A Discussion about Religious Questions

Karel Polácek

1926

So, Mr. Blum?

So, Mr. Blau?

What’s with you, Mr. Blum?

What should be with me, Mr. Blau?

How should I know what’s with you, Mr. Blum? I’m asking you. May I not ask? Why are you staring so?

I’m staring? I’m not staring.

You are staring. You will not tell me anything. I see into you, Mr. Blum. You are sad, Mr. Blum. You are angry, Mr. Blum.

I’m not…

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Creator Bio

Karel Polácek

1892–1945

Karel Polácek was one of the wittiest writers in interwar Czechoslovakia. Born into a Czech-speaking home in a small Bohemian town, he became a journalist after serving in the Habsburg army in World War I. He wrote plays, film scripts, short stories, novels, and short humorous essays. They targeted political extremism, stereotyped political thinking, bourgeois narrow-mindedness, and the clichés of everyday life. Although he formally withdrew from the Jewish community in 1919, he published his Stories of the Israelite Faith in 1926 and a collection of Jewish humor. He was deported to Terezín in 1943 and then to Auschwitz in 1944 and probably died on a death march in 1945.

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