Czech-Israeli Writer Viktor Fischl in the Context of World Events During the 20th Century

Abstract

Viktor Fischl (Avigdor Dagan, 1912–2006) was an important writer, a journalist and a diplomat of Czech Jewish origin. During the inter-war period, he wrote about the topic of Judaism, during the WWII he helped to defend Czechoslovak interests in the service of Czechoslovak government-in-exile. In his second home Israel, holocaust and parallels between the Nazis and the Communist totality in Soviet satellites became his topic. He was active in public affairs as a writer and as a diplomat (he was Israeli chargé d´affaires in Japan, in Burma and ambassador in Poland, Yugoslavia, Norway and Austria). This study searches for the sources of Fischl´s life philosophy and describes the formation of his cultural and national identity while using his texts and analyzing the Czech cultural discourse.