Jiří Žák

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Jiří Žák (born November 11, 1917 in Budweis , Austria-Hungary ; died January 29, 1986 in Hamburg ) was a Czech journalist and writer . Žák was imprisoned in German concentration camps for more than five years .

Life

Jiří Žák attended grammar school and business school in Pilsen and began to write at an early age; a volume of short stories was printed as early as 1932. He joined the communist party KSČ around 1935 . The Stalinist purges in the Soviet Union also affected the other communist parties in Europe and led to his being expelled from the KSČ in 1938.

After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Žák was arrested by the occupying forces in April 1939 and was taken to the Dachau concentration camp and from there to the Buchenwald concentration camp in September 1939 . Žák worked in the Buchenwald camp under a Kapo in the office. In his memoirs, Jorge Semprún reports that Žák organized jazz music in the Buchenwald camp: " Jiří Zak's personal passion was jazz ."

After the liberation he went back to Pilsen, worked as a freelance journalist and in 1945 became the advertising officer for the entire communist press in Czechoslovakia. In 1947 he became editor-in-chief of the Sunday newspaper "Nedělní noviny" or "Haló - Nedělní noviny" published by the Central Committee of the KPC, later the Sunday newspaper "Květy", also published by the party. In 1952 he was dismissed for political reasons and expelled from the Communist Party. He worked for a time as a construction laborer, which, however, was difficult for his health after the concentration camp imprisonment. He then wrote again as a freelance journalist, sometimes under a pseudonym .

Among other things, Žák translated Bruno Apitz 's novel Nackt unter Wölfen into Czech and Maximilian Scheer's Reise an der Rhein . He wrote a biography about Wernher von Braun .

In the Prague spring of 1968 he was re-admitted to the KSČ. When Semprún met him again in Prague in the spring of 1969, he was one of those who had not yet decided on exile after the invasion of the Warsaw Pact states . After a meeting of the former Buchenwald prisoners, he stayed in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1969 and worked in the final editorial department of the Illustrierte Stern in Hamburg until 1982 .

Fonts (selection)

  • Deset posledních dnů: beech forest . Pilsen, Volnost, 1945
  • Dvě cesty v Německu . Svoboda, Prague 1948
  • Brána je znovu otevřena: německý lid na nových cestách . Rudé Právo, Prague 1949
  • Konec komisaře Gaslera: vyprávění . Svobodné Slovo, Prague 1961
  • … A pozdravuj u nás doma . Pilsen, 1961
  • Úžasný chlapík . Nakladatelství politické literatury, Prague 1962 [on Wernher von Braun]
  • Schůzka před Samsonem: budějovický fejeton . Krajské nakladatelství, Budweis 1963
  • Beech forest varuje: Dokumenty, vzpomínky, svědectví . [Ed .: Walter Bartel et al. Translated from the German original by Jaroslav Strnad and Jiří Žák. Edited and supplemented for the Czech edition by Jiří Žák]. Nakladatelství politické literatury, Praha 1964
  • S pětilistou růží v knoflíkové dírce . Pilsen, 1964
  • Žíznivý . Svobodné slovo, Prague 1964
  • Zázrak za raw . Svoboda, Prague 1967
  • Vstupné se nevrací. Kolportážní novela . Práce, Prague 1969

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ There are different details about the place of birth Budweis or Prague
  2. ↑ Jorge Semprún: The Dead with My Name , 2002, p. 182.
  3. ↑ Jiří Louženský: Jiří Žák , biography, online at: www.spisovatele.cz/
  4. ↑ Digital library of the Moravská zemská knihovna (Moravian State Library), online at: digitalniknihovna.cz/
  5. ↑ Jorge Semprún: The dead man with my name , 2002, p. 184 and p. 199-203
personal data
SURNAME Žák, Jiří
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czechoslovak journalist
DATE OF BIRTH November 11, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Ceske Budejovice
DATE OF DEATH January 29, 1986
Place of death Hamburg