O historii prožité a napsané
History Experienced and Written

Summary/Abstract: The author discusses Edvard Beneš and Winston Churchill – two statesmen who were both also notable writers of memoirs – from the perspective of how they incorporated the history of the Second World War (of which they had personal experience) into their historical autobiographies. Whereas the Czechoslovak president in writing his Paměti relied for the most part only on the help of his archivist and confi dent, the historian Jan Opočenský, the British Prime Minister (also thanks to his incomparably greater fi nancial situation) used the services of a whole “syndicate” of assistants led by the historian William Deakin. Both memoirs are interesting, however, not only for what they say, but also for what they do not say. In this respect, the author focuses on the massacre of the Polish offi cers as a moral dilemma of British policy. After the discovery of the mass graves in 1943, both Beneš and Churchill accepted the Soviet version of the event, not because of the persuasiveness of the arguments provided by Moscow but out of political pragmatism, the logic of which few in the British political élite were able privately to deny. In the relevant passage of his multi-volume The Second World War Churchill for years avoided taking an explicit position on the Katyn massacre. In an unpublished part of his memoirs, Beneš makes only brief mention of it, calling it a German provocation.

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