ČTK |

30 January 2012

Prague, Jan 27 (CTK) - A diary of a Czech Jewish boy, Michal Kraus, who survived the Holocaust was published Friday, which is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

As a boy Kraus went through the Terezin, Auschwitz and Mauthausen concentration camps where he lost both parents and he survived two death matches.

He survived the camps also thanks to the fact that he was chosen to work as a servant and messenger.

He wrote his diary shortly after the end of the war but he has not released it until now. He had started writing a diary already at home and in the concentration camps but in Auschwitz it was taken away from him.

The diary will be officially presented at the seat of the Prague Jewish Community on February 2.

Kraus's diary does not try to put the events into any broader context but only describes the events and relations in the camp and condemns inhuman behaviour of some inmates.

In July 1948, 17-year-old Kraus left Czechoslovakia and moved to Canada with the help of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. He took his diary with him and later gave it to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. Copies of the diary are kept by four museums in the Czech Republic and Israel.

Kraus, now aged 81 said he decided to publish his diary because the persecution of ethnic and other minorities still seems to be a major problem in the Czech Republic and Europe in general.

He said he wished that his story would never be repeated and that the public would be able to react to the first indications of aggressiveness, especially with racial or anti-Semitic subtext.

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