Miroslav Kárný


Miroslav Kárný was an historian and writer from Prague, Czechoslovakia.

Early life and education

Kárný was born into an assimilated Jewish family. His mother ran a shop selling candy and haberdashery and his father was a tradesman. After graduating from the gymnasium, Kárný studied history and Czech language at the Charles University of Prague from 1937 to 1939. During this time, he joined the students' communist organisation Kostufra.

Deportation

Because he was Jewish, Kárný was sent on 24 November 1941 to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where he met his future wife, Margita Krausová. Both became active in the communist resistance group in Theresienstadt and collaborated with Josef Taussig, Bruno Zwicker, Valtr Eisinger, Josef Stiassny and Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. In September 1944, they were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in occupied Poland. From there, Kárný was deported for slave labour to the Kaufering concentration camp in Germany, a subcamp of Dachau.
After the war, he became a journalist, then a freelance historian, specializing in the Holocaust and German fascism. He was expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia due to condemnation of his brother Jiří in the anti-Semitic Slánský trial, and for a second time in 1969, after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. He retired in 1973.

Publications

;Books
;Articles