Spolek pro ochranu zvířat – Pick J. R. (2018)

Children live and grow up in the horrifying reality of the Terezín fortress, often with only a short time left before death. Yet children, including adolescents, inhabit their own world, into which the reality of adults penetrates only with difficulty and often in barely comprehensible ways, and whose course escapes the uncompromising laws of physical time. Drawing on his own memories, J. R. Pick evokes both the eager, elemental joy in the few pleasures granted to children forced into premature adulthood in the camp and, paradoxically, their absurdly comic relationship with the dark reality of genocide. This short book is a unique work, perhaps the only humorous portrayal of life in a concentration camp anywhere in the world. Jáchym Topol, who contributes the afterword to this new edition, emphatically embraces its black humour. As a child who witnessed dissident gatherings in his parents’ flat, he remembers J. R. Pick’s presence there. Zuzana Justman Picková also returns to the atmosphere of the Protectorate era alongside her older brother, recalling that after the ordeal of the concentration camp had ended, it took Pick twenty years to return to the subject and turn it into this small book of extraordinary significance. The contents are in Czech.