Krabice živých – Frýd Norbert (2017)

The environment of the concentration camp provided Norbert Frýda with the opportunity for a profound psychological insight into various human personalities. In it, we encounter professional criminals, sadists, swindlers, and schemers, speculating even in the shadow of death, representatives of Nazi ideology, but also noble and educated people, brave and beautiful. However, these are prisoners fighting for their lives, trying to survive the machinery of death and even actively resisting it. This resistance of the prisoners against the terror in the camp forms the most interesting and main storyline in the novel about life in the Nazi camp Gigling near Dachau. Frýda convincingly demonstrates the heroism in ordinary people, the international solidarity of the prisoners, which he contrasts with the spiritual poverty of the camp's SS men. Frýda's novel is one of the few works that depict resistance in Nazi concentration camps from the perspective of a politically aware prisoner. The suspense of the plot, the drama of extreme situations, the conflict of character and bestiality in people – all of this makes Frýda's novel artistically one of the most impressive and also one of the most translated works of Czech post-war prose.