Presentation of Professor Kateřina Králová’s New Book in Athens

Kateřina Králová, Professor of Modern History at Charles University and a researcher at the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, presented her new book HOMECOMING: Holocaust Survivors and Greece, 1941–1946 in Athens on 6 February 2025. The presentation was organized by the Netherlands Institute at Athens. Ivo Šilhavý, the Czech Ambassador, also attended the event.

HOMECOMING draws on years of research into the circumstances surrounding Holocaust survivors’ return from concentration camps back to Greece, conducted by Kateřina Králová with the support of the Jewish Museum of Greece. The book follows up on the unique collective work Návraty (“Returns”), edited by Kateřina Králová and Hana Kubátová in 2016, focusing on the postwar reconstruction of Jewish communities across Central, Southeastern, and Eastern Europe.

Kateřina Králová – presentation of the book HOMECOMING in Athens

Professor Králová has long specialized in the modern history of Greece and has published several books on the subject. Her historical study Nesplacená minulost: Řecko-německé vztahy ve stínu nacismu (Unpaid Debts of the Past: Greek-German Relations in the Shadow of Nazism, 2012) elaborates on the issue of Greek-German relations regarding the period following the World War II, with an emphasis on how the Greek society dealt with the legacy of Nazi occupation and the punishment of war crimes.

The study Vyschly nám slzy…: Řečtí uprchlíci v Československu (We have no tears left to cry: Greek refugees in Czechoslovakia, 2012) is a collective work by a team led by Czech historians of Greece, Kateřina Králová and Konstantinos Tsivos. The study explores the fate of around twelve thousand refugees who fled Greece for Czechoslovakia in the late 1940s and early 1950s, seeking temporary refuge from the civil war. Their temporary stay became a second home.