Modlitba pro Kateřinu Horovitzovou – Lustig Arnošt (2024)

A psychological novel about the tragic fate of a Jewish girl who elevated revenge for her fellow tribesmen to the meaning of her existence. The book is based on true events and was first published in 1964. The character of Kateřina Horovitzová is inspired by the fate of a real girl, the Polish actress Franceska Mann. In this evocative novel, Lustig primarily explores the theme of a sadistic trap, through which Nazi leaders attempted to seize the assets of a group of captured wealthy Jewish merchants who had initially escaped German Nazism by fleeing to the USA, but later, in 1943, returned to Italy and fell into the hands of the Nazis. Among these merchants was the beautiful Jewish woman Kateřina Horovitzová. The Nazis promised the merchants that they would exchange them for captured German officers, but it was all, of course, a lie. On a second level, the novel describes the heroine's own story, a girl who, on the brink of death, defies the humiliation of her human dignity and manages to mobilize the strength within her to overcome fear and the natural instinct for self-preservation.