Event

The Last Cyclist

A dark joke that made the rounds in Europe between the First and Second World Wars was the inspiration for a bitter comedy an avant-garde cabaret by the young Czech playwright Karel Švenk who was murdered during the Holocaust:

"The Jews and the cyclists are responsible for all our misfortunes!"

"Why the cyclists?"

"Why the Jews?"

The Last Cyclist (Poslední Cyklista) is a daring, gallows-humor, absurdist allegory that expands on the "Jews and the cyclists" theme: The inmates of a mental institution, led by "Ma'am" (Pani) and "Rat" (Krysa), escape from the asylum and take over the outside world. They hound, oppress, exile or kill everyone who rides a bicycle and anyone who has ever had anything to do with cyclists for many generations back.

Written and rehearsed in the concentration camp known as the Terezín Ghetto (in German, Theresienstadt) from the end of 1943 into early 1944 , the play was banned from performance by the ghetto's Council of Jewish Elders whose members feared reprisals because the explicitness of the satire and its references to the irrational behavior of the dictators and their followers were so blatantly and transparently anti-Nazi. Karel Švenk, the author, was sent to Auschwitz several months later and this script, like his others, was lost forever.

The Last Cyclist is an example of the extraordinary resilience displayed by concentration camp inmates. Incredibly, Švenk's play is funny and was meant to be funny. The audiences at Terezín that attended the open rehearsals of The Last Cyclist laughed and we are meant to laugh too. But ours is uncomfortable laughter: first because we realize that the play is not just a joke but, rather, a brave protest against totalitarianism; and, second, because we know the fate of the cast and the rest of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust. The play, in a non-confrontational way, clearly demonstrates that it is the personal responsibility of every human being to fight intolerance, prejudice, bullying and racism.