Milena Jesenská (August 10 1896, Prague - May 17 1944, Ravensbrück, Germany) was a Czech journalist, writer and translator.

She was born to an old aristocratic family of Slovakian origin, although settled in Bohemia; her father was Jan Jesensky, a professor at Prague University. Milena studied at Prague Girl Grammar School Minerva (absolved 1915). Between 1918-1925, she was married to Ernst Pollak and lived in Vienna. In the early 1920s, her love-affair with Prague writer Franz Kafka started. This intellectual friendship lasted several years and was very important for both of them. In its time, 1920-23, Milena became a journalist - Vienna contributor of Tribuna (daily newspaper in Prague and between 1923-26 Narodni Listy in Prague, and then magazines Pestry tyden and Lidove Noviny. Between 1938-1939 she was editor of the famous political and cultural magazine Pritomnost published in Prague by Ferdinand Peroutka. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Hitler's armies, Milena joined a secret military resistance organisation. In 1939 she was arrested by the Gestapo for it. Next year, she was deported to a concentration camp Ravensbrück, Germany, where she died in 1944.

Books: Cesta k jednoduchosti, 1926; Clovek dela saty 1927 etc. Selected essays of Pritomnost Magazine (1937-39) were published as a book posthumously.

Translations: Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Franz Werfel, F. C. Weiskopf and others.

Relatives: Jana Krejcarová - daughter of Milena and Jaromír Krejcar. Writer of underground edition Pulnoc in early 1950s. See Jesensky family article for more details.