Czech historian Jan Tesař, biographer of Romani resistance fighter Josef Serinek, has passed away
Jan Tesař, a former dissident and historian who was repeatedly imprisoned by the Czechoslovak communist regime and later forced to emigrate, has passed away at 92. He authored an exceptional three-volume publication charting the life of the Romani partisan Josef Serinek, Česká cikánská rapsodie [Bohemian Gypsy Rhapsody].
The A2 biweekly cultural magazine and historian Michal Stehlík announced his passing. Mr. Tesař was born on 2 June 1933 in Skutč in the Chrudim district of Czechoslovakia, studied history in Prague at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts, and worked at the Military History Institute.
Mr. Tesař was mainly concerned with the history of the Nazi German occupation until the August 1968 Warsaw Pact occupation, at which point he joined the resistance to the emerging normalization period. He was first arrested in 1969 and released without trial more than a year later.
He was arrested again in 1971 and one year later was sentenced to six years in prison. After his release he became one of the first signatories of Charter 77 and participated in the establishment of the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS).
After another arrest and other pressures from Czechoslovak State Security, Mr. Tesař accepted the regime’s offer to be deported in 1980. He worked in exile, first in Germany and later in France.
Mr. Tesař authored the book Mnichovský komplex [The Munich Complex], which became the loose inspiration for the film “Ztraceni v Mnichově” by the director and screenwriter Petr Zelenka. Tesař’s writings from 1967-1969 about the beginning of the Nazi German occupation, entitled Traktát o “záchraně národa” [Tractate on the “Salvation of the Nation”], were also published in book form.
Česká cikánská rapsodie – a document of a lost culture
A significant milestone in Czech historiography and Romani studies is his work Česká cikánská rapsodie [Bohemian Gypsy Rhapsody], which is an extensive collection of commentaries, historical analyses, and oral testimonies on the life of Josef Serinek (1900–1974), a Czech Roma who became commander of the Chapayev partisan group during World War II. Mr. Tesař first met Mr. Serinek in the early 1960s.
The historian recorded the partisan’s memories and spent a decade supplementing them through his own analysis and historical interpretation. The result is more than 1,400 pages combining his critical reflections with eyewitness accounts and military-historical analysis of the second Czech resistance and the position of Roma in Czech society.
Serinek survived the concentration camp in Lety, set up his own partisan unit and became an active fighter against the Nazis. After the war he was the recipient of several decorations, but both his person and his story were then ignored for some time.
Mr. Tesař’s work shows how Czech society approached issues of race not just during the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, but also after the war, and how racism persisted even after the defeat of Nazism. Česká cikánská rapsodie is not only the pinnacle of his own historical work, but also one of the few truly worthy monuments to the Romani resistance in the former Czechoslovakia.
In the history of both Czech historiography and Romani studies, Mr. Tesař’s work will be associated primarily with the effort to capture this story that had been so long overlooked.
