Short Bio


  • Prague
    • born 10 August 1896
    • 1907: starts attending the first gymnasium for girls, Minerva
    • 1913: mother dies after a long sickness
    • 1915: finishing the Gymnasium and starting to study medicine, after 2 semesters she switches to Music
    • 1916: socializing with artists (Ernst Pollak, Max Brod, Ernst Haas, Franz Kafka, etc) in Cafe Arco and starting a romantic relationship with Ernst Pollak
    • 1917: Milena’s father is committing her to a social institute, most likely to separate her from Pollak
    • 1918: marriage with Ernst Pollak, moving to Vienna
  • Vienna
    • 1919-1925: writing articles for “Tribuna” and Nadroni Listi, translating some of Kafka's books
    • 1920 - 1921: intense exchange of letters with Kafka
    • 1923/1924: separation and divorce from Pollak
    • 1924/1925: relationship with Franz Xaver Schaffgotsch, living with friends in Dresden before moving back to Prague
  • Prague
    • 1925-1929: editor for Nadroni Listi
    • 1926: taking on the magazine Pestry tyden
    • 1927: marriage to Jaromir Krejcar
    • 1928-1929: while pregnant she became seriously ill, leaving her right knee stiff and keeping her dependent on morphine for several years. Birth of her daughter Jelena (called Honza). Spending several months in hospital and sanatorium.
    • 1929: contract with Nadroni Listi is ended when she writes articles about drugs. Turning towards the communist party (KPTsch)
    • 1932-1933: writing for the magazine Zijeme, which is ended because of her leftist opinions.
    • 1933/1934: Krejcar leaves for Russia, she meets Evzen Klinger and starts a relationship with him.
    • 1933-1936: writing for communist newspapers (e.g. Svet prace). After the editor of Svet prace demands of her to leave Klinger (because his alleged “trotskyist divergence “) she quits and soon thereafter breaks with communism
    • 1937-1939: position in the weekly newspaper Pritimnost where she writes political articles and meets and falls in love with Willi Schlamm
    • 1939: together with Joachim von Zedtwitz and others she helps many people to flee the country into security. Also Klinger and Schlamm have to flee (as both are Jewish). Pritimnost is forbidden, Milena is writing for different underground papers and gets arrested.
  • Dresden/Ravensbruck:
    • 1940: she is moved to a prison Dresden, gets acquitted of the charge but has to go to schutzhaft for undetermined time. She is deported to KZ Ravensbruck.
    • 1940-1943: KZ Ravensbruck, where she dies after a kidney surgery.

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