Authors

Johana Kłusek¹;  ¹ Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Czechia

Discussion

The British exile experience dominates the contemporary Czech narrative of the Second World War. Since 1990, RAF pilots have consistently been the first to receive the highest state orders and medals from the Czech president during the annual celebrations of the founding of Czechoslovakia. Bookstalls have been stocked with dozens of memoirs by former pilots as well as politicians and diplomats who spent the war years in Britain. After Jan Svěrák’s Kolya won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1996, the world eagerly awaited his next project. He chose a romantic story about two Czech pilots who compete for the love of an Englishwoman in the midst of the Battle of Britain. The potency of the British exile narrative rivals only the commemoration of the repressions following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942.

In this paper, I examine the long construction of this narrative and its role in building national identity. The origins of this narrative are as old as the exile experience itself. I will demonstrate how key features of the wartime exile media discourse—which was profoundly positive—echo in the memoirs published after the war and in oral interviews recorded in the 1990s and 2000s. 

Three main reasons underpin the choice of the British exile as the primary Czech reference point for the Second World War. First, it is a deeply anti-communist narrative, making it well-suited to the needs of post-1989 society. Second, it diverts attention from the issue of Czech collaboration with the Nazis, a topic the Czech people have yet to fully confront. Third, it provides a safe discursive space, which is often sought when dealing with extremely traumatic and psychologically destabilizing periods such as the Second World War. My interpretation of this last, and most enduring, reason draws on the concepts of Zygmunt Bauman (community as a safety in an insecure world), Elisa Tamarkin (deference as a key to faith in a world), Karl Deutsch (love), and Michael Hardt (political love). 

In conclusion, I argue that positive stories have a vital place in the memory of war conflicts. When presented in the appropriate context, their purpose is not to conceal or diminish the horrors of war but to aid in healing and to inspire people to embrace life again.