Petr Balajka: Ottla

A biographical play about Franz Kafka's closest sister. Ottla was not only Kafka's confidante, she often helped him with practical matters that she was better able to handle. She helped him find independent housing, rented and adapted a house in Zlatá ulička where he could write undisturbed after work, because the busy environment of the Kafka's apartment in Dlouhá Street did not allow him to do so. Ottla proved her legendary devotion and courage in the difficult days of the Protectorate, when the barbaric Nuremberg laws caught up with her and her sisters, and even later in Terezín, where she took care of orphans. There she also took in impoverished Jewish children from Poland and voluntarily accompanied them to the transport to Auschwitz. Shortly after arriving there in October 1943, she was murdered in the gas chamber along with all her children.