He could have never imagined.
- Apr 6
- 1 min read
Human experience is sometimes a strange thing. Take for example the life of Franz Kafka, a young man universally recognized today as a giant of 20th century literature. He lived a short life, dying from tuberculosis at the age of 40, and during that short life, he suffered from a great lack of confidence in his writing abilities.
Kafka’s best known work is Metamorphosis, the story of Gregor Samsa who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a giant insect. He is reviled more and more by all around him, including his own family who ultimately kill him and happily move on without him.
How could Franz have imagined that one morning, only a few short years later, his Jewish family would wake in Prague to find themselves suddenly sub-human, described as vermin? How could he have imagined that almost everyone he knew and grew up with would one day be exterminated? Did his sister Ottla think of Gregor Samsa when she shepherded a frightened group of orphans to Auschwitz and was killed there with them?
What makes this tale such a strange one is that Franz Kafka never knew or imagined any of these things. He died in 1924, fifteen years before the Nazis marched into Prague…
