Universes in Universe

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Vera Hozáková: Longing (1941)

Info / context to the poem

I love nature... I was a scout. Before my imprisonment I took a trip to eastern Czechoslovakia. We have mountains there and such lovely people... that remained with me for a long time... that was longing...
Vera Hozáková from an interview, 1997.

There are three words that recur in camp poetry and that not only the then young Czech communist Vera Hozáková considers the source of her survival power: Hope, friendship, and longing. For Vera Hozáková, longing was nourished above all by a deeply felt sense of harmony with nature. (C. Jaiser)

Author - biography

Vera Hozáková

Vera Hozáková, born under the name of Vera Fialová on 28 October 1917, joined the Communist Party at the age of twenty. She was arrested for having contact with Jozef Smerkowski, for whom she was a liaison to the party. On 14 January 1942, she was deported with sixty women from the Pankrác prison in Prague to the Ravensbrück concentration camp (n° 9011). There she worked for some time in the crafts production. From the fall of 1943 on, she worked in the construction management office. She wrote numerous poems, not all of which have survived. She also participated in the illegal choir led by Anicka Kvapilová. For her, it was the poems, the friendships and the firm hope for a future that helped her survive the concentration camp.

In 1943/44 she supported Vlasta Kladivová in secretly making a collection of poems and resistance songs "Europa u boji. 1939 -1944" (Europe in Struggle) . Vera Hozáková wrote down the poems in ink and provided the book with illustrations. Some of her own poems also found their way into the collection.

After liberation, Vera Hozáková remained at Ravensbrück until the end of May 1945 to care for her friends in the infirmary. In the year of her return home, she married her fiancé, who had been waiting for her. She gave birth to four children and worked as an architect, living in Hradec Kralóve, Czech Republic. A few years ago, Vera Hozáková wrote down her memoirs to bear witness and to encourage those who come after her to "reject lies, demagogy, herd instinct and collective responsibility" for all time to come.

Text in original language