Valerie "Valli" Kafka Pollak (25 September 1890 in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

– Fall of 1942 at

Chełmno extermination camp Chełmno or Kulmhof was the first of Nazi Germany's extermination camps and was situated north of Łódź, near the village of Chełmno nad Nerem. Following the invasion of Poland in 1939, Germany annexed the area into the new territory of Re ...

) was the second oldest sister of

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ty ...

Life

Valli Kafka attended the German Girls' School in Prague and later a private further educational instutuion for girls. Little is known about Kafka's relationship with Valli. Of all the siblings, she was supposedly the one who had the least trouble with her father, Hermann Kafka. Outwardly, she seemed discreet and adjusted, however she was well-read and inclined to language. She married commercial employee Josef Pollak with whom she had two daughters, Marianne (1913–2000) and Lotte (1914–1931). She became one of the first woman teachers in the Prague Jewish School founded in 1920. In late October 1941 Valli and her husband were deported to the

Łódź Ghetto The Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto (after the Nazi German name for Łódź) was a Nazi ghetto established by the German authorities for Polish Jews and Roma following the Invasion of Poland. It was the second-largest ghetto in all of ...

where they lived together temporarily with Valli's sister Elli and her daughter Hanna in the spring of 1942. Valerie Pollak was probably murdered in the fall of 1942 in the

. Elli and the third sister Ottla as well as other relatives also became victims of the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

. At the family grave in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague, a plaque commemorates the three sisters. Her first daughter Marianne emigrated to

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

along with her husband Georg Steiner in 1939. She looked after the inheritance of her uncle

in the

Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the sec ...

in the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in contin ...

References

Bibliography

External links

Page of Fischer-Verlages about Valli Kafka

Page about the daughter Marianne

''The Final Journey of Franz Kafka's Sisters''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kafka, Valli 1890 births People from Prague 1942 deaths Franz Kafka Austro-Hungarian Jews People from the Kingdom of Bohemia Łódź Ghetto inmates Czech Jews who died in the Holocaust