4th February is the Day of Czechs Living Abroad, which we are commemorating for the fourth year. This date was chosen by the Czechs themselves, and not by chance – on this day in 1628, John Amos Comenius, the “teacher of nations”, went into exile and spent many years away from his homeland.
The theme of the exile experience has a strong tradition in Czech literature and is the subject of one of our current projects, Czech Literary Exile 1948–1989.
The reflection of exile in our records includes not only the view of the emigrants on the situation in their home country but also, for example, the reports appearing in the local official press, which often try to distort and dishonest the image of the West.
In our database, you can view over 5,000 of these records, many of which also contain links to full-text documents available free of charge, for example, on Sriptum.cz.
