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A powerful portrait of loss, love, and survival in Nazi Germany. Kafka's great love, Milena Jesenká, to whom he wrote his most passionate letters, was a beautiful, politically committed, talented free spirit. At one time Kafka's translator, she later became a celebrated journalist. Milena took an early stand against Hitler, which she pursued with vigor after the Nazis came to power. As the head of a politically committed newspaper targeted by the Nazis, Milena was arrested in 1939 and sent to one of Hitler's death camps, Ravensbrück. There she met Margarete Buber-Neumann, a fellow political prisoner, also a writer and opponent of Nazism. This book portrays a unique and remarkable friendship between the two women, a bond that helped them endure. They made a pact: if they survived, they would write a book together; if only one made it, she would tell the story. Three weeks before D-day, Milena died in the camp. Thus it fell to Buber-Neumann to tell Milena's story. This book is a full biography of Milena, from her strict childhood in Prague to her love affair with Franz Kafka. By artfully and discreetly interweaving images of Ravensbrück with episodes from Milena's life, the author avoids repeating the already well-documented accounts of concentration camps. She gives us a lesson in humanity and dignity, and an unforgettable homage to friendship. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.… (more)
User reviews
The biography traces Milena's unhappy childhood in Prague (her father was a well-known physician and teacher, but a personal tyrant; when she gave birth to a daughter but was uncertain whether she could care for her, Milena told her father that she would rather throw the child in the river than give her into his care), through a failed marriage in Vienna, a love affair with Franz Kafka (a largely epistolary relationship that Kafka ended, partly because he could not respond to Milena's passion, nor give her the physical love that he dreaded), her flirtation with Communism which did not last long as she was one who came to see the Soviet Union for what it was, and her return to Prague where she became a very active and well-known journalist writing for various papers.
Milena was not necessarily an easy person to get along with:
"Even after the hard years in Vienna, during which she had learned to work regularly and submit to discipline, Milena was not exactly a well-balanced character. With her ideas about honour and chivalry she was a kind of feminine Don Quixote. She made high moral demands on herself and others and was unwilling to compromise. Living in constant conflict, she was vulnerable and often impatient. With her violent temper, her sharp tongue, and her ever-readiness to step in where she suspected an injustice, she was bound to make enemies".
But, at the same time, she was a person, "...distinguished by a remarkable gift of observation, by unusual quickness, and, perhaps most important of all, by [a] love of humankind and ...passionate sense of justice. And last, not least, ...a fine sense of humour".
Throughout her life, Milena gave freely of herself towards friends and strangers, becoming known for her generosity with no thought to consequences for herself.. Before the war she was openly critical of treatment of refugees, Jewish and others, along the Sudeten/Czech border; when the Germans marched into Prague in March, 1939, she immediately became involved in rescue programs for Jews; in Ravensbruck she was notable for her dedication to others and her constant efforts to provide assistance. She rejected labels and categories of any kind and treated people, "as neither more nor less than human beings in need of help".
Milena died three days before the invasion of Normandy
Gross numbers of people murdered under the Nazis, or other tyrannical regimes, always obscure the fact that these were individuals, with individual lives and hopes and dreams and connections to life and other people. Books such as this one remind one of those individualities.
(Feb/06)