Milena a Margarete – Strauss Gwen (2026)

This Czech-language biographical novel recounts the extraordinary bond between Milena Jesenská and Margarete Buber-Neumann, who first met in Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1940. Milena, Franz Kafka’s first translator and his correspondent and love, is portrayed as an outspoken journalist and opponent of fascism. An unconventional bisexual feminist ahead of her time, she turned her Prague flat into a refuge for Jewish refugees after the occupation of Czechoslovakia. Margarete, a German woman from a middle-class family, first married the son of philosopher Martin Buber before becoming involved in the atmosphere of the Bolshevik Revolution alongside her second partner, communist Heinz Neumann. After Neumann was branded politically unreliable in Moscow and died during Stalin’s purges, Margarete was sent to a Soviet gulag and, two years later, exchanged by Stalin for Hitler, eventually reaching Ravensbrück, the only Nazi camp intended exclusively for women. The two women fell in love, knowing it could cost them their lives. Because lesbian relationships were stigmatized in postwar testimonies, survivors remained silent. The book brings to light a story suppressed for decades and pays tribute to two exceptionally strong women, their courage and resilience.