Ingeborg Fialová

“I’m glad I have many different roots, that it’s not a single Czechness or Germanness. It is a little bit of everything, and I value each of my roots very much: the Jewishness, the old Austrianness, the Germanness and the Czechness that I inherited a little from Grandma Mimi. However, I definitely do not feel like a Czech, Austrian, or German patriot. On the contrary, such patriotism, even if well-intentioned as patriotism, is very suspect because any, even well-intentioned, patriotic action can end in nationalism, chauvinism, the Shoah and the extermination of others.”

“After the coup in 1948 until 1989, Judaism and any acknowledgement of Jewish roots was sometimes even dangerous, definitely taboo. So during my teenage years, I had no idea I had Jewish roots. My father, who I think was a baptized Catholic, did not profess to any religion, neither Jewish nor Catholic. So I learned that I have Jewish roots only in college, thanks to Lucy Topoľská. She was my teacher and later a great friend and Germanist, who herself is half Jewish. Her mother was Jewish. I somehow started talking to her during my studies, and she revealed my roots to me. And so we started talking about Judaism, and I became interested. I have been interested in the Jewish topic even as a professional topic for research ever since. So I apply myself to it within the literature. One of my research topics is German Jewish literature and Jewish authors from Moravia. I like to read it, and sometimes I write something about it. So I only have that knowledge from college. Only then did I start asking my grandmother.”