Janet Clara Malcolm was an American writer, staff journalist at The New Yorker magazine, and collagist who fled antisemitic persecution in Nazi-occupied Prague just before it became impossible to escape. She was the author of Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (1981), In the Freud Archives (1984), and The Journalist and the Murderer (1990). Malcolm wrote frequently about psychoanalysis and explored the relationship between journalist and subject. She was known for her prose style and for polarizing criticism of her profession, especially in her most contentious work, The Journalist and the Murderer, which has become a staple of journalism-school curricula.
Milena Jesenská was a Czech journalist, writer, editor and translator.
Helen Kleinbort Krauze is a Polish-born Mexican Jewish journalist who worked for over five decades as an interviewer, features and travel writer and columnist. She was first with Novedades, later with El Heraldo de México and more recently with Sol de Mexico and Protocolo magazine.
Arnošt Lustig was a renowned Czech Jewish author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays whose works have often involved the Holocaust.
Irène Némirovsky was a novelist of Ukrainian Jewish origin who was born in Kiev, then in the Russian Empire. She lived more than half her life in France, and wrote in French, but was denied French nationality. Arrested as a Jew under the racial laws – which did not take into account her conversion to Roman Catholicism – she was murdered in Auschwitz at the age of 39. Némirovsky is best known for the posthumously published Suite française.
Katherine Pancol is a French journalist and novelist. Her books have been translated into some 30 languages, and sold millions of copies worldwide. In the United States, she is known as the author of The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles and its sequel, The Slow Waltz of Turtles, both translated by William Rodarmor.
Heda Margolius Kovály was a Czech writer and translator. She survived the Łódź ghetto and Auschwitz where her parents died. She later escaped whilst being marched to Bergen-Belsen to find that no one would take her in. Her husband was made a deputy minister in Czechoslovakia and he was then hanged as a traitor. As the wife of disgraced man she married again and she and her husband were treated badly. They left for the US in 1968 when the country was invaded by the Warsaw Pact countries. She published her biography in 1973. She and her husband did not return to her homeland until 1996.
Rosie Whitehouse is a British historical researcher, journalist and author.
Helen Lewis MBE was a pioneer of modern dance in Northern Ireland, and made her name as a dance teacher and choreographer. A survivor of the Holocaust, she was also known for her memoir of her experiences during the Second World War.
Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968 was published first under this title by Plunkett Lake Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1986. The memoir was written by Heda Margolius Kovály and translated with Franci and Helen Epstein. It is now available in a Holmes & Meier, New York 1997 edition (ISBN 0-8419-1377-3), in a Plunkett Lake Press 2010 eBook edition and in a Granta, London 2012 edition (ISBN 978-1-84708-476-7). Prague Farewell was the book title in the UK in previous editions. The memoir was originally written in Czech and published in Canada under the title Na vlastní kůži by 68 Publishers, a well-known publishing house for Czech expatriates, in Toronto in 1973. An English translation appeared in the same year as the first part of the book The Victors and the Vanquished published by Horizon Press in New York. A British edition of the book excluded the second treatise and was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson under the title I Do Not Want To Remember in 1973. The book is also available in Chinese (ISBN 978-7-5360-6942-8), Danish (ISBN 978-87-7467-106-0), Dutch (ISBN 90-254-6826-8), French (ISBN 2-228-88397-2), German (ISBN 3-87134-035-9), Romanian (ISBN 978-606-8653-57-0), Spanish (ISBN 978-84-15625-26-1), Italian (ISBN 978-88-459-3164-2) and the original Czech editions (ISBN 978-80-200-2038-3). Additional background information to the book is available in Heda Margolius Kovály and Helena Třeštíková: Hitler, Stalin and I: An Oral History, DoppelHouse Press 2018, Los Angeles, (ISBN 978-0-9987770-0-9), (ISBN 978-0-9978184-7-5).
Eva Fogelman is an American psychologist, writer, filmmaker and a pioneer in the treatment of psychological effects of the Holocaust on survivors and their descendants. She is the author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust and co-editor of Children During the Nazi Reign: Psychological Perspectives on the Interview Process. She is the writer and co-producer of the award-winning documentary Breaking the Silence: the Generation After the Holocaust and co-author of Children in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath: Historical and Psychological Studies of the Kestenberg Archive (2019).
Kurt Epstein was a Czechoslovakian Olympic water polo player and survivor of Nazi concentration camps.
Ottilie "Ottla" Kafka was the youngest sister of Franz Kafka. His favourite sister, she was probably also his closest relative and supported him in difficult times. Their correspondence was published as Letters to Ottla. She was murdered in the Holocaust.
Paul Hermann Ornstein was a Hungarian-American psychoanalyst and Holocaust survivor.
Doreen Agnes Rosemary Julia Warriner was an English development economist and humanitarian. In October 1938, she journeyed to Czechoslovakia to assist anti-Nazi refugees fleeing the Sudetenland, recently occupied by Germany. She became the head of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia in Prague which helped 15,000 German, Czech, and Jewish refugees escape Czechoslovakia while the country was being occupied and annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938 and 1939. Told that she would be arrested by the Germans Warriner departed Czechoslovakia on 23 April 1939. "From 1947 to 1966 she was on the staff of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, where she was made a reader in 1960 and a professor in 1964". Britain awarded her an OBE in 1941. She was a posthumous recipient of the British Hero of the Holocaust award.
Ruth Bondy was a Czech-Israeli journalist and translator. Bondy was a Holocaust survivor who wrote for the Israeli newspaper Davar and translated books written in Czech to Hebrew. She was awarded the Sokolov Award in 1987 and the Tchernichovsky Prize in 2014.
Anne-Lise Stern was a French psychoanalyst and Holocaust survivor.
Joanie Holzer Schirm is an author, entrepreneur, and community activist. In 1991, she founded Geotechnical and Environmental Consultants, Inc. and served as the president until her retirement in 2008, when she sold the company. She served for 35 years in the business of engineering in management and marketing roles in Atlanta and Orlando and in numerous community leadership efforts, most notably as the founding volunteer president of the Central Florida Sports Commission and chair of Orlando's successful bid and host committee for the 1994 FIFA World Cup.
Leslie Gilbert-Lurie is an American author, community leader, philanthropist, lawyer, and former television executive. Her memoir, Bending Toward the Sun, was published in 2009 by HarperCollins. She frequently moderates panel discussions and publicly speaks on topics related to human rights and policy reform.
Friderike Maria Zweig was an Austrian writer.
