The story begins when Rudolf Wels’ parents first met in the 19th century and ends in Great Britain at the end of the 20th century. The Wels’ descendants learned about their ancestors’ fate from a family archive in the United Kingdom.
Story in a box
“Before being transported to the Terezín concentration camp, the Wels hid a box of family memories, letters, photographs, drawings and other documents with their friends. Only one member of the family, Tomáš Wels, survived the war. He fought in the in the British Royal Air Force and collected the box after the war. He put it in storage and never talked about his life in Czechoslovakia again,” the organisers explain the origin of the exhibition.
His children reconstructed the family story only after his death, based on the content of this family archive.
Exhibition creator
The creator of the exhibition is David Vaughan, a British journalist and writer who has been living in Prague since 1991. Vaughan got involved in the search and helped the Wels descendants find out details about the family’s life in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the new Czechoslovakia and during the Second World War.
The setting of the exhibition refers to the tragedy of the Holocaust, which unites the Wels and Winternitz families.
For further information, please visit: https://www.loosovavila.cz/vystavy.