No Night So Dark; one Jewish family’s story

When Oxford-based Colin Wels first opened a box that his father Tomáš had kept for decades in the back of a cupboard, he entered an unknown past. Through the contents of the box, made up of hundreds of letters and documents, photographs, sketches and drawings, and two remarkable manuscripts, the immense creative energy of several generations of the Czech Jewish Wels family was brought to life.

Colin Wels will discuss his search for his family’s past with Gerry Turner, whose translation of the memoir At the Bernards written by Colin’s great-grandfather Šimon Wels marked the beginning of his search. The book offers a vivid picture of life in a Czech village in the second half of the 19th century. The story continues with Colin’s grandfather Rudolf Wels, a successful architect who worked closely with the influential modernist architect Adolf Loos in pre-First World War Vienna. Another piece of the puzzle is provided by Sancta Familia, which was also preserved in the box. Written by Rudolf’s sons, eighteen-year-old Tomáš and thirteen-year-old Martin in Prague at the end of 1938, it is made up of humorous scenes from the family’s daily life and richly illustrated by Martin, it depicts the world of a modern middle-class Prague family just before it was drawn into the abyss of WWII. Only Tomáš was to survive the Holocaust, reaching Britain as a refugee in the spring of 1939.

The discussion will be complemented by extracts from Sancta Familia and At the Bernards, by examples of the family’s rich visual legacy – including Martin’s sketches and Rudolf’s designs as an architect – and extracts from a new podcast series devoted to the family and produced in cooperation with Czech Radio. It will be moderated by writer and journalist David Vaughan, who has devoted several years to researching the family’s history and has been instrumental in publishing Sancta Familia in a first trilingual (Czech, German and English) facsimile edition (Triáda, 2020). He is the author of the exhibition No Night So Dark devoted to the Wels family, which was held in Prague’s Winternitz Villa in 2020.