Abstract
With the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, we are now witnessing new interpretations of military battles and crimes against humanity, with the tragedy of the holocaust at the forefront. Non-heroic approaches to war heroes and war victims appear sporadically in the war-themed books published after WW2 and the vast volume of Czech literature written since the late 1950s. (Authors Jiří Weil, Zdeňka Bezděková, Arnošt Lustig and Josef Škvorecký should be emphasized in this respect.) World War Two becomes the subject of philosophical, historical and literary reflections, with many significant books drawing on the war experiences of children and teenagers in the context of world history. "Ať žije republika" (Long Live the Republic), originally subtitled "Já a Julina a konec velké války" (Me and Julina and the End of the Big War) and "Běž, chlapče, běž" (Run, Boy, Run) are two different war novels published in two different centuries.
The former first appeared in 1965 - in Czech, the latter in 2001 - in Hebrew. They both evolve around the topic of unexpected and forced escape, as the war interrupts everyday life and influences both protagonists' mental growth.
The internationally acclaimed "Ať žije republika" by Jan Procházka, published three times in a row between 1965 and 1968, has been reedited this year. "Běž, chlapče, běž" by Uri Orlev, an Israeli author of Polish origin, was translated into Czech and published in the Czech Republic in 2014. Thus, they are now both available on the Czech book market. "Běž, chlapče, běž" is even accessible in most world languages.
Procházka's book deals with the end of the war in a Moravian village. Orlev's young Jewish protagonist almost loses his identity over a prolonged period of time in a changing Polish rural region.
Both of these extraordinary stories share the same unique setting of Central Europe in the 1940s. That connects them powerfully.