Josef Čapek was one of the first intellectuals arrested by the gestapo after German occupation in 1939. He went through four concentration camps when, right before the end of the Second World War, he died in Bergen-Belsen. Inside the camps, Josef Čapek began to write poetry for the first time in his life. It was published post-mortem in 1946 by the poet Vladimír Holan. The poems arise from concrete experiences and even from memories, and they are pointed at an existential reflexion of destiny of a human surrendered to the power of evil. Verses are distant from optimistic pathos and are rhetoric.