family problems probably became more distanced and rationalized. When necessary, however, he supported his sisters and tried to help them. For example, during World War I, when both of his brothers-in-law were sent to the front, Franz (who volunteered but was rejected by the army because of poor health) accompanied Ella when she went to Hungary to Nagy Mihály to visit her husband who had been wounded in action. He also helped (though very reluctantly, as we know it from his letters to his fiancée, Felice Bauer, and from his journals) to manage Karl Hermann's factory. He supported Elli in her attempts to help a Jewish association for the aid of the poor in Germany. From his letters and journals we can gather that he was most sympathetic towards his nieces and nephew. Yet  in closest contact he remained with Ottla. He took every opportunity to spend time in her company. He spent time with her (since September 1917) in Siřem, where Ottla ran the Hermanns' country farm ²¹⁾. He also accompanied her in Želízy (1919) and in Plané upon Lužnica (1922). When Franz discovered his illness (the first dangerous hemorrhage occurred in August, 1917) the kindest friendship and spiritual kinship with his youngest sister allowed him to live through the most difficult moments. Her company also gave him hope (even as late as 1922 Dr. Otto Herrmann believed it possible Franz could be cured) ²²⁾.

When his health deteriorated he was placed first in a sanatorium in Wiener Wald and later in Kierling near Vienna, where he died. On June 3^rd, 1924, early in the morning, in addition to his fiancée Dora Diamant (Dymant ²³⁾ ), whom he had met during his last summer (July 1923) in Müritz on the Baltic coast, and his doctor Robert Klopstock, who both took care of Franz in his final days, Elli stayed at her dying brother's side and his last words were addressed to her ²⁴⁾.

Franz Kafka's funeral took place on June 11 in the afternoon according to the Jewish tradition. Over a hundred people took part in the ceremony: his parents, sisters with their husbands, Dora Diamant, who wept loudly and had to be supported over the grave by Max Brod ²⁵⁾, his closest friends from the literary group later called Prager Kreis ²⁶⁾, teachers, journalists and common inhabitants of Prague. At this time no one, not even Brod, realized they were partaking in the farewell to one of the greatest writers of the 20^th century. This realization came later and was confirmed over the years, in fact, thanks to Max Brod, who did not respect his friend's "will" and not only did he not burn his manuscripts but to the contrary, he published them persistently and obstinately. Before 1939 almost all Franz's literary works appeared in print: The Process in 1925, The Castle in 1926, America in 1927, while Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Works) in six volumes were published between 1935 and 1937, as was the author's biography (1937). However, only the post-war decades truly revealed Kafka's unquestionable greatness. The key here was not only his parabolic art of letters but also his biography, gradually uncovered in the writer's journals as well as in his numerous letters. This observation may be also confirmed by many works, which came into being as a result of their authors' fascination with Kafka and his literature ²⁷⁾.

The fate of the Kafka family after Franz's death is little known. His parents died, Franz's father first, in 1931, and his mother three years later. In 1931 Lotte – Valerie's daughter – died, and in 1939 Gabriela's husband, Karl ²⁸⁾. Then 1939 comes and World War II breaks out.

* * *

Ex post in Franz Kafka's works many critics discovered a parabolic prophecy of all those tragedies that the war had caused – criminal Nazism, concentration camps, the deaths and martyrdom of millions of people, the Holocaust. These tragedies also befell the Jews from Prague who perished in their thousands in Terezin (Theresienstadt), in gas chambers of Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Neither did fate spare Franz Kafka's friends. Greta Bloch (1892-1944), who perhaps was the mother of the writer's son ²⁹⁾, was murdered by a German soldier – her skull was smashed by his rifle's butt. Milena Jesenská (August 10, 1896 – May 15, 1944) died in Ravensbrück.

His three sisters, as the inscription on Kafka's family tombstone indicates, also perished in the Holocaust. However, the information on the subject not only differs in details but also is contradictory as to the dates and places of their deaths. Most often we are told that they all died in German concentration camps ³⁰⁾, but we can also learn that all three perished in the Łódź ghetto ³¹⁾. Elsewhere we read that the war separated the three sisters, that Ottla died in Auschwitz while Valeria and Gabriela passed away in Łódź. The dates of their deaths are also different: 1941 ³²⁾, 1942, and 1943.

This last date, 1944, is given in the first post-war text containing information about Kafka's sisters. It was a five-paragraph note by H. Zylberberg entitled The Tragic End of Franz Kafka's Three Sisters ³³⁾ published in an ephemeral magazine at the beginning of 1947. The author must have known the Kafka family because he begins with a detailed characteristic of the sisters: "Franz Kafka's three sisters, Elly, Vally, and Ottla were all very different but in each of their personalities their brother's character traits may have been seen. Elly, the eldest, was extremely timid. She suffered from an almost morbid taciturnity like a young girl even when she became a mother of two grown children. She was aware of this weakness and treated it as an infirmity; like Franz she was very self-demanding. Her adult son perished in a concentration camp in France" ³⁴⁾. – writes Zylberberg. About the middle sister the author writes in brief ("resembled her brother through her noble character, inborn elegance, desire for perfection and youthfulness"), in order to devote more space to Kafka's youngest sister:

"Ottla was handsome, of dark carnation, an imposing frame and piercing look; her steps were steady and certain. She introduced her two daughters to me, showed me her vegetarian recipes, told me about how she visited the poor and how many beggars she knew. She never accepted the fact that Kafka's works had been published as the result of someone's indiscretion. Franz had left a will and his deepest and most sacred wish that all he had written be burned ought to have been obeyed. For this reason she was angry with Max Brod. Ottla was devoid of any literary sensitivity, she actually did not have time to read, but all she did and said possessed its own deep, almost metaphysical justification. She noticed the value of even most trivial deeds and constantly wondered about their moral values. Those three sisters are no longer with us: they died in Nazi ghettos."

About Ottla's fate Zylberberg writes as follows:

"She found herself in the Terezin ghetto. One day a transport of Jewish children arrived who reacted with hostility to all attempts to keep them quiet. Ottla and a few doctors gained the children's confidence – in their eyes one could see fear caused by the torture that their parents had been subjected to. They were very distrustful. The Nazis came up with a devilish idea: they informed the worried guardians that they would organize a special transport in order to send those orphans and their guardians abroad; a plan of the expedition was agreed to, the children were given new clothes and cared for with great care. Hopeful Ottla wrote her husband that she was happy because she could help these orphans who needed kindness so much; and that she would go with them to Sweden and Denmark. However, we know that prisoners from this transport were not given freedom but went to Auschwitz, no farther than the crematoriums..."

This excerpt requires a few expanding details. Ottla divorced her husband after the persecution of Jews had started in order that he "would not have to share the suffering of her people". In Terezin she volunteered as a guardian of the children in the transport. According to Kalendarz wydarzeń w KL Auschwitz ³⁵⁾ on October 7, 1943, a transport from Terezin arrived at Auschwitz, consisting of 1260 children and 53 guardians. On that same day all prisoners from the transport were murdered in the gas chambers of the camp. Thus we can say with certainty that the final journey of Franz Kafka's youngest sister ended on October 7 in Auschwitz...

In the novel aforereferred to (note 27.), in the form an apocryphal post-war letter from Max Brod to Dora Diamant (could it have been modelled on an authentic earlier letter of a family member or one of the friends of the Kafka family to Max Brod? ³⁶⁾ ), Anna Bolecka gives (p. 311) – some additional information about Ottla's daughters who survived the war. I can add nothing to it. I do not know whether they started families, lived in the Czech Republic or moved to the West (like Gerti, Gabriela's daughter, who died in Canada in 1972 ³⁷⁾ ), or whether they are still alive – which not so improbable ³⁸⁾. Vera would be 81 today, Helene 79. Also the Pollaks' elder daughter survived – Marianne, her fate, however, also remains unknown. Now she would be 90 years old ³⁹⁾.

Of the two remaining sisters Zylberberg writes: "...they were taken to the ghetto in Łódź and were never heard from since. They immediately disappeared in the general liquidation in August and September of 1944 when all the Jews from ghettos in Poland and other countries were sent to the ovens of the crematoria" ⁴⁰⁾. The latter statement has to be verified in detail.

* * *

The history of the Łódź ghetto (Litzmannstadt Getto) has been described in many books, memoirs, journals, novels and theatre plays ⁴¹⁾ – but it still remains incomplete and insufficient. Poland's post-war history was the reason that only recently numerous historical works, memoirs and notes have begun to appear ⁴²⁾. Work on the complete edition of Kronika getta łódzkiego ⁴³⁾, an unprecedented document in the history of WWII, written in the Łodź ghetto, is coming to an end. A book on the fate of the Prague Jews and the ghetto has also recently been published ⁴⁴⁾, Photographs from the ghetto found not long ago served as the source of a documentary film Fotoamator (1998, directed by Dariusz Jabłoński) ⁴⁵⁾, which attracted much attention and gained recognition around the world.

The ghetto in Łódź was established as one of the links in the Nazi chain that served as the "final solution of the Jewish question" (Endlösung der Judenfrage). It was established in Łódź, because Jews represented more than 30% of the city's population – there were 230,000 of them living there – and it would have been difficult to deport them all quickly from the Reich, as the city, under the name of Litzmannstadt, was incorporated into the Reich. Łódz's central geographical position was the reason why the ghetto, established at the beginning of 1940 (in the northern poorest district, covering little more than 4 square kilometers), began to play the part of a temporary concentration camp for the Jews (and the Gypsies) not only from the vicinity of Łódź but also from the so-called Warta Country (Warthegau), as well as from western and southern Europe. The population of the Łódź ghetto never exceeded 170,000, which proves that when the ghetto was still in existence (until August, 1944) transports to Łódź and deportations further on from Łódź must have taken place incessantly. We must also take into account that the number of prisoners kept decreasing because of death from exhaustion, starvation and diseases, as well as due to executions and suicides in the ghetto.

* * *

Five thousand Jews were deported to Łódź straight from Prague, without stopping at a temporary facility for the deportees from the Czech and Moravian Protectorate in Theresienstadt. Prague inhabitants, who had been notified in writing in their homes that they would be deported, were assembled (with their luggage) in Holeąovice in Veletřní Palace that before the war had served as an exhibition pavilion. It was from there, i.e. from the Holeąovice railway station, that the transports left for Łódź. Eyewitnesses who survived the Holocaust (from the 5,000 people deported from Prague only 277 survived) have later described the details of this journey. Their accounts have been completed and confirmed by historians ⁴⁶⁾. To illustrate those events I shall quote fragments of the aforementioned novel by Frantiąek Kafka (unrelated to Franz Kafka; the name "Kafka" is quite popular in the Czech Republic), who in his fiction recreated the fate of the Jews deported from Prague as he had participated in the drama himself having arrived in Łódź in one of the deportation trains in October 1941:

"They were finally assembled in groups of a hundred people each and they were escorted from the wooden buildings of the exhibition pavilion at Veletrzna Street. Those three days of idleness and waiting at the assembly point had been unbearable. People dragged out of their homes wandered around the exhibition cabins aimlessly and hopelessly (...) One cloudy morning their doorbells rang sharply and their uncertainty came to an end. (...) They were to prepare for a journey in three days' time. (...) They heard consolations that they would be back by Christmas. (...) They had to cling to some hope. (...) A week before no one had known whether the transports would travel to the Pyrenées or to Poland. But after three days at the assembly point they all felt certain that they would travel east" ⁴⁷⁾.

Between October and November of 1941 five such transports left Holeąovice in Prague, each numbering a thousand prisoners (the journey through Wrocław alone took over 30 hours). Every prisoner was given a number... The list of the second transport (B) (which arrived in Łódź on October 17, early in the afternoon, at the Radogoszcz train station, north of the Łódź ghetto) includes the name of Gabriela Hermannova ⁴⁸⁾ (the author of The Cruel Years also travelled on this train, so we might claim that this fictional document describes, in a sense, also her own experiences and emotions). The Pollaks – Valeria and her husband Josef – arrived in Łódź with the fourth (D) transport, which pulled up at the Radogoszcz (Radegast) train station on November 1, 1941, at half past four in the afternoon ⁴⁹⁾.

Let me quote the novel again:

"German orders drove the people out of the carriages at a small station among the fields in a snow blizzard which covered their faces with stripes of wet flakes and blinded them, making it difficult to move.

– Jewish B transport from Prague. Nine hundred and ninety eight people, one died on the way, one was shot when attempting to escape! (...)

People with hand luggage walked in pairs or in threes arm in arm, passing snowy mounds growing on both sides of the road through the snow-covered fields and seemed endless. The old and weak, those burdened with children, lagged behind. On the horizon low houses with little gardens appeared. They marched through the fields again and in half an hour's time found themselves in a derelict housing district." ⁵⁰⁾.

The deported Jews from the second transport were first accommodated in a building at ul. Łagiewnicka (Hanseatstrasse) 37, and later were transferred to more spacious rooms in interconnected houses at ul. Franciszkańska (Franzstrasse) 13/15. The fourth transport was quartered in a former school at Franciszkańska 29 (all those buildings have survived to this day). Those, then, were the first Łódź addresses of Gabriela Hermann as well as Valeria and Josef Pollak.

The rooms of "the collectives", as they were called, though renovated before the arrival of the Prague Jews and partly furnished with beds of boards and mattresses, were not at all able to provide passable living conditions. It was incredibly crowded, a few dozen people lived on a few square metres devoid of any privacy or intimacy. All available rooms played the domestic roles of kitchens and bedrooms. Yet again, let us refer to the novel:

"The second Prague transport was now quartered in two buildings at Franciszkańska, close to the barbed wire guarded by German guards; the houses were connected by specially constructed passages and enveloped in darkness, so it was hard to find your way around and find this or that room. People slept on rough beds of boards with bundles under their heads instead of pillows; there was not enough room so one could hardly move." ⁵¹⁾.

In November 1941, right after the transports from Prague arrived, Kronika getta łódzkiego reports the following:

"During the first days of November the temperature dropped a few degrees below zero; the next ten days were rainy and sleety; in the middle of the month the temperature dropped sharply (...) 914 people died in the ghetto in November and 29 (13 boys and 16 girls) births were registered. The Chronicles of the Jewish Order Service noted nine suicides in November (...) On November 16 a shocking catastrophe occurred in the ghetto (...) On that critical day through a breach in the wall a roll-balance heavily laden with vegetables rolled into the yard (...) and it crashed into the wall. As a result of the crash a 2 metre high concrete slate, weighing a hundred kilograms, came down, burying 10 people standing in a queue in front of a soup kitchen (...) An even more terrible disaster occurred at night of the 2^nd and 3^rd of November. Late in the evening a gable wall, dividing the two buildings, came down. Both these houses were exceptionally densely inhabited." ⁵²⁾

Several dozen victims perished in this accident. The Order Service also noted that in November seven people were shot at the wire fence surrounding the ghetto, including two new arrivals from Prague. But we will not find the names of Valeria and Gabriela in Kronika.

We do not know how the two sisters managed in the ghetto. I do not know whether they found jobs; and it was surely hard to survive without a job. On the other hand, they may have had some goods that they could sell to buy food. The new arrivals from Western Europe were treated rather well in Łódź though at the same time many ghetto dwellers were hostile towards those people since they were wealthier – which was an easy thing to establish just by looking at their clothes and luggage ⁵³⁾. Jakub Poznański (b. July 26, 1890 in Łódź – d. August 11, 1959), a prisoner in the ghetto, saw such reactions in a different light and described the arrival of the Jews from Western Europe this way:

"As I had said before, in late fall Jews resettled from Germany and the Czech Republic began to flow in to our ghetto. Altogether there were 23,000 such Jews. Some of them, from Prague, Frankfurt am Main, etc. could bring very much with them, while others, like those from Berlin, could bring almost nothing. Officially they could not have any money, but some transports had been allowed to take a hundred marks per person. They were well received here and with proper hospitality. There were full blood Jews among them, half-breeds, full blooded Jews but born as Christians, etc. They were all treated equally. The transports were given accommodation in offices and other similar buildings. At first they slept on the floors but later beds of boards were constructed for them. They were also given food, at first very meagre, later of somewhat better quality." ⁵⁴⁾

Not counting such general information about the new arrivals, in no publication have I found anything more about the two Kafka sisters. One could say that they were anonymous in the ghetto like thousands of other Jews from Prague who fought for their survival every day. Despite long hours spent over the archives of "The Eldest of the Jews 1939-1944" preserved in the National Archives in Łódź (and it is a general knowledge that the documents from the ghetto's Statistics Department, saved by Nachman Zonabend, were later distributed and only a part of them can now be found in Łódź ⁵⁵⁾ ), I have not come across the names of Gabriela Hermannova or Valeria and Josef Pollak. But perhaps among the thousands of other surviving documents (2,500 file units, i.e. 50 running metres of paper!) ⁵⁶⁾ some trace of their written requests, letters or applications to the ghetto authorities was, nevertheless, saved (as many examples of such correspondence can be found in the archives). This, however, is doubtful. The two sisters stayed in the ghetto for too short a time, not even eleven months, so there was no time indeed for them to leave a trace of life in the documents of the individual ghetto "departments" ⁵⁷⁾.

Though there is one extremely important exception – registration and departure cards of both sisters and Josef Pollak have been preserved and proper entries in the registration books can also be found.

In the spring of 1942 the authorities began to transfer the tenants of the Prague "collectives" to emptied flats in the ghetto. From Valeria's Registration Card (Anmeldung), issued March 12, 1942, we learn that along with three people (including her husband Josef, since it was he who filled and signed the Card) she received a place in a one-room flat no. 23 at ul. Franciszkańska 67. However, the Registration Book of this street does not confirm the above address, which may be the result of a mistake because of the great shifts in the ghetto population at this time (suffice to say that in 1941 and 1942 due to starvation and various diseases more than 30,000 people died!). From Gabriela's Card (dated May 5 and signed by her) we know that beginning April 15 she and seven other people were allowed to occupy a single room in the house at ul. Gnieźnieńska (Gnesnerstrasse)1/a. And this time the Registration Book confirms the address because Gabriela Hermann's name appears under this address in flat no. 4/a.

* * *

Deportations (which is a euphemism because these actions ought to be called simply "death transports") from the ghetto intensified in the beginning of 1942. They included mainly Jews from Western Europe. On May 1 there had still been as many as 4,578 Prague Jews in the ghetto, whereas a month later their number was reduced by more than 2,000 people, deported mostly to the death camp in Chełmno upon Ner ⁵⁸⁾. The authorities kept the ghetto's inhabitants in ignorance of where and why the transports with the "resettled" prisoners were going. Jakub Poznański observed in his journal as late as 1943:

"On Monday a group of a thousand people was deported; seemingly some of them were sent to forced labour, while others were meant for resettlement. Is it really true that those sentenced to deportation from the ghetto are in reality sentenced to death by gassing? I don't want to and I don't believe in this mass, grisly murder of innocent people – even Jews, whom the national socialist party counts among its greatest enemies. Leaving the ghetto, these poor souls sang a Jewish prayer, S'hma Israel. Which goes to show their mood." ⁵⁹⁾

The first transport to the gas chambers of Chełmno was sent in January 1942.

"The action lasted, with breaks, until May 15, 1942; 57,064 Jews from the Łódź ghetto, including 10,943 from Western Europe, were gassed in the Chełmno camp. (...) The deportations were carried out with extreme cruelty and terror, in an atmosphere of murder and assaults. Another tragedy occurred between September 3 and 12, 1942. (...) The ghetto inhabitants called it "szpera" (curfew) since the Germans had forbidden them to leave their flats (Allgemeine Gehsperre). (...) By the fall of 1942, 72 745 persons defined as «a dispensable non-working element» were annihilated." ⁶⁰⁾

Departure Cards (Abmeldung) of the two sisters filled in ex post – Gabriela's on October 18, and Valeria's on September 20 – inform that the departure of both sisters from their flats took place on September 10, 1942. Under the column "new address" we read: "deportation". This is the last trace of Kafka's sisters. Looking through the lists of the deportees from the ghetto at that time I did not find their names. Those lists, which are incomplete, sometimes handwritten, sometimes typed, sometimes set in alphabetical order and sometimes at random order, cannot be treated as totally trustworthy documents. In any case, one can say that during the days of the genocidal "szpera" Valeria's and Gabriela's met their doom. Kronika getta łódzkiego describes the week of September 5-12, 1942, as follows:

"In the point of fact, the operation proceeded as follows – block after block was surrounded by the Jewish police and then each building was surrounded by a horde of police and Jewish firemen and entered by a representative of the authorities (the Gestapo). A shot was fired as the signal to assemble, and then all the residents of a given building were assembled in the courtyard, arranged in two rows, and subjected to inspection by representatives of the authorities. (...) Those selected for resettlement were sent by a horse-wagon to the assembly points." ⁶¹⁾

The record from Kronika, as an actually official, i.e. censored text, is restricted to sole facts and neglects their emotional context, i.e. the drama of those days of hopelessness and starvation, family tragedies, the atmosphere of terror and the fight for survival, of which we know, for example, from the moving memoirs of Dawid Sierakowiak ⁶²⁾.

From Łódź to Chełmno, a village upon the river Ner on the borderline of Kolska Valley and Kłodawska Plain where the Germans had set up a death camp in December 1941, the Jews deported from the ghetto were driven in lorries. Many years later, Frantiąek Kafka, on the basis of historical evidence, reconstructed the eighty-kilometer journey in a literary manner:

"Mrs. Horowitz stood next to Róża Bendlova in a lorry which drove them on a road through beautiful, woody landscapes. Behind them two more trucks were following. They carried all those who had left the assembly point at the central prison in the Łódź ghetto two days before. (...) The lorries were now entering a small mansion; they slowed down and drove into the courtyard through a massive gate. Among the tall trees stood a one-storey, spacious little palace (...) – You have arrived in a labour camp – an SS officer turned to them. – You must now undergo disinfections. The lorry will drive you there (...). – She found herself in a lorry with Różena Bendlova. – Just like when we were leaving Prague on a train – Bendlova whispered. They all stood squeezed tightly together within the closed box of the lorry. (...) The car started. Mrs. Horowitz felt dizzy. She didn't know whether she felt sick because the car kept rocking or because of the heavy air inside. – Exhaust fumes – she realized in terror, holding her breath. – Such is the end of transport number two, the end of our journey (...) – A spasm shook her body. And she was left motionless among the other dead in the "soul-perisher", in Chełmno upon Ner." ⁶³⁾

With a sequence of photographs of the woods near Chełmno Claude Lanzmann begins his magnificent film Shoah (1985). We know that out of 400,000 men, women and children transported here only two witnesses survived: Mordechaj Podchlebnik and Szymon Srebnik. The latter says in the film ⁶⁴⁾:

"It's difficult to recognize, but it was here. People were being burnt here. Many people were burnt. Yes, right here. No one could leave here. The gas lorries drove up... Two gigantic ovens stood there and the flames shot up high into the sky." ⁶⁵⁾

Translated from Polish by Maciej Świerkocki

(The translation edited by Andrew Kobos)

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Notes:

1. A fragment of the inscription at the gates of Hell, which begins the third canto of the Divine Comedy [as translated by Ciaran Carson]. This quote was also used as a motto to the novel Krutá léta (1963, The Cruel Years) by Frantiąek Kafka (Dec. 5, 1909 – Nov. 22, 1991), a Czech writer and literary scholar. We will talk more on him and his novel in this article.   (return)

2. Among numerous books dealing with the cultural and artistic history of this city see, for example, K. Krejči: Praga. Legenda i rzeczywistość, Warszawa 1974, transl. by C. Dmochowska; A.M. Ripellino: Praga magiczna, Warszawa 1997, transl. by H. Kralowa; J. Kuchař: Praha esoterická, Praha 2000.   (return)

3. According to A.M. Ripellino, op. cit., p. 11.   (return)

4. E.g. in a Lexicon (M. Zybura ed.) Pisarze niemieckojęzyczni XX wieku, Warszawa-Wrocław 1996.   (return)

5. The letter of December 20, 1902. Quotation after Ripellino, op. cit., pp. 10-11.   (return)

6. I stress this because false information is often given about his grave in Žižkov in Prague next to Kafka's tomb. See, for example, Praga. Przewodnik Pascala, Bielsko-Biała 2001, 3^rd ed., which, by the way, contains many mistakes (factual and linguistic from the sphere of artistic and literary problems) that were probably transferred thoughtlessly from the French original. In the cemetery in Prague, not far from the tomb of the Kafka family, there is but a memorial plate on the cemetery wall, dedicated to Max Brod as a Prague inhabitant and a friend of the great writer, founded by the Jewish community in Prague.   (return)

7. See the entries Krąg praski and Realizm magiczny in my Słownik europejskich kierunków i grup literackich XX wieku, Warszawa 2000. See also: M. Pazi: Fünf Autoren des Prager Kreises, Frankfurt am Main, 1976.   (return)

8. Details and other addresses, see, for example G. Salfiellnier: Franz Kafka i Praga, Praha 2000. Also K. Wagenbach: Kafkas Prag. Ein Reiselesbuch, Berlin 1993.   (return)

9. See the abovementioned K. Wagenbach: Franz Kafka mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1964; Franz Kafka. Eine Biographie seiner Jugend 1883-1912, Bern 1958; Franz Kafka. Bilder aus seinem Leben, Berlin 1983; A. Northey: Kafkas Mischpoche, Berlin 1988 (I also used the Czech translation of this book by A. Kusák Miąpoche Franze Kafky, Praha 1997; I thank Dr. Leszek Engelking for helping me to find this book).   (return)

10. Hans Sachs (1494-1576), from Nürnberg, a playwright and author of poetic plays, comic and satirical sketches (called Schwank), but also of tragedies and dramas referring to the Bible and Greek classics. Between 1870 and 1908 his Werke (Works) were published in 26 volumes.   (return)

11. M. Brod: Franz Kafka. Opowieść biograficzna, Warszawa 1982, p. 28, transl. by T. Zabłudowski.   (return)

12. The author refers to the fact that Kafka's father constantly set the positive features of the Kafka family against the negative features of the Löwy family on his wife's side.   (return)

13. F. Kafka: Letter to Father, Praha 1999, p. 37-38, translated by Karen Reppin.   (return)

14. As above, p. 38. In this merciless characteristic, also for himself, Franz seems to measure his sister according to his father's criteria. His father humiliated Gabriela whenever he could.   (return)

15. See, for example, H. Binder: Kafka und seine Schwester Ottla, "Schiller-Jahrbuch" 12, 1968; Briefe an Ottla und die Familie, hrsg. H. Binder und K. Wagenbach, Frankfurt am Main, 1974.   (return)

16. Letter to Father, op. cit., pp. 40-41.   (return)

17. A year later Karl founded an asbestos factory in Žižkov, Prager Asbestwerke Hermann&Co (Pražská továrna na osinkové zboží), whose shareholder was – for his father's money – also Franz. See R. Hayman: Kafka. Seine Leben, seine Welt, sein Werk, Bern-München, 1983; R. Robertsson: Kafka. Judentum, Gesellschaft, Literatur, Stuttgart 1988.   (return)

18. Letter to Father, op. cit., p. 30.   (return)

19. See Briefe an Ottla, op. cit.; also M.Brod, F. Kafka: Přátelství. Korespondence, připravil M. Pasley, přeložila H. Žantovská, Praha 1998.   (return)

20. Dates are partly according to A. Northey, op. cit.   (return)

21. See E. Pawel: Das Leben Franz Kafkas. Eine Biographie, München-Wien, 1986.   (return)

22. See M. Brod, F. Kafka: Přatelství, op. cit.   (return)

23. Born 1898 in Pabianice near Łódź, Poland. (In Kafka's biographies, 1900 or 1902 is given as the year of her birth). Her parents, Hersz Aron and Frajda Frid, were in the weaving business (biographies tell us that Dora was a daughter of an orthodox rabbi from Poland). They lived at ul. Południowa 19. Dora had four brothers (Dawid, Jakub, Abram, Ajze), and a sister (Nacha). In the early twenties Dora left for Berlin. In the summer of 1923 she met Franz Kafka and started living with him in Berlin. She died in London, where she lived with her daughter, Marianne, on August 15, 1952. Dora's husband perished in the Holocaust. Details of his death remain unknown. Her daughter died in 1982. The above biography has been reconstructed in detail by Kathi Diamant, a professor of San Diego State University (College of Arts and Letters), according to Dora's memoirs, recovered in Paris and according to the Gestapo documents in Berlin and to documents preserved in Muzeum Miasta Pabianic (Museum of the City of Pabianice) - which she visited on May 21, 2001. See also R. Adamek: Wielka miłość Franza Kafki, "Nowe Życie Pabianic" 2001, no. 21. Kathi Diamant, who studies the Holocaust, became interested in Dora due to the fact that they both bore identical surnames. She is an author of a voluminous book Kafka's Last Love: The Mystery of Dora, which appeared in London, 2003.   (return)

24. M. Brod: Franz Kafka, op. cit., s. 280.   (return)

25. See Garald Salfiellnier: Franz Kafka i Praga, Praha 2000.   (return)

26. See M. Brod: Pražský kruh, Praha 1993, transl. from German by I. Vizdalová. See also the quoted Krąg praski entry in my Słownik europejskich kierunków..., op. cit.   (return)

27. Not counting the better or the not-so-good theatrical adaptations (e.g. M. Brod's of The Castle, A. Gide's [1947] and P. Weiss's (1982) of The Process – see K. Prykowska: Adaptacje sceniczne "Procesu" Franza Kafki, Łódź 1998, typescript at the Institute of the Theory of Literature, Theatre and Audiovisual Arts at the University of Łódź) as well as film adaptations (like The Process directed by O. Welles, 1963), one might mention as especially valuable Z. Rybczyński's (1991) and S. Soderbergh's (1991) films, both entitled Kafka. They treat the writer's life and work as one whole. We might also add an interesting epistolary novel by Anna Bolecka Kochany Franz, Warszawa 1999, and paintings by a Russian painter living in Prague, A. Prostow-Pokrowski. See Franz Kafka in Bildern des Malers, Praha 2001. G. Janouch's Rozmowy z Franzem Kafką, translated into Polish by J. Borysiak and E. Dyczek and published in Warsaw in 1993, seems to be an apocryphal work. Brod and Dora Diamant though never questioned the validity of Janouch's notes. See M. Brod: Franz Kafka, op. cit., p. 287.   (return)

28. I refer to the information from the book (quoted above) by A. Northey, although, for example, in the Czech translation of this volume of letters by Brod and Kafka (ed. by Malcolm Pasley, see also note 17) the notes contain a different date of Karl's death, namely 1942. I believe it rather to be 1939, which the rest of this article seems to confirm.   (return)

29. See Uzupełnienia (Supplements) in M. Brod's biography: Franz Kafka, op. cit., pp. 316-319.   (return)

30. Such news ("they perished somewhere in Poland in the gas chambers") was conveyed to Max Brod by the oldest daughter of Gabriela and Karl Hermann, Gerti, who survived the war and wrote to him as Greta Kaufmann (apparently she had married) from London, right before leaving for Canada, on August 27, 1947. The letter was devoted solely to her uncle, Franz Kafka, described from the viewpoint of young child's memories (let me recall that Gerti was born in 1912) and family tradition. See M. Brod: Pražský kruh, op. cit., pp. 109-111.   (return)

31. See the notes to the Polish edition of Listy do Felicji, Warszawa 1976, transl. by Irena Krońska, vol. II, p. 360.   (return)

32. See the family tree of the Kafkas (as no other details are available) in Northey's book: Mischpoche Kafkas, op. cit. The author devoted much space to the writer's uncles and ancestors, leaving out of account the fate of the sisters and their children.   (return)

33. H. Zylberberg: Das tragische Ende der drei Schwestern Kafkas, "Wort und Tat" 1946/1947, Heft 2. I actually came upon this text at the end of my research. However, it seems a valuable supplement of the rest of the documentation. I kindly thank dr Johann Biedermann from the University of Giessen and Dr. Małgorzata Leyko from the Institute of the Theory of Literature, Theatre and Audiovisual Arts of the University of Łódź who helped me to get access to this article and its contents.   (return)

34. The author speaks of Felix, the favourite of the whole family, especially of his grandfather, Hermann Kafka – as he was the only male descendant in the family! This very inexact piece of information (a concentration camp in France?) was the only data I could find on him (in the family tree Northey, op. cit., gives the year 1940 as the year Felix died). Franz in Letter to Father mentions the grandfather's great love to his grandson.   (return)

35. D. Czech: Kalendarz wydarzeń w KL Auschwitz, Oświęcim 1992, p. 534. In the archives of the camp a list with the names of the guardians was preserved.   (return)

36. The abovementioned letter from Gerti to Brod informs about the fate of her mother and her mother's sisters in one sentence only.   (return)

37. It is the year (??) of her death according to Northey.   (return)

38. Northey does not know that either. In the Kafka family tree the names of  Ottla's daughters bear question marks.   (return)

39. The fate of Hanna, the older daughter of the Hermanns, is also yet to be revealed.   (return)

40. All quotations from Zylberberg's article have been translated by Małgorzata Leyko.   (return)

41. Like E. and H. Lieberman's play Throne of Straw (1989), whose main characters are Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski, appointed by the Germans as the Eldest of the Jews (Der Alteste der Juden) in the ghetto, and Hans Biebow, the head of the German ghetto administration (Getto-Verwaltung). I was informed about this play and its content by Dr. Małgorzata Leyko.   (return)

42. E.g., J. Poznański: Dziennik z łódzkiego getta, Warszawa 2002 (the first, incomplete edition was published in 1960); O. Singer: Przemierzając szybkim krokiem getto... Reportaże i eseje z getta łódzkiego, Łódź 2002, transl. from the German by K. Radziszewska (the German version of the book appeared in Berlin in 2002); J. Wajsblat et G. Lambert: Le témoin imprévu, Paris 2001; J. Baranowski: The Łódź Ghetto, 1940-1944/Łódzkie getto 1940-1944, Łódź 1999; A. Adelson, R. Lapides (eds.): Lodz Ghetto. Inside a Community under Siege. New York, 1989. Earlier Polish works on the subject include R. Bonisławski: Bibliografia polska dotycząca zagłady Żydów z getta łódzkiego (in:) M. Budziarek (ed.): Judaica łódzkie, Łódź 1994.   (return)

43. An incomplete edition: D. Dąbrowska, L. Dobroszycki (eds.): Kronika getta łódzkiego, Łódź 1965, vol. 1-2 (an abridged edition in English: L. Dobroszycki (ed.): The Chronicle of the Lodz Getto, New Haven 1984).   (return)

44. R. Seemann (ed.): Getto Litzmannstadt 1941-1944. Dokumenty a výpovědi o životě českých židů v lodžkém ghettu, Praha 2000. Hereby I thank Mr. Janusz Kozłowski, a journalist and the invaluable source of information on Łódź affairs, who lent me this book and helped to find other sources for this essay.   (return)

45. Coloured, and thus somehow idealized photographs of the ghetto have been confronted in this film with the mercilessly realistic and verifying commentary by Arnold Mostowicz (1914-2002), a prisoner of the ghetto and an eyewitness. See also his memoirs Żółta gwiazda i czerwony krzyż, Warszawa 1988.   (return)

46. Most of all the aforementioned Getto Litzmannstadt, published in Prague; see alsp note 43.   (return)

47. F. Kafka: Okrutne lata, Łódź 1966, transl. by H. Gruszczyńska-Dębska, pp. 17-18.   (return)

48. The lists of the deportees do not mention the name of Gabriela's husband, Karl (the name Karel Herrmann appears thrice, spelled with double "r", but with birth dates different from the birth date of Kafka's brother-in-law), hence – see also note 28 – Northey is probably right.   (return)

49. See also the lists of the deportees in the supplements to R. Seemann's book Getto Liztmannstadt, op. cit., pp. 267 and 292. The book does not mention Gabriela and Valeria at all, which is somewhat curious, all the more so that the editors reached many people from these transports who survived the war and perhaps could give some information about Kafka's sisters.   (return)

50. As above, pp. 35-37.   (return)

51. As above, pp. 160-161.   (return)

52. Kronika getta łódzkiego, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 266-268.   (return)

53. A probing analysis of the relations between local Jews and the new arrivals was presented in a series of articles by Oskar Singer (b. February 24, 1893 – d. August 1944 in Birkenau), a Prague writer, journalist and columnist who had arrived in the Łódź Ghetto with the third transport. Probably thanks to his profession, almost immediately after his arrival he was assigned a flat beyond "the collective" and offered a job at the Statistics Department, initially as a co-author of Kronika getta łódzkiego, and later as its main editor and the director of the department. See his essays Z problematyki Wschodu i Zachodu, written in the ghetto and published recently in Przemierzając szybkim krokiem..., op. cit.   (return)

54. J. Poznański: Dziennik..., op. cit., p. 42.   (return)

55. The rest of the documents can be found in YIVO (Institute for Jewish Research) in New York City and in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and near Haifa.   (return)

56. See J. Baranowski: Materiały źródłowe do Zagłady Żydów z łódzkiego getta w Archiwum Państwowym w Łodzi, (w:) Judaica łódzkie, op. cit.   (return)

57. The Archives also contain many IDs, passports, various membership cards and private letters left behind by the resettled from Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany and Luxembourg. It is possible that among the documents I have not browsed, Gabriela's and Valeria's papers may be found.   (return)

58. According to Getto Litzmannstadt, op. cit., p. 136.   (return)

59. J. Poznański: Dziennik..., op. cit., p. 55.   (return)

60. J. Baranowski: Łódzkie getto 1940-1944, op. cit., p. 91.   (return)

61. Kronika getta łódzkiego, op. cit., v. II, p. 245.   (return)

62. D. Sierakowiak: Dzienniki, ed. L. Dobroszycki, Warszawa 1960.   (return)

63. F. Kafka: Okrutne lata..., op. cit., pp. 215-217. On March 8, 1998, the President of the Czech Republic Václav Havel visited the Łódź cemetery in Marysin and paid tribute to the martyrdom of the inhabitants of Prague. In October 2001, a memorial plate was mounted in the wall of the cemetery, near the entrance, to commemorate the death of Jews from Prague.   (return)

64. C. Lanzmann: Shoah Koszalin 1993, transl. M. Bieńczyk, s. 17.   (return)

65. I first presented the general theses of this article during a Polish-Czech conference Polish-Czech Relations in the Comparative Perspective. Language-Literature-History, Łowicz, September 26-28, 2002) that was organized by the Mazovian College of Humanities and Pedagogy and by the Vysoka Škola Karla Engliąe, Brno. At the time I called my presentation "a text in progress" because I counted on additional information. Here, at the end, in a footnote (in order not to disturb the main text at this point), as a supplement to my notes about Kafka's nieces, I might add that the elder Pollak, namely Marianne (b. November 19, 1913) married George Steiner (in 1935; in 1938 their son, Michael, was born) and moved to London in 1939. She died there on November 8, 2000, at the age of 87 (according to the obituary in The Times, November 2000, of which I was kindly informed by Mr. R. Grzela – Thank you). Ottla's both daughters have married and live in Prague: Vera Soudkova and Helene Rumpeldova (I also owe this information to Mr. Grzela who obtained it by letter from Hanna Greenfield, the daughter of one of the children's guardians who shared the tragic fate of Ottla Davidova).   (return)

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Grzegorz Gazda

Dr. Grzegorz Gazda, b. 1943, is Professor at the University o Lodz, Poland. He holds the Chair of the Theory of Literature, Theatre and Film. He has authored about 100 papers in theory of literature and comparative European literature of the 20th century. In these fields he published in Polish five volumes of his studies W kręgu zagadnień awangardy ('In the Range of the Avangarde Issues') (1987-1995), and his Słownik europejskich kierunkow i grup literackich XX wieku ('The Dictionary of the European Movements and Literary Groups of the 20th Century') (PWN, Warsaw 2000). For his achievements in Humanities, he received several prestigious awards. He is particularly interested in the life and work of Franz Kafka. Recently, he has been carrying out scholarly studies on the literature (in a broad sense) in the Lodz Ghetto (1940-1944).

Copyright © 1997-2005 Zwoje