Norbert Frýd
He is known mainly for his autobiographical novel Krabice živých (A Box of Lives, 1956), in which he describes his experiences in Nazi concentration camps.
He was a close collaborator with Emil František Burian, and became friends with various Jewish artists, such as Hanuš Bonn, Robert Guttmannn, Jindřich Heisler, Jiří Orten and Josef Taussig.
Together, they created the farce Mistr Pleticha, based on the French original, Maître Patelin.
[1] In November 1942, Frýd was imprisoned in the ghetto at Theresienstadt, where he became involved in the clandestine cultural life of the community.
He wrote a collection of nursery rhymes, Abeceda květovaného koně,[4] which later he and Karel Reiner rearranged into a set of children's songs and choruses that were successfully performed in the ghetto.
[7][note 1] At Auschwitz, he spent several nights sitting (together with thousands of other people) on a concrete floor in block "E2", located on the site of the former Roma camp.
"I was in Dachau-Kaufering at the end of 1944", he later remembered, "when the boys from all over Europe – French, Dutch, Germans, Poles, Yugoslavs, Greeks, we Czechs and I don't know who else – began to sing The Internationale in their mother languages, all together.
Frýd's father, brother and wife died in the concentration camps and he appears to have been the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust.
[1] His childhood friend, the writer Lenka Reinerová, recalled in an interview how he had helped her when she was arrested in 1952.
In the novel Krabice živých, he attempted to provide a detailed psychological picture of concentration camp prisoners and their SS guards.
The author attempts to depict everyday life, social interactions and relationships in the camp, and the work and hardships of the inmates.
It offers philosophical insights while attempting to provide an objective picture of the camp's everyday reality.
The author reflects on how to maintain human dignity and cope with evil in the extraordinary circumstances of the camp.
