During the horrors of Buchenwald concentration camp, Czech writer and musician Jiří Žák was somehow able to orchestrate moments of humanity through the forbidden rhythms of jazz. Fellow prisoner and renowned author Jorge Semprún recalled how Žák's passion for jazz music transformed into an act of cultural resistance, organizing clandestine performances that offered brief escapes from the daily brutality. This underground jazz band, formed under the most harrowing circumstances, represented not just entertainment but a declaration of defiance. When liberation finally came in April 1945, Žák channelled this musical resistance into celebration, arranging concerts for Allied troops that bridged the gap between imprisonment and freedom.
Born on November 11, 1917, in České Budějovice, Austria-Hungary (later Czechoslovakia), Žák showed remarkable literary talent from an early age. While attending high school and business school in Pilsen, he published his first volume of short stories at just fifteen years old in 1932. A year later, he followed this with a collection of poems titled "Open Window." His early literary success was accompanied by growing political consciousness, leading him to join the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia around 1935. However, the Stalinist purges sweeping through European communist parties resulted in his first expulsion from the party in 1938.
Following Nazi Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Žák was arrested by the occupying forces in April. His journey through the Nazi concentration camp system began with imprisonment in Dachau, followed by transfer to Buchenwald in September 1939. There, he worked in the clerk's office while secretly organizing cultural resistance through music. He remained in Buchenwald until the camp's liberation in April 1945. In his book Ten last days - Buchenwald he describes the last days in captivity that decided the fate, existence or oblivion of prisoners who had survived years behind barbed wire and were now liberated.
After the war, Žák returned to Pilsen and rebuilt his career as a journalist. His political rehabilitation led to significant positions within communist media: in 1945, he became chief propagandist for the communist press in Czechoslovakia, and by 1947, he was appointed editor-in-chief of the Communist Party's Sunday newspaper in Prague (later renamed "Haló") and the party weekly "Květy."
However, his relationship with the Party remained turbulent. In 1952, he faced his second expulsion from the Communist Party and lost his editorial positions. Reduced to working as a construction worker on the Slap dam, his health, already compromised by his concentration camp experience, suffered further. By 1954, he left construction work and turned to independent journalism and writing, sometimes using pseudonyms.
Throughout the 1960s, Žák produced significant literary works, many drawing from his wartime experiences. Together with Jaroslav Strnad, Zak compiled a significant (708-page) collection of documentary material, Buchenwald varuje (Buchenwald Warns), which reveals the history of the establishment and development of Buchenwald and is a shocking testimony to the crimes of the Hitler regime. It deals in detail with the organisation of the camp, the slave labour of the prisoners, the development and forms of the prisoners' struggle, and the international solidarity of the prisoners who fought against the terror in inhuman conditions until their liberation by their own forces on 11 April 1945. The collection, published on behalf of the International Federation of Resistance Fighters, Victims and Prisoners of Fascism, was supplemented by a Czech translation of memories and testimonies of Buchenwald prisoners. His works also include "Say Hello to Us at Home" (1961), "The End of Commissioner Glaser" (1961), and two autobiographical books: "Thirsty" (1964) and "Entrance Fees are Non-refundable" (1969). He also translated German works into Czech, including Bruno Apitz's "Naked Among Wolves" and wrote a biography of Wernher von Braun.
