Jiří Fiedler – Archivist on a Bicycle

The Jewish Museum in Prague has prepared a Czech translation of the English-language e-book Archivist on a Bicycle, which commemorates the life and invaluable work of the Czech historian and translator Jiří Fiedler – a tireless documenter of Jewish sites in the Czech lands during the Communist regime, who published a wealth of material on this subject after the Velvet Revolution.

Jiří Fiedler’s life came to a tragic end in 2014, when he and his wife were brutally murdered in their apartment by a man visiting under the pretext of asking for specialist advice. This tragic event was covered in the local and international media. His obituary was published, for example, in The New York Times.

Co-authored by Dušan Karpatský, Mark Talisman, Leo Pavlát and Rabbi Norman Patz, among others, the e-book Archivist on a Bicycle is a very pleasant read. Not only is it a tribute to the memory of a most interesting person with a distinct sense of humour; it is also an exploration of the circumstances under which the Jewish community operated during the period of Czechoslovak Normalization.

“At a time of destruction, Jiří Fiedler did what, under normal circumstances, specialist institutions should have devoted their time to. On account of his work, he earned the animosity of the secret police and aroused the suspicion of others. At a time when the Jewish cultural heritage in Bohemia and Moravia was treated with utter contempt, he produced a trove of work that can be drawn on by future generations of researchers in the area of Jewish topography”, said Leo Pavlát, the director of the Jewish Museum in Prague.

The original English-language version of the book was initiated by Czech-born American writer and journalist Helen Epstein, who first came into contact with Jiří Fiedler in 1990 when trying to find information about the Czech Jewish community. Over the years, they met in person many times during her research work and became friends.

Helen Epstein was born in Prague in 1947. After the coming to power of the Communist regime, she emigrated with her family to the USA, where she lived in New York. She graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She then became a freelance journalist and also taught courses in creative writing, Jewish studies, women’s studies, and European studies. Her books Children of the Holocaust, Where She Came From and The Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma have also been published in Czech.

Archivist on a Bicycle: Jiří Fiedler

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