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This article describes the transfer of Dutch literature to Czechoslovakia in the period 1945-1990. After 1949, private publishing houses were abolished or merged. Emphasis on socialist realism and Soviet literature severely limited the number of Dutch-language titles. After 1956, the system became freer, publishers developed their own identity but de facto censorship persisted. The agency DILIA/DILIZA regulated all contacts abroad and checked ideological admissibility. The selected books were controlled once more by the secret censorship agencies HSTD/PIO and ultimately the Central Committee of the KSČ/KSS had the final say. This system was abolished during the Prague Spring, but reintroduced in a milder form after 1968. Main translators were Olga Krijtová and Ella Kazdová in Czechia and Júlia Májeková in Slovakia. Krijtová was also a lecturer in Dutch at Charles University, while Májeková was editor-in-chief at the important Slovak literary publishing house Tatran. By taking up different positions in the literary field, the latter two had a great influence, which Kazdová lacked. The case study of two works by A. den Doolaard that were problematic from a socialist point of view, but were eventually published for literary reasons – namely Het verjaagde water (1947), published in Czech as Spoutaná voda (1964) and De goden gaan naar huis (1966), published in Slovak as Bohovia sa vracajú (1974) – demonstrate the bottlenecks of socialist transfer.