The Silence of the Occupied in Czech Literature, 1940–46

Abstract

The use of silence to characterize the dominant response of occupied populations during the Second World War recurs throughout post-war European literature and is especially prominent in Czech writing. Interpreting the meaning of this silence therefore became central to Czech efforts to establish a preferred narrative about the German occupation in the immediate post-war period. Through analysis of the motif in more and less well-known works published between 1940 and 1946, I shall map the narrowing understanding of the silence of the occupied from its varied, ambiguous portrayal in the now forgotten first Czech novel about the Occupation, Silences by Josef Horal, to its unequivocal interpretation as resistance in Jan Drda's canonical The Mute Barricade. While this narrowing reflects Tony Judt's notion of a “collective amnesia” necessary for national unity and recovery, the marginalization of certain perspectives also presages the broader move in Czech post-war society away from pluralism to nationalist authoritarianism.