In the former building of the Accident Hospital, the Franz Kafka Spital museum is set to open

Brno – In the former building of the Accident Hospital on Koliště, the non-profit organization Amerfo plans to open an experiential museum, the Franz Kafka Spital, next spring, which will guide visitors through the history of Brno and this extensive building in the 20th century, said director Pavel Paleček today to ČTK.

People could visit the building today as well as on previous days during various events of the multi-genre festival Štetl Fest, which focuses on Jewish culture. Paleček conducted a guided tour of the building today, and there were also guided tours of a photographic exhibition titled Jewish Identity in Photography. Paleček also spoke about the writer Franz Kafka, after whom the building is now named and which is closely associated with his life. One of the rooms in the museum is to be dedicated to him.

Kafka was a relatively high-ranking employee of the Workers' Accident Insurance Company for Moravia and Silesia at its Prague headquarters and communicated intensively with the Brno management. "And at the end of his life, he wrote that if he recovered, he wanted to move to Brno. His work at the insurance company also significantly influenced his literary creation, and he drew inspiration from this environment," noted Paleček.

The building has served the insurance company since its inception in 1913 and was part of the Accident Hospital until 2001. Today it belongs to the city, and Paleček's company has been part of it since 2019. In some rooms, they created an experiential hostel, which was equipped like a hospital from the 1960s, where it was possible to spend the night.

"The whole project connects the world of the healthy and the sick; people with disabilities work here and take care of visitors just like in shelter 10-Z under Špilberk," described Paleček. When the war in Ukraine began, the Franz Kafka Spital closed to tourists and interested parties, and its capacity was opened to help refugees. "But we would like to reopen part of it to the general public in spring," said Paleček.

The history of the 20th century and this building will offer a rather dark experience, similar to the often dark 20th century. "People will walk through authentic spaces, they will be able to listen to the memories of people whose stories are related to the exhibition. One room is dedicated to Jews in Brno, and it contains preserved parts of the largest Brno synagogue, which stood under the museum's windows and was the center of the Jewish community in Brno," said Paleček. Among other things, the synagogue stood until the end of the 1980s.

In another room, the stories of people who were treated here during the time of Stalinism will be recalled. "From the interrogation room of the StB on Příční, they brought in beaten interrogatees and wanted doctors to patch them up so they could speak in court. That tells the story of Příční as well, where many people were beaten," said Paleček.

Another room is jokingly about those who did not complete their treatment. "We found materials showing how doctors after World War II searched for patients so that no one would reprimand them for not completing their treatment. It was bizarre because it involved Germans or Jews who were dying from some illness, yet in 1945 they were driven out of Brno, and if they were Jews, they received an invitation to transport. We want to show the inhumanity of driving people to their deaths due to illness," said Paleček.

One of the rooms will also recall the fates of Miloš Knorr, a Czechoslovak officer and resistor who fought abroad against Nazism and after 1948 worked for some time in Vienna in the service of the American intelligence.

Paleček is aware that a visitor will likely have grim feelings from their visit to the museum. "But when you go to a place called Franz Kafka Spital, that can probably be expected," he said. The museum feels very authentic. "We preserved the spaces as best we could. Jokingly, we even left some dirt on the walls. We want people to take away an experience that impacts them," added Paleček.