What is it like to fall into the “murky sewer” of history? Three documentary stories from the Protectorate.
How do people react in extreme situations? What are the consequences of collaborating with the occupier or making a pact with the devil? Our modern history is not paved only with heroism, self-sacrifice, and principle, but also with failure, betrayal, and collaboration. Miloš Doležal, who has long studied the figure of the communist martyr Father Josef Toufar, this time focuses on the Protectorate period. The traces left by the main protagonists of his book are still visible and bloody today. However, the author does not judge people or history; rather, he carefully unravels fateful moments, tries to understand inner motives, and offers a glimpse into the tragic game that Evil plays with man.
These three documentary stories are not a historical study, but a vivid and readable portrait of several dark figures: Bohuslav Bušta, alias “Zwirn”, a tailor from the Vysočina region who became an agile Gestapo informant in Tábor. Oskar “Kari” Felkl, a pre-war Czechoslovak gendarme, later a member of the Gestapo in Kladno and one of the architects of the massacre and burning of Lidice, and his wife. And finally, the paratrooper Karel Čurda, a member of the OUT DISTANCE parachute group sent to the Protectorate in the spring of 1942, who betrayed his comrades and colleagues and became a Gestapo collaborator named Karl Jerhot.
