A wonderful book written in 1938 by the Jewish brothers Martin and Tomáš Wels as a Christmas present for their family has just been released by the Prague-based publisher Triáda. The book is called Sancta Familia and on a space of just a few dozen pages, it paints an incredibly vivid portrait of a middle class Jewish family living in Prague on the brink of the Second World War. It was published in a trilingual edition, which was edited by Czech Radio’s David Vaughan.
I met with David to discuss the book and we started by listening to a short extract from a podcast based on the story of the Wels family, which he prepares for Radio Prague: