UTW 67

Milena Jesenská, born 1989, was a Czech writer, translator, confidante of Franz Kafka.

Of Catholic parentage, she was murdered by the Nazis at the Ravensbrück concentration-death camp, Germany, May 17, 1944.

Art: 2018
Media: Ink, pencil, gouache, colored pencil in the drawing. The drawing paper surrounding the drawing has ten pieces of a (Segan-made 1976) woodcut print (King David) collaged onto the drawing paper.  The proof, printed in gold ink on black paper, was printed by the artist around 2010.
Paper size: 12 1/8 inches H x 1.5 W. Framed

Milena Jesenska was a Czech writer, translator, confidante of and one-time lover of Franz Kafka. She was was of Catholic heritage. Her father, according to Philip Boehm, author of the Introduction in 'Franz Kafka - Letters to Milena' (pub. by Schocken Books, N.Y., 1990, was "Jan Jesensky...a professor at Prague's Charles University... an outspoken Czech nationalist, and anti-Semitic."

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Aside from her one-time romance with Kafka, she was married to a Jewish man, Ernst Pollak. Her father was so outraged at this that he had her forcibly committed to a sanatorium for several months. She came of legal age following her release and married Pollack.

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She was eventually murdered by the Nazis at the Ravensbrück concentration-death camp. In failing health following a kidney operation in the death camp, she died there on May 17, 1944.

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The boat was drawn from a model boat. I found it in a community exchange table where I live. It has a Goodwill sticker on the bottom; someone bought it at a Goodwill store. On seeing it, it brought to mind a much smaller but similarly constructed model ship, which I drew in the forehead of my portrayal of Rüdiger Schleicher, a brother-in-law of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who, like Bonhoeffer, was executed by the Nazis within a few weeks of the end of WWII in Europe, 1945.

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See videos of Bonhoeffer der Jude (a 2012 artwork by Segan).

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Drawing model boat, Holocaust victim memorial portrait Milena Jesenska (1 min., 54 sec)

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Artist reads Milena Jesenska essay excerpt on fate. She perished Ravensbrück, 1944 (3 min., 37 sec)