KRAUS, František.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Plyn, plyn..., pak oheň [Gas, gas... and then fire]. First edition of one of the earliest Holocaust accounts published in Czechoslovakia and "one of the first testimonies about Auschwitz" (Encyclopaedia Judaica, XII, p. 340), written within months of Kraus's escape from the concentration camps.Born into a Jewish family in Prague, Kraus (1903-1967) began his career on Prague's German-language newspapers and later worked for ČTK and Czechoslovak Radio, openly opposing the advance of Nazism. Deported to Theresienstadt on 24 November 1941, Kraus was among the prisoners forced in June 1942 to bury the victims of the Lidice massacre. In October 1944 he was transported to Auschwitz, then to Gleiwitz and Blechhammer. Escaping during Blechhammer's evacuation, he made his way to liberated Budapest, where he wrote the present account before returning to Prague. The book appeared in September 1945. The striking photomontage wrappers are by David Friedmann, an artist and fellow Holocaust survivor.After the war Kraus returned to ČTK and Czechoslovak radio, but lost his position during the anti-Semitic purges surrounding the Slánský trial and thereafter faced severe censorship. Reprinted in 1946, his testimony was not published again until 2013.

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