THE 'FORGOTTEN CZECH SCHINDLER'
PITTER, Přemysl.
Domovu i exilu [Home and Exile].
London, Čechoslovák-FCI, [1956].
8vo, pp. 95, [1 (contents)]; a very good copy in the original illustrated stiff-paper wrappers, with illustrated dustjacket; extremities browned; signature of H.G. Adler in pencil on half-title.
[offered with:]
PITTER, Přemysl. Na předělu věků [At a watershed of epochs]. [Nuremberg, F. Straub (Munich) for] Kruh přatel duchovní obrody, [1959].
8vo, pp. 106, [2 (contents, advertisements)]; original printed stiff-paper wrappers, extremities browned; signature of H. G. Adler in pencil on half-title; typescript letter dated 1959 loosely inserted (see below).
First editions, association copies, of a series of radio transcripts by the humanitarian Protestant lay preacher and educator Přemysl Pitter (1895–1976), often described as the ‘forgotten Czech Schindler’, owned by the Czech-Jewish poet, novelist, and Holocaust survivor H.G. Adler.
Broadcast over twenty-five sessions by Radio Free Europe and the BBC and here published by Free Czechoslovak Information, a news agency established by Czech émigré Josef Josten, Domovu i exilu is directed at Czechoslovaks behind the Iron Curtain and Czechoslovak political refugees abroad, and is the first of Pitter’s books to have been published in exile. Na předělu věků, published three years later, adds a further twenty-six radio broadcasts, many of them delivered from the Valka refugee camp near Nuremberg. The son of a printer, Pitter originally intended to carry on in the family firm, but after experiencing the horror of the trenches on the Italian front in the First World War, he came home a Christian and a pacifist, resolved to devote the rest of his life to humanitarian works. He began working with children in a poor suburb of Prague, where he founded the ‘Milicuv dum’ school in 1933. When the Nazis marched into the Czech capital six years later, Pitter began to take in Jewish children.
Although the majority were discovered by the Nazis and taken away, hundreds were saved thanks to Pitter. In recognition of his efforts, Yad Vashem has named Pitter ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ and a tree stands in Jerusalem in his honour. In 1951, to avoid persecution in Stalinist Czechoslovakia, Pitter went abroad, where he continued his humanitarian work, and produced books on various subjects. His works have never been translated into English.
After the war, Pitter created a number of houses for the Jewish children returning from the concentration camps, and educated them alongside Czech and German children. He was aided in this endeavour from July to December 1945 by the writer Hans Günther Adler (1910–1988), recipient of the Leo Baeck Prize, the Prix Charles Veillon, and the Buber-Rosenzweig medal and survivor of Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald, who came to Prague following the liberation of Buchenwald on 13 April 1945 and subsequently fled to London in 1947. Loosely inserted in our copy of Na předělu věků is a 1959 letter from diplomat Pavel Růžička, a friend of Pitter’s who settled in Ireland after the war and sent Pitter funds to support German internees. The letter, sent on behalf of the author, requests that any reviews of the newly published work be submitted in time for Christmas.
