Karel Poláček

Karel Poláček (22 March 1892 – 21 January 1945) was a Czech writer, humorist and journalist of Jewish descent.

He was born in Rychnov nad Kněžnou into a family of a Jewish trader. He started to attend secondary school (Czech gymnasium) there, but due to his bad results he transferred to a secondary school in Prague, from which he graduated in 1912. He then attended the faculty of law at Charles University.

He was employed as a clerk for a short time. During the First World War he was sent on a Serbian and Galician front. After the war he was employed in the Czechoslovak committee on import and export. But he lost his job after he ridiculed the office in one of his short-stories called Kolotoč (The Carousel). The story is about a family that inherits a carousel but due to a hyperbureaucratic committee on import and export they are not able to sell it abroad.

Josef Čapek offered him a cooperation in 1920. Poláček contributed to a humoristic magazine Nebojsa (English Dreadnought). He started writing short-stories, feature-stories and columns using a pseudonym Kočkodan (English Guenon). Shortly after that in 1922 he was introduced to the editor's office of Lidové noviny (a famous newspaper at that time) by the Čapek brothers. The newspaper published his feature-stories and very popular "soudničky" (stories - usually funny - from the court). His work was published in this newspaper until the Nazi occupation came and forbade it with racist laws.

Then he was hired by the Jewish religious community. By the end of 1943 he was transported to the concentration camp in Terezín and then transported to Auschwitz. He died in Gleiwitz camp.

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