Ivan Klima, the Czech novelist whose life and work were forged in the fires of two totalitarian regimes—Nazi and Communist—has died at age 94. A Holocaust survivor, dissident, teacher, and prolific writer, Klima became one of Eastern Europe’s most powerful voices on memory, moral compromise, and the fragile resilience of hope .
From Terezin to the Underground: A Life of Resistance
Born Ivan Kauders in Prague in 1931 to secular Jewish parents, Klima’s childhood ended abruptly when Nazi Germany occupied Czechoslovakia. At age 7, he was forced to wear the yellow star. By 1941, he and his family were imprisoned in the Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp—just 40 miles north of Prague.
There, amid daily fear of deportation to Auschwitz, the young Klima began writing. “That life can be snapped like a piece of string—that was my daily lesson as a child,” he later wrote .
Miraculously, the family survived—likely because his father managed the camp’s electrical systems and was deemed “essential.” After the war, they changed their surname to Klima, shedding its Germanic roots for a more Czech identity.
Defying the Communist Regime
Klima’s defiance didn’t end with the Nazis. After the 1968 Soviet-led invasion crushed the Prague Spring, he chose to return to Prague from a U.S. sabbatical—unlike contemporaries such as Milan Kundera who left permanently.
He was soon blacklisted, expelled from the Communist Party, and banned from publishing. For two decades, he worked as a street sweeper, bricklayer, and hospital orderly—experiences he transformed into literature.
- Underground publisher: Smuggled banned texts to Western publishers.
- Clandestine salon host: Organized secret literary gatherings with Vaclav Havel and other dissidents.
- Samizdat writer: Circulated hand-typed manuscripts like “Judge on Trial” and “Love and Garbage” through Prague’s intellectual underground.
Klima’s Literary Legacy: Key Works
| Work | Year | Theme |
|---|---|---|
| Judge on Trial | 1991 (written 1986) | Moral ambiguity under dictatorship; memory and justice |
| Love and Garbage | 1986 | Existential despair vs. transcendent love; life as a street cleaner |
| My Golden Trades | 1993 | Stories from his menial jobs during the Communist ban |
| My Crazy Century (Memoir) | 2009–2012 | Personal history of 20th-century totalitarianism in Czechoslovakia |
“A Walking Symbol of What Our Country Endured”
“Ivan Klima is one of the greatest Czech writers,” said Jiri Pehe, director of New York University in Prague. “Having experienced concentration camps and the communist period, he is a walking symbol of what our country endured in this century” .
Even in his darkest works, Klima insisted on hope. “My books may seem somewhat depressing,” he once said. “But they always offer a little hope. I could not write a book without hope.”
After the 1989 Velvet Revolution, his novels sold over 100,000 copies each in Czechoslovakia. His work has since been translated into dozens of languages, with Philip Roth calling him a “much more intellectually evolved Ringo Starr” in a 1990 New York Review of Books cover story.
Survived By
Klima is survived by his wife Helena Mala, son Michal (a journalist), daughter Hana (an artist), brother Jan, four grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
