Jiří Weil's Life and Work after 1939

The dissertation summarises the life and work of renowned Czech Jewish writer, translator, journalist and scientist Jiří Weil (1900-1959) in the reference period 1939-1959. It presents the results of research conducted in more than twenty, both domestic and foreign archives (Literary Archive of the Museum of National Literature, Security Services Archive, National Archive, Archive of the Jewish Museum in Prague, Beroun Archive, Central Military Archive, Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History and others), accompanied by the accounts of selected eyewitnesses, placing events in a narrower historical context and presenting the life and work of Jiří Weil from a hitherto unknown perspective. Based on surviving archival material, Jiří Weil is presented not only as a hitherto well-known prosaist, but also as a translator of Polish and Hebrew, a poet, playwright, scientist and editor of a world-famous non-literary work that became the inspiration for other artistic transpositions (e.g. a play, film), Dětské kresby na zastávce k smrti 1942-1945 (Children's Drawings and Poems. Terezín 1942-1945). Brief analyses of the writer's selected published works, written and published in the reference period from 1939 to 1959, as well as unpublished works not yet known to the public, are also examined in a..