Zionist memoirs

Jiří Pohátka sheds light on the diaries of Czechoslovak Zionist leader Egon Redlich, a leading member of the Maccabi HaKer Zionist organization, who was imprisoned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp before being transferred to Auschwitz. Pohátka definitively exposes the Zionist leadership‘s collaboration with the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, portraying them as a fifth column acting not only against the interests of the Czechoslovak people but also against the interests of the majority of the Jewish population. As Redlich‘s diaries reveal, thousands of Jews, both those who identified as Zionists and those who did not, were sent to Nazi extermination camps in exchange for Nazi promises to send a few dozen or a few hundred Zionist leaders and businessmen to Palestine. At the time, Redlich was a young Zionist deeply involved in youth activism and had been chosen to be in charge of the camp‘s youth welfare department, as well as housing and education for the children in Theresienstadt. He recorded in his diaries from the beginning... His presence in Teresin captures the fear and despair of that Jewish ghetto, reflecting daily life, culture, illness, death, rumors, dashed hopes, and guilt. The diaries serve as a powerful document of the Holocaust experience and the role of Zionism in it, with all its horrific human dimensions.