page_title: František R. Kraus
section_title: After the war
hierarchical_section_title: František R. Kraus / After the war
caption_attribution_description: Čeština: FRK po válce v Pinkasové synagóze.
context_page_description: František R. Kraus was a Czechoslovak Jewish anti-fascist writer, journalist and editor, member of the
  resistance movement and a sportsman.
  He wrote for the famous Prager Tagblatt, Freie Presse, and others, and was an editor in the Czechoslovak Radio, founder of its Shortwave section and speaker for the Foreign section in Czech, German, French and English.
  In his literary work, he deals with reflexion of the Holocaust in Czechoslovakia; topics such as human existence, dignity, justice, guilt and hope. Main theme of his short stories is a pictorial world of weird figures and characters from old Prague.
  Due to his political prosecution during the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, vast majority of his work was censored and banned. One of his disciples, Arnošt Lustig, considered him to be one of the most important modern Czech writers ever and compared him to authors such as Jack London, Egon Erwin Kisch or Primo Levi and taught his legacy in universities in the United States. However, Kraus still remains to be relatively unknown in the present-day Czech Republic, because most of his books remain unpublished.
context_section_description: Immediately when Prague was liberated, Kraus came back home. He was miraculously reunited with not only his wife Alice, who also survived Terezín and Auschwitz, but also both of Kraus' parents survived b amiracle. They then lived together at the Jewish Quarter in Prague.
  The Communist Putsch in Czechoslovakia in 1948 influenced not only Kraus' works, but also himself. After the war, he rejoined the Czech Press Office and Czechoslovak Radio, where he became the founder and head of short-wave foreign broadcasting. He also acted as a speaker in the English, French and German editorial and commentator for Central Europe, his most important student being Arnost Lustig. All this ended in the early 1950s during the Process with the Slansky. Kraus has lost his seat in both CTK and Radio. He was not allowed to publish, his work was repeatedly changed by the censorship regime, then completely rebuked, with the slightest reasoning that "the Holocaust has been completely exhausted for five years after the war, it is past and no one else is interested in. People now have to focus on the future, Building a new, better and more just society - Communism. "
  No more work was left out of the publishing house - The Three Rifles novel, the novel for children The Song about Lée, and the latest Kraus novel The face number 5, where the main role is played by a Nazi criminal who changes the form and identity after the war. This theme was used in the Barrandov film Lost Face, but without mentioning any mention of the original author.
  Kraus, however, published under pseudonyms or foreign names, especially his stories from Old Prague at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, enjoyed a great popularity in the 1960s and came, for example, in Evening Prague. Under his own name he published regularly in the Jewish Yearbook. [4] He was employed at the Jewish religious community in Prague, where he headed the cultural department. Thanks to his rich contacts at this time, such personalities such as Jan Werich, Karel Gott, Judita Čeřovská and Waldemar Matuska performed in the cultural programs and celebrations of the Jewish holidays.
  Franz Kraus died in Prague on May 19, 1967. He was to welcome the "ice melting" after the Liberec conference on Franz Kafka, which he considered to be a turning point in cultural and political life, but the Prague Spring did not.
  He is buried at the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague.
  In 2003, Bystrov and his sons published a novel from the environment of Old Prague, Terezin and Auschwitz without a shadow. In 2013, the 3rd edition of the book Gas, Gas ..., then Fire (Grantis) was released. In May 2015, the book Holocaust, a blind track of history, was published by Roman Cielko, the researcher and literary writer, where Kraus's memories are one third of the book.
caption: FRK after the war in Prague, reading off the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue names of his murdered comrades.
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