Arnošt Frischer and the Jewish Politics of Early 20th-Century Europe 9781472585899, 9781472585882, 9781474296137, 9781472585905

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Arnošt Frischer and the Jewish Politics of Early 20th-Century Europe

Arnošt Frischer and the Jewish Politics of Early 20th-Century Europe Jan Láníček

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2017 Paperback edition first published 2018 © Jan Lánícˇek, 2017 Jan Lánícˇek has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Cover design: Catherine Wood Cover image © Jewish Museum in Prague All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4725-8589-9 PB: 978-1-3500-7099-8 ePDF: 978-1-4725-8590-5 ePub: 978-1-4725-8591-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

For Emine

Contents List of Maps and Illustrations List of Abbreviations Preface

viii ix xi

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1 15 45 67 91 111 143 175

The Formative Years In the Czechoslovak First Republic Munich and Occupation, 1938–9 The Politics of Exile, 1939–45 Coping with the Catastrophe Help for the Jews Squaring the Circle: Diaspora Politics in Post-War Czechoslovakia The Second Exile

Epilogue: Who Was Frischer? Notes Selected Bibliography Index

195 199 237 253

List of Maps and Illustrations 1 Czechoslovakia, 1918–45 2 Young Frischer, date unknown (in author’s possession. I would like to thank Hannah Pinkus for giving me a copy of the photo) 3 The apartment building (Automat) in the city centre of Moravská Ostrava, where the Frischers lived after 1936 (Archiv města Ostravy) 4 Zionists from Moravská Ostrava on their trip to Palestine in 1934 (Copyright © George Lowy) 5 The Jewish primary school in Moravská Ostrava (Archiv města Ostravy) 6 Frischer in the late 1930s (Národní archiv, Praha) 7 Hanuš Frischer and Heřmína Frischerová (Národní archiv, Praha) 8 The leadership of the National Jewish Council in London (Copyright © David Zell and Ben Barber) 9 Parcel sent from Lisbon to Prague in the framework of the Czechoslovak Relief Action (Jewish Museum, Prague) 10 Postcard sent by Lilli Skutezky from Theresienstadt to Fritz Ullmann in 1944 (Central Zionist Archives) 11 Frischer’s meeting with President Beneš, at Prague Castle, 1947 (Jewish Museum, Prague) 12 Frischer addressing a meeting of the Jewish Community (Jewish Museum, Prague)

xv 7 19 23 31 54 61 70 115 139 151 170

List of Abbreviations ABS

Archives of the Security Forces of the Interior Ministry of the Czech Republic (Archiv bezpečnostních složek)

AČR

Archive of the Czech Radio, Prague (Archiv Českého rozhlasu)

AfZ

Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, Zurich

AJA

American Jewish Archives

AJJDCA

Archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

AKPR

Archives of the Chancellery of the President of the Republic

AMB

Brno City Archives (Archiv města Brna)

AMO

Ostrava City Archives (Archiv města Ostravy)

AMZV

Archives of the Czech Foreign Ministry

APNP

Archive of the Museum of Czech Literature

BBC

British Broadcasting Corporation

BS WJC

British Section of the World Jewish Congress

CJRC

Czechoslovak Jewish Representative Committee

Council

Council of Jewish Religious Communities in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia

CRA

Czechoslovak Relief Action (Československá pomocná akce)

CRTF

Czech Refugee Trust Fund

CZA

Central Zionist Archives

CZU

Central Zionist Union

DP

Displaced Persons

FDRPL

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library

HOC

Hitachdut Olei Czechoslovakia

ICRC

International Committee of the Red Cross

JMP

Jewish Museum, Prague

JNC

Jewish National Council

x Joint (JDC)

List of Abbreviations American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

Joint Aid Commission Joint Aid Commission of the ICRC and the Red Cross League JUS

Jüdische Unterstützungsstelle

JTA

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

LAC

Library and Archives Canada

LBI

Leo Baeck Institute, New York

LMA

London Metropolitan Archives

LOC

Library of Congress

MEW

Ministry of Economic Warfare (UK)

MFA

Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Czechoslovak)

MSW

Ministry of Social Welfare (Czechoslovak)

MÚA AV ČR

Masaryk Institute and the Archives of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

MZA

Moravian Land Archive (Moravský zemský archiv, Brno)

NA

National Archives, Prague

NARA

National Archives and Records Administration

NYPL

New York Public Library

RELICO

Relief Committee for the Warstricken Jewish Population

SOKA Jihlava

State Regional Archive Jihlava (Státní okresní archiv Jihlava)

SVŽČ

Social Committee of Jews from Czechoslovakia

TNA

The National Archives of the United Kingdom

UHA

University of Haifa Archives, Center for Historic Documentation, the Strochlitz Institute of Holocaust Studies

USA

University of Southampton Archives

USC

University of Southern California, Shoah Visual History Archives

USHMMA

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives

VHA

Military History Archive, Prague (Vojenský historický archiv)

WJC

World Jewish Congress

YVA

Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem

ZAO

Land Archives, Opava (Zemský archiv v Opavě)

Preface On 7 November 1941, in the midst of the worst military conflict in modern history, the Canadian Jewish Chronicle published its regular weekly ‘Jewish Quizmaster’, asking its readers ten questions about contemporary international affairs and internal Jewish community matters. The quiz presented a set of questions that were rather challenging for people unfamiliar with the complex politics and volatile political geography of the distant European continent. After asking its readers who the Endeks were and in what country Bratislava was, question 9 specifically asked: ‘Ernst Frischer was mentioned this month as the probable choice to be appointed as the first Jewish member of the Czech State Council in London. Who is Frischer?’1 The inclusion of this question in the quiz is intriguing. Frischer did not belong to any publicly recognized leaders of the international Jewish agencies, and it was only after 1941 that he entered the public consciousness in the wider Jewish community beyond the borders of Czechoslovakia. It is safe to assume that not many readers in Canada were able to answer the question. But who was Frischer? When I met a son of one of Frischer’s close collaborators from before the Second World War, he said that ‘Frischer was a sign of the times’.2 He spent most of his life in Central Europe, specifically Moravia, part of the historic Lands of the Bohemian crown. He was born in 1887, at the peak of the rule of the idealized Habsburg Emperor Francis Joseph I, and died in 1954, one year after the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. During Frischer’s life, the Jewish community in Moravia experienced five significant changes of political regimes (the Habsburg Empire, the democratic Czechoslovak Republic, the post-Munich authoritarian second Czecho-Slovak Republic, the Nazi regime of the German Protectorate, renewed – but limited – Czechoslovak democracy after 1945 and the Communist regime after 1948). Frischer was a part of the ancient Jewish community that faced new political challenges in the first decades of the twentieth century. In existence for almost 400 years, the multinational Habsburg Empire was slowly eroding before it completely collapsed in late 1918. A handful of multi-­ethnic countries emerged on the ruins of the empire. These successor states were challenged by their internal composition, legacies of the imperial rule, as well as by the revanchist sentiments across their borders in the temporarily weakened regional powers of Germany and Russia. In the late 1930s rearmed Germany again changed the rules of the game, and under the Nazi banner brought an unimaginable catastrophe upon the Jewish people: the Shoah. It was only thanks to the military victory of another totalitarian regime, the Stalinist Soviet Union, that Hitler’s Germany was defeated and the remnants of the once flourishing Jewish communities were saved. The introduction of Communist totalitarian rule in Czechoslovakia, after the brief post-­war intermezzo, however, separated the region from the Western countries by the Iron Curtain that was raised only forty years later.

xii

Preface

I have long been interested in exploring how the Jewish community of Bohemia and Moravia responded to the political and socio-­economic developments in the wider region in the first half of the twentieth century. My journey to the topic was rather unexpected. In the early 2000s I was a young history undergraduate at Palacký University, Olomouc. When reading British and American literature on the Allied responses to the Nazi persecution of the Jews, I repeatedly came across Frischer’s name in relation to the proposals (never executed) to bomb the death camps in occupied Poland.3 It was at that time that I began to collect documentary material about Frischer’s life and his political activities. In late 2005 I visited Israel for the first time. I was lucky to visit the country while Frischer’s only son, Jaakov (previously Hanuš) – almost ninety – was still alive. On a tight budget, I could only afford to stay in a hostel located at the Shuk (market) at the border between the Christian and Muslim quarters of Jerusalem’s Old City. I walked through the Jaffa Gate and up the hill, around the King David hotel to Talbiya, where Jaakov Frischer lived opposite the presidential residence. I talked to him for over an hour, but he was unfortunately too ill and frail to remember very much about his father’s life. He died several months after our meeting. Nevertheless, this conversation made me even more interested in Ernst Frischer’s life and political activities. What originally started as a project analysing the responses of the exiled Jewish communities (Frischer spent the war in Jerusalem and London) to what we now call the Holocaust or Shoah eventually developed into an analysis of modern Jewish politics in Bohemia and Moravia in the first half of the twentieth century. Although Frischer belonged to the leading Jewish nationalists in Czechoslovakia, he virtually disappeared from the public consciousness after his death. He did not belong to the celebrated cultural circles of Bohemian Zionists, the group of Hugo Bergmann (1883–1975) and Max Brod (1884–1968), who have been of interest to both German and Israeli historians, as well as Czech scholars, even when faced with the limitations imposed by the Communist regime. Frischer’s escape from Czechoslovakia after the Communist takeover, but also the virtual suppression of academic research on modern Jewish history and the wartime western political exile, contributed to his disappearance from any academic literature published in Czechoslovakia until after the regime change in late 1989. His decision to settle as a Jewish nationalist – even Zionist – in London, rather than Israel, then erased him from Israeli historiography. Most of my research thus consisted of visits in archives and libraries, where I collected primary sources relevant to Frischer’s political activities. My research has also been facilitated by the willingness of numerous archivists and librarians to share their expertise and knowledge with me. As a historian of European history who lives on the other side of the globe from Europe, I greatly benefited from their support. I thank Tomáš Karkoszka of the Ostrava City Archives, Miroslava Kučerová of the Moravian Land Archives in Brno, Lenka Likavčanová of the Brno City Archives, Vlasta Měšťánková of the National Archive, Prague, all of the helpful and friendly archivists of the Archive of the Security Forces of the Interior Ministry of the Czech Republic, Prague, and in the Land Archives in Opava, Shaul Ferrero of the Yad Vashem Archives, Libuše Salomonovičová, the devoted chronicler of the Ostrava Jewry, Michlean Amir of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, and Hannah Gill

Preface

xiii

from London. I also owe a debt of gratitude to numerous colleagues and friends who offered valuable advice and insight into the life of the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia in the period under consideration, and other topics in modern Jewish history. In particular I should mention Laura Brade, Kateřina Čapková, Michael Fleming, Jacob Labendz, Tatjana Lichtenstein, Michael L. Miller, Anna Rosenbaum and Gil Rubin, who read and commented on drafts of individual chapters, and helped to improve their quality. I also appreciate the collegial support I received over the years from Natalia Aleksiun, Karen Auerbach, Ruth Balint, Andrew Beattie, Stefania Bernini, Petr Brod, Daniella Doron, Michal Frankl, Simone Gigliotti, Krista Hegburg, Julie Kalman, Rebekah Klein-Pejšová, Hana Kubátová, Tony Kushner, Konrad Kwiet, Ilse Lazaroms, Lisa Peschel and Magdalena Sedlická. Nonetheless, the responsibility for the final manuscript rests of course solely with me. I also express my gratitude to Esther Washington, who helped me with the translations for the publication of original texts in German. Furthermore, I really appreciate the help of Anna Barber, Jaakov Frischer, Uri Meretz, Hannah Pinkus, Suzy Hershman and David Zell, who provided me with valuable information from Frischer’s private life. My major expression of gratitude goes to Derek Paton and Veronica Lyons, who helped me edit the final version of the manuscript, and made sure that my written English clearly expressed the ideas I wanted to convey. My special thanks also go to the School of Humanities and Languages, UNSW Australia, who have generously supported my research in the last three years, allowing me to finish the monograph in the present form. Parts of my research have been supported by generous grants from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and from a Saul Kagan Postdoctoral Fellowship that I received from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany. I would also like to thank Brill Publishers and the publisher of East European Jewish Affairs for their permission to use parts of my articles that appeared in their publications in this monograph. Last but not least, I would like to thank Rhodri Mogford and Emma Goode from Bloomsbury Academic, who from the very beginning enthusiastically accepted this book project and worked with me on its successful completion. The purpose of the publication is to answer the question posed by the Canadian Jewish Chronicle concerning who was Ernst (or, in Czech, Arnošt) Frischer. The narrative analyses Frischer’s political activities in relation to wider trends within the Jewish community. Although the individual chapters generally follow a chronological order, each also raises separate topics of importance for the particular period. I thus present Frischer as a child of his times, but also hope to contribute to general historiographical discussions on the Jewish experience in modern Central Europe. This is, however, not just a biography, and my aim was to provide sufficient context that will allow also readers not fully versed in the history of the Jewry in the Bohemian Lands to understand the story. The monograph presents the developments of the Jewish community in the post-Emancipation period at the time when the Jews were acculturating in the dominant neighbouring communities. This primary acculturation, to use Kieval’s term, mostly into the German culture, had serious implications for the life of the Jews in the region until the late 1940s. After the successful acculturation in the nineteenth century, the internal structure of the Jewish community was challenged by the rising Czech national self-consciousness, as well as by new ideological

xiv

Preface

movements spreading from the imperial capital, Vienna, in the last decade of the nineteenth century: secular Jewish nationalism and Zionism. Frischer became enchanted with this new secular religion already during his early student years in Brünn (Brno, in Czech) and embraced the ideology of Jewish nationalism until his death in 1954. My book analyses the origins and developments of Zionism in Bohemia and Moravia from the days of the first Zionist student groups in the 1890s, until the effective end of the movement in Czechoslovakia in the late 1940s. Frischer came on the scene shortly after the movement had built its first inroads in Moravia, and left after the curtain had fallen on Jewish nationalism in Czechoslovakia. Apart from the analysis of Jewish political activities in Bohemia and Moravia, the monograph also raises a crucial question about the Jewish responses to persecution in the first half of the twentieth century. The rise of Zionism in Central Europe was, it is fair to say, linked to the increase in racial antisemitism and German Volk ideology. Furthermore, Frischer’s fate in the late 1930s and late 1940s raises the theme of Jewish emigration strategies after the establishment of German rule in Central Europe and, a decade later, Soviet rule. Frischer successfully escaped from both totalitarian regimes shortly before they radicalized their antisemitic and in the latter case anti-Zionist policies. The chapters that examine Frischer’s activities during the Second World War in London then analyse the still mostly neglected topics of Jewish self-­help and solidarity during the Shoah from the perspectives of the exile Jewish activists in Britain. So far, the grassroots perspectives on the Jewish activists, who during the war kept pursuing mostly fruitless efforts to alleviate the plight of the communities in occupied Europe, have remained at the margins of scholars’ attention. The concluding part introduces the politics of the Jewish leadership after the Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia. The Communist Gleichschaltung soon purged the community of all undesirables, and only a coalition of pro-Communist activists and leaders of Assimilationist groups set the community agenda thereafter. The monograph is the first serious attempt to offer a long-­term perspective on the Jewish responses to the various challenges, including chiefly political and racial persecutions, in the Bohemian Lands in the first half of the twentieth century. Frischer is the main character in the story, but the aim of the monograph goes well beyond a biographical narrative. It offers a comprehensive survey of the State attitudes towards the Jewish religious and national minorities in Central Europe in the first half of the twentieth century, and discusses the subsequent responses in parts of the Jewish community during these turbulent decades, aptly called by Eric Hobsbawm ‘The Age of Catastrophe’, leading all the way to the ethnic witch-­hunting in post-­war east-­central Europe. The first chapter sets the stage for the following parts of the monograph. The story starts in the late 1880s in the Bohemian and Moravian countryside, in the Jewish community that had been fully emancipated only twenty years before. Sydney, March 2016

Figure 1  Czechoslovakia, 1918–45.

1

The Formative Years

A new movement is spreading among the Jews of all countries. It is a movement for the freedom of the Jewish People. This modern Jewish national movement is called Zionism.1 Berthold Feiwel and Robert Stricker (1898) Ernst (Arnošt) Frischer was born in Hermannstädtel/Heřmanův Městec on 7 July 1887, the youngest child and only son of Friedrich (sometimes Veit) Frischer (1854– 1924) and Augustine Frischer (née Neumann, 1854–1941). His father worked as a merchant (Kaufmann), a traditional occupation of the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia at that time. Frischer had two sisters, Josephine (1883–1916) and Wilma (1885–1944, later Bloch). His mother was born in Heřmanův Městec and his father in Marwaretz/ Markvarec, near Datschitz/Dačice, a traditional Jewish community in south-­western Moravia.2 Heřmanův Městec is located in east Bohemia, in the area that was, until 1849, home to the largest number of Bohemian Jews.3 Until the Second World War, the town had a Jewish community dating back to the early sixteenth century. The revolution of 1848 brought the first, but only temporary, emancipation to the Habsburg Jews. The Familiantengesetze of 1726–7, Austrian legislation restricting the number of Jewish families in the Bohemian Lands, were repealed.4 Although most of the restrictions on Jewish life were reintroduced after 1849, the first relaxation of the restrictions initiated a demographic transformation of the community. The Jews were granted the freedom to move and settle in most of the territory of the empire, though there were places that remained off limits until the full emancipation in 1867.5 Shortly after Frischer’s birth, the family moved to Teltsch, a Moravian town with a tiny Jewish minority, numbering less than a hundred in the early twentieth century.6 The post-­emancipation freedom allowed the Jews to seek upward social mobility, and the traditional community of peddlers had soon changed into a community of economically prosperous lower middle class who were able to further social progress for their children. The Jews of Moravia increasingly settled in the new economic centres such as Brünn/Brno, Mährisch Ostrau/Moravská Ostrava, Iglau/Jihlava and Olmütz/Olomouc, and contributed to the economic prosperity of these rapidly industrializing societies.7 Also the Frischers followed in the footsteps of a large part of the rural Jewish communities, and after a brief sojourn in Teltsch, they finally settled in Brünn, the Moravian capital with a rapidly growing Jewish community.8 By 1900, almost 20 per cent of all the Jews

2

Arnošt Frischer

of Moravia lived in the city, and the traditional communities of Nikolsburg/Mikulov and Boskowitz/Boskovice were fading away.9 The post-­emancipation period presented the Jews with new challenges. During the nineteenth century, the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia found themselves in the midst of a national struggle between the Czech and German ethnic and linguistic communities. The Enlightenment reforms of the Emperor Joseph II (r. 1780–90) cleared the way for the acculturation of the Jewish communities in the German cultural stream. In 1781, Joseph II issued the Patent of Toleration (Toleranzpatent), followed by the Edict of Tolerance in 1782, which introduced religious tolerance in the Habsburg monarchy. As an enlightened monarch, he pursued the ideal of a centralized state, where all its subjects would work for the benefit of the empire. One of the main features of the reforms was the effort to create a lingua franca that would lighten the administrative workload of the authorities. The Emperor ordered the establishment of secular Jewish schools, where the language of instruction was German, thus contributing to the cultural transformation of the Jewish community.10 The historian Hillel Kieval has usefully termed this ‘primary acculturation’.11 The trend of the Jews’ adhering to German culture continued throughout the nineteenth century, even during the Czech National Revival. Yet, the Jews of the Bohemian and Moravian countryside often mastered both local languages, particularly since their business dealings had long been with both communities. The situation developed differently in major cities, where German culture clearly dominated in the Jewish communities.12 The secondary acculturation, the reorientation of the Jews of Bohemia away from the German cultural stream to the Czech, started in the 1870s, a long time before the disintegration of the Habsburg monarchy. By 1900, a majority of the Jews in Prague, although bilingual, declared Czech as their primary language.13 The cultural transformation of the Jews of Moravia was much slower, and German remained the main language of the Jews, especially in larger Moravian cities, until the threat of the Third Reich came to a peak in the mid-1930s.14 One of the reasons for this development was that the Czech-German conflict started in Moravia only in the 1860s, much later than in Bohemia. Furthermore, the Moravian Germans were able to maintain their political and economic power in Moravia until the beginning of the twentieth century, thanks also to the careful manipulation of electoral districts for elections to the Moravian Diet (Landtag). In the post-­emancipation era, the Jews could aspire to higher economic and social positions that were in the Moravian cities predominantly secured by Germans. In contrast, the use of Czech was associated with peasantry and poverty, which the Jews wanted to leave behind.15 Furthermore, for Moravian Jews, the centre of political allegiance was Vienna, not Prague. Frischer’s family was no exception to the prevailing trend in the Moravian Jewish community. He was brought up in the German linguistic environment and the German educational system. His parents’ allegiance to the monarchy can be discerned also from the name of his oldest sister, Josephine, in reference to both the Emperor who had granted the Jews their first freedoms in the late eighteenth century, and the current emperor Francis Joseph I (r. 1848–1916), who had fully emancipated the Jews in 1867.16 In Brünn, the Frischers continued in their business as owners of private property, business employee, and business woman, as they are listed in the police records for

The Formative Years

3

right of domicile.17 Their prosperity allowed young Frischer to pursue tertiary studies, something hardly imaginable in the family several decades earlier. In 1898, he enrolled in the K. K. deutsche Staats-Realschule, a German-­language grammar school in Brünn, from which he graduated in 1905. His school record reveals how the institutions of secondary education in Habsburg Moravia prepared their students for their future careers. During his grammar school studies, he passed proficiency exams in four different languages: German, Czech, French and English.18 After graduation, Frischer continued his studies. Several years before, the Imperial authorities had given an ear to the calls from the Czech nationalists and, in 1899, opened the Czech Technical University in Brünn. Nevertheless, like most of the Jewish students in the Moravian capital, Frischer decided to attend the German Technical University in Brünn.19 As a teenager, Frischer presided over one of the first Zionist student groups at a grammar school in the empire.20 It was only after he began to attend the German Technical University, however, that he became fully absorbed in Zionism, the new secular religion that was slowly finding inroads among the Habsburg Jewry. His studies at the university were the formative years for Frischer’s political and ideological beliefs, but it was also the time of the initial developments of Jewish politics in Moravia and the monarchy at large. University students played a crucial role in the spreading of Zionism and later also in the fight for Jewish national rights in the monarchy.

The Zionist enchantment The origins of political Zionism are usually traced to the public proclamations of the Vienna-­based journalist and writer Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), who articulated the aims of the Zionist movement in the mid-1890s. Nevertheless, the first proto-Zionist student group, Kadimah (Forward), was founded by University of Vienna students already in the autumn of 1882. Jews from Galicia and eastern Europe played prominent roles in the origins of the movement. They were troubled by the pogroms that had swept through the western parts of the Russian empire in 1881, and concluded that the only response to antisemitism was an activist political stance by Jews who perceived their identity in national terms and had their ‘sights set on Palestine’. Ideologically, Kadimah was under the influence of Leon Pinsker (1821–91) and his theory of AutoEmancipation. Pinsker rejected the idea that the Jews could ever assimilate into the nations amongst whom they lived and argued that the only truly possible path for them was adherence to the idea of Jewish nationalism.21 Kadimah collected Hebrew books, organized cultural and literary events, including social gatherings, lectures on Jewish history and culture, and events commemorating glorious moments in Jewish history (for instance, the Maccabees). The association later also assumed new tasks and as a duelling fraternity engaged in the physical protection of the Jewish students, which was to symbolize the birth of a new proud Jewish man.22 In 1896, Herzl introduced Zionism to the world with the publication of his short book entitled Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). Kadimah and other Jewish groups in Vienna belonged to the first and staunchest supporters of Herzl’s efforts to organize the first Zionist congress in Basle (1897) that adopted the official Zionist programme for

4

Arnošt Frischer

the creation of a homeland ‘for the Jewish people in Palestine’.23 The seat of the Zionist Organization, created at the Congress, was in Vienna, where Herzl also founded Die Welt, the newspaper of the movement. With the flourishing of Jewish nationalist ideas in Vienna, other student groups also emerged, including Unitas (founded by Kadimah members), Ivria and Libanonia. Moravian students who preferred to study the arts or law rather than engineering had to go either to Prague or Vienna. With no real bonds to the Bohemian capital, most Jews preferred to study at the University of Vienna. It was there that they encountered a now widely accepted culture of new, radical antisemitism, stemming from the German student fraternities (Burschenschaften) that deliberately excluded Jewish members. This segregation led to increasing numbers of Jewish students finding their way to the Jewish national associations. The idea of Zionist student fraternities soon spread throughout the monarchy, and groups such as Hasmonaea in Czernowitz and Maccabaea in Prague were founded.24 In the mid-1890s, Unitas and Ivria, created by Austrian and Silesian students, brought the idea of Zionism to Moravia and Silesia.25 During their vacations, students returned to their hometowns, where they established Jewish nationalist bodies. The first two Jewish student fraternities in Moravia, Veritas and Zephirah, were both founded at the German Technical University in Brünn, which later became Frischer’s alma mater.26 Members of the fraternities took the initiative and organized meetings in smaller Moravian towns, where they helped to create Zionist organizations among gymnasium students.27 In summer 1906, Frischer, only a nineteen-­year-old university student, travelled to western Moravia (Mährisch Budwitz/ Moravské Budějovice and Teltsch), where he had spent his childhood, and now organized public agitations for Zionism as the only possible solution to the Jewish Question. The meetings often took the form of family events, accompanied by recitations of Jewish poems and music performances. Zionist activists used these occasions to collect donations for the National Fund.28 Another Zionist activist, Ernst Müller (1880–1954), a Moravian student at the University of Vienna, after graduating, taught for a short time at the private Jewish gymnasium in Ungarish Brod/Uherský Brod. During his stay in the town, Müller organized public lectures and outings in nature for Jewish youth.29 Zionism was not, however, only the prerogative of university students. Max Hickl (1874–1924) was a self-­educated, deeply pious Zionist who came from the poorer part of Brünn Jewish society. A good orator, he spoke in towns across Moravia, and helped to spread the ideas of Zionism outside the Moravian capital.30 By 1912, there were no fewer than 117 Jewish associations (Vereine or Verbindungen) in Moravia.31 This introduction of a new ideology in Moravia was no easy task. Similar to the situation in Vienna fifteen years before, the Jewish society here did not welcome an ideology that in their opinion tried to reverse the progress in the integration they had achieved during the previous decades. German liberals had accepted the Jews, who at the same time played a crucial role in the elections in mixed districts, where they tipped the scales to the German side of the German-Czech national divide.32 The situation changed in the 1890s and ultimately in 1905, when after the Moravian Compromise the Czech and German populations of Moravia each elected a certain number of members to the Land Diet, agreed in advance, and no longer competed for

The Formative Years

5

seats in the ethnically mixed electoral districts. This new political landscape deprived the Jews of their important role during the elections. They thus lost any political leverage, because their votes went automatically to the nation that formed a majority in the electoral district. Furthermore, at the same time, the abandonment of liberalism by the German parties and the rise of the Volk (radical nationalist and racialist) ideology and antisemitism questioned the so-­far-successful policy of acculturation and led to the Germans’ economic and social ostracism of the Jews. On the other side of the national divide, Czech resentment against the Jews, reflected in the continuous economic boycott and Czech anti-Jewish riots of 1897 and 1899, contributed to the Jews’ reluctance to side with the Czechs.33 This changing political climate helped spread Zionism. Berthold Feiwel (1875– 1937) was the key figure for the introduction of the new ideology among Moravian Jews. He was born in Pohrlitz/Pohořelice in Moravia but moved to Vienna and Zurich to study law and economics. In Vienna he became a close associate of Herzl, and worked with him on the preparation of the first Zionist Congress.34 In a newspaper article, published in Die Welt, Feiwel describes the complex situation the Zionist activists encountered in the late nineteenth century in Moravia, where the Jews had mostly become Germans.35 The situation, Feiwel continued, was easier for activists in the countryside, where the Jews lived under a ‘thin covering’ of acculturation, but maintained a sense of Jewish community. They became receptive to the Zionist ideology thanks to the prevailing sense of being Jewish. The activists’ work was much more difficult in the main Moravian cities and towns, where assimilation had become a political and social programme whose task was to ‘kill everything Jewish’ (alles Jüdische zu tödten). The Jews had become part of German society, and were fighting for German political interests.36 Furthermore, in Brünn, the Zionist efforts to appeal to the wider community were opposed by the traditional German liberal and assimilationist elites that led the Brünn Jewish Community, which was not elected on the principle of one man, one vote. Zionists were unable to enter Jewish community politics before the democratization of the elections after 1918, and before the fall of the monarchy they rarely worked with members of the community elite. For many Jewish nationalists, including Frischer, the struggle for the new ideals started in their families, where they had to challenge their parents, many of whom had only recently accepted the Czech or, mostly, German culture.37 Feiwel poignantly depicted the situations in the families of students: It is the struggle between the young and the old, between the new, modern, farsighted and the long-­accustomed, propertied, and narrowly restricted. The fathers still drag heavy chains on their hands and feet. Countless musty ideas and ponderous views, which have, by the dreadful power of the law of inertia, been turned into tradition and common law, keep them shackled. The youth have boldly and quickly thrown off their chains. The fathers believe this to be foolishness, sin, or foolhardiness. Only with difficulty can they follow the youth. They warn them. But they do not stop them. For they feel that in spite of everything there is something beautiful in what the youth are doing. And, as time goes by, they too broaden their view. And one sees the rare spectacle of fathers learning from their sons.38

6

Arnošt Frischer

Feiwel was involved in the creation of both Veritas and Zephirah, the first Zionist associations in Moravia that a decade later became the main areas of Frischer’s Zionist activities. Veritas was established, with the help of Rudolf Nassau and Rudolf Zeisel, in 1894 (officially on 24 September 1895), under the official name Verbindung freisinniger Hochschüller ‘Veritas’ in Brünn, later changed to Die jüdisch-­akademische Verbindung ‘Veritas’ in Brünn.39 Veritas first of all focused on the propagation of the Zionist movement, on the organizational work and the defence of Jewish students against antisemitic attacks from the side of the German fraternities. Under the influence of the student organizations from Vienna and the Herzlian idea of practical Zionism, Veritas was less concerned with the spiritual aspect of the Zionist ideology.40 Veritas adopted green, white and black as its official colours, and fostered other traditions associated with student life in the German-­speaking lands, such as the Kneipen (tableround) and Kommers (commercium, academic feast).41 Most famously, in the days of the declaration of Czechoslovak independence in 1918, Veritas established their own Jewish militia to protect the Jews and their property in Brünn against anticipated Czech riots.42 Nevertheless, Veritas strictly declared their neutrality in conflicts between Czech and German students in Brünn and supported neither side.43 Shortly after enrolling at the German Technical University in 1905, Frischer joined Veritas, and served as its chairman in 1908–9.44 He addressed the regular gatherings of the society, held speeches about the nature of the Zionist movement and introduced the activities of Veritas to the general public.45 He also got involved in the public work on behalf of the Jewish community in Brünn, when he joined the philanthropic Provident Society for Destitute Jewish Engineers (Unterstützungsverein für mittellose jüdische Techniker) at the German Technical University. Frischer served on the board of the new society from 1909 to 1911, including for one year as its chairman. The society collected donations from its members and wealthy figures such as the famous Petschek family of bankers and miners. In autumn 1910, the society opened a home with room for twelve poor Jewish students of the German Technical University. The opening of the home and its maintenance were enabled by donations from the elitist German-Jewish B’nai Brith Lodge Moravia in Brünn. The chairman of the Brünn Jewish Community, Hieronymus Fialla (1844–1913), also supported their non-partisan philanthropic activities.46 Frischer belonged to the second generation of Moravian Zionists, who were deeply influenced by the pioneers of the movement at the turn of the century. In 1898, Feiwel, together with Robert Stricker (1879–1944) – who was then an eighteen-­year-old student at the German Technical University in Brünn – penned a manifesto, in which they argued for the programme introduced the previous year by the first Zionist Congress. Feiwel and Stricker believed that emancipation had brought liberty to the Jews only on paper. In reality, and in the eyes of non-Jews, they were still second-­class citizens. The Jews remained the scapegoats of society, and the traditional religious prejudices against Jews had been transformed into racial antisemitism.47 There had hitherto been several attempts to improve the position of the Jews in Europe. None of them, Feiwel and Stricker argued – whether assimilation, an active fight against antisemitism, or socialism – had helped to alleviate their plight. Antisemitism would, it seemed, continue as long as Jews and non-Jews lived next to each other, and as long as

The Formative Years

7

Figure 2  Young Frischer, date unknown.

their social, cultural, national and economic interests intersected. The only solution, according to Feiwel and Stricker, was to realize that the Jews were different, and to acknowledge this difference proudly: ‘Yes, [. . .] we are Jews.’ Those who tried to hide their Jewishness and present themselves as ‘Germans of the Mosaic faith’ contributed to the rise of antisemitism, because they themselves argued – by implication – that being a Jew was something inferior. Even those who lived in the Diaspora and spoke no Jewish language were part of the Jewish nation, because a common country and language were not the only attributes of a nation. Even so, the Jews have, they continued, actually had both: ‘The Hebrew language is not dead. Hundreds of thousands of Jews in Poland and Russia understand it. We had a country. We can acquire one.’ Even more important were the common history of the Jews and their sense of belonging.48 The task of the Zionist movement was, Feiwel and Stricker continued, to find territory for the Jewish populations of Galicia, Russia and Romania. Openly ostracized, economically and socially persecuted, they needed a land where they could freely settle and develop their capabilities. The Jewish Question in Europe was without a solution, and the Jews had to start looking overseas: ‘And they immediately turned their eyes to the only land with which Jews associate their fondest memories. And at once the solution was clear to them: Palestine must again become the land of the Jews. That is Zionism.’49 Feiwel and Stricker did not argue that the Jews inhabiting central and

8

Arnošt Frischer

western Europe should abandon their mostly tolerable (erträglich) lives and immediately move to Palestine. Their task was – for the time being – to support the implementation of a plan that would liberate the suffering eastern Jews.50 Only three years later, Feiwel was at the forefront of a dramatic change in the Zionist movement, when he overtly articulated the need to focus on ‘present work’ (Gegenwartsarbeit), in addition to the diplomatic and practical efforts to create the Jewish national homeland in Palestine. He helped to introduce the idea of the temporary development of Jewish national consciousness, and the political, social and economic rights of the Jews in the Diaspora, before they would be able to move to the Jewish national homeland.51 It became part of the Austrian Zionists’ work five years later, in 1906, and contributed to the spreading of Jewish nationalism to Galicia and Bukovina, the eastern parts of the empire.52 Gegenwartsarbeit, however, remained in the shadow of Zionism, and ‘tension between the poles of “here” and “there” remained unresolved’ for a long time.53 Feiwel soon moved back to Vienna, before settling in Berlin, where he worked as editor-­in-chief of the main Zionist paper, Die Welt. Stricker remained in Moravia for some time, and became a regular contributor to the Jüdische Volksstimme, an important mouthpiece of the Zionist movement, published in Brünn from 1900 by Max Hickl. Stricker, though still very young, exercised influence within Veritas and set its agenda strictly in Zionist terms. Veritas members met regularly, studied early Zionist writings, and debated topics from Jewish history, culture, technical developments and economics.54 Stricker, however, too soon left Moravia, and settled in Vienna. Brünn was only a provincial city, which in the long term could not satisfy the ambitious young leaders of the new nationalist movement. In the first decades of the twentieth century, Stricker became a leading Austrian proponent of Gegenwartsarbeit, who emphasized the need for Jewish nationalists to focus on the daily problems of the Jews in their countries of residence. In the multinational empires of Europe, the Jews were to declare allegiance to the Jewish nation and remain neutral in the raging conflicts between individual nations.55 Both Feiwel and Stricker strongly influenced Frischer’s future ideological outlook and shaped his future career as a student activist and, later, politician, who despite his strong Zionist leanings, eventually focused predominantly on Diaspora nationalist politics. Until his death in 1954, Frischer often recalled Feiwel and Stricker as role models for the second generation of Zionists in Moravia.56 Also thanks to the pioneering activists, Zionism made significant inroads in Jewish society in Moravia before the First World War. Nevertheless, it clearly did not become a dominant ideology among the Jews there.57 The number of middle class Zionists was slowly growing, possibly due to the former members of the student fraternities establishing their professional careers in Moravian cities, but the students were still the dominant element.58 In absolute numbers, the nationalists appeared to be strongest in the main Moravian towns: Brünn, Mährisch Ostrau and Olmütz. Yet proportionally, the movement remained relatively weak in the cities where the Jews preferred to adhere to German liberal bourgeois society, even when the German liberalism began to give way to radical Volk nationalism and antisemitism. Also the number of ‘shekel payers’, that is, the people who paid their membership dues to the Zionist Organization, was in Brünn proportionally much lower than in other parts of Moravia.59 The first census in

The Formative Years

9

post-­war Czechoslovakia, in 1921, when the Jews had the option of registering their subjective Jewish nationality, confirms these conclusions. The appeal of Jewish nationalism seemed to be much stronger in the predominantly Czech countryside, in towns such as Uherské Hradiště and Kroměříž, where a decisive majority of the people of Jewish faith declared Jewish nationality.60 Before the First World War, the student Zionist associations lamented that the Jewish society in Brünn was among the strongholds of assimilation.61 At Christmas time, the Jüdische Volksstimme expressed discontent about the constantly growing number of Jewish families that had a Christmas tree at home. The custom had reached such a scale that it was publicly denounced by the Chief Rabbi of Moravia, Ludwig Lewy.62 The Jüdische Volksstimme also complained that a high number of Jews in the city ignored Jewish holidays, did not work on Sundays, and celebrated Christian holidays. Brünn had a new synagogue, but the temple was generally empty.63 It has been persuasively argued that the existence of Jewish political autonomy in the Moravian countryside (the Jewish Political Communities), even in the post-­ emancipation period, led to the unique phenomenon of emancipation in Moravia becoming combined with the rise of secular Jewish self-­consciousness and a sense of belonging to a Jewish nation.64 This fact had already been implied in Feiwel’s article in Die Welt from the late nineteenth century. This could well be a reason for the hypothesized greater acceptance of Jewish nationalist ideals in the countryside than in the major industrial centres. They had been created in the second half of the nineteenth century by internal and external mass migration from the Moravian countryside and other Habsburg provinces. Yet we need to be cautious before we conclude that the Jews in Czech areas in Moravia were more prone to accept Zionism. It could well be that, because of the declaration of Czechoslovak independence in late 1918, the Jews in predominantly Czech areas felt uncomfortable registering as Germans and took the opportunity to declare neutrality in the nationalities conflict by declaring Jewish nationality. It is also reasonable to hypothesize that in the areas where the Germans continued to play a major role in economic and social life, the Jews felt more comfortable adhering to German culture and were more impervious to the infiltration of Zionist ideas. We shall see that this remained the case also in the interwar period.

Political activities of the Jewish nationalists in the monarchy Before the collapse of the monarchy in 1918, Jewish nationalists, both pioneering politicians and students, developed extensive public activities. Frischer joined their ranks as a university student, who fought in the framework of the Zionist movement for the official recognition of the Jewish national programme by the monarchy. In 1907, when the Austrian half of the monarchy introduced universal male suffrage, the Jewish nationalists saw an opportunity to achieve parliamentary representation.65 Four Jewish politicians from Bukovina and Galicia were elected to the Imperial Council (Reichsrat) at Vienna, where they created the ‘Jewish club’ (1907–11). Their maximalist, though utopian, plan was to transform Austria into a Völkerstaat (federative state), with the recognized ‘autonomous management of its internal affairs’ for the Jewish

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community.66 The nationalism of the Jews was liberal, democratic, non-­territorial and tolerant. It did not aim to dismantle the monarchy.67 A more moderate goal, they articulated, was to receive an official recognition by the Imperial authorities of the existence of the Jewish nation. Habsburg legislation officially recognized only nine nations (Volksstämme): German, Bohemian-Moravian-Slovak (Czech), Polish, Ruthenian, Slovene, Serbo-Croat, Romanian, Italian and Hungarian. The recognition of a nation was based on the ‘language of everyday use’ (Umgangssprache) or the language ‘customary in the land’ (landesübliche Sprache). The Jews, according to the Austrian officials, did not use a common language. Hebrew and Yiddish were not used (in everyday life) by all the members of the ‘Jewish nation’ and thus did not constitute a marker that would justify the inclusion of the Jews among the officially recognized nations. They were only ‘regional languages’ (Lokalsprache) and ‘dialects of a regional character’ (ein Dialekt lokalen Characters).68 The Jewish nationalists tried to argue that a common language was not the only marker of a nation. Max Rosenfeld, a Socialist Zionist activist from Galicia, outlined their argument as follows: The most important elements of Jewish nationalism are (1) national-­social religion; (2) carefully maintained family life, which excludes converts; (3) a shared history; (4) for the most part a common language, at least an understanding of the sole vernacular, the Jewish (Jüdische) language (falsely or incorrectly called ‘Yiddish’ (jiddische)!); (5) the mostly dense settlements, and (6) homogenous economic conditions. All together this creates a strong tribal conscience.69

Despite the efforts of the Jewish nationalists, the Imperial Court of Justice in Vienna ruled, on 26 October 1909, that the Jews did not form a nation but only a religious community.70 The session was chaired by the president of the court, Joseph Unger (1828–1913), a baptized Jew.71 The Jewish nationalists’ efforts to achieve official recognition were not based purely on their own national self-­consciousness. In some of the ethnically mixed territories, such as Moravia or Bukovina, they were, during the 1910 census, pigeonholed together with the German minorities (with Yiddish considered as a dialect of German), which led to an artificial increase in the number of Germans in the territory and caused a lot of resentment amongst the other ethnicities, such as Czechs and Ruthenians (Ukrainians). Census results were not only a matter of prestige for particular nationalists, but often had practical implications for the management of local affairs, such as national education, or recognition of languages in communication with the official authorities. In Moravia, the artificial imposition of either Czech or German identities was anchored in the Moravian Compromise of 1905. According to the Compromise, the Jews were grouped together with the ethnic majority of each individual district. The option to register their nationality could have potentially provided the Jewish nationalists with a chance to distance themselves from the ethnic conflict between the German nation and local populations.72 Also Jewish nationalist students joined the fight for the acceptance of the Jews as equals amongst the nations of the monarchy. After 1900, the students waged a private war for the recognition of their nationality by the university authorities.73 When

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11

registering, all university students in Austria had to declare their mother tongue (Muttersprache). On the forms for the official census, Yiddish (or Jüdisch) was not recognized as a language, and the Jews were therefore registered mostly as Germans. The student organizations at Vienna, Lemberg and Czernowitz were at the forefront of the campaign, but associations from Bohemian and Moravian universities, including Brünn, soon also followed suit.74 After an unsuccessful first campaign between 1901 and 1903, the associations renewed their efforts in early 1906, when Jewish students across the land, in Vienna, Prague, Brünn, Cracow, Lemberg and Czernowitz, held mass meetings at universities and submitted resolutions to the rectors.75 In Lemberg, this resolution was followed by another vote by ‘Polish nationals of the Mosaic confession’, who opposed the nationalists’ efforts.76 In Brünn, a meeting of 120 students, organized by Veritas, alleged that one-­third of all students at the university were Jewish, though they were listed, based on their mother tongue, as Germans. The meeting passed a resolution demanding the recognition of the Jewish nationality, and submitted it to the Austrian Ministry of Education and the Ministry of the Interior.77 After attending one of these meetings, Leon Kellner (1859–1928), Professor of English Philology at Czernowitz (and a close collaborator of Herzl’s), described the students’ feelings: The train of thought of the humbled student is very simple. For my fellow-­students of the Christian faith the denomination of their mother tongue is identical to their national denomination. For me, this is not the case. Consequently, I do not belong to the German nation. To which nation, then, do I belong? Certainly, I do not belong to the Romanian, Ruthenian or Polish nation. There are only two possible solutions: either I belong to no nation at all, or I belong to the Jewish nation. I reject the first possibility – with all my being I resist it; the example of all my fellow students, each and every one of whom has his nation, is a strong argument against it. Consequently, only the second hypothesis remains to me: I belong to the Jewish nation.78

Frischer became one of the leaders of this nationalist student movement in Brünn. Although from the German cultural milieu, he publicly criticized the German students’ domination of the university, and demanded that the school authorities grant equal rights to the other national groups. In 1906, Frischer was among the Jewish and other non-German students who proposed the creation of a minorities’ committee as a counterweight to the Engineers’ Committee consisting solely of German students, who were accused of ignoring the interests of their non-German colleagues. These protests led to a disciplinary hearing against the leaders of the group, including Frischer.79 Despite the harsh response of the university authorities, Frischer continued in his public activity and was one of the main speakers at protest meetings. On 27 April 1907, he was elected to a committee of three students who submitted a protest note to the rector. The meeting was organized by the joint effort of Veritas and the Jüdisch-­ akademische Lese- und Redehalle (Jewish Students’ Lecture and Reading Society).80

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Arnošt Frischer

The protest note demanded the recognition of Jewish nationality by Austrian universities, the introduction of a nationality section in university documents, and confirmation that these declarations would be reflected in all statistics published by the university.81 Only this approach would, according to the students, correspond to true academic freedom. A similar resolution was passed at another Jewish students’ meeting in May 1908.82 Rectors, who regularly received the delegations, officially expressed their warm appreciation for the demands and promised to inquire into the matter. The University of Czernowitz, it seems, allowed its students to register, based on their mother tongue, as ‘Deutsch jüdischer Nationalität’ – ‘German of Jewish nationality’ (that is, ethnicity). The main motivation behind the concession was that the students, in protest against the authorities having artificially increased the number of Germans, began to register as Romanians or Ruthenians. This concession, however, was only temporary.83 A similar practice was endorsed by the Executive Committee for the Recognition of Jewish Nationality at Austrian Universities in Vienna, which, in March 1908, appealed to the students to write ‘Jüddisch’ in the registration form next to German as their mother tongue.84 In 1910, 35 per cent of all Jewish students at the University of Vienna followed this recommendation. These sentiments were particularly strong among Jewish students born in Galicia, but two-­fifths of the Jewish students born in Moravia also attempted to register as Jews. The campaign proved the acceptance of secular Jewish nationalism by many Jewish students throughout the monarchy.85 The demands of the Jewish students, however, fell mostly on deaf ears. The university authorities generally rejected the demands, ignored them or simply passed the papers to the Ministry of Education, which later returned them to the universities, and the whole cycle could start anew. On several occasions, the Jewish bodies rejoiced that the matter had been settled at one of the institutions – in Lemberg or Czernowitz – only to realize soon afterwards that they had been misinformed or that the institutions had changed their minds. Some of the institutions even threatened with suspension those who had registered as Jews or had wanted to do so. Thirty years later, Frischer recalled that the faculty at the Technical University in Brünn threatened him with expulsion.86 The Jewish students hence – similar to other Jewish nationalists in the monarchy – did not receive the official recognition they fought for. In the last years before the First World War, Frischer was rarely publicly active. He still took part in Zionist life in Brünn, but, at the same time, after graduating in 1912, he focused on his career as a civil engineer.87 In 1913, he was present at the founding conference of a new Zionist organization in Brünn, the Jüdischer Volksverein ‘Theodor Herzl’, whose chief task was to promote the idea of Jewish colonization of Palestine and the fulfilment of the Basle programme.88 Although Frischer actively participated in the meeting, he did not take any official position in the organization. He also attended the first congresses of the Zionist organizations, which attempted to establish closer cooperation among the various groups in the western parts of the monarchy.89 In his public speeches, he always stressed the need to maintain the unity of the Zionist movement and find some middle ground where all the competing factions could meet.90 In one of his essays, published in the Jüdische Volksstimme, he used a story of

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13

two boys who prod each other to eat a toad for money, only to realize in the end that although each of them has eaten a live toad, neither of them has gained anything from the challenge. Quarrels and internal disputes brought no benefit to the Zionist movement.91 In early 1914, Frischer moved to Witkowitz/Vítkovice, near Mährisch Ostrau, the expanding industrial hub of the Habsburg monarchy and the seat of the famous iron works owned by the Rothschilds and Gutmanns.92 In less than six months, pistol shots in Sarajevo completely changed the course of European history. Instead of being able to focus on his career, Frischer was called up to serve in the Austrian Imperial army. After spending the first year of the war in Vienna, he was sent to the front. Before his departure, he married Hermine (in Czech Heřmína or Heřma) Rufeisen (1891–1949) from Oderfurt/Přívoz near Mährisch Ostrau. The wedding took place in October 1915 in Prerau/Přerov, a town on the railway line between Vienna and Mährisch Ostrau.93 Almost no records exist about Frischer’s military service during the war. In April 1916, he was deployed in the Lublin region.94 He spent time in Galicia, around Lemberg, before he was transferred to the Italian front, where he served until the Armistice.95 Jewish nationalists welcomed the war against the Russian empire as a way to settle the score with the main country of pogroms (in Kishinev, Odessa and Bialystok in 1903–6). For the Jews, the Austrian imperial troops were avenging the Jews persecuted by the Tsarist regime. This urgency to support the German and Austrian troops in the east further increased in the first months of the war, when the Russian troops occupied sizeable parts of Habsburg Galicia and forced hundreds of thousands of Galician Jews to seek refuge in the western parts of the empire.96 For the Austrian soldiers who served in Galicia, the war offered the first opportunity to encounter traditional Jewish communities living their destitute lives in the impoverished eastern shtetls. For Zionists, this was a trip to the past, to the roots of true and authentic Jewishness. It also served as a way of strengthening their Zionist persuasion. When they encountered the catastrophic economic conditions in war-torn Eastern Europe, many among the Jewish nationalists came to realize that only the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine could improve the lives of the millions of eastern Jews. The experiences also strengthened their efforts to protect the eastern Jews against nationalist tensions and antisemitic outbursts in the local Polish and Ruthenian communities.97 The presence of the eastern Jews in the Habsburg hinterlands and the subsequent rise of antisemitic sentiment amongst the non-Jewish population provided the Zionists with further impetus to seek a Jewish homeland outside Europe. The Jews of the monarchy remained among the most loyal subjects of the House of Habsburg until the very end. The enlightened rule of Francis Joseph I was for them the main guarantee of protection against nationalist fervour in the provinces. Nevertheless, the centrifugal nationalist and antisemitic forces that developed in the second half of the nineteenth century created conditions in which secular Jewish nationalism presented a viable alternative to many Jews who had stopped believing in assimilation. Frischer joined the movement when it had, under Feiwel and Stricker, already made its first inroads in Moravia, and he personally contributed to the spreading of Zionism in Brünn and in the countryside. As a veteran of student associations, he was a committed Jewish nationalist, persuaded of the rightness of the Zionist solution to the Jewish Question. In 1916, when he was informed in Lemberg about the death of his older

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sister Josephine, he immediately contributed money in her memory to the planting of trees in the Herzl Forest in Palestine.98 The post-1918 period would then present Frischer and other members of the Jewish nationalist organizations with new challenges and opportunities in Czechoslovakia, a country that emerged from the ruins of the ancient Habsburg Empire.

2

In the Czechoslovak First Republic

In the autumn of 1918, the countries of the world were in the fifth year of a conflict that had now left behind millions of dead soldiers and civilians. Frischer still wore the Imperial uniform and was stationed with his unit in northern Italy. Shortly after the Austrian army in early November 1918 agreed to the armistice conditions on the southern front, 400,000 Imperial soldiers, among them 83,000 Czechs and Slovaks, were taken prisoner by the Italian army. Lieutenant (Oberleutnant) Frischer was among them. Instead of returning home to his wife Hermine, son Hans (1916–2006) and soon-­to-be-­born daughter Liese Ruth (b. 1918), Frischer was transferred to the San Pellegrino POW camp near Bolzano.1 He spent more than six months in captivity, living in the harsh conditions that the victorious Italians had prepared for the defeated Austrian army. Many of the Austrian soldiers died, and those who survived were only gradually released. Frischer did not return to Přívoz/Oderfurt, where his family settled, until July 1919.2 In September and October 1918, the whole structure of the multiethnic Habsburg Empire collapsed, and several new states appeared. The Bohemian Lands (Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia) formed the cornerstone of the Czechoslovak Republic, which was declared on 28 October 1918. It was a country bordering Germany in the west and now including Slovakia (formerly Upper Hungary) and Subcarpathian Ruthenia (or Rus’) in the east, also previously part of the Kingdom of Hungary. It was a multinational state, where a significant part of the population differed ethnically and religiously from the main constituent ‘nationality’ (národ, that is, ‘ethnic group’), the Czechs (officially ‘Czechoslovaks’). Almost 360,000 Jews lived in Czechoslovakia according to the official census in 1921, with only a third of them settled in the Bohemian Lands. They had to adjust to an entirely new environment in a country that, although resembling the old monarchy in the diversity of its population, presented the Jews with new challenges and uncertainties concerning their life as an ethnic minority. In the ‘crisis of Jewish identity’, the Jews could no longer rely on what until then had been practically a tripartite identity, where they could be Austrians politically, Czech or German culturally, and Jewish by ethnic affiliation. The creation of the successor states propelled new national groups into ruling positions, and challenged the strategies adopted until then by a large segment of the Jewish population.3 The Jews of Czechoslovakia constituted a multifaceted mixture. There were highly acculturated communities in Bohemia and Moravia, with varying degrees of affinity to

16

Arnošt Frischer

Table 1   ‘Nationality’ (ethnicity) according to the Czechoslovak census, 1930 Nationality declared

Number of people who declared it (in thousands)

Czechoslovak German Hungarian Rusyn Jewish

9,605 3,318     719     569     205 (356 according to religion)

Source: Jacob Robinson, 1943, Were the Minorities Treaties a Failure? (New York: IJA), 334–7.

Czech and German cultures. There were Magyarized Jewish communities in Slovakia and, further east, traditionally living Orthodox Jewish constituencies, still using Yiddish as their language of daily communication, as well as the Hassidic communities in the God-­forsaken territory of Subcarpathian Ruthenia. The problems of the Jewish communities were increased by the legacies of the imperial rule and the policies of Germanization and Magyarization, which had been exercised by the former authorities in both parts of the new country. Moreover, secular Jewish nationalism was gaining ground all over the new country, further complicating the outsiders’ understanding of the community. This new situation offered the Jewish nationalists an opportunity to assume the leading position among the Jewish activists in a country that pledged to respect the ethnic and cultural diversity of all its citizens, and whose political leadership was sympathetic to the Zionist programme. This, however, was an idealist perspective that the nationalists could use in the development of their loyalties in the new state. The questions that remained unresolved for the time being were how far the Czechs and Slovaks would respect Jewish adherence to what many of them perceived to be an abstract Jewish nationality, and whether they would not impose loyalties and identities on to the Jews simply based on the language they used in their daily communication. In such a case, the nationalists, who in their majority communicated in non-Slav languages, could be perceived as supporters of the German and Hungarian irredentist aspirations in Czechoslovakia. It also remained unclear how the other groups among the Jewish population would respond to the Zionists’ programme. The negotiations between the Czechoslovak authorities and representatives of the Jewish nationalists were in full swing when Frischer returned home. Following the example of other Jewish communities in the region, Jewish activists, mostly nationalists and socialist-Zionists, created the Jewish National Council in Prague (JNC), and articulated key Jewish minority demands for the new state. Their efforts emanated from the rise of Jewish national politics in Europe during the First World War. In particular, the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917, where the British government promised to support the creation of the Jewish ‘national home’ in Palestine, provided encouragement to the nationalists’ activities. The promise, however, forced the nationalists to redefine their position in the Diaspora, because Palestine could become a home to only a fraction of the world’s Jews and the colonization project would make it habitable only in the distant future. The principle of national self-­determination should not, the JNC believed, be restricted only to those who decided to make Aliyah

In the Czechoslovak First Republic

17

(literally ‘ascent’ – immigration to Palestine).4 More specifically, the nationalists demanded cultural autonomy in their internal affairs and emphasized the need for independent secular education for the Jews in the Diaspora.5 The overall climate in Czechoslovakia in the early post-­war years was not adverse to the development of Zionist activities. During the war and in the first years after the armistice, cities and towns across the future Czechoslovak state had witnessed social tensions, with public demonstrations often taking the form of anti-Jewish riots and even pogroms.6 Their motivation was mostly national and social, with the Jews being presented as anti-Czech (anti-Slovak) and as anti-­social profiteers in the difficult period of post-­war stabilization. The notion of ‘Judeo-Bolshevism’ also began to appear in the Czech right-­wing press.7 Though Jews were rarely killed in these pogroms, they did suffer considerable material losses.8 With these heightened inter-­ethnic tensions in the society, the nationalists hoped that the Jewish population would be willing to support their efforts. The nationalists also attempted to persuade the Czechoslovak government to publicly guarantee the Jews’ minority rights in the country. Nevertheless, the Czechoslovak authorities reacted half-­heartedly to the Jewish nationalists’ programme. At the Paris Peace Conference, in 1919, Czechoslovakia signed the minority treaty attached to the St Germain-­en-Laye Treaty with Austria, but rejected the inclusion of the so-­called ‘Jewish clauses’, which would specifically reiterate the rights of the Jewish minority within the state.9 It was one of the first disappointments for the Jewish nationalists, and was only partly compensated for in the 1920 Czechoslovak Constitution, which gave citizens the right to declare Jewish nationality in the census, regardless of the language they used in their daily affairs.10 The Jewish nationalists in Czechoslovakia thus received the recognition that they had fought for in the last decades of the Habsburg monarchy. This was an indisputable achievement in a country where many Jewish nationalists had not mastered either of the Jewish languages (Hebrew or Yiddish) and whose belonging to a separate nation was often contested by the Czechoslovak authorities, as well as by a large part of the Jewish community.11 This achievement encouraged the JNC in its work, but the nationalists soon realized the limits of their political and cultural activities in the new state. In spite of the nationalists’ efforts to present themselves as the leading Jewish force in the country, the situation among ordinary, politically less-­active or non-­active Jews was far more complex than the nationalists were willing to admit. The situation in Czechoslovakia was not outright adverse to the development of Jewish national politics. It was a multinational state, where a considerable part of the Jewish population adhered culturally to the German and Hungarian milieu in ‘a new political-­cultural reality dominated by the previously subservient and oppressed Czechs and Slovaks’.12 Yet, it has been cogently argued, the wide acceptance of Czech culture by middle class Jewish society in the western provinces of Czechoslovakia even before 1918, the lack of public antisemitic manifestations in the interwar period (after the revolutionary period of 1918–20), and the strength of the anti-Zionist Orthodox communities in the east, meant that Jewish political nationalism, despite its relative strength, remained a largely insignificant force (or ‘influential, though not victorious force’).13 An important blow to the nationalists’ programme was already dealt during the first elections to the National Assembly (the lower chamber) in April 1920. The Czechoslovak

18

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electoral law recognized proportional representation, but established a threshold, which a party had to cross in one of the twenty-­three districts in order to get into the National Assembly. The Jewish minority was unevenly dispersed across Czechoslovak territory, and the Zionist-­supported party was unable to gain enough votes in any of the individual districts. Thus none of the Jewish nationalist representatives sat in the parliament.14 In spite of the initial setbacks, the Jewish nationalists in the following two decades presented an extensive programme of political and social change to prepare the Jews of Czechoslovakia for their future mission in a future Jewish homeland, but simultaneously anchor their position in the Diaspora as loyal and equal, or, as one scholar calls them, ‘model Czechoslovak citizens’.15 Frischer’s activities, as well as the situation among the Jews in Moravská Ostrava – his hometown – allow us to offer insights into the complex national and cultural situation among the Jews in Czechoslovakia and into the development of the Jewish politics in the new state. Frischer was from the very beginning involved in discussions about the future of the Zionist movement and about the nature of Jewish life in the specific conditions of the Diaspora in Czechoslovakia. The situation in Moravská Ostrava then presents an example of the community development at the time between the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy and the demise of Czechoslovakia in late 1938.

Frischer and practical Zionism Frischer had been unable to build his professional career before he was called up for service in the Austrian Army. When he finally returned home, he was thirty-­two, married with two children, and without any financial security. He and his family lived in the Hotel Nordbahn, owned by his in-­laws, Samuel and Karoline Rufeisen, in Přívoz. Despite its small size, Přívoz was truly multiethnic, with the Jewish community of more than 600 people, many of whom, including the Rufeisens, had come to the town from Galicia in recent decades. Hotel Nordbahn was only a short walk from the Přívoz synagogue, which, built in 1904, accommodated the religious needs of the growing local Jewish community. The local train line enabled quick access to the centre of Moravská Ostrava, only several kilometres away, with its renowned social and cultural life (Ostrava was often called the ‘swinging city’ or ‘mini-Chicago’). Samuel Rufeisen died shortly after the end of the First World War. Shortly thereafter, in 1922, Frischer and his family moved to Moravská Ostrava, where they bought a flat in the centre of town.16 In 1921, Frischer was granted a licence to work as a construction engineer and joined the Pokora-Skála company, which built houses and commercial buildings both in the city and its environs, and railways across the whole territory of Czechoslovakia. A successful professional, he climbed the company ladder, and by 1930 became the sole owner of the firm.17 Frischer kept the firm even after he had become deeply involved in Jewish politics, partly because he never reached political positions that would provide him with financial security. In the interwar period, the Frischers belonged to the affluent middle class in Moravská Ostrava. In the mid-1930s, they moved to a new large apartment on the

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other side of the old town, near the main cultural and economic institutions. This apartment was located in the central part of the town and attests to the economic prosperity the Frischers were able to achieve. They owned a car, a sign of a high living standard in interwar Czechoslovakia. Hermine, as the spouse of a successful businessman, stayed at home and looked after the children. Affluent families in Ostrava at that time typically had a maid, often a poor peasant girl who moved to Ostrava, attracted by the neon lights and decadence of the local cultural centre. There was a vibrant cultural and social life in the city, with people promenading in the streets in the evenings, or frequenting one of the scores of local bars and clubs. There were also several theatres, both Czech and German, in the city centre. Ostrava is an industrial city, and in the interwar period coal mines and towers still dotted even the centre of the town. The air was polluted, and black soot continuously fell from the sky. That is why on weekends families with children always left for the nearby Beskid Mountains, for hiking in the summer and skiing in the winter. Also the Frischers used these opportunities to leave the dirty city and spend some time in the countryside. Memoir literature confirms that even holidays in Yugoslavia or Italy were not out of the question for middle-class people from Ostrava. Hence, after the war, Frischer quickly established a successful professional career in this multiethnic city, which allowed members of the Jewish community opportunities for prosperous economic life.18 Alongside his work in the construction business, Frischer continued in his political activities in the ranks of the Zionist movement. He attended the Czechoslovak Zionist Congresses, held positions in local and central Zionist organizations, and contributed

Figure 3  The apartment building (Automat) in the city centre of Moravská Ostrava, where the Frischers lived after 1936.

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Arnošt Frischer

to the Jewish National Fund and other pro-Palestine fundraising drives. Although during the 1920s he did not rise to prominence in the organizations, he repeatedly contributed to the general discussion about the nature of Zionist activities in the Diaspora. Jewish nationalists in Czechoslovakia continued with the schizophrenic policies of the previous generations, when they had been unable to resolve the internal tensions between the Diaspora politics (Landespolitik) and practical Zionism. The JNC and the Jewish Party (Židovská strana/Jüdische Partei), which was established in January 1919, assumed the leading role of the nationalist institutions for Diaspora politics. At the same time, the Central Zionist Union (CZU) and the Zionist Executive, both attached to the World Zionist Organization, emerged. The National Political Committee (Politische Reichskomission) was established to coordinate the work of both streams of the movement and control that the Jewish Party adhered to Zionist principles.19 In 1921, the CZU, chaired by the lawyer Josef Rufeisen (Hermine’s cousin; 1887–1949), relocated its head office to Moravská Ostrava, allegedly to be closer to the masses of the Jewish population in the eastern parts of Czechoslovakia. Ostrava thus became the centre of Czechoslovak Zionism in the interwar period. At the Czechoslovak Zionist Conference in Brno in 1921, Rufeisen announced that the CZU would not interfere in Diaspora politics and would direct all its energies towards Palestine, its development and preparation for European Jewish emigration there.20 Yet the competences of the CZU and the Jewish Party overlapped in the following years, and the Zionist Executive continuously meddled in the domestic politics of Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, various activists often held positions in both organizations, and the relationship between the two groups was never satisfactorily resolved.21 Shortly after his return from Italy, Frischer articulated his vision of the future Zionist politics in Czechoslovakia in a sequence of articles for the Jüdisches Volksblatt, a Zionist newspaper published in Moravská Ostrava. It was his attempt to express the confusion and the crisis that was prevalent among the Jewish nationalists after the First World War. The first two generations of Zionists, including Frischer, successfully established Jewish nationalism as a respected programme. It was the radicalism and revolutionary fervour of the youth that was driving their efforts. But, Frischer argued, the ideas that had been revolutionary a quarter of a century before could no longer appeal to the youth. The new generations needed new goals that would awaken their revolutionary fervour and their desire to seek the new and unknown.22 Frischer argued that the Zionism of his generation was not the real thing. It did not embody the idea of a country and a State (Land- und Staatsidee), but was, instead, a vague utopian vision of the future. The Zionists of his generation had no idea about Palestine-­centric Zionism. For them, Zionism was a question of Jewish modernity, ‘of the self-­confidence and honour of the nation and then, in the far distance, indeterminate and hazy, for later generations, perhaps one day Palestine. Palestine Zionism was for the young generation, which we belonged to, a lyrical muse, a beautiful picture from a novel, a Platonic love.’23 The new generations could not be satisfied with such abstract ideas and that is why the Jewish nation experienced the crisis of its youth. After the strenuous exertion during the war (both physical and mental), the people of Europe, in particular the young generation, were severely affected by stagnation, paralysis and exhaustion. Frischer thus believed that the task of the older generation was to find a

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solution to the crisis and new avenues whereby the youth could continue in their fight for the Zionist ideology.24 The international recognition of their programme caught the Zionists off guard. Now it was not just a castle in the air, an idea of a possible homeland in an unimaginable distant future. The vision of Palestine became tangible: ‘[I]t is now Palestine for you or, if not for you, then for your actual biological child, who has been growing up at your side; or, actually not Palestine for your child, but a child for Palestine.’ This awareness further escalated the Jewish nationalists’ internal crisis. They suddenly realized that they would have to take a decision about the practical carrying out of the Zionist dream. Frischer perceived the nation (Volk) as any other living organism. The current generation was a stem of the nation, which was going to blossom. Any child that was not won over to the Zionist idea meant that a blossom would not fruit and the whole nation would suffer from such a loss.25 Frischer called upon the youth to embrace the ideology, for the new version of Zionism had to glow in their hearts. They ought to go to Palestine, work the land, and build houses. Only such radical, revolutionary ideas could, he argued, live up to the expectations of the youth, who in turn would make the dreams of the first generations a reality.26 The Zionist, Palestine-­centrist ideal, Frischer continued, needed to permeate all spheres of the lives of the youth. He advocated a return to the great outdoors and physical education, together with the in-­class education about Palestine. The youth should form small groups led by former members of student Zionist organizations who would be natural leaders. He also praised the creation of Jewish sport groups (such as Maccabi), as long as they were not content just with physical education and competition.27 Reconnecting with nature was not possible only through outings, Frischer argued, and the youth should, during their holidays, engage in farm work as the ideal preparation (Hachshara) for their future in Palestine. The older generation should join the youth in returning to nature, and owners of farms should give the youth an opportunity to reconnect with the land.28 All the activities of the Jewish nationalists in the Diaspora should aim, in Frischer’s view, towards the young generation’s ultimate migration to Palestine. The theoretical ideal was clear; now it was the task of the Zionists to win over the youth, ‘to achieve the direction, and then to march’. Previous generations had laid the foundations. Now they bequeathed this legacy to future generations: ‘Understand that we are only Moses. Joshua, however, should come into the land.’29 Frischer’s essays centred on the Jewish future in Palestine and the sole role of Diaspora politics – in his opinion – was to prepare the young generation for their future Zionist mission. He belonged to the General Zionists who had gained the upper hand in the movement. They advocated a programme of synthetic Zionist work that included intellectual and diplomatic efforts in the Diaspora, accompanied by the carrying out of the Zionist programme even before a diplomatic solution had been achieved. The ideology also called for the temporary institutionalization of the Diaspora activities in support of the minority rights of the Jews and in preparation for the future development of the Jewish homeland in Palestine.30 The General Zionists attempted to unite all the various factions of the movement and pursue unity within it.31 But dissent kept growing, and new factions, Socialist-Zionist, Religious-Zionist

22

Arnošt Frischer

and right-­wing Zionist, emerged and accused the General Zionists of dictating the conditions for cooperation instead of searching for compromises.32 The expectations that Frischer voiced in the early 1920s were not met, and practical Zionism remained on the margins of Jewish national politics in Czechoslovakia.33 There were not many Jews, particularly in Bohemia and Moravia, who were willing to make Aliyah. Between 4,000 and 6,000 Jews – less than 2 per cent of the community – left Czechoslovakia for Palestine in the interwar period (most of them in the first post-­ war years), with an unknown number emigrating illegally.34 Furthermore, most of the ones from Czechoslovakia appear to have been transmigrants or stateless, and the number of native immigrants is estimated at 1,500 at most.35 Valtr Rosenzweig (1918– 2013) offers illustrative insights into the situation in Czechoslovakia. He was born into an Orthodox Zionist family in Moravská Ostrava. His brother Schlomo decided to make Aliyah in 1925, one of the first Jews in the city to leave for Palestine. (His sister Gerta followed in 1929.) Schlomo was accompanied to the railway station by ‘all the Jews of Ostrava’, and people reproached his family for letting him leave on such an uncertain enterprise. Moravská Ostrava was home to the headquarters of several Zionist youth organizations, such as Hechalutz, Hashomer Hacair and Tchelet Lavan (Blau-Weiss), and local Zionist groups were far more Palestine-­centrist than those in other parts of the Bohemian Lands, including Prague.36 There was also a farm in Komárov, near Ostrava, where the youth were trained for manual labour in Eretz Israel.37 Though Zionism was strong in Ostrava, even there it was almost incomprehensible to most people that anyone would actually move to the Middle East.38 Frischer often complained that the Jews did not take Zionism seriously and that they should increase their efforts in support of the colonization project by emigrating and also by contributing money. With antisemitism in Czechoslovakia lower than in most other countries of East-Central Europe, with avenues open for economic prosperity, and nothing standing in the way of integration, or even assimilation, few Jews decided to follow their Zionist heart for purely idealist reasons. Moreover, the escalating violence between the Jewish immigrants and the indigenous Arabs increased the doubts of potential chalutzim about whether to exchange their relatively comfortable lives in Czechoslovakia for uncertainties and economic difficulties in Palestine. Frischer believed that Arabs and Jews could coexist peacefully, with all inhabitants of Palestine benefiting from the Jewish contribution to its economic development.39 But this vision seemed to collapse by 1929, when Arab riots swept across Palestine and left many Jews dead. The need for the creation of a Jewish homeland as a place of refuge for persecuted Jews increased only after Hitler’s coming to power in Germany in 1933.40 Frischer’s Zionist convictions were based on what he had read and heard from others. It was only in the mid-1930s that he, together with a group of 30–40 Zionists from Moravská Ostrava – including leaders of the movement Rufeisen, Paul März (1894–1981), Fritz Knöpfelmacher (1889–1970) and Bedřich Löwy (1895–1959) – travelled to Palestine to experience life in the Jewish homeland first-­hand. After their return, they organized a series of fundraising meetings in support of the Jewish settlements.41 Löwy’s son remembers that shortly after they got back to Ostrava, his father began to make preparations to emigrate to Palestine. But his wife, ‘who was more practical’, dissuaded him, because they would not have any economic security.42

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Frischer also never seriously considered moving to Palestine, and there is no evidence that even his children – who based on Frischer’s ideological view ought to make Aliyah in the first place43 – were inclined to fulfil the Zionist dream. He also began to have doubts about the capacity of Palestine to absorb further immigrants, for, he asserted, it was from the very beginning intended as the homeland ‘only for a small part of the Jewish nation’, while most Jews would ‘for the foreseeable, even imaginable’ future continue to live all over the world.44 In the end, few Zionist leaders emigrated to Palestine before the Munich Agreement in late September 1938.45 For most of the Zionists, the ideology remained theoretical and mostly fostered a sense of being part of a Jewish culture, and helped them to assert their Jewish identity in multinational Czechoslovakia. Overall, the Jewish community in the Bohemian Lands remained largely uncommitted to Zionism, and thus the nationalists soon toned down the Zionist part of their programme to make it more acceptable for the Jews in the country.46 Even the Jews who lived in the poor eastern parts of the republic preferred to improve their economic and social status by moving to industrially developed Bohemia and Moravia rather than trying their luck in Eretz Israel. Also Frischer became increasingly more involved in domestic Diaspora politics. He gradually rose in the ranks of the JNC (of which he had been a member since 1920) and of the Jewish Party.47 Soon after the declaration of Czechoslovak independence, the Jewish communities in the country were confronted with the quandary of where their loyalties lay in the new state. Frischer,

Figure 4  Zionists from Moravská Ostrava on their trip to Palestine in 1934 (Frischer, top row on left).

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Arnošt Frischer

together with the Zionist leadership, faced the question of how to secure the position of the Jews, who considered themselves members of the Jewish nation. Between the wars, the declaration of nationality in the official census, the language the Jews used, the existence of Jewish schools, and the Jews’ electoral behaviour all became the main points of contention in the Jewish community, and in relations between the Jewish communities and the State. Frischer in all these fields developed activities, which – as he believed – would lead to the existence of a separate Jewish minority that would concurrently be accepted as a politically reliable community in the state.

The Jewish community in Czechoslovakia and Moravská Ostrava The official census was a key avenue for individuals to express their identities and loyalties in interwar Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovak propaganda described (fairly enough) Czechoslovakia as a country that respected diversity and had a democratic constitution that guaranteed the rights of ethnic and religious minorities.48 Nevertheless, it was evident to all concerned that the official census also reflected the desire of ‘Czechoslovaks’ to present themselves as the dominant ethnic group in the country. The Jews, therefore, even if proportionally a tiny minority in absolute numbers, could play a key role in the ethnically mixed areas, especially because of their previous adoption of the German and the Hungarian culture and language. Apart from the hardly identifiable groups of national ‘amphibians’ and nationally indifferent people, the Jews were the only group of people in the state who could be persuaded to change their national affiliations and weaken the numbers of the territorial minorities (Germans, Hungarians and Poles). Also the Jewish nationalists directed their hopes towards the official censuses, which, as they believed, could confirm the strength of Zionist ideals among the Jews in the country. For months before the interwar censuses were conducted (in 1921 and 1930), the nationalists organized public meetings, and their press published official calls for the Jews to declare Jewish nationality.49 In his ideological vision, Frischer supported the decision to declare Jewish nationality, but not without reservations. He believed that the Jews ought to respect the conditions in the countries where they lived and should not claim special rights if such a programme went against established policies – they should try not to stand out as a special group. Seeking privileges in such cases could lead people to question the Jews’ loyalty to the state – a possible threat constantly preoccupying the minds of Zionist activists. In an article published in 1936, Frischer made a clear division between nation states and nationalities states. In Western Europe, where the population was almost exclusively formed by the predominant nation in the state, nationality was synonymous with citizenship. The Jews could not claim any special, exclusive rights in Great Britain or France; they were simply British or French. The situation differed in the multinational states of east-­central Europe. In Czechoslovakia, there were, depending on how one counted, as many as five national minority groups plus the ‘Czechoslovak’ nation state. There the Jews were obliged to declare their identity in the sense of which ethnicity they felt they belonged to. It was,

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Frischer suggested, their ‘highest ethical duty’.50 This declaration of Jewish nationality was not to be perceived as an expression of disloyalty to the Czechoslovak state.51 The Jews would have preferred to point to their citizenship as the sign of identity, but in a country where everybody was constantly asking about individuals’ identities, ‘most of them feel that to be true to themselves they can do only as Jonah did when, while in dire straits, he was asked and replied: “Ivri onauchi – I am a Jew.” ’52 In the two interwar censuses, Frischer and his family thus declared Jewish nationality.53 The Frischers were among the over 50 per cent of people of the Jewish faith in Czechoslovakia who in 1921 declared Jewish nationality (the number slightly increased in 1930). The proportion of those who declared Jewish nationality increased from the west to the east of the country, and skyrocketed to almost 90 per cent in the traditional communities of east Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia. By contrast, almost 50 per cent of the people of Jewish faith in Bohemia opted to declare Czechoslovak nationality. Moravia and Silesia maintained their mixed character, though the number of Jews identifying with the main nation of the state was only less than 16 per cent. The data did not significantly shift nine years later, in the 1930 census.54 Although the Zionists often used the data as proof of their dominance in the Jewish communities, there was in fact a multitude of reasons that led the Jews to declare Jewish nationality in the census. For some, it was an expression of their sense of belonging to the Jewish people, based on a strict adherence to the Jewish religion and social interactions within the orthodox communities of Subcarpathian Ruthenia and east Slovakia. Most of these communities were in fact strictly anti-Zionist. The decision to declare a particular nationality was often influenced by individuals’ social contacts or family, and reflected nothing about their views.55 Furthermore, some people wanted to demonstrate their neutrality in the ethnic conflicts between Czechoslovaks and the territorial minorities, a decision encouraged by the Jewish nationalists and tacitly tolerated by the Czechoslovak authorities.56 Last but not least, some people – including Frischer – felt that a declaration of Jewish nationality had a deeper meaning. It demonstrated their acceptance of the secular Jewish national programme and Zionism. The results of the official census created an image of a Jewish community that supported the nationalists’ vision, but the situation in local communities was far more complex. The history of the Jewish community in Moravská Ostrava in the interwar era shows the challenges Zionists – including Frischer – faced in one of the key industrial and multiethnic cities in the country, and how they attempted to square political and national reliability in the new state. The Jews in Ostrava constituted a specific example of a highly diversified community, so typical of the interwar republic. After the mining boom in the nineteenth century and the Rothschilds’ establishment of the Witkowitz (Vítkovice) Steel Works in 1828, the city experienced extensive migration from all parts of the Habsburg Empire. Located at the Czechoslovak border with Poland, as well as at an ethnic fault line between a Czech area and the predominantly German Sudetenland, Moravská Ostrava, after 1918 a predominantly Czech city, had a strong minority presence. There were German and Polish cultural centres, German-­language educational institutions and a large part of the economic and cultural elite came from the German milieu. The Jewish minority, which had been banned from the city for centuries (officially from 1531 to 1792), created their own district in the centre after

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their number in the city increased in the second half of the nineteenth century. The main Ostrava synagogue, built in 1879, was only a short walk from the Frischers’ flat (after the family moved to the city in 1922), as were the offices of the Jewish Community and the Jewish primary school. The atmosphere in Moravská Ostrava after the proclamation of Czechoslovakia in late October 1918 was tense. As in several other places in Bohemia and Moravia, the feeling was that a pogrom was about to happen in the city. In November 1918, Jewish demobbed soldiers considered forming special units to help protect local Jews. Ultimately, they decided to trust the local garrison, even though there were reports of Czechoslovak soldiers joining the mobs that assaulted Jewish shops and removed shop signs if they were in German.57 The situation gradually stabilized and no pogroms occurred in the city.58 Further problems were caused by the presence of more than 400 Galician Jewish refugees who had settled in the city during the war (Galicia in 1918 became part of the new Polish Republic).59 This caused tensions amongst the local population because of a housing shortage and the alleged involvement of the refugees in profiteering. Radical public speakers warned the authorities that unless they removed the Jewish refugees from the city, locals would take justice into their own hands, effectively threatening the town council with pogroms.60 The Czechoslovak ministry of the interior consequently soon repatriated most of the Galician Jews to Poland, leaving only several dozen refugees in Ostrava.61 In 1919, authorities in the Ostrava region conducted the first local census of inhabitants in independent Czechoslovakia.62 The results reflect the precarious position in which the Jews found themselves shortly after the 1918 revolution. In Moravská Ostrava, Czechs formed only slightly over 50 per cent of the population, with the rest declaring Jewish, German and Polish nationalities.63 In Přívoz, Frischer’s hometown, fewer than one in two people considered themselves Czech. Also the Jews mostly belonged to the German cultural milieu in the region. It is fair to say, as several memoirists have, that parts of the Jewish community in Ostrava mourned the end of the monarchy, remained ambivalent about the new republic and in the following decades continued to commemorate the previous Austrian monarchs.64 Yet although the Jewish community of Ostrava was predominantly German in culture, almost 90 per cent of all Jews in the city declared Jewish nationality in the 1919 census.65 These numbers reflect both the uncertainty prevailing among the local Jews about the future development in the region, and their desire to declare neutrality in the Czech-German conflict. Shortly after Czechoslovak independence, most of the local Jews did not feel comfortable being identified with the German minority. But this development was only temporary. Only two years later, in the 1921 census, the number of Jews sharply decreased from the number in 1919. The simultaneous increase in the number of Germans suggests that two years after Czechoslovak independence parts of the Jewish community felt more comfortable returning to a German cultural affiliation.66 This quick shift in the data further proves that we need to be extremely cautious when working with the statistics in the situation when bilingual people, or those belonging to the Jewish faith, had to decide for one particular national group in the censuses. The writer Joseph Wechsberg (1907–83), who grew up in Ostrava (and later, in America, was a regular contributor to The New Yorker), ascribed the persistence of

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German culture in the Jewish community to the liberal character of Ostrava during the 1920s, and the existence of a local – ‘Ostrava’ – identity that transcended ethnic and linguistic boundaries.67 It is also plausible that the way in which the Jewish community had developed in the second half of the nineteenth century – with a significant part of it originating in the various lands of the Habsburg Empire – and the high concentration of Jews and Germans in the city centre (more than 35 per cent of the population) may have slowed down any possible cultural change in the community. We unfortunately lack reliable data regarding the changing linguistic and national identification of the Jews of Moravská Ostrava in the 1920s and 1930s. One of the few available ways to characterize the community is by considering the composition of the democratically elected Jewish Religious Community, the local administrative body. Ostrava’s was the first Jewish Religious Community with a Zionist majority in the Bohemian Lands, but most of the members were affiliated with the German culture and language.68 The list of members elected to the Jewish Community by popular vote in 1935 – in the last interwar elections – suggests that the Community had maintained its German-Zionist character. General Zionists, members of Poale Zion and members of German parties dominated the Board.69 Throughout the interwar years, the Jews’ adherence to the German culture and the strength of the Zionist movement both became the major points of complaint amongst the Czechs of Ostrava, including the small but gradually growing CzechJewish assimilationist movement, represented by the Association of Czech Jews (Svaz Čechů-židů).70 The Czechoslovak authorities expected that after 1918 the Jews would abandon German culture and come over to Czech culture and language. The fact that the Jews did not immediately do so led, according to some historians, to the emergence of the ‘antisemitism of disappointment’.71 The local authorities in Moravia, in particular, observed developments within the Jewish community with suspicion and reported to the central authorities when they noticed something that they perceived to be evidence of Jewish disloyalty to the new state. As one clerk wrote in 1922: Since the establishment of Czechoslovakia, the Jews have learnt nothing, and have remained a great source of support for Germandom in [. . .] Moravian towns [. . .]. Nor can one expect otherwise from them, despite all the assurances of a few Jewish national enthusiasts, even less so considering that the Jewish national parties, despite all the emphasis on Jewish nationality, feel German.72

Between the two world wars, when reporting on meetings of Jewish organizations in Moravská Ostrava, the local police always noted the language each particular speaker used. Although Czechoslovak law allowed the Jews to declare Jewish nationality in the official census, the officials were more interested in individuals’ cultural affiliation and mainly their language of everyday communication. Evidently, the existence of Jewish nationality meant an unwelcome complication in the otherwise easy categorization of the population in Czechoslovakia, based on the main language they spoke. These sentiments persisted among Czech nationalists, for whom, the Jews – including Zionists – remained emblematic of Germanization and disloyalty.73

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Frischer and the Jewish nationalists perceived the existence of the Jewish ethnic minority as comporting with the basic idea of the democratic Czechoslovak state. Yet although they believed that the nationalists could pursue an independent course in the Czech-German national struggle, they could not ignore the resentment the Jews’ language identification with the German culture caused among the Czechs. Shortly after 1918, therefore, the Zionist organization in the country endorsed the change in Jewish nationalist cultural and linguistic affiliation from German to Czech.74 In the interwar period, Frischer was at the forefront of these efforts. Hence, for example, whilst in 1921 the Frischers completed the official census forms in German, in 1930 they did so in Czech. In this way, they believed, the Jews could ensure their place in the country as politically loyal citizens. These ideas were, however, only half-­heartedly followed by the Jewish population, especially in the centres of Jewish nationalism in Moravia, such as Moravská Ostrava and Brno. Furthermore, most of the Zionist activists, including the leadership of the Zionist organization, continued to use German as their working language. It was only after Hitler’s rise to power and the first anti-Jewish excesses throughout Germany that the Czechoslovak Zionist organization revisited their efforts to increase the use of Czech among the Jews. In Moravská Ostrava, they organized public meetings where speakers appealed to the Ostrava Jewry to learn their lesson from the developments in Germany and completely adjust to the situation in Czechoslovakia. They asked them to ‘send their children to Czech schools, speak Czech to each other, support the actions of the state-­forming elements and of the government’. This campaign allegedly bore first fruit when there was a noticeable increase in the number of Jewish families that employed private Czech language teachers.75 Whereas German remained the main language of the Zionist organization (also of the Jewish Community in Moravská Ostrava) until 1938, the Jewish Party, involved in domestic politics, became sensitive about the use of German in public. This was at the point when linguistic self-­identification was increasingly used as a yardstick of political reliability. At the party congress in early 1935, some of the delegates ‘felt offended’ that the session was chaired by Emil Margulies (1877–1943), the party chairman, because he only spoke German.76 Later, in May 1936, when Frischer addressed a public meeting of the Jewish Party in Znojmo (south Moravia), he had to speak in German, because ‘many of the Jews of Znojmo still do not properly understand Czech’. He made it clear at the beginning of his address, however, that this was by no means to be considered a sign of his support for the German nation.77 This campaign of the Zionist organization should not be confused with Jewish acceptance of assimilation in the Czech nation. For Frischer and other nationalists, the persecution of the Jews in Germany was the final proof of the failure of the assimilationist programme.78 The only possible response to the new wave of persecution of German Jews was to do more for Palestine, either financially or physically. The Jews needed a homeland that would unite and protect them. In Frischer’s words, ‘the Jewish nation ends in Germany, but begins in Palestine’.79 Frischer remained committed to the Zionist programme, but concurrently found it necessary to respect the national sentiments in the Czech and Slovak society in the changed situation after 1918 and then in particular after 1933. This peculiar situation of the Jewish communities in

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Moravia is further confirmed when we centre on the Zionist efforts to educate children in the Jewish national spirit.

Jewish education or education for the Jews? A proper education of Jewish children was one of the essential tenets of the Zionist foundational work in the Diaspora. Children, the future of the Jewish nation, had to be prepared for the day when they would live in the Jewish homeland, Palestine, but also develop a sense of belonging to the Jewish culture even if they would decide to stay in the Diaspora. But opportunities for Jewish education in Czechoslovakia were limited, and the number of parents who sent their children to purely Jewish schools was minimal, at least in the communities in the Bohemian Lands. The situation was different in eastern Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia.80 In Czechoslovakia, parents had considerable freedom to send their children to local elementary schools according to the language of instruction they preferred. The Czechoslovak Constitution of 1920 allowed linguistic minorities to establish educational institutions with a language of instruction that was different from the State language (‘Czechoslovak’), provided they formed a ‘considerable fraction’ of the local population. From the Jewish point of view, the meaning of these sections of Constitution was rather unclear, because they explicitly mention only minorities that used a language other than the ‘Czechoslovak language’.81 Jewish nationalists in Bohemia and Moravia did not use Hebrew or Yiddish; most of them communicated in Czech and German. Although the Jewish schools could educate only a small number of the Jewish pupils, the Jewish nationalist politicians considered the maintenance of these schools to be a key point on their agenda. In Frischer’s opinion, a school education needed to provide young people with an introduction to Jewish history, literature and the Hebrew language. He therefore believed that the obligations towards minorities, which were accepted by the Czechoslovak government at the Paris Peace Conference, ought to lead to the establishment of schools where children would receive education in a Jewish national spirit.82 Frischer expected that the government would recognize the schools as part of minority education and give them access to subsidies from the State budget. The Ministry of Education, however, claiming that the Jewish schools were not national but confessional institutions, never recognized them as part of minority schooling and thus again confirmed the authorities’ problematic understanding of the existence of a separate Jewish national minority in the country. This led to frequent complaints from the Jewish nationalists that practice fell short of the promises made by the Czechoslovak government in the minority treaties and in the Constitution.83 During the Habsburg monarchy, there had been numerous Jewish elementary schools in Bohemian and Moravian cities and villages. Due to the character of the Jewish communities, the schools provided education predominantly in German. The German-Jewish schools in Bohemia almost disappeared by 1910. The ratio of Jewish students at German gymnasia (secondary schools) was also shrinking, though they still formed a majority of the Jewish secondary school students. This cultural transformation proved to be more difficult in Moravia.84 Czech nationalists perceived

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the existence of German-Jewish schools as one of the main obstacles that caused the slow linguistic transformation of Moravia from German to Czech.85 The creation of the Czechoslovak Republic led to the closure of fourteen Jewish elementary schools in Moravia. Only the schools in Boskovice, Podivín, Uherský Brod, Břeclav, Miroslav and Moravská Ostrava remained open, but their fate was also uncertain.86 The JNC launched a campaign to secure the existence of the Jewish schools, arguing that even the changed conditions in the new republic justified the need for special Jewish educational institutions. They stated: ‘Our aim is to establish a Jewish school system in the Czechoslovak Republic that would draw on modern educational practice and bring Jewish children up to be loyal citizens of the Republic and good Jews.’87 In the atmosphere of the Czech-German national conflict, when nationalists on both sides of the divide tried to claim children for their own national groups (often against the will of the nationally indifferent parents),88 the JNC imagined the Jewish schools as bilingual institutions that would prepare Jewish children for life in the multinational country. Although the first graders would learn the second language only informally, in practical classes, beginning in the second grade, children would have a bilingual education that would lead, by the time they were in fourth or fifth grade, to fluency in both languages. At the same time, the special character of a Jewish school would lead to the inclusion of Hebrew in the curriculum. Furthermore, ‘examples, sayings, legends, fairy tales, comparisons and customs’ from Jewish history and culture ‘would instil in the Jewish child understanding for its own essence and protect it from being forced to give up its nationality [ethnicity]’.89 In line with the programme of manifesting political loyalty to the Czechoslovak state, the JNC declared in 1918 that Czech would be the primary language of instruction.90 Despite their efforts, the JNC was not able to secure the continued existence of the remaining schools in the Bohemian lands without state subsidies, and they were gradually closed. The only exception was the Jewish primary school (Volksschule) in Moravská Ostrava, where the Jewish Community was financially strong enough and committed to the idea of an independent Jewish school system (a new Czech-Jewish primary school was also opened in Prague and a German-Jewish primary school in Brno). Established in 1863, the school had, from the start, provided local Jewish children with education in Hebrew and especially in German.91 Between the wars, the Jewish school received minor, irregular support from the town council (arguably thanks to Frischer’s interventions as a councillor), but until the end in 1942, the school remained a burden on the Ostrava Jewish Community.92 Although lacking an overtly Zionist character, the school was patronized by the local Jewish nationalists.93 During the 1920s, German remained the dominant language of instruction (though Czech was introduced as the second language), respecting the preferences of parents, which reconfirms the theory that the language transformation in the community was slow. Yet, it has been cogently argued that the school created a special Jewish space where the Jews were able to distance themselves from the chauvinistic German nationalist agenda, foster the Jewish identity and culture, and bring up good Czechoslovak patriots.94 Similar to other places in the Bohemian lands, the Ostrava Jewish elite’s support for the Jewish school came under attack from Czech-Jewish Assimilationists. The

In the Czechoslovak First Republic

Figure 5  The Jewish primary school in Moravská Ostrava.

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Association of Czech Jews stepped up its criticism after 1936, when, following the rise of German irredentism in the country, Czech became the main language of instruction in the school. In their opinion, the optional weekly two hours of Hebrew did not justify the existence of an exclusively Jewish school. An institution of this type was artificial, they argued, and ought to be closed; Jewish children, in their view, ought to attend only Czech schools. Julius Bondy (1873–1944), a Czech Jewish Assimilationist from Polská Ostrava, accused the Jewish nationalists of maintaining the school purely as part of their efforts to separate Jewish children from the Czech population and create ‘artificial distrust’ among the Jews toward the Czech nation.95 On another occasion, Bondy went as far as to compare the Jewish school in Ostrava to the Sudeten German irredentist education. He even argued that by supporting the school with its ‘politically Jewish nationalist character’, the Jewish Community violated the law that allowed them to see only to the religious needs of the community.96 Although the nationalists in Moravská Ostrava propagated independent Jewish education, Jewish children, or rather their parents, were eventually forced to make a decision whether they preferred the Czech or German national education. The Jewish school in Ostrava offered instruction only in four (later intermittently five) grades. When the children reached the age of ten or eleven, they were not able to continue at Jewish schools unless they were willing to relocate 170 km to Brno, which had a Jewish (German) gymnasium (grammar school).97 After 1918, the JNC promised the authorities that the Jews would continue to reorient themselves culturally and linguistically to the Czech nation. In Ostrava, during the 1920s, there was a sharp increase of Jewish children who moved from German schools to Czech.98 Many of the parents, however, did not follow the recommendation of the Zionist leadership and, based on their social contacts, or simply because they believed that education in German improved one’s future social mobility, they sent their offspring to German schools.99 Their numbers were however gradually decreasing. According to a report prepared by the Central Zionist Union in January 1939, shortly after the demise of the First Czechoslovak Republic, most of the nationalists’ children in the late 1930s attended Czech, Slovak, or Rusyn schools, and ignored schools where instruction was in German or Hungarian. This transformation accelerated in the second half of the 1930s and could be particularly well documented in the areas inhabited by the German minority. We need to add that there was a rise of local antisemitism in the German areas in the 1930s. Teachers and students at German schools often became the first to be radicalized in the Nazi ideology, which was one of the reasons why Jewish pupils and students moved to non-German educational institutions. Nevertheless, the authors of the report concluded that the Jews had clearly kept the promise the Zionist leadership made in October 1918.100 The programme of adjusting to the changed conditions in the Diaspora and adopting Czech culture, advocated by Jewish nationalists, including Frischer, was largely introduced in Moravia. It is often impossible to reconstruct the motivations that led parents to send their children to German, Czech, or Jewish schools. Like other Zionists, Frischer enrolled Hans, Liese and his youngest daughter, Bedřiška/Friederike/Fritzi (born in 1924), in the Jewish primary school in Moravská Ostrava. All three children attended the school when German was the dominant language in the curriculum. This was also the time

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when the school, from 1924 onward, began its gradual transformation into an institution dominated by Czech.101 After completing the fourth grade, Hans Frischer enrolled, in 1927, as Hanuš Frischer at the Czechoslovak Grammar School. His school records state that his religion was Jewish and his mother tongue Czech. Several years later, Liese Ruth Frischer enrolled in the Czechoslovak Reformed Grammar School, registering as Líza Rutha Frischerová with Czech as her mother tongue.102 She left the grammar school four years later, and enrolled in the German Open Vocational School for Women’s Occupations as Liese Ruth Frischer, giving German as her mother tongue. She eventually became a seamstress.103 The youngest of Frischer’s children, Friederike, followed in the footsteps of her older brother and enrolled as Bedřiška Frischerová in the Czechoslovak Gymnasium in Moravská Ostrava, giving Czechoslovak as her mother tongue.104 Ostrava had several German grammar schools, attended by many of the local Jews.105 Both the Czechoslovak gymnasium and the German gymnasium were only several minutes walking distance from the Frischers’ apartment, so distance clearly did not influence Frischer’s decision to send his children to the Czech school. Frischer therefore was among the Zionists who, even in a city with a strong GermanJewish presence, sent their children to Czech schools already before the Nazis came to power in Germany. As early as in 1920, he advocated the utraquisation of the Jewish schools in Czechoslovakia. As a member of the Ostrava Jewish Community from 1920 to 1929 (serving as its Vice-Chairman from 1921 to 1925; and First Vice-Chairman from 1925 to 1929), Frischer was directly responsible for the introduction of Czech as the second language in the Jewish school, and also initiated the Jewish Community’s decision to communicate with the state authorities in Czech.106 This was not a sign of the changing identity of the Jewish nationalists, but rather an expression of loyalty to the new political system of the Czechoslovak Republic and an adjustment to changed conditions in the Diaspora. The story, however, is not that simple. Liese Ruth could very easily move from a Czech institution to German school, suddenly stating that German was her mother tongue. Clearly, bilingualism was still common among the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia. Her enrolment in a German school should certainly not be considered evidence of disloyalty to the Czechoslovak state. Bilingual children had a whole range of options after only four years of primary school. Frischer, like his wife, had been brought up in the German cultural environment; indeed, Frischer’s Czech was never flawless.107 Yet he insisted that his children acquire fluency in both Czech and German at an early age. Is it reasonable in this case to talk about ethnic fluidity or national indifference?108 The evidence points to the contrary. Frischer, although emphasizing the need to learn Czech, kept using German when addressing audiences at Jewish meetings.109 Ernst and Arnošt Frischer could live beside each other. Frischer considered himself Jewish, but in the specific conditions of Moravská Ostrava he used German when dealing with the local Jewish community and Czech when communicating with the state officials.110 He brought up all his children in the Jewish nationalist spirit and insisted that they master the language that would cement their Jewish identity, but also the ones that would facilitate their social mobility and demonstrate their political loyalty to the state. Apart from Czech and German, the Jewish school gave them foundations in Hebrew, and the gymnasium offered instruction in French.111

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Arnošt Frischer

Furthermore, the Jewish schools were not the only available avenue to instil the Jewish national spirit in children. In Ostrava, visits to the synagogue every Friday were part of the curriculum, and children of the local Zionists took private Hebrew classes on Saturday mornings.112 Parents also used extracurricular activities, such as Jewish youth and sport clubs, to strengthen their children’s sense of belonging to the Jewish nation.113 Jewish youth groups organized camping trips to the Beskid Mountains, which provided another opportunity where children could learn Hebrew. The WIZO (Women’s International Zionist Organization) held talks in private apartments for the youth, and during the 1930s Ostrava was frequented by visitors from Palestine, who delivered lectures about life in the Jewish national homeland and taught Hebrew to the youth.114 The Jewish Community also owned a sanatorium in Ostravice in the Beskid Mountains, where children from poorer families could spend their summer vacations.115 The problematic existence of the Jewish schools led to frequent complaints by the Jewish nationalists that they had not received any comprehensive rights that would support a proper development of the Jewish minority and culture in Czechoslovakia. One of the reasons for the lack of commitment from the side of the Czechoslovak state, Frischer believed, was that for a long time the Jewish nationalists were not represented in the parliament. Their struggle to achieve parliamentary representation reveals another set of challenges they faced in Czechoslovakia.

The political representation of the Jews The Jewish Party, as the representative of the Jewish nationalists, was founded in 1919, but for a long time it remained a loose collection of dispersed activists. The party only attempted to establish a tighter bond just before general and local elections, when they formed ad hoc coalitions amongst the individual factions all across Czechoslovakia. The nationalists decided to create a close-­knit regular organization only in the early 1930s. The first inaugural congress convened in Moravská Ostrava on 6 January 1931 and elected Margulies, a Radical Zionist from Litoměřice, as the party chairman. Frischer became one of the forty members of the party central committee. The Congress reiterated the party programme as follows: [The Jewish Party] is the political organisation of national Judaism in this country. It is the legitimate representative of the Jewish people in its fight for nationality rights, for national and cultural development, and for civic and political equality based on the laws of this Republic and within the framework of its constitution.116

Although formed by Jewish nationalists, the Jewish Party presented itself as a representative and protector of the whole community. Despite these claims, the nationalists faced several major obstacles in their efforts to prove the acceptance of their programme by the Jewish electorate. In absolute numbers, the Jews presented a sizeable community, but they constituted a hopelessly fractious group. Frischer for a long time believed that the Jewish nationalists should seek parliamentary representation as a distinct minority political party. His argumentation

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correlated with the reasons he gave in defence of the Jews’ decision to register their nationality Jewish in the official census. He argued that the situation in the non-Jewish population was rather straightforward for potential voters, with by far most of the political parties, except for the Communists, divided according to ethnic lines (for example, the Czechoslovak Social Democrats were separate from the German Social Democrats in the country). Individual voters made their decision based on what ethnicity they felt they belonged to, and subsequently chose a socialist or bourgeois party according to their own outlooks on life. For the Jews, the choice was less clear cut. A considerable number of them doubted whether, in view of their geographic dispersion, the ‘conditions in which they have been able to make a living’ (Wirtschaftsbedingungen) and ‘their complicated spiritual life’ (komplizierten Seelenleben), they could run a national ticket. But, Frischer emphasized, the Jews simply had no other option: [T]he election and the census: these are the crossing of the River Jordan, single file, one after another, counted and registered, and each and every one has to say: ‘Shibboleth’, must answer the question: ‘Who are you?’ And then each of the fourteen million citizens of this empire [Reich], without hesitation and without deliberation (and also ‘Chochmes’ [savvy]), declares his nationality, so each of the few hundred thousand Jews has no choice but to say: ‘Ivri onauchi’ – ‘I am a Jew’.117

Furthermore, because of their relatively small numbers, the Jewish Party needed to appeal to voters across socio-­economic boundaries – to both the middle class and workers – because only the united support from the Jewish electorate could push the party across the electoral threshold. Frischer appealed also to Jewish voters who favoured the practical execution of the Zionist programme to take part in elections in the Diaspora. Pointing to the inadequate State support for Jewish-­minority demands, he stressed that the situation would have been different had the nationalists managed to get their representatives into the National Assembly. Jewish nationalist representatives in parliaments throughout Europe were also of fundamental importance to the Jewish diplomatic activities with regard to Palestine.118 There was, however, very strong opposition against the Jewish Party within the Jewish community. Besides their ideological struggle with various integrationist (Czech, German and Hungarian) and internationalist (pro-Communist) groups, the nationalists had to wage an even more bitter struggle with the Orthodox religious authorities in the east, who rejected the ideology of secular Zionism and nationalism as blasphemy. The Orthodox also believed that the nationalists’ activities, perceived as political separatism, threatened the Jewish position in Slovakia and Ruthenia. Likewise, local Slovak authorities and some Czech political parties, such as the Agrarians, favoured the Orthodox groups to secular Zionists, whose political loyalties they doubted, because of their perceived adherence to the Hungarian culture.119 There were deep ideological divisions also among the Zionists. These tensions became evident in the first years after 1918, when the movement experienced an internal split. Poale Zion was a Jewish Socialist party, whose members combined the pro-Zionist agenda with an emphasis on revolutionary Socialist ideas.120 Also Frischer belonged to the wing of the Zionist movement that recognized the ideals of social and economic

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Arnošt Frischer

equality. He often attended meetings of the local branch of Poale Zion in Ostrava, an industrial city with a strong working class, which became one of the centres of the Jewish Socialists’ activities.121 It is sometimes claimed that he was a party member, but we have no evidence of this. In these turbulent years shortly after the end of the war, other leaders of the mainstream Zionist movement also attended these gatherings in an attempt to persuade the radical leftists that the pro-Zionist factions should work together. Frischer believed, reasonably, that a strong Zionist movement could only be built if the diverse pro-Zionist factions in Czechoslovakia cooperated. He even offered to coordinate the collaboration between Poale Zion and the mainstream Zionists, arguing that there were ‘historical and cultural reasons for the unification and united action of both groups’.122 Poale Zion, however, gradually radicalized their Socialist rhetoric, and accused the Zionist movement of supporting the interests of the bourgeoisie against the working class, creating class divisions amongst the Jews and causing antisemitism.123 The tone of the debate attests to the nature of the political crisis in Czechoslovakia at that time. At a Poale Zion meeting in Moravská Ostrava in June 1920, speakers, including many Polish and German Socialists, called for a revolution and gave as an example the French bourgeoisie that annihilated the nobility and let flow ‘streams of blood’. Others, mostly Czech speakers and Frischer (who spoke in German), praised the Socialist ideals, but opposed the view that Czechoslovakia was ripe for revolution. He was however immediately silenced and accused of being a capitalist, an entrepreneur in the construction business, who had no right to contribute to the discussion. Although the meeting eventually rejected the left-­wing radicalism, the inner conflict within the party was leading to a split.124 Frischer again publicly appealed to Poale Zion not to leave the Zionist movement, but in vain.125 In early 1920, the radicals left Poale Zion, rejected any further cooperation with the Zionists and overtly adhered to the Communist International (the Comintern). They later merged with the newly founded Czechoslovak Communist Party.126 This split came shortly before the first general elections. Although this was unlikely the main reason why the pro-Zionist United Jewish Parties failed to enter the parliament, the affair shows that even the Zionist movement in Czechoslovakia did not form any homogeneous group, which further complicated their efforts to achieve parliamentary representation. Moreover, the Communists’ revolutionary fervour and their alleged appeal among the Jewish youth then constituted one of the major concerns for the Zionists in the interwar period.127 During the 1920s, the Jewish Party kept running for the national elections on a single party ticket, but without any success. Major changes to their election strategies came only in the late 1920s, and Frischer was a driving force in their efforts to enter the parliament with the help of skilful political negotiations rather than direct ideological campaigns.128 In 1928–9, he was one of the key representatives of the Jewish Party during negotiations with Polish minority parties in the Ostrava region. The parties agreed to stand for the elections together, under the name ‘Electoral Coalition of Polish and Jewish Parties’.129 The Jewish Party used as a model the tried-­and-tested tactic of the Polish Jewish representatives who, in 1922, formed a Bloc of National Minorities – together with the Ukrainian, German and Belorussian minorities – in the Sejm, the Polish parliament.130 The election results in 1929 marked the loss of support for the Jewish nationalists compared to the previous elections. Nevertheless, the high concentration of Polish

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votes in the Ostrava region provided the coalition with the required minimum in one of the electoral districts, and four MPs (two Polish and two Jewish) entered the parliament. Ludvík Singer (1876–1931), a veteran Bohemian Zionist elected in Prague, and Julius Reisz (1880–1976), elected in Slovakia, became the first two Jewish deputies to the National Assembly.131 When Singer died in 1931, his seat was taken by Angelo Goldstein (1889–1947), another Prague Zionist.132 The Jewish MPs joined the parliamentary group of the Czechoslovak Social Democrats (as affiliated members – hospitanti), a party that helped to form the government. In their parliamentary interpellations, they pointed to the difficult economic situation among the eastern Jews of Czechoslovakia, fought against any manifestations of antisemitism in society, tried to secure State funding for Hebrew schools, called for a new citizenship law that would naturalize foreign-­born Jews, and attempted to negotiate the revision of the electoral law to make it fairer for small minorities.133 Before the 1929 elections, the Jewish nationalists were concerned that their electorate could reject the coalition with the Poles. They therefore launched an extensive campaign to explain to their potential voters the content of the agreement and its benefits for the Zionists. Frischer was one the main public defenders of working together. His arguments, published in Selbstwehr (the German-­language mouthpiece of the Zionist movement), reflect his transformation from an idealist into a practical politician. Anticipating wariness among the Jewish voters, he pointed to the Polish parties’ loyalty to the Czechoslovak state, and stressed that although their programmes were not identical, the partners could find common ground. In any case, the parties formed only a practical alliance for the elections, and were not bound to work together in parliament.134 The way they achieved their parliamentary representation in 1929 was what kept reminding the nationalists about their limited support among the Jews of Czechoslovakia. The matter re-­emerged in 1934 and 1935 with the preparation for the next general elections. The changed international situation after Hitler’s accession to power in Germany and the revisionist turn in Polish policy towards Czechoslovakia ruled out further cooperation with the Polish parties. The discussion within the Jewish Party brought to the fore the inner divisions arising over ideological principles and straightforwardness on the one hand and practical compromise politics that could lead to parliamentary representation on the other. The Czechoslovak Social Democrats, an anti-­fascist and democratic party, offered to include on their ticket two members of the Jewish Party, and promised them seats in the National Assembly. In the event of an exceptionally successful result, one candidate of the Jewish Party would be given a seat in the Senate (the upper chamber). The name of the Jewish Party, however, would not appear on the ticket. On the other hand the parliamentarians would remain members of the Jewish Party and would follow its political programme. The Jewish Party had received similar offers before the 1929 elections, but had not yet considered this type of cooperation ‘honourable’.135 Also in this case, Frischer emerged as one of the key party members in the heated internal discussions. The party congress in Moravská Ostrava overwhelmingly approved the agreement with the Social Democrats, against the opposition of Margulies, who in response resigned the chairmanship. Frischer, already the Vice chairman, gave

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a two-­hour speech in support of cooperation with the Social Democrats, and later replaced Margulies as temporary chairman. Frischer and the other defenders of the electoral agreement emphasized that the last six years had proved the need for the Jews to be represented in the parliament, where their MPs could fight for the interests of the communities in the difficult times after the rise of Nazism in Central Europe. The congress decided that the current parliamentarian Goldstein and Chaim Kugel (1897– 1953), the headmaster of the secular Hebrew gymnasium in Mukacheve (Subcarpathian Ruthenia), joined the Social Democrat slate and were later elected to the lower house.136 Frischer ran for the Senate on the Social Democrat ticket in Moravská Ostrava, but was ultimately nominated only for seventh place in the district and was not elected.137 Frischer and others, in particular Goldstein, successfully defended the cooperation of the Jewish Party with the Socialists, proving their understanding of what Diaspora politics in Czechoslovakia meant in practice, and where the ends justify the means. But success came at the price of causing a rift in the party, when some of the founding fathers vocally opposed the cooperation. The agreement and its authors also came under attack from the right-­wing Zionist press, and the subsequent exchange of personal attacks left a bitter aftertaste among the Jewish nationalists.138 This was not the last time that Frischer’s decisions led to conflicts with his close associates. The agreement with the Social Democrats ensured the continuation of Jewish representation in the National Assembly despite the new electoral law, which was even more restrictive to small minorities.139 The Jewish nationalists would have to unite almost all of their potential voters to be represented in the parliament. This constituted an impossible barrier, because the nationalists could hardly simultaneously appeal to the diverse community of the secular Zionists and various integrationists in the Bohemian Lands, and the religious traditionalists in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia. In 1935, Margulies and his allies believed that because of the changed international situation after the rise of Hitler, a single Jewish Party ballot could gain sufficient support to enter the parliament.140 We are unable to ascertain the final number of votes cast in support of the Jewish Party in 1935. Yet the subsequent provincial elections to the Slovak and Ruthenian legislatures, and the decline in the number of votes for the Jewish Party, proved that the nationalists’ claim of having strong support in the large communities in the east was not based on correct readings of the statistics (but also possibly that the internal disputes had alienated part of the Jewish electorate).141 Besides trying to get into the parliament, the Jewish Party also ascribed high importance to political representation at the local level (for example, in town councils), where they could directly influence the lives of the communities. Before the elections, nationalist leaders toured the country and campaigned in support of the local candidates. They argued that the electoral behaviour of Jewish voters at the local level was even more visible than at the central level and presented support for an independent Jewish ticket as a manifestation of political loyalty to Czechoslovakia. In 1929, Goldstein, a long-­standing Jewish politician from Prague, at a meeting in Ostrava pointed to the complex situation in Czechoslovakia, a country whose authorities, although pledging to respect national diversity, cautiously followed the Jews’ political decisions where they supported German or Hungarian political parties and national aspirations. Only overt

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and proud Jewish politics could lead to the Jews being accepted by the non-Jews as equals. Frischer also emphasized that, if elected, the Jewish Party would loyally work together with the other parties in the town council for the benefit of the city.142 Between 1929 and 1939, Frischer was repeatedly elected to the Ostrava town assembly.143 The electoral support for the Jewish Party in Frischer’s hometown far exceeded the proportion of Ostrava Jews who had declared their nationality as Jewish in the census, and the nationalists were represented in the town assembly during the whole interwar period.144 In 1929, Frischer was also co-­opted for the first two years of the six-­ year term among twenty members of the town council – the executive body, where he looked after the interests of the Jews of Ostrava, and put his professional expertise to good use in the technical division.145 The efforts to integrate the Jewish votes in Moravská Ostrava reached their peak during the elections in late 1935. At the time, Nazi Germany had already disenfranchised German Jews, and Ostrava, lying near the border with Germany, experienced the heightened tensions between the Czechs and local Germans. Some local Czechs had also clearly become radicalized and supported the Czech National Fascist Community (Národní obec fašistická – NOF), which in 1935 won seats on the town assembly. The interests of the Jewish community allowed various Jewish groups to overcome their own particular interests and they created a united ticket under the neutral label ‘the Jews’ (Židé), under Frischer’s leadership. Only various assimilationist groups remained outside of the coalition.146 The post-1933 situation also increased the nationalists’ efforts to sway German Jews away from the German political parties and, as a sign of loyalty to Czechoslovakia, vote for the Jewish Party.147 ‘The Jews’ secured almost all the Jewish votes in the city and received two mandates. Frischer was again appointed among the twenty members of the town council, where he worked together with the state parties, especially the Social Democrats.148 The politics in Moravská Ostrava points to the potential of the Jewish nationalists in local elections.149 Their electoral success in Ostrava was repeated in dozens of cities across Czechoslovakia where the Jewish nationalists sat on town assemblies and councils.150 In Slovakia, the Jewish Party was even able to achieve representation in the land diet.151 Any such cooperation with other Jewish groups was more problematic at the Czechoslovak level, where the Jewish Party made the ethos of the Jewish nationalist programme of minority politics its priority, and had to look for other strategies to achieve representation in the parliament. For Frischer, representation in the parliament was crucial for the development of Jewish politics in the country. In 1935, he believed that the Zionists, with the renewed parliamentary mandate, had an opportunity to expand their activities in the political, as well as socio-­economic sense.

As chairman of the Jewish Party In July 1935, after the successful general elections, the Jewish Party congress in Turčanské Teplice, Slovakia, confirmed Frischer as the elected chairman. Otto Zucker (1892–1944) of Brno, Matěj Weiner of Liptovský Svätý Mikuláš, and Vilém Sternbach of Mukacheve became the vice-­chairmen.152 The Czech Zionist weekly, Židovské zprávy (Jewish News), commented on Frischer’s election:

40

Arnošt Frischer With extraordinary trust and expressions of affection, Arnošt Frischer, an engineer from Moravská Ostrava, was elected Chairman, having succeeded in capturing the hearts and loyalty of everyone. Everyone had the feeling that this was more than just merely the election of an official. It was the proclaiming of a leader whom the party will follow in closed ranks in all circumstances and through all hardship.153

Frischer served as the chairman of the Jewish Party for just over three years, between July 1935 and autumn 1938, after which the party for all intents and purposes ceased to exist. He reached the highest position at a difficult time. The economic crisis in the early 1930s deeply affected the poor Jewish communities in the east. Furthermore, the 1935 elections that brought another success to the Jewish nationalists also confirmed the strength of the German irredentist movement in Czechoslovakia. The Sudeten German Party (Sudetendeutsche Partei – SdP), led by Konrad Henlein (1898–1945), finished second in the whole republic. More important, almost 70 per cent of all the German voters supported the SdP and their call for more rights for the German minority in the Czechoslovak borderlands. Under Frischer’s leadership, the Jewish Party faced three main challenges. First, they attempted to renegotiate with the Czechoslovak government the minority status of the Jews and tried to ensure that they would be able to fully benefit from the minority rights. Second, Frischer hoped to continue with the party reorganization and develop a comprehensive network of local cells across the whole country. Last, the Jewish Party prepared plans for how to improve the socio-­economic structure of the Jewish communities to make the Jews more economically competitive in the post-Depression times. On 22 April 1936, a delegation led by Frischer submitted a long memorandum concerning the position of the Jews in the country to the newly elected President Edvard Beneš (1884–1948).154 In particular, they complained about the inadequate State support for the Hebrew schools in Subcarpathian Ruthenia and demanded their nationalization (zestátnění), meaning that the state would sustain them financially. Further, they requested a higher state contribution for the improvement of the social situation among the Jews, especially in the east. They also appealed to the President to initiate a change in the electoral law that would be friendlier towards small minorities.155 Frischer later took advantage of another opportunity, Beneš’s visit to Ostrava in August 1937, to remind the President of the problematic status of the Jews in the city. Almost one-­third of the 9,000 Jews did not have Czechoslovak citizenship, even though some of them had been born in Ostrava (they were Polish citizens).156 Most of the nationalists’ requests to Beneš fell on deaf ears, which confirmed an ambiguous attitude of the Czechoslovak state to the Jewish minority. The Ministry of Education confirmed that the nationalization of Hebrew schools was not on the agenda. They were still considered confessional, not national schools, and any state support for them would create a precedent for other religious groups in the country. Even more fundamental to the whole matter was that support for Hebrew education was not in the State’s interest, because ‘the language was not used in everyday life’ and the ministry did not have Hebrew-­speaking school inspectors who could properly check the quality of the instruction at these institutions. The request for support for the

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social and vocational reorientation of the Jews in the east of the country, for example, by giving them opportunities in agriculture, was rejected because, allegedly, it could have caused conflicts with the local Slovaks and Ruthenians. Lastly, the government argued, claims to citizenship could be assessed only on an individual basis, and claimants, they added, must also take into account that the Polish government had recently begun expelling Czechs and Slovaks from the country, and the Czechoslovak authorities felt compelled to respond reciprocally. This policy, the Interior Ministry explained, was not directed specifically against the Jews, but since most of the claimants were Jews this had led to them being disproportionally affected by the policy.157 The Jewish nationalists were given a vague promise that the Jews’ minority status would be improved only one year later, in March 1937. One month before that, the Czechoslovak government issued a statement of its intention to resolve the position of the minorities in the country by means of the so-­called ‘nationalities status’.158 This was a result of the effort to find a modus vivendi with the German and Hungarian minorities that kept increasing their demands for autonomy. Prime Minister Milan Hodža (of the Agrarian Party) promised that the Jews too would benefit from any change in the general status of ethnic minorities in the country.159 Frischer interpreted Hodža’s declaration as confirmation of Jewish Party’s contested decisions before the 1935 elections and added: ‘I shudder to think how, in the current situation, the Jewish element would have been trivialized, even ignored, if it had not been represented in parliament.’160 As we shall see later, Frischer was rarely willing to accept any criticism of his political decisions and often reminded the public if he believed that political developments confirmed his predictions. In 1937, it seemed that the position of the Jewish national minority would improve, but the collapse of the negotiations with the Germans in the autumn of 1938, the annexation of the Sudetenland by Germany, and the perceived betrayal by the minorities, which led to the demise of independent Czechoslovakia, meant that the Jewish nationalists never received the minority rights they yearned for.161 Furthermore, their efforts in the late 1930s created a potentially dangerous situation. The Jewish nationalists could be lumped together into the same category as the remaining national minority groups in Czechoslovakia. The threat of being perceived as a disloyal minority became more tangible than before. The links between Jewish minority demands and the rights granted to the other minorities, among them Germans and Hungarians, later clearly influenced the Czechoslovak policies towards the Jewish minority during the Second World War in exile and after 1945 in liberated Czechoslovakia. In addition to negotiations with the Czechoslovak government, Frischer’s chairmanship was filled with intense reorganization work and an effort to create a compact, effectively functioning party apparatus.162 Frischer travelled throughout Czechoslovakia and promoted party activity. Reports in the Jewish press confirm that he had not been widely known before 1935 and had visited most of places for the first time only as the party chairman. The reports also confirm that he soon gained the necessary respect among the Jewish public and that his addresses were widely acclaimed.163 The party was preparing for the next general elections (which ultimately never took place) and sought to mobilize the Jews of Czechoslovakia in support of the nationalist programme. Frischer’s leadership directed their attention to the east, to the

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large groups of Jews in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia, still politically ‘uncrystallized’ population.164 In December 1936, Frischer and Paul März (a leading Zionist from Ostrava) visited Ruthenia, and organized meetings in Uzhhorod, Mukacheve, Berehove and Velká Sevljuš (Vynohradiv). The tour was successful, and both speakers attracted large audiences.165 The party membership also increased, perhaps as a result, though the nationalists were unable to achieve the numbers they hoped for.166 Frischer’s and his colleagues’ journeys to the east of the country also had more altruistic motivations, for the activists wanted to bring in new social services to the poor regions that had been severely hit by the economic crisis. The Jewish Party finally realized that the Jewish communities were far more concerned about the improvement of their economic position than about any, largely abstract, minority rights. Under Frischer and Zucker, the Jewish Party thus looked after the interests of the Jews far beyond the world of politics.167 In 1934, Othmar Huss, Frischer’s colleague from Moravská Ostrava, created a career counselling centre in the city for Jewish youth. Huss believed that the Jewish community faced a deep socio-­economic crisis, because most of the youth still preferred white-­collar vocations, or became lawyers and medical doctors in large numbers. He in contrast emphasized the need to persuade the youth and their parents that other vocations were also necessary for the healthy development of the community in the Diaspora as well as later in Palestine. He stressed that the Jews should also focus on blue-­collar professions, in particular as craftsmen or artisans.168 It was a practical attempt to put into practice the rather idealist visions that Jewish nationalists, including Frischer, had been promoting since the creation of Czechoslovakia. The Jewish Party congress in 1935 adopted the social policies initiated by the Ostrava group as one of the key areas of its activity and agreed to create a Career Counselling Centre and Jewish Youth Care. Another new office, the Economic Council, provided advice to adults who had run into financial difficulties, and organized retraining in different occupations and courses to improve the economic competitiveness of the Jews.169 Although the Jewish newspapers praised the success of the initiatives, it is impossible to discern if they had any real impact.170 The demise of Czechoslovakia came too soon to allow the programme to develop. In any case, as in the past when various nationalist activists lobbied with parents to send their children to certain national schools, now too the whole initiative depended on the parents’ willingness not to hope for the upward social mobility of their children and to choose blue-­collar and manual professions for them instead, in the interest of the wider community. The last year of the first Czechoslovak republic saw a decline in the activities of the Jewish Party that rather focused on the expressions of loyalty to the threatened republic and attempted to contribute toward its defence, either financially or by means of propaganda.171 In summer 1938, Lord Walter Runciman, an envoy of the British government, visited Czechoslovakia to investigate the complaints of the Sudeten Germans against the Czechoslovak government. The Jewish Party prepared a long memorandum in which they supported the Czechoslovak government and condemned the antisemitism of the Henleinist movement. A delegation of the party met with

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Runciman and warned him against the growing danger from Nazi Germany in Central Europe. Frischer worked day and night on the preparation of documents that supported the Czechoslovak government. In Brno, Frischer in cooperation with Štěpán Barber (1911–83) and Armin Weiner created a press agency, ‘Tribuna’, that informed journalists in the world about the situation in Czechoslovakia.172 In spite of the complaints about the inadequate implementation of the Jewish minority status in the country, the Jewish nationalists kept emphasizing that Czechoslovakia was the last bastion of democracy in the region that did not persecute the Jews.173 A delegation of the Jewish Party, headed by Goldstein (MP), even planned a propaganda tour to the United States, where they would lobby for the Czechoslovak cause. They were supposed to start their journey across the Atlantic on 28 September 1938.174 The Sudeten crisis that escalated in September 1938 in the end prevented the delegation from leaving. Interwar Czechoslovakia is often presented as an ideal democratic country in east-­central Europe. As representatives of a national minority, however, the Jewish nationalists had to fight hard to win recognition of their minority rights. Although politically the most vocal, numerically the nationalists most likely did not dominate among the Jewish groups. The option to declare Jewish nationality in the official census remained the only major achievement of their policies. It thus seems fair to describe the Jewish national position in the country as a ‘semi-­fiction’.175 Frischer in the interwar period went from being an idealist, who appealed to Jews to prepare their children for emigration to Palestine, to being a practical politician who sought compromises in order to secure the rights of the Jews in the Diaspora. This pragmatist approach led to frequent conflicts with the leaders of the Zionist organization, including März, his closest associate in Ostrava.176 He also frequently stressed that the Jews should accept parts of the Czech culture, especially the Czech language, as a way to build their existence as a reliable minority in the new state after the 1918 revolution. By the mid-1930s, Frischer reached his highest political positions in the Jewish nationalist structures. While chairman of the Jewish Party, which held seats in the National Assembly, he was also a member of the Ostrava town council. He contributed a great deal to tightening up the party organization and to creating a regional and provincial network of party cells. He was, however, also among the first Jewish politicians in the Czech interior who experienced the changing environment of the 1930s. After 1933, streams of German-Jewish refugees began to cross the borders of Czechoslovakia, many of them travelling through Moravská Ostrava, an important transportation hub near the German and Polish borders. Members of the Jewish community looked after the refugees and often invited them to their homes for a hot meal.177 From 1935 onwards, Frischer sat on the Ostrava town assembly together with supporters of the German irredentist parties, as well as members of the National Fascist Community, who attended council sessions in black fascist shirts. In 1936, Frischer’s family moved to a new flat at the other side of the centre of Moravská Ostrava, still near the main Jewish institutions in the city. The flat was also located near German schools, German banks and insurance companies, and, in particular, only a short walk from the Deutsches Haus and Deutsche Theater, which became the centre of the Henleinist irredentist activities in the late 1930s. The family

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was thus directly exposed to the growing Sudeten German propaganda and their public demonstrations, which were often anti-Jewish. In September 1938, there were even cases of shooting between the German militias and Czechoslovak troops near the Deutsches Haus.178 Over the course of 1938, the fascist and Czech nationalist press in Moravská Ostrava also escalated their attacks on the local Jews, and on several occasions personally targeted Frischer.179 At that time, the Jews in the predominantly German areas in Czechoslovakia were already being subjected to economic boycotts and physical attacks led by the German irredentists. The Jews’ room for manoeuvre became increasingly limited. They could only hope that with the support of the western allies, the Czechoslovak state would be able to withstand the German-­inspired pressure both from the Third Reich and from within Czechoslovakia. Not only the question of independent Jewish politics, but the whole matter of the Jews’ existence as equal citizens in Czechoslovakia was at stake.

3

Munich and Occupation, 1938–9

During the night of 29 September 1938, at the peak of the Sudeten crisis, the leaders of Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy met in Munich to decide the fate of Czechoslovakia. In the end, the British and French prime ministers, Neville Chamberlain and Eduard Daladier, agreed that the Third Reich would annex the contested Czechoslovak border territories inhabited mainly by ethnic Germans. No Czechoslovak representative was invited to the talks, and the Czechoslovak leaders were only later informed of the decision that was reached by the four European powers. After painful deliberations, President Beneš accepted the conditions and gave in to the pressure of Czechoslovakia’s two Western allies. The demise of the first Czechoslovak Republic had inevitable implications for domestic politics. On 5 October 1938, Beneš resigned the presidency, and the collapse of the centralized state allowed the Slovaks and Ruthenians to achieve the autonomy they had so long demanded. The next day, Czechoslovakia became Czecho-Slovakia, in which the Slovaks and Ruthenians had their own governments. From this point on, the central government in Prague would only coordinate the portfolios necessary for running the decentralized state, such as the foreign affairs and defence. At the end of November, Emil Hácha (1872–1945), a leading lawyer, jurist and judge, was elected President of the Czecho-Slovak Republic, and the new government, led by Rudolf Beran (1887–1954), the leader of the right-­wing Agrarian Party, was sworn in.1 Soon after Munich, Jewish activists in Czecho-Slovakia and abroad realized that the Czech national catastrophe would impact on the position of the Jews in the country. Štěpán Barber was a young Czech-Jewish lawyer and community activist, who had in recent years worked tirelessly on behalf of the German and Austrian refugees in Czechoslovakia.2 In 1938, he was living in Paris as a delegate to the World Jewish Congress (WJC). Several days after the Munich Agreement was signed, Barber revealed his perception of the situation in Czechoslovakia to the WJC headquarters in New York. It merits quoting at length. The economic dependence of the diminished Czechoslovak State on Germany has now become almost inevitable. Naturally it is to be feared that economic dependence will lead to political dependence. The consequences of such a development for the Jewish minority in Czechoslovakia need hardly to be pointed out. Apart from the increase of German influence on Czechoslovakian policy, there will certainly develop a strong feeling of hostility toward [the] non

46

Arnošt Frischer Czechoslovakian population. The Czechs and the Slovaks will now endeavour to create a homogeneous national State and to get rid of all other nationalities; at any rate an effort will now be made to eliminate as far as possible any complications of a minoritarian character, probably by means of a strong policy of assimilation. [. . .] The position of the Jewish minority in Czechoslovakia will now become all the more difficult as in the first [place] any anti-­alien movement inevitably strengthens antisemitic feelings, and in the second place because the Jewish minority does not enjoy the support of powerful neighbouring States which will protect effectively the status of the Polish, Hungarian and German minorities which have remained under Czechoslovak rule.3

In spite of his scepticism, Barber over-­optimistically predicted that the Jews’ contribution to the post-Munich reconstruction works could secure their position within the society. It was important for the Jews to manifest unity with the Czechs, and the international Jewish organizations ought to provide Czechs with the support from abroad. Particularly at this time, people in Czechoslovakia were sensitive to expressions of sympathy, and careful statements by Jewish activists could contribute to the reversal of the anticipated rise in anti-Jewish sentiments.4 The developments in the second Czecho-Slovak Republic, from October 1938 to March 1939, soon proved that only one part of Barber’s assertions was accurate. Anti-­ alienism indeed became highly pronounced in the post-Munich society. The changed situation also signalled the need for the Jewish groups to re-­adjust their political activities. Instead of fighting for the political rights and minority status in the country, they had to provide social support to the refugees from the border regions and focus on the negotiation of emigration possibilities. With the growing Nazi danger in the region, an increasing number of Jews soon realized that their only chance of being saved was to find their way out of Central Europe, or indeed Europe, as soon as possible, and the community activists were often sought after for advice about how to proceed in the hopeless situation.5 Frischer was not one of the activists who after Munich actively negotiated with the Czech and, later, the German authorities. For the most part, he disappeared from the public scene and focused on his private life, attempting to save his family. Yet, his fate and the fate of the Jews of Moravská Ostrava raise important questions about the disfranchisement of the Jews in the Bohemian Lands after Munich and about their efforts to deal with the situation they encountered after the beginning of the German occupation in March 1939.

‘Small but our own’ Czecho-Slovakia quickly abandoned the principles of parliamentary democracy, and the post-Munich governments adopted the authoritarian principles of governance. The State-­controlled press initiated a public campaign that rejected the liberal ideology of the first Czechoslovak Republic and began to call for a modus vivendi with Nazi Germany, the newly confirmed hegemon in Central Europe. The authoritarian

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tendencies in the government and society were accompanied by overt manifestations of nationalism, anti-­alienism and chauvinism. These sentiments were clearly articulated in the slogan ‘small but our own’ (malá, ale naše), meaning that the Czecho-Slovak state was to be of purely Czech and Slovak character, and that there was no room in the country for anyone who was not perceived as part of the ethnically Slav population. The Czecho-Slovak government thus decided to reconsider their previous attitude towards the Jewish minority. The administration was partly pressured to solve the so-­ called ‘Jewish Question’ by the German government, but there were also clear calls (later executed) within Czech society to ban Jews from certain professions, particularly medicine and law, and from the civil service.6 The work of Frischer’s Jewish Party was soon restricted, and they more or less ceased all their activity shortly after Munich. The situation became even more precarious for Jews in Slovakia, where the autonomous government of the priest Jozef Tiso (1887–1947), stridently antisemitic, put limits on the rights of Jews and even attempted to expel 7,000 Jews to Hungary.7 Furthermore, they also banned the Jewish Party in Slovakia in late November 1938.8 The first victims of this changed political environment were the German and Austrian refugees temporarily in the country after January 1933 and then after the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938. According to the available estimates, between 5,000 and 6,000 refugees, mostly Jews and opponents of Nazism, lived in Czechoslovakia at the time of the Munich Agreement. Their evacuation became an emergency. Another pressing problem for the Jewish activists was to facilitate the re-­settlement in the Czech districts of the Jews who had escaped or been expelled from the Sudetenland.9 The Jewish refugees faced problems from the Czecho-Slovak authorities immediately after the German annexation of the borderlands. The Czech police often did not allow Jews to cross the new border, and the refugees had to spend several days, even weeks, in the no-­man’s land between both countries. Eventually, the Czechs, after British and French interventions, allowed them to settle temporarily in the interior, but they were expected to emigrate soon afterwards. In the rump state, they faced economic problems and could not find housing, since the local authorities gave priority to the ethnic Czechs among the expellees. Many of the Jewish refugees did not speak Czech, which further complicated their position in the now predominantly Czech territory.10 Originally, somewhere between 24,000 and 27,000 Jews lived in the Sudetenland.11 In May 1939, only 2,363 (racial) Jews remained there.12 Between about 17,000 and 20,00013 Jews escaped from the Sudetenland to the Czech interior, and at least two-­thirds of them were in danger of not being allowed to opt for CzechoSlovak citizenship, because they had not declared Czechoslovak nationality before Munich. They could be removed to Germany, or had to quickly find refuge abroad.14 In the meantime, they were entirely dependent on the social help from the Jewish communities. Margulies, the former head of the Jewish Party, was in the large wave of refugees. He escaped from his hometown of Litoměřice/Leitmeritz across the River Elbe to Terezín (Theresienstadt) shortly before the arrival of the Wehrmacht. He settled in the garrison town of Terezín that three years later would become the ghetto for all Jews from the Bohemian Lands (and some from elsewhere), and he intended to prepare himself to emigrate to Palestine. The Czecho-Slovak refusal to offer to the majority of Sudeten

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Jews the opportunity to opt for Czecho-Slovak citizenship also meant that they could not claim their property from the annexed territory and were thus suddenly transformed into penniless and stateless Jewish refugees. Margulies concluded soon after Munich that he and the ‘other 15,000 Jews’ had become exiles in their own country.15 In the end, he stayed in Czecho-Slovakia until the last minute. He left by train for Palestine, via Budapest, on 15 March 1939, the very day the Wehrmacht marched into Bohemia and Moravia, and only just before the Germans closed the borders. Margulies had fought for the rights of the Jews of Germany and had worked with the refugees from the Reich since the Nazis had come to power.16 After Munich, he organized aid for the Jewish refugees from the Sudetenland.17 He could harbour no illusions about what would happen to him if he fell into German hands. His timely escape did indeed save his life. The refugee question absorbed most of the activists’ efforts. In the atmosphere of post-Munich Czecho-Slovakia, there was no more space for Diaspora politics. Also Frischer apparently abandoned his public activities and stopped attending the meetings of the Ostrava town council.18 Before Munich, the Jews had actively joined the rest of Czech society in preparing to defend the country against the growing threat of German aggression. Yet even this support suddenly turned against them, when the right-­wing press accused the Jews of having escalated the Czech-German conflict in the few months before Munich.19 Furthermore, Czech and Slovak nationalists blamed the Jews for having directly contributed to the amount of Czech and Slovak territory that was annexed by Germany and Hungary after Munich. The extent of the annexed territories was determined by examining the data of the 1910 census, in which many Jews in the contested areas declared non-Slav nationalities.20 In the post-Munich atmosphere, some leaders of the Czech-Jewish assimilationist organizations, as absurd, surprising and disgraceful as it may seem in hindsight, joined the ranks of the radical Czech nationalists. They called for the expulsion from Czechoslovakia of German and Austrian refugees and opposed the settlement in Czech districts of Jews from the Sudetenland, who had not declared Czechoslovak nationality in the 1930 census.21 Moreover, they defended only the rights of Jews who ‘belonged to the Czech nation’, that is, ‘those who do not differ from other members of the Czech nation except in the religious sense’.22 This small group of radical assimilationists among the Czech Jews was, however, slowly losing ground, and could not gain real support in the Jewish community while the anti-Jewish rhetoric in the country was gradually assuming the form of racial antisemitism.23 Other leaders of the Assimilationist movement, such as Emil Kafka (1880–1948) and František Weidmann (1910–44), both representatives of the Prague Jewish Community, joined the efforts of the Zionist groups and supported the expellees from the Sudetenland.24 Many Jews who lived in the Czech areas of Bohemia and Moravia suddenly experienced the feeling of being aliens in their own country. Hanna Fischl was a young grammar ­school teacher in Olomouc, in central Moravia, at the time. In her diary, she documented the increasing isolation of the Jews, in particular those who had come from the German cultural milieu. Her former German friends and colleagues now avoided her, and German students at the grammar school refused to attend classes if Jews were present. Yet, belonging to the German culture, Fischl could not simply turn

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herself into a Czech.25 In this atmosphere, Fischl soon decided to emigrate. For her, Czecho-Slovakia simply was no longer a country to live in. She managed to leave the country under the ‘domestics scheme’ for Britain.26 Fischl arrived in Dover at the beginning of March 1939. The situation of the Jews deteriorated more quickly in towns with larger German minorities, such as in Fischl’s Olomouc, and in areas with large numbers of refugees from the annexed territories, both Jewish and non-Jewish. This was also the case with cities where the Jews had been well integrated and where they had contributed to the economic prosperity of the local communities. After Munich and the Polish annexation of the Těšín district, Frischer’s hometown, Moravská Ostrava, suddenly became a border town in the narrow strip of the Czech territory between Germany and Poland. The city was flooded with refugees who presented the Czech authorities with serious problems concerning housing and food, and led to the rise of anti-­alienism and antisemitism.27 The high proportion of Jews in the city, their predominant adherence to German culture and language, and the socio-­economic structure of the local population in an industrial region with a lower level of education further contributed to spreading of anti-Jewish sentiments.28 We do not have available Frischer’s impressions of the changing situation in the city, but it is evident that especially Jews, who came from non-Czech backgrounds, faced an uncertain future. Ilse Weber (1903–44), a German-Jewish poet and author of children’s stories who lived in Vítkovice, captured the changing environment in Moravská Ostrava in letters she sent to a friend in Sweden. Weber came from the German cultural milieu and was not proficient in Czech. Like many German Jews in Czechoslovakia, she faced the identity dilemma after Hitler’s accession to power in Germany. In 1936, she wrote to her friend that she no longer felt ‘German’, but did not feel Czech either. Answering her son’s question about their identity, she said they were ‘Czechoslovak Jews’.29 This self-­identification, which allowed her to function in the multinational state, documents for us the blurred borders of identity formation among the Jews of Czechoslovakia. But this artificial construction of identity could work only so long as the environment in Ostrava tolerated such a complex self-­identification among the Jews. With the radicalization of society during the hot summer of 1938, people became increasingly sensitive to public manifestations of identity. Weber resented that she could no longer wear her favourite traditional Tyrolean dress and especially that the Czechs, even before Munich, had begun to reproach the Jews for speaking German in public. But once they switched to Czech, the Jews were immediately accused of ethnic fluidity and opportunism.30 After Munich, local fascist groups began to spread their anti-Jewish campaign. They painted anti-Jewish slogans on walls and on Jewish shops and distributed anti-Jewish leaflets. The fascist press published antisemitic proclamations and uniformed fascists attacked cafés patronized by Jewish guests. Prominent Jews in the city received anonymous letters threatening them with physical violence unless they left Ostrava.31 Anti-Jewish sentiments were also spread by the Sokol (Falcon) organization, a patriotic Czech physical-­training movement that had previously been a foundation stone of democratic Czechoslovakia.32 The problems with the influx of Czech refugees after Munich led the Sokols to demand that the authorities expel all the Jews who had settled in the Ostrava region after 1918. Some of the Czech patriots even demanded that the

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Jews who had declared German nationality in the 1930 census should also be expelled because they had clearly exhibited a hostile attitude towards the Czech nation. Even liberal observers made distinctions amongst the Jews, depending on the language they preferred and the length of their stay in the country. Some people also began calling for a racial definition of the Jews and the introduction of numerus clausus.33 The situation in neighbouring Poland further contributed to the Jews’ predicament in Ostrava. On 31 March 1938, the Polish government adopted a law that revoked the citizenship of those Polish citizens who had lived abroad continuously for more than five years. With the swift industrialization and economic boom in the second half of the nineteenth century, Ostrava became a centre of migration from the Habsburg lands, in particular from Galicia. In 1918, the recent migrants found themselves in territory that lay outside the borders of their home countries. Only those who, in 1910, were domiciled in the territory that became part of Czechoslovakia automatically received citizenship. Those who fell outside that category had to apply for citizenship, and, if their application was turned down, they automatically became citizens of the country whose territory they had been permanent residents of before 1910. This was in the case of recent migrants from Galicia in Poland. As it happened, many of the unsuccessful applicants (most of them applied repeatedly) continued to live in Czechoslovakia, but only as foreigners, and they could not benefit from the economic and social security that was guaranteed only to citizens.34 Fulfilling their threats, the Polish consulate in Ostrava began on 1 November 1938 with the revocation of the citizenship of local Polish Jews. The directorate of police in Moravská Ostrava immediately responded to the changed situation and began to expel Polish citizens, mostly Jews, even if they had lived in the city for decades (or had been born in the city). Another reason for the expulsion was that the local authorities needed to make jobs and apartments available for the Czech expellees from the borderlands, and ‘it was thus necessary to remove foreigners who had so far not expressed sympathies with the Czech nation and state’. The selected expellees were allowed between five days and one month to leave the Czechoslovak territory.35 Ruth Elias, a survivor of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, recalled in her memoirs, years later, how one of the assistants in their family-­owned shops was suddenly informed by the Czech authorities that as a Polish citizen she would be expelled.36 A similar fate awaited Bernard Bornstein, the proprietor of the Hotel Severní dráha (Nordbahn), which had previously been owned by Frischer’s mother-­in-law, Karoline Rufeisen. Bornstein, a Polish citizen, was arrested and literally pushed over the new border on 3 November 1938. His wife and children left to join him three weeks later. Bornstein had lived in Ostrava since the 1920s, and owned the hotel from 1929 onwards. Nevertheless, he was forced to leave Czecho-Slovakia without compensation. The hotel was then leased by the regional court in Ostrava to a Czech national whom the Poles had expelled from the recently annexed Těšín district.37 The Czechoslovak authorities decided to expel the Polish Jews only several weeks after the Nazi authorities in Germany had reached a similar decision. In late October 1938, Polish Jews, even those who had been settled in Germany for decades but lacked German citizenship, were gathered together from all over the Reich, taken to the German-Polish border, and chased across to the Polish side. The Polish authorities

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were unwilling to accept the expellees, and some of them spent several months in the no-­man’s land near the border town of Zbąszyń before gradually being allowed to settle in the country. A similar situation developed at the Czech-Polish border near Moravská Ostrava in late autumn 1938. There too the Polish authorities did not accept the Polish Jewish expellees (according to some sources almost 1,700 refugees, though this estimate seems to be exaggerated) and they lived in the no-­man’s land between the two countries.38 In her letters, Weber describes how the expellees lived in horrific conditions, often in ditches and in tents. Some of them, Weber suggested, even died there.39 The Polish Jews who were not admitted to Poland were later granted an option by the local Czech authorities to stay temporarily in Czecho-Slovakia but only if they registered to emigrate overseas.40 Until mid-February 1939, the Police directorate in Ostrava continued to compose lists of people to be expelled, regardless of the events on the border and the Kristallnacht pogroms in Germany, on 9–10 November 1938, which were indirectly caused by the expulsions of Polish Jews from the Reich.41 The Jewish Community in Ostrava did not publicly oppose the policies, and rather evacuated people threatened with expulsion (including German and Austrian Jewish exiles) to the Jewish sanatorium in Ostravice in the Beskid Mountains, where they could wait until they received overseas immigration visas.42 The course of events in October and November 1938 demonstrates how easily the governments in Central Europe adopted radical methods against people whom they perceived as alien Jews, for example, when there seemed to be an imminent threat that the Polish government would revoke their citizenship. In autumn 1938, local authorities in Bohemia and Moravia, and also in Slovakia, used the forced, even violent, expulsion of Polish Jews and Hungarian Jews, with methods similar to those used by the Nazi regime in Germany. Likewise, in the first response to Kristallnacht, the Moravian regional authorities immediately instructed the border guards to tighten security and not allow any refugees from Germany to cross into CzechoSlovakia.43 Furthermore, on 27 January 1939, the Czecho-Slovak government passed new laws in which it promised to investigate cases of people who had received Czechoslovak citizenship after 1918, with the clear intention of focusing on Jews. The laws also centrally regulated the position of ‘émigrés’ (non-Czecho-Slovak citizens) who lived in the country, and gave them between one and six months to leave the country.44 Although the new laws and expulsions did not threaten Frischer, in Moravská Ostrava he directly witnessed the disintegration of the local multiethnic community. A majority of the Jews – in particular those coming from non-Czech cultures – had been excluded from the local society by both Czechs and Germans even before the German invasion in March 1939. Frischer could also see that despite their efforts in the interwar period, the Jewish politicians had not been able to secure a place in the country – or even in Ostrava – for all the Jews who had been living there. During the 1930s, Frischer and the Jewish Party repeatedly pointed to the unresolved situation of the Polish Jews in the city, but in vain. Now all they could do was to try to persuade the Czecho-Slovak authorities to postpone the expulsion orders until the Jews were able to find a new home elsewhere. Yet, the situation soon took a turn for the worse and now directly threatened Frischer’s personal security.

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Under the swastika The Second Republic was short lived. Hitler kept increasing his influence in rump Czecho-Slovakia and also used the nationality tensions to further break down the state from within. Before he made the final move and occupied Bohemia and Moravia, he persuaded Tiso to proclaim the independence of the Slovak state on 14 March 1939. On 16 March, the day after German troops entered Prague, Hitler personally announced the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia as a German vassal state, with Hácha as the State President but with the Protectorate government answerable directly to the Reich Protector Konstantin von Neurath (1873–1956) as the real source of power. The accessible archive documents do not allow us to reach any definite conclusions about Frischer’s intentions to emigrate before the German occupation.45 Nevertheless, as one of the leading Jewish politicians before Munich, he was aware of the danger he would face in the likely event that the Germans would soon occupy the country. Czech Zionist activists were indeed making preparations for the possible invasion. As early as November 1938, they approached the British Foreign Office with the names of seventeen Jews who would be in imminent danger in the event of a German occupation. The Foreign Office instructed the British minister to Prague to provide them with British ‘protective papers’.46 Later, several days after the invasion, Viktor Fischl (1912– 2006), the former parliamentary secretary of the Jewish Party, left the Protectorate with a list of seventy names of Jewish activists to be evacuated immediately.47 The Jewish Agency in London also intervened with the Home Office, which eventually granted permits to the Jewish activists for temporary leave to stay in Britain, ‘on the understanding that arrangements will be made for their eventual emigration overseas’.48 The list contains almost eighty names, including the dates when their permits were approved. Frischer was in the first group of twenty-­two activists who received permission to enter Britain on the day after the occupation began.49 Some of the activists in that group, including Max Brod, a famous journalist and activist, in fact left Prague for Palestine on the evening of 14 March. They were able to get through Ostrava, which had already been occupied by the Wehrmacht, in the early morning of the fateful 15 March. They reached Palestine in the following days. Others, such as Kugel and Goldstein (both former MPs), had left Czecho-Slovakia even earlier.50 For the Jews who remained in the Protectorate, holding British papers proved to be of little help. Years later, Paul März, chairman of the Central Zionist Union, recalled that the wording of the documents was actually very dangerous for them, because it stated that they had been granted ‘in recognition of your efforts on behalf of the refugees from Germany’. He later commented: ‘[I]f such a permit were to be found on a person, it is clear what would have happened.’ Indeed, März decided not to use the documents.51 The activists who could leave the Protectorate had to decide to do so immediately, before the Germans consolidated their power. However, the temporary British permits were only for the individuals to whom they had been issued; they did not include their families. The decision to leave thus also meant abandoning wives and children. Decades later, Viktor Fischl recalled that after the occupation he sat in a Prague cafe and wrote down the reasons for and against leaving the country. He left Prague for Britain without his wife Stella, whom he had married only six months

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before.52 He arrived in London three days before the British introduced entry visas for Protectorate citizens, and later succeeded, against some odds, also in getting his wife to London. Shortly after the invasion, the British Home Office informed the Jewish Agency that the selected activists should immediately go to the nearest British passport office to claim the protective papers.53 This, however, proved difficult for people who resided outside Prague. In March 1939 Frischer and his family still lived in Moravská Ostrava. The Wehrmacht occupied this strategic industrial city on the evening before they moved further inland. Frischer later recalled his own experiences during the occupation of the city: First of all let me tell you that it was a complete surprise to the Czechoslovak people when the Germans marched in. Surely, in [. . .] Moravská Ostrava, situated about 8 miles from the German border – everybody knew that danger was imminent, because of Hitler’s threats. His threats, however, seemed to indicate that only one or two important towns near the border would be occupied, which just applied to Moravská Ostrava with her steel works Vítkovice and to Pilsen with her famous Škoda works. [. . .] But no-­one thought that the whole of Bohemia and Moravia were in imminent danger and that invasion was near. When, therefore, on the 14th March at about 6 p.m. suddenly large columns of armed forces appeared in the streets of Moravská Ostrava, people could not realize at the first moment that they were Germans. [. . .] I myself left Moravská Ostrava by car in the late afternoon of the 14th of March and spent the night in a little village in the mountains. At 10 o’clock in the evening I heard on the radio that President Hácha had been ordered to see Hitler and I thought that, in any case, there would be at least a day’s grace. I intended to go back to town the next morning to make various arrangements. By that time, however, the Germans were already not only in Moravská Ostrava, but a few miles from the village where I was. When, next morning, I came down from my room, the landlord told me, ‘It is too late for you; the Germans are already here.’54

The Germans came to the Protectorate equipped with lists of people to be detained. The lists included, in particular, political exiles from Germany and Austria, Czech political and cultural anti-Nazi activists, and prominent Jews. Many Jewish industrialists and entrepreneurs in the Ostrava District were detained by the Gestapo. They were interrogated, bullied, and their flats were searched. Some of those who were imprisoned were never seen again.55 In the first moments after the arrival of the German troops, Frischer tried to escape to Poland,56 less than 10 km from Moravská Ostrava, but was not successful. He was either caught crossing the border, or was imprisoned after his return to Ostrava. The only thing certain is that by the end of March Frischer was in the hands of the Gestapo.57 Among other detainees in the Protectorate were Fritz Ullmann (1902–72), a prominent Zionist activist; Marie Schmolka (1890–1940) and Hannah Steiner (1894–1944), both of whom had been active working for refugees; Paul März; and Oskar Zweigenthal, a regional leader of the Jewish Party from Olomouc.58 Later, Lev Zelmanovits (1907–69), the former Secretary General of the Jewish Party, was briefly incarcerated in the same

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Figure 6  Frischer in the late 1930s.

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prison as Frischer.59 Barber, in Paris, was secretly warned over the telephone not to come back to the Protectorate because the Gestapo had already been looking for him at his parents’ house.60 We have no information about Frischer’s almost three months’ incarceration or about the particular reasons for his imprisonment. März, for example, was incarcerated because of his business activities.61 By contrast, Zweigenthal was interrogated because the Gestapo wanted to learn more about the internal structure of the pre-Munich Jewish Party and other Jewish organizations.62 After the war, when he lived in Jerusalem, Ullmann described the experiences of the Jewish activists in the German prisons shortly after the creation of the Protectorate as follows: I was interrogated for hours. They put my files in front of me, which they had confiscated, and I had to explain its contents to them. Eventually I received a kind of ID card and was released, but I had to report to the Gestapo every day, and on Friday they came for me again. In front of the room in which they interrogated me, they put me in front of a wall and ordered me to stand there without moving. They led various arrested people by me, and half an hour later they summoned me for further questioning, during which they wrote down only my personal information and then let me go again.63

We should have no illusions about the way the Gestapo treated Frischer. His chances slightly improved when, on 13 April 1939, the Gestapo handed him over to the Czech Prison in Ostrava, where he was registered as a political prisoner.64 Once he was in the hands of the Czech police, his wife Heřmína could visit him and bring him the bare essentials he needed for prison life. Tens of thousands of Jewish men, the heads of families, were incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps and prisons in Germany, Austria and later in the Protectorate in 1938–9. Their spouses, who had previously been mostly housewives, now had to take a more active role in public life.65 Heřmína had also spent her whole life so far in charge of the household, avoiding the public arena. The German occupation and especially Frischer’s imprisonment forced her to abandon the confinement of her home life. Suddenly it was her task to visit the authorities and negotiate an opportunity to visit her husband. She became the head of the family, shouldering all the responsibility for her imprisoned husband and their youngest daughter. Frischer later praised his wife for her brave behaviour in these difficult times.66 Also the Jewish Community looked after the prisoners and sent them food and extra warm blankets.67 On 24 June 1939, Frischer walked out of the prison gates. The file that is part of the prison collection includes no information about interrogations, and it therefore seems that once the Gestapo transferred him to the Czech authorities, he was simply held in protective custody.68 Even so, he spent more time in prison than the other leading Jewish activists in the Protectorate. One source suggests that he was released thanks to his former German employees, who intervened on his behalf with the German authorities.69 Conversely, later, during the war, the exile Minister of State Jaromír Nečas (1888–1945), who prior to his escape in late 1939 worked as the head of the Price Board (Nejvyšší úřad cenový), claimed that he personally intervened on Frischer’s behalf and secured his release.70

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When Frischer left the Ostrava prison, he could hardly recognize the town in which he had lived for more than twenty years. George F. Kennan (1904–2005), the Secretary at the American Legation in Prague, who visited Moravská Ostrava, now again Mährisch Ostrau, several weeks after the invasion, described it as a much more Nazi town than Prague and other cities in Bohemia and Moravia. The Nazis intended to Germanize the border towns like Ostrava/Ostrau, Plzeň/Pilsen, Brno/Brünn, and Olomouc/Olmütz, which were of an ethnically mixed character and had sizeable German populations. In response to German policy in these towns, Czechs too ‘feel that if they are to please the authorities they must profess themselves to German culture and to the Nazi ideology. The result is that in Moravská Ostrava the fascist greeting and the ubiquitous “Heil Hitler” are used even by the Czech waiters in the hotels. Pictures of the Führer hang in the public places.’71 With the expropriation of their property already in full swing and their being prohibited from entering public places in the city, the position of the Jews was particularly dire, and Kennan noted a large number of suicides among the Ostrava Jewry.72 There were also cases of physical violence against the Jews and their property. Shortly before Frischer’s release from prison, in late May and early June, local Nazi and Czech fascist groups razed all six Ostrava synagogues. During the summer of 1939, brutal attacks on Jewish property in the city continued and the windows of Jewish shops and flats were smashed by rocks thrown by members of anonymous crowds.73 The Nazi administration also stepped up the persecution of the Jews by means of the courts. In April 1939, the German Mayor (Kommissar) of Mährisch Ostrau demanded that the two Jewish members of the town assembly, Frischer and Rudolf Jokl (1888–?), be officially removed from their positions.74 The town council requested legal advice from the Moravian regional authorities (Landesamt) in Brno, which, however, refused to comply on the grounds that there was no legislation that would allow them to dismiss Frischer and Jokl.75 Even in prison, Frischer remained on the town assembly until 4 July 1939, when the Czech Protectorate government issued a new law that regulated the activities of Jews in public affairs.76 Even before that, on 21 June 1939, the directive of the Reich Protector von Neurath institutionalized the ‘Aryanization’ (confiscation) of Jewish property and also for that purpose introduced the Nuremberg laws in the Protectorate.77 Frischer was imprisoned by the Gestapo as a Protectorate citizen, but left prison as a Jew. The owner of a large construction company suddenly lost any right to dispose of his company property, including his shares. In official communication with the authorities, he, like the other ‘Jews’ in the Protectorate, suddenly had to use a new version of his name, including the compulsory middle name ‘Israel’ (for boys and men; ‘Sara’ was compulsory for Jewish girls and women). Destitute and almost penniless, Frischer decided to pursue the only option that remained to him: emigration.

Emigration The emigration of the Jews from Czechoslovakia began even before Munich, when the first refugees left the border areas, which were full of pro-Nazi propaganda and public

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demonstrations.78 The emigration crisis further escalated after Munich, especially when refugees from the Sudetenland and those threatened with expulsion – such as the Polish Jews – had to search for new homes overseas. At the same time, the Jewish population in the interior had begun to look for opportunities to leave areas that were falling under the influence of Nazi Germany. The anti-Jewish policies of the CzechoSlovak authorities were another contributing factor. Those who decided to leave Czecho-Slovakia had to join the long queues in front of foreign embassies, where people went to try and get immigration visas. In 1938, the international refugee crisis escalated after the mostly unsuccessful attempt to find a solution at the Evian Conference in July that year.79 Only individual Latin American countries – such as the Dominican Republic – welcomed skilled workers or those able to work on farms. Yet even then, the feasibility of the scheme was uncertain. In late 1938 and in early 1939, a large number of Jews in Ostrava (according to some sources, between 1,200 and 1,700) were preparing for emigration to San Domingo (and also Ecuador), but the plans eventually fell through.80 Other countries, including the United States, Canada and Great Britain, were not inclined to open their borders to large numbers of refugees. Palestine, too, became increasingly off limits to large-­scale immigration. The decision of the Czech and Slovak Jews to seek refuge overseas, moreover, was taken when the German and Austrian Jews had practically exhausted all available emigration possibilities.81 Despite the lack of countries willing to accept more refugees, the number of Jews who wanted to emigrate, quickly increased. Although we have no evidence about Frischer’s personal plans to emigrate – he is not, for example, listed among the potential emigrants to San Domingo – he decided to facilitate emigration for some of his immediate family members. On 30 December 1938, Frischer, together with his daughter Liese Ruth and her fiancé Moritz Buchsbaum, went to see a local Ostrava solicitor, Alois Krumnikl. They signed a prenuptial agreement, in which Frischer promised to pay the couple the substantial sum of 180,000 Czecho-Slovak crowns (about US$122,000 in today’s money) as a dowry. Liese was only twenty years old, seven years younger than Moritz. Buchsbaum, born in 1911, was one of eight children of the Polish-­born Isaak (Israel Isser) Buchsbaum and his Polish-Jewish wife, who settled in Ostrava in 1905. In November 1938, the Buchsbaum family was directly threatened with expulsion to Poland.82 There are two conditions in the prenuptial agreement that raise questions about the true motivations of the involved parties: first, Moritz was obliged to apply to the Ostrava police for a permit to leave the country and also for an immigration certificate from the Palestinian authorities. Second, he was obliged to receive permission to transfer the dowry to Palestine. Frischer insisted that both conditions had to be met within a year of signing the agreement.83 The conditions of the prenuptial agreement and the promised dowry point to Frischer’s efforts to secure a ‘capitalist’s certificate’ (an A-1 category) from the British Administration in Palestine for the couple (holders of a capitalist certificate could take three additional family members with them). People who could prove that they had at least £1,000 (the equivalent of about 140,000 Czecho-Slovak crowns) could get a capitalist certificate, which allowed them to settle in Palestine ahead of the usual waiting period and also to jump ahead of other potential candidates in the queue.84

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We do not know whether Liese and Moritz had previously been in love with each other, but Frischer’s decision to allow the marriage and to provide his daughter with a substantial amount of money was most certainly influenced by his desire to get his daughter out of Czecho-Slovakia. People who were in danger of being expelled, and young adults who were willing to risk the uncertainties of trying to establish a new life in a new country, reached the decision to leave earlier than people with established careers and large families.85 Moritz worked as a photographer, which does not imply that he would be reasonably well off, at least not enough so to explain the hurry with which Frischer agreed to the marriage of his young daughter.86 Although it is not fair necessarily to conclude that this was an arranged marriage, in the end it offered both Moritz and Liese an opportunity and the financial means to leave Central Europe and find a new home overseas. If Frischer had really wanted to, he could have left Czecho-Slovakia before the German occupation, as Kugel, Goldstein and Brod had. It is evident that Zionist activists had an easier access to the very limited number of available Palestinian certificates. There were many reasons why Jews kept postponing their departure. Zionist leaders, Jacob Edelstein (a Socialist-Zionist, originally from Galicia), Franz Kahn (the secretary of the Zionist Organization), März and Zucker, for example, decided not to leave the community at this critical juncture.87 Others still clung to the hope that things would eventually improve and that Czecho-Slovakia would recover from the humiliation of Munich; only the German occupation shook them out of their lethargy.88 Those who were not willing to leave without their families faced further challenges and lengthy family discussions before they decided to investigate emigration opportunities. There was also a feeling within the Jewish community that since opportunities for emigration were scarce, it should be people who were in the most imminent danger, especially refugees from the Sudetenland, who should be allowed to leave the country first.89 The Palestinian Office in Prague, which issued Palestinian certificates to the Jews, also gave clear priority to veterans of the Zionist movement and to people who were considered most suitable for the colonization of the Jewish homeland.90 Financial motives were another factor that contributed to the decision to postpone emigration. Frischer stayed in Ostrava until March 1939 partly because he had established a career in the city and emigration would have inevitably led to financial uncertainties. His dowry to Liese Ruth suggests that he was most likely preparing for the possibility of leaving, and this could also have been a way for him to get funds to Palestine. The last remaining assets he had after that point was the real estate he owned in Ostrava and the capital in his construction company. It is quite plausible that he intended to sell the company before leaving Czecho-Slovakia.91 Until late 1938, obtaining a capitalist certificate was the easiest way to get quickly to Palestine. Yet, only 184 capitalist certificates were granted to Czecho-Slovak Jews between October 1938 and January 1939. This was one-­fifth of the number granted to Jews from the Reich, who, after Kristallnacht, were naturally desperate to leave Germany as soon as possible. Furthermore, in January 1939, the British began to restrict the issuing of this type of immigration certificate as well.92 Hence Liese and Moritz were unable to get to Palestine. They both stayed in Moravská Ostrava until the German occupation. Moritz escaped from the Protectorate, illegally crossing the border to

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Poland, a week after the Wehrmacht had marched in. He registered with the British Consulate in Katowice, and with the help of the Czech Refugee Trust Fund (CRTF), a British humanitarian agency, got to Britain in mid-May. There, he was reunited with Liese, who also got to Britain with the help of the CRTF on the domestics scheme. They settled in London, where they finally got married.93 Despite restrictive immigration policy, more Jews from pre-Munich Czechoslovakia found refuge in Britain than in any other country in the world. The more lenient British policies after Munich allowed Frischer’s daughter and her fiancé to emigrate in time from Central Europe. Nevertheless, it has also been persuasively argued that the British response to Jewish emigration from Czecho-Slovakia was less generous than in the case of refugees from Germany and Austria. After Munich, Britain was willing, partly to appease public opinion at home, to facilitate the emigration of those who lived in Czecho-Slovakia and faced possible persecution or expulsion.94 The British also wanted to ensure the stabilization of Czecho-Slovakia. Consequently, the British government decided to provide the Czecho-Slovak government with a loan of £10 million, of which £4 million was to be considered a gift for relief and resettlement purposes. Furthermore, in the following months, more than 9,000 people from Czecho-Slovakia found refuge in Britain, though the British kept consciously blocking the arrival of any large number of Jews, clearly preferring refugees from the Sudetenland and people who were considered ‘political refugees’ (though this category also included Jews). This British attitude did not change even after the Wehrmacht entered Bohemia and Moravia, but they quickly realized that the Czech Jews were generally the only group of people whose emigration from the Protectorate was allowed by the Nazis. Even then they did not want to accept any large number of Jews as a separate category, because they were worried that it would further encourage the Nazis to persecute the Jews in order to force all of them to emigrate.95 After his unsuccessful escape and imprisonment, Frischer in the autumn of 1939 began to seek emigration through official channels. He could utilize the Nazi willingness to allow the Jews to leave the Protectorate, and his emigration was also facilitated by the activities of the Jewish leadership. After Munich, Zionist activists, both in the country and abroad, as well as representatives of the Czech Jews – Kafka and Weidmann – became the principal mediators who tried to secure emigration opportunities for the Jews. The Zionist headquarters moved to Prague, where Edelstein, Zucker, Kahn, März (he left Ostrava for Prague on 14 March 1939) and František Friedmann created ‘The Transfer Committee’. They could base their activities on previous experience gained when they provided help for German and Austrian Jewish refugees in Czechoslovakia from 1933 onwards.96 The Jewish leaders also attempted to reach an agreement, first with the Czecho-Slovak authorities and later, after the occupation had begun, with the Germans, to allow the Jews to take at least some of their property overseas.97 Concurrently, envoys of the Czech and Slovak Jews – both Zionists and Assimilationists – travelled to Britain and France, and tried to negotiate immigration opportunities. Later, after the outbreak of the war in September 1939, the inner group of the Zionist activists decided that März would be the person to leave the Protectorate as an envoy of the Czech Zionists in Palestine.98 In the end, he and Friedmann were the only members of the ‘Transfer Committee’ who survived the war.

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The Zionist group took advantage of British willingness to allow the emigration of the Czech Jews to Palestine (at that time under British Mandate), though only as part of the legal immigration, which from May 1939 onward was limited by the newly published White Paper (restricting emigration to 75,000 Jews within five years). Leo Herrmann (1888–1951), the Czech-­born general secretary of Keren Hayesod (Foundation Fund), the fundraising organization for the building of Palestine, played a key role. He was able to negotiate with the British authorities that £500,000 of the loan promised to the Czecho-Slovak government would be used purely for ‘the Czech Transfer’, the emigration of 2,500 Czech Jews with their assets to Palestine under the Haavara (that is, transfer) Agreement.99 The negotiations were complicated by the changing political and military circumstances, especially after the German invasion of Poland and the declarations of war against Germany by Britain and France in early September 1939. The Zionist groups in the Protectorate and London frantically tried to resuscitate British and German willingness to let Jews emigrate to Palestine. Herrmann, in cooperation with Jan Masaryk (1886–1948), the former Czechoslovak ambassador to the Court of St James, successfully negotiated that the British government would, even after the outbreak of the hostilities, honour the Palestinian certificates that had been issued to the Czech Jews now living in enemy territory. The Zionist contacts in neutral countries then negotiated Italian transit visas with Count Galeazzo Ciano, the Italian foreign minister, and Edelstein personally went to Adolf Eichmann’s office in Prague to get the final permission for the emigrants to leave. In the end, 1,200 Czech Jews left the Protectorate in five batches between October and December 1939. A further 1,700 Jews from Germany and Austria joined the Czech transfer and, according to März, hundreds of youths and students, as well as thousands of illegal immigrants, benefited from the negotiations and also escaped to Palestine. According to the final statistics prepared by the Czech Ministry of Social and Health Welfare, 2,955 Jews officially emigrated in the framework of the Czech Transfer.100 Zionist activists played a crucial role in the negotiations. Paraphrasing the ‘Lex Masaryk’, an odd piece of Czechoslovak legislation from 1930, März commented that ‘Leo Herrmann rendered outstanding services to the Czech Jews’.101 The Prague Jewish group also coordinated the Jews’ efforts to receive individual exit permits from the Bohemian Lands. The situation became increasingly more difficult after the German invasion. The German and Czech administrations tightened their control over the possibilities of property transfer overseas, and imposed large emigration taxes on the Jewish émigrés. Nevertheless, 9,186 Jews left the Protectorate (888 for Palestine) between 15 March and the centralization of the emigration process in July 1939, when the Germans established the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung Prag).102 The Prague Zentralstelle was established at the initiative of the German Protectorate authorities, in particular the head of the security police Walter Stahlecker (1900–42), using the example of similar institutions in Vienna (as of August 1938) and Berlin (as of February 1939). Jewish emigration was at that time the preferred Nazi solution to the ‘Jewish question’. Stahlecker worked closely with Eichmann (1906–62), who had organized Jewish emigration from Vienna. Henceforth, the only way for the Jews to

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Figure 7  Hanuš Frischer and Heřmína Frischerová.

leave the Protectorate was through the Zentralstelle, which coordinated all the administrative offices in the Protectorate that had any relation at all with the emigration of the Jews. The running of the Zentralstelle was financed with Jewish funds, and the Jews themselves had to investigate emigration possibilities. One of the main tasks of the Zentralstelle was to ensure the smooth confiscation of the émigrés’ real estate and other assets. The Nazis complained that after Munich the Czech authorities had been lenient in their approach and allowed the extensive transfers of Jewish property overseas. Rich Jewish candidates were allowed to take roughly half of their monetary funds, with the other half paid as a fee for the emigration.103 On 11 September 1939, just ten days after Germany had invaded Poland, Frischer and his wife moved to Prague, to a flat at Národní třída, where his son Hanuš had lived while a student at the Czech Technical University (ČVUT).104 Many Jews from the regional cities were moving to Prague after the March 1939 invasion, with the intention of speeding up the emigration process.105 Once the Zentralstelle became the sole agency that administered Jewish emigration from the Protectorate, the whole process would in the Frischers’ case require frequent trips from Ostrava to Prague. Furthermore, there were no foreign consulates in Ostrava (except the Polish consulate, but that was closed after the outbreak of war). Frischer and his family were able to move from Ostrava in time, shortly before the Nazis between 17 October and 1 November 1939 organized the first mass deportation of the Jews from the city to eastern Poland (1,292 Jewish men were sent from Ostrava to Nisko in the Lublin Reservation).106 Frischer’s former deputy in the Ostrava Town Assembly, Salo Krämer, in his new position as the chairman of the Ostrava Jewish Community, had to cooperate with the SS in the preparation of the deportation.

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The Frischers, including their son Hanuš, started the emigration process in midSeptember 1939, when the Zentralstelle opened its offices after a short closure following the outbreak of war.107 In their dealings with the agency, individual applicants were supported by the Zionist Palestinian Office and the Jewish Community office. Each emigration candidate received a folder with documents to complete (Auswanderungsmappe), mostly asking about his or her personal background, assets, and taxes owed in the Protectorate. Applicants had to complete the forms as accurately as possible, and any mistake or missing detail would not only prolong the whole process, but could also be used by Nazi officials as a pretext for bullying the applicant, with verbal or even physical abuse. There was also an office in the Zentralstelle, which was staffed by Jews, where Wally Zimet and her colleagues checked all the documents for the final time, and made sure that the claimants could proceed to the main hall, where they queued up for one of the eleven booths staffed by Czech and German officials.108 In his testimony at the Eichmann Trial in 1961, März described the atmosphere in the main hall of the Zentralstelle: There was a large hall like the hall of a bank, and it had booths. In each booth sat some official in charge and there was one booth for the payment of taxes; first of all there was a booth for handling documents. Anyone wishing to emigrate had to bring an application supported by documents. [. . .] It was necessary, prior to [visiting the Zentralstelle], to arrange documents, that is to say, it was necessary, first of all, to pay all the taxes. After that, one had to report to the Czech Ministry of Finance and to pay the ‘Reichsfluchtsteur’ (Tax for Flight from the Reich) there, and after that to pay the ‘Judenabgabe’ (Jews’ Contribution) at the [Jewish] community office, and thereafter one had to supply lists of all one’s movables which had to be brought there for assessment. After their assessment one had to pay one hundred percent of the value of the movables. Next one had to give all jewellery to a shop to have them valued – these were only specific shops, German shops, which made the valuation. After that one had to place the jewellery on deposit with a bank, to bring all kinds of certificates from the police, from the customs, whether one had or did not have a dog, whether or not it had been paid for – one had to pay a dog tax. Following that one had to go to the bank for a ‘Treuhandssvertrag’ (Trusteeship Contract) that is to say, to hand over all Jewish-­ owned property to the trusteeship of the bank, and to give an irrevocable Power of Attorney for it. After all that, when all these documents were ready, and sometimes this was truly a process which made one despair, it would then be necessary to come and undergo all the processing, from counter to counter, in the Emigration Centre.

März also described the random violence by the SS guards, which accompanied the process: The officials were there [on the ground floor] and there was also a control office; for example Feldwebel (Sergeant) Lederer and other such men were there who

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made trouble for the Jews, beat them. Or, when a lawyer appeared, they made him stand in the middle of the hall and said to him: Say three times: ‘I was a Jewish lawyer, a thief and a swindler.’109

Neither during the war nor afterwards did Frischer ever return to describe his experiences of negotiating his emigration. It seems that he wanted to suppress any memory of the humiliation he had experienced at the hands of the Nazis, of the process where people who held respect in the community were systematically humiliated by the German soldiers and officials. Only traces of the Zentralstelle paperwork, mostly property declarations, survived the war. Frischer’s form gives us an indication as to his difficult financial situation in the Protectorate. His only important asset, which was no longer accessible to Frischer, was his life insurance policy.110 His financial means were indeed meagre, especially if one takes into account how much he had paid to Liese as a dowry. His construction company had been ‘Aryanized’ (confiscated) several months before. In the meantime, Alfred Preuss, a German who had worked for the company for fifteen years, was appointed by the Ostrava Oberlandrat and the Gestapo as the Aryan trustee (Treuhänder).111 Frischer no longer had property at his disposal and was forced to sell it for a sum far below its real value. Under the terms of the contract, the payment of 250,000 crowns was deposited in an account at the Živnostenská banka pro Čechy a Moravu v Praze (Gewerbebank für Böhmen und Mähren in Prag) and Frischer was to receive compensation in Palestine from the funds provided by the British government. This was part of the Transfer Agreement. It is unclear, however, if he was indeed compensated and, if he was, how much he received.112 His wife Heřmína owned no important assets either.113 The Office of the Reich Protector did not agree with the appointment of Preuss as the Treuhänder of Frischer’s company, and investigated the decision. This postponed the confirmation of Frischer’s emigration and he had to stay in Prague for the rest of the year. During that time, he personally witnessed the radicalization of the German occupation policies in the Protectorate, following the suppressed Czech demonstrations, on 28 October 1939, to mark the anniversary of the creation of the Czechoslovak Republic.114 Two Czechs were killed during the demonstrations, among them one university student. The Nazis used the public meetings that accompanied his funeral on 15 November as a pretext to close all Czech universities in the Protectorate. Two days later, nine student leaders were executed and 1,200 students were sent to concentration camps. Shortly after the crackdown, Frischer’s son, Hanuš, himself a university student, left the Protectorate. He travelled on a student certificate (to study at the Haifa Technion) as part of the ‘Czech Transfer’, and landed in Haifa on 5 December 1939.115 Fritzi (Bedřiška), the youngest of the Frischer children, left the Protectorate at about the same time as part of the Youth Aliyah (JugendAlijah).116 Frischer and his wife Heřmína received Palestinian immigration certificates on 15 November 1939.117 They finally got permission to emigrate in late 1939, and left Prague for Trieste on 27 December.118 There, they boarded the ship Galilea and several days later reached Haifa. They were part of the last group that left the Protectorate with the

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‘Czech Transfer’.119 In Palestine, they first lived in Haifa, before finally settling in Arnonah, part of Jerusalem, south of the Old City. Frischer’s contacts in the Zionist movement helped him get the whole family to safety. At a time when thousands of Czech Jews were desperately queuing up in front of foreign consulates, Frischer successfully received three different types of Palestinian certificates for himself, his wife and two of his children. But things were even more complicated. The details of Frischer’s private life in interwar Moravská Ostrava are often unclear, but he was apparently involved in an extramarital affair with a much younger woman named Lilli Popper (1907–87). In 1932, Lilli married Gustav Skutezky (1895– 1941) and they had a daughter called Hanna in 1936. Nevertheless, Frischer and Lilli continued their affair. In the Protectorate, Frischer faced the dilemma of how to save his lover and her daughter, while honouring his marital obligations to Heřmína, who was evidently aware of the affair. In the end, the Skutezkys stayed in the Protectorate. During the war, in his private correspondence, Frischer frequently expressed his anxieties about the fate of Lilli and her daughter, and he did everything he could to alleviate their plight under Nazi rule (Chapters 5 and 6).120 The Skutezkys, like Frischer’s extended family – including his mother and his sister’s family, had to face the ordeal that the Nazis had prepared for all the Jews of occupied Europe. Gustav Skutezky was deported to Nisko and most likely was murdered in the Ukrainian town of Brzezhany in July 1941. Lilli Skutezky lived in Prague and worked as one of the administrative assistants for Salo Krämer, who was put in charge of the ‘Treuhandstelle’ – often called the ‘Krämer Department’ – which secured the property and valuables the deported Jews left behind. It is possible that Krämer, Frischer’s erstwhile deputy, protected her for a long time from deportation (Frischer’s affair was public knowledge).121 Skutezky and her daughter were deported to Theresienstadt only on 8 July 1943 (almost two years after the beginning of the deportations), when the last ‘full Jews’ were sent from Prague to the ghetto and the Krämer Department was closed down. The Munich Agreement led to the total reversal of Czechoslovak domestic policies and hit the Jewish minority hard even before the German occupation. Many Czechoslovak Jews soon concluded that their only chance of survival (first economic and later physical) was offered by emigration overseas. Despite all obstacles, a sizeable number of Jews, according to some estimates more than 20,000, emigrated before March 1939.122 The occupation of Bohemia and Moravia and the introduction of the German racial antisemitism forced the Jews to step up their efforts to get out of the Protectorate. The outbreak of war at the beginning of September halted emigration to Britain, and Palestine also almost disappeared from the list of destinations listed by potential Jewish emigrants after December 1939; most now tried to get to Latin America or Shanghai.123 More than 9,000 Jews escaped from the Protectorate in the first four months after March 1939. Subsequently, between 28 July 1939 and the end of June 1941, the Zentralstelle received 16,242 applications from 21,741 applicants.124 Not all of the applicants who had received permission to leave the Protectorate were ultimately successful in finding refuge overseas. The estimates differ. According to one scholar, 24,017 Jews emigrated between March 1939 and the end of 1940, and another 1,960 Jews left after that date.125 František Weidmann, the chairman of the Prague Jewish

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Table 2  Emigration from the Protectorate, 15 March 1939–1943 Destination

Numbers

North America Central America South America Australia Africa Asia (excluding Palestine) Palestine European countries Total

1,482 671 4,673 176* 167 4,042 2,117 12,783 26,111

*The newest research by Anna Rosenbaum suggests that the number of Czechoslovak refugees in Australia was much higher, between 900 and 1,000. Personal communication from Anna Rosenbaum, 15 July 2015. Source: Peter Heumos, 1989, Die Emigration aus der Tschechoslowakei nach Westeuropa und dem Nahen Osten 1938–1945 (Munich: Oldenburg Verlag), 56.

Community, estimated that about 25,000 refugees left the Protectorate by 30 June 1940, but another expert has argued that many of those 25,000 were probably not originally from the Protectorate, and had instead previously immigrated to Czechoslovakia from Germany and Austria (see Table 2).126 It means that between Munich and late 1941, around 50,000 Jews successfully emigrated from Bohemia and Moravia (but not all of them were Czechoslovak citizens). In October 1941, the Germans prohibited any further Jewish emigration from the Reich and began the deportations to the east.127 At that time, 88,105 Jews lived in the Protectorate and more than 78,000 of them were killed in the Shoah. Leaders of the Zionist organizations also left in time. Two of the former MPs for the Jewish Party and both chairmen of the CZU escaped to Palestine. It is unclear how many of them would have made Aliyah if Nazi Germany had not destroyed Czechoslovakia. Also Frischer was not a prime candidate for emigration to the emerging Jewish homeland. The construction company he had established in Ostrava was a success and he became a well-­off member of the middle class in this industrial city. He was fifty-­two years old in 1939, and would hardly have exchanged a successful, comfortable life in Czechoslovakia for the challenges of the developing economy in Palestine. Moreover, when Nazism became an increasing threat to the Bohemian Lands, and other countries of Europe, Frischer was not among those who immediately sought emigration opportunities. His imprisonment by the Gestapo further postponed his departure. In the end, he left thanks only to the successful negotiations of the Zionist activists, which set the wheels of the ‘Czech Transfer’ in motion. He escaped on the last organized transport from the Protectorate, before the door of legal emigration to Palestine was slammed shut. Those who facilitated his escape, members of the ‘Transfer Committee’, stayed in Czechoslovakia until it was too late for them to leave (with the exception of März). As late as March 1941, Zucker and Kahn planned a departure to Palestine and received immigration certificates, but in the end they did not manage to escape.128 After Munich, Jewish activists, including Frischer, completely withdrew from Diaspora minority politics. The fate of the Jews of the Bohemian Lands remained in the hands of the Zionists who led the negotiations with the British, as well as the Czech

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and the German authorities. Yet, Frischer’s and others’ abandonment of activist politics in the Diaspora turned out to be only temporary. Some of the nationalist politicians, who escaped to exile, re-­established their work in Western Europe, and Frischer also soon re-­entered Diaspora politics. In exile during the war, he in fact received the highest political appointment of his career.

4

The Politics of Exile, 1939–45

On the whole I think going to London was the right thing to do.1 Frischer, March 1945 In November 1941, when the Wehrmacht was approaching Moscow and the future of the Czech and Slovak territories remained unpredictable, the British-Jewish weekly The Jewish Chronicle published an article entitled ‘Jew in Czech State Council’: Mr. Ernest Frischer, a well-­known Czech Jewish engineer, has been appointed a member of the Czechoslovak State Council. He is the first Jew to be appointed to the Council, which was set up by President Beneš in December 1940.2 [. . .] One of the implications of Mr. Ernest Frischer’s appointment [. . .] is the recognition by Dr. Beneš Government of the pre-Munich status of Czechoslovak Jewry.3

This appointment meant Frischer’s return to Czechoslovak politics. Between 1941 and 1948, he held leading positions in Czechoslovak-Jewish organizations and was the main person setting the agenda of their national Jewish politics. When analysing Jewish politics during the war, we need to differentiate between activists in the occupied territories and those who had escaped from Nazi-­occupied Europe. In Bohemia and Moravia, Jewish activists – both Zionists and Czech Jews – had to manoeuvre in the increasingly narrow space after the anti-Jewish laws were introduced by the German and Protectorate authorities. They ran the Jewish Community, negotiated with Czech and German officials, looked for emigration opportunities, organized Jewish labour battalions (in 1940, this initiative allegedly saved the Czech Jewish communities from the deportation to Poland), and provided social services for the Jews in the pre-­deportation period. From autumn 1941 onwards, their main task was to prepare lists of people to be deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto or directly to the east, and to register the property left behind by the deportees. In November 1941, two Jewish activists, Edelstein and Zucker, were put in charge of the first ‘Council of Jewish Elders’ in Theresienstadt. Similar to other Nazi-­created ghettos, the elders in Theresienstadt organized the daily life of the community, but were also ordered to compile lists of the deportees to be sent to the east. The only motive of their ‘politics’, a race against time, was to save at least a part of the Jewish community until liberation.4 The situation was different for politicians and activists who escaped from Central Europe to exile in Allied and neutral countries. The politics of Czechoslovak Jewish

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exile between 1939 and 1945 followed the tradition of the interwar political efforts. The activists soon created new organizations and established contacts with the Czechoslovak resistance movement in Britain and France under the leadership of the exile president Beneš. Jewish exile politics continued to manifest the ideological divisiveness of the interwar republic, with each particular group claiming the right to represent the Jewish community at large. Just as after the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918, it was the Jewish nationalists who were eventually recognized by the Czechoslovak exile politicians as their main Jewish partners. The major achievement of the Jewish nationalists was Frischer’s appointment to the Czechoslovak State Council (Státní ráda Československá), an advisory body that, in the exile movement, substituted for the work of a parliament. The negotiations about the appointment and, later, Frischer’s parliamentary activities reflected changes in Czechoslovak internal politics, which, after the Second World War, would lead to the transformation of the multiethnic republic into a nation-­state. The Jewish nationalists from Czechoslovakia also had to solve their internal political quandary of whether to continue with the Diaspora politics or focus entirely on the building of the Jewish national homeland in Palestine. Frischer spent the first two years of his emigration in Jerusalem. In the meantime, Jewish exiles in Western Europe entered into political negotiations with the diplomatic representatives of the Czechoslovak resistance movement – the nucleus of the government-­in-exile, which in late 1941 led to Frischer’s appointment as a member of the exile parliament in London.

Jewish representation in the Czechoslovak State Council After the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939, the former Czechoslovak president, Beneš, now in exile, initiated the organization of the Czechoslovak resistance movement abroad. He intended to create an officially recognized administration that would prepare the renewal of the Czechoslovak state and negotiate its future composition with international partners. It took Beneš more than a year before he was able to overcome the prevailing appeasement sentiments in the west. The British recognized the Provisional Czechoslovak government only after the fall of France, on 21 July 1940. The exile resistance claimed to represent all shades of Czechoslovak society, regardless of social, national or religious affiliation. It soon became evident, however, that ethnic Czechs and Slovaks played a prominent, almost exclusive, role among the leading exiles. Beneš articulated the political programme in opposition to the ethnic tolerance of interwar republic, which had ultimately led to the perceived betrayal of Czechoslovakia by its minorities. The situation among the Czechoslovak exiles reflected the sentiments among European politicians. In contrast with 1919, when the Paris Peace Conference sanctioned the creation of multiethnic states, the idea that co-­ existence between various cultures and ethnicities was no longer possible prevailed during the war. Also Czech resistance gradually radicalized, particularly in response to the brutality of the German occupation regime in the Protectorate. Post-­war East-­ Central European governments (with the approval of the major Allied powers)

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employed the method of population transfers to solve the problems of unwanted minority groups. Over 12 million ethnic Germans from countries across East-­Central Europe – predominantly from Poland, Czechoslovakia (2.5 million), Hungary and Yugoslavia – as well as members of other ethnic minorities lost their homes after 1945 as part of these ruthless efforts to achieve the national homogeneity of post-­war societies.5 Minorities as distinct factors of European politics were to disappear. This radicalization of the resistance movement soon had an impact on political negotiations between the government-­in-exile and Czechoslovak-Jewish activists.6 Together with the Czech and Slovak politicians, representatives of diverse Jewish ideological groups also escaped to London and Paris. Most of them had originally come from the German-Jewish milieu in the Sudetenland.7 Because the old leadership of the Zionist groups had gone to Palestine, representatives of a new generation in Czechoslovak-Jewish politics mostly found refuge in Western Europe. The organization of the Czechoslovak-Jewish groups started almost immediately after the outbreak of the war, when the French and British governments permitted Czech and Slovak exiles to take part in political activity. In October 1939, the Union of Jews from Czechoslovakia in France (Association des Juifs de Tchécoslovaquie en France) was established, and declared its plans to work intensively on the post-­war reintegration of the Jews into Czechoslovak society. The Union represented all the nationalities and religious denominations among the Jews. As they argued, the main tie that bound all Jews, including the Zionists and German, was their Czechoslovak citizenship.8 Yet there was an evident lack of political leaders among the Jewish refugees in Paris (only Štěpán Barber had any previous international experience). The early collapse of the French Republic after the German military campaign in May and June 1940 then inevitably moved the centre of the Czechoslovak resistance to London. The Jewish exiles in Britain also focused their programme on, what they expected to be, the difficult post-­war reintegration of the Jews, as articulated in the statement by the Joint Committee of Jews from Czechoslovakia, an umbrella relief organization, in October 1939: ‘We, Jews from Czechoslovakia, having closely watched for nearly seven years the progress of National-Socialism, spreading its ideology and chiefly the ideas of its racial theory, are deeply concerned about the outlook for Jewry in Central Europe, after the war.’9 As a consequence, political organizations emerged beside purely humanitarian groups that had previously facilitated the immigration of refugees and their maintenance in Britain. The first political group that emerged was the Central Council of the National Jews from Czechoslovakia (Ústřední rada národních Židů z Československa – hereafter the National Jewish Council). It was founded in October 1939, at the moment when President Beneš officially proclaimed the beginning of the struggle for a new Czechoslovakia. The National Jewish Council was founded by former members of the Jewish Party and Poale Zion. They later co-­opted representatives of the Jewish soldiers serving in the Czechoslovak army abroad.10 Lev Zelmanovits became the leader of the Jewish nationalists. He was born in Cracow, Austria-Hungary, but since early childhood he lived in Moravská Ostrava, where he attended the Jewish primary school and German gymnasium. He studied law at Charles University in Prague and later worked as a lawyer in Prague, Nový Jičín and Moravská Ostrava. Beginning in 1929, Zelmanovits served as a parliamentary secretary

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Figure 8  The leadership of the National Jewish Council in London (Lev Zelmanovits (third from the left) and Štěpán Barber (in the uniform)). of the Jewish Party, and in 1935 he was elected as its General Secretary. His legal practice was closed shortly after the German occupation. Zelmanovits was briefly detained by the Gestapo, but was allowed to emigrate to Britain several weeks before the outbreak of the war.11 In October 1939, he and Imrich Rosenberg (1913–86), a Slovak Zionist and leader of the Czechoslovak Maccabi, re-­established the Zionist political activities and expanded their contacts with the Czechoslovak exiles.12 The National Jewish Council were carrying on the tradition of the pre-­war Jewish nationalist politics.13 The nationalists imagined the organization as a successor of the JNC created in 1918. The Zelmanovits group, which often used the English name the National Council of Jews from Czechoslovakia, compared the situation in London to the situation at the end of the First World War, when the negotiations between the Comité des Délégations Juives and the Entente governments led to the adoption of the internationally guaranteed protection of minorities in East-­Central Europe. They were unable to comprehend that the times had changed and that the pre-­war disintegration of the international guarantees concerning minorities could not, in the minds of the European politicians, lead to the re-­establishment of the minority treaties and, by implication, to the recognition of the minority status of the Jews. From the very beginning, the nationalists developed their programme in opposition to the other exile Jewish groups from Czechoslovakia. There were, Zelmanovits argued, numerous Jewish activists in London who had been presenting themselves as the spokesmen of the Czechoslovak Jews, and often issued problematic declarations. It was therefore necessary to create an official representative body that would clearly define the ideology of the national Jews, join the Czechoslovak resistance abroad and work for the future of the Jews, as a minority, in post-­war Czechoslovakia.14 The remaining two

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Czechoslovak Jewish political groups that emerged in London, the Assimilationists and the Orthodox, publicly declared that they considered themselves members of the Czech or Slovak nations. Such statements, Zelmanovits suggested, justified the political activities of the National Jewish Council as a clearly defined group fighting for the rights of the Jewish national minority. Zelmanovits’s efforts received the support of other important Czechoslovak-Jewish activists in Britain, for example, Leo Herrmann. Moreover, Hitachdut Olei Czechoslovakia (HOC), the organization of CzechoslovakJewish settlers in Palestine under the leadership of the former Zionist elite from Czechoslovakia, established a committee for cooperation with the National Jewish Council. Zelmanovits also promised to liaise with the remaining Jewish groups in London, but concluded that any comprehensive cooperation was improbable due to ideological differences.15 Already, the first months confirmed that the Jewish groups in London could find no common platform and were continuing to bicker over ideology as they had in the interwar period.16 Both the Orthodox (often called the Agudists) and the adherents of assimilation declared their interest in different ideological, national or religious terms. The Agudists, who had worked with the Czech Agrarians in the interwar period, were initially represented by the Federation of Czecho-Slovakian Jews, a humanitarian organization.17 Later, the Union of Orthodox Jews from Czechoslovakia emerged as their unofficial political branch.18 The Union, represented by three young Moravian and Slovak Jews – Meir Raphael Springer, Kurt Leitner and Karol Rosenbaum – was largely moderate in its political programme; their sole demand was that post-­war Czechoslovakia repeal the post-Munich legislation that had led to the gradual segregation of the Jews. In particular, they defended the rights of the Jews of the Czechoslovak border regions who had lost their citizenship after Munich (especially the communities in southern Slovakia, a territory annexed by Hungary in November 1938). Although the Agudists – in an atmosphere of intense Czech and Slovak nationalism – disapproved of the previous political stance of those Jews, meaning their former adherence to German and Hungarian culture, they argued that the Orthodox Jews had always been the most loyal element in the Czechoslovak Republic.19 Otherwise, the aims of the Union were related to securing religious freedom in a future Czechoslovakia, together with other related matters, for example Orthodox Jewish education. The Agudists officially rejected any interventions of Western Jewish groups with the Czechoslovak government, because Beneš and Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk, in their opinion, needed no ‘watchdog’.20 The assimilationist Association of Czech Jews was officially founded on 20 April 1940 as an open group of Jews who considered themselves Czech in the national sense, but were seriously troubled by developments in post-Munich Czechoslovakia and wanted to restore the rights of the Jews as equal citizens. This camp included the businessman Milan Kodíček and the former head of the Prague Jewish Community, Emil Kafka. They summed up their principal aim as seeking to influence Jewish refugees in Britain to discharge their national duty and join the resistance movement in the fight for the liberation of Czechoslovakia. Although they admitted that Zionists too could be loyal to Czechoslovakia, their ultimate goal, the Association asserted, was to move to Palestine and not to stay in Czechoslovakia.21 Yet already during the

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war the Assimilationists too expressed concerns about the post-­war equality of the Jews, especially because of what they perceived as growing antisemitic sentiments in the occupied homeland. Since they felt that the exile government was neglecting the question, the Association prepared a document dealing with Czech antisemitism and provided it to the exile authorities. Their proposals to solve the question of Czech and Slovak antisemitism proved that they could hardly find a common platform with the Jewish nationalists. Only the creation of a Jewish state and the migration there of all the Jews who perceived their Jewishness in national terms could solve the problem of antisemitism. Furthermore, they appealed to other Jews to take assimilation more seriously than before; a superficial approach was, they argued, no longer possible. Antisemitism in Europe could disappear only if the Jews themselves contributed to the solution of the perceived Jewish problem.22 The ideological rift within the exile Jewish community deepened in the autumn of 1940 when Beneš announced a plan to create the Czechoslovak State Council. The National Jewish Council immediately announced that, based on the theory of the continuity of the exile administration with pre-Munich Czechoslovakia – the cornerstone of Beneš’s claim for international recognition – their representatives too should be appointed to the State Council. This claim was based on the composition of the last pre-Munich parliament, where the Jewish Party had two MPs.23 In response, the Orthodox and the Assimilationists drafted public statements that countered the Zionists’ claims. In particular, the Orthodox and the Jewish nationalists battled over the interpretation of the interwar census statistics as a way to determine who could claim to be the spokesmen for the whole Jewish community.24 The Agudists demanded recognition as the representatives of the Jews organized in the Orthodox Jewish communities of Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia, numbering over 207,000 people in the community of 360,000 Czechoslovak Jews. They opposed the claim of the nationalists that all the Jews who had declared Jewish nationality in the two official censuses (almost 200,000 Jews), were supporters of secular Jewish nationalism.25 According to Agudist estimates, only about 40,000 Jewish voters – a questionable claim – had supported the Jewish nationalists in the pre-Munich days. Twisting the proclamations of the nationalists somewhat, the Orthodox argued that although the nationalists purported to represent the whole Jewish community in Czechoslovakia, the Agudists claimed ‘only to represent themselves, and naturally declined to permit any other group to speak on their behalf ’.26 The Czech-Jewish Assimilationists also responded to the debate about the Jewish political claims that was unfolding. Numerous assimilated Jews – often not organized in any specifically Jewish body – were represented in the Czechoslovak exile administration. They had relatively unrestricted access to the official exile newspaper, Čechoslovák (Czechoslovak), where they attacked the political demands of the Jewish nationalists and accused them of disloyalty to the Czechoslovak resistance. Jiří Langstein-Hronek (1905–87), an influential Czechoslovak journalist, suggested in Čechoslovák that Jews who demanded representation based on their membership of a certain group were publicly declaring that they did not consider themselves members of the Czech or Slovak nations. As a consequence, they had become a national minority, a term that after Munich carried a negative connotation among Czechoslovak

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politicians, and by which Hronek relegated the Zionists to the periphery (or even outside) of the resistance movement. He expressed his belief that most Jews did not support the nationalists, and instead felt Czech or Slovak, with unconditional loyalty to the government.27 A further complication, however, was that not all Assimilationists were content with their being represented in the State Council by Czech and Slovak politicians, which further confused the Czechoslovak exiles. The Assimilationists consisted of many factions and did not form any uniform movement.28 Hronek was among those who had a stricter approach towards assimilation. Some members of this hard-­to-define group, for example, the journalist Julius Fürth (1897–1979), who in 1946 changed his surname to Firt – a member of the Czechoslovak State Council in London (not as a Jew) – even promoted the idea that the only correct approach to assimilation was by way of baptism, atheism, or mixed marriage.29 In response to Hronek, Kamil Kleiner (1892–1954), a member of the Association of Czech Jews, sent a rebuttal to the Foreign Ministry.30 He believed that developments in post-Munich Czechoslovakia and the Protectorate, with the segregation of the Jews, had created a special situation that needed to be rectified. Furthermore, the defeat of the Allied armies in France and the subsequent evacuation of Czechoslovak soldiers to Britain were accompanied by a large number of antisemitic incidents among Czechoslovak soldiers.31 Kleiner thus suggested that the Jews should be represented in the State Council. He would not be content with the appointment of a person who, though Jewish, was not connected with the Jewish community and did not represent its political and social interests. Only a person who had not cut his ties with the Jewish community and who was willing to avoid, as he put it, ‘a head-­in-the-­sand approach’, would be a suitable candidate. He concluded that the antisemitic propaganda in the Protectorate, which claimed that the exiles were governed by the Jews, would not deter the Association of Czech Jews in their efforts to be adequately represented by politicians interested in the Jewish community and willing to address the sensitive ‘matters of which everyone was aware’.32 Zelmanovits’s group later claimed that the Assimilationists and the Orthodox extended their political activities only after they became acquainted with Zionist demands towards the Czechoslovak government.33 But the situation was evidently much more complex, and his statement was rather a part of the unfolding public conflict between the Jewish nationalists and the other groups. The disfranchisement of the Jews after Munich and the national radicalization of the Czech and Slovak exiles triggered responses within the exiled Jewish bodies across ideological boundaries. The Jewish exiles were aware of the anti-Jewish sentiments that existed in the resistance movement, but their mutual struggle further exacerbated the already existing problematic image of the Jews as a distinct and unreliable minority group. One of the main lines of argumentation used against the Jewish nationalists by their opponents was the incessant questioning of Zionist loyalties to the Czechoslovak state.34 On the other hand, the Zelmanovits group launched a defamatory campaign against their political opponents, though the campaign was not intended for the Czechoslovak authorities, but for British and American Jewish political groups as a way to persuade them to support the Zionists’ bid. Zelmanovits denounced the Agudists for their pre-­ war work with the Agrarian Party, a leading political force in Czechoslovakia from the

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mid-1920s onwards, which had led the post-Munich government that had passed the first anti-Jewish laws even before the German occupation. Concurrently, he accused the assimilationist Association of Czech Jews of having backed post-Munich Czech efforts to expel Jewish refugees who had escaped to rump Czechoslovakia from the Sudetenland. He even alleged that the Association had supported the introduction of anti-Jewish laws, whose implementation was discussed shortly after the creation of the Protectorate by the only permitted and therefore collaborationist Czech party, National Solidarity (Národní souručenství).35 Beneš used these conflicts for his benefit. With the internal changes for post-­war Czechoslovakia as a country without recognized minorities already planned, the President did not want to appoint a representative of the Jews as a distinct group, because it could easily create a precedent for negotiations with the democratic Germans and other minorities.36 Beneš thus employed a delaying tactic, and at one point during the lengthy negotiations stated that he would be willing to appoint a Jewish member of the State Council, but only if the diverse Jewish groups agreed on a joint candidate. That, however, proved to be virtually impossible. (Beneš’s secretary privately noted that the President’s tactics with the Jews were ‘masterful’.)37 The negotiations continued for almost a year, but no conclusion was reached.38 In December 1940, Beneš appointed the members to the first State Council and rejected the demands of the Jews and other ethnic minorities. In response, Zelmanovits ignored the invitation to the inaugural session of the State Council and instead prepared a public memorandum of protest against the decision. He ensured wide publicity in the Jewish press and through diplomatic channels for the memorandum, a step deeply resented by the Czechoslovak authorities.39 He also increased the efforts to court the support of the American and British Jewish organizations that were initially unable to comprehend the internal conflicts within the exile Jewish community. In a letter to Noah Barou, a leader of the WJC, Zelmanovits summarized the views of the Jewish nationalists and the importance they ascribed to their political representation in the State Council: ‘In the case which concerns us the decision does not lie between persons [that is to say,] candidates who hold the same opinion, but between a basically different conception of Judaism.’40 At the same time, Zelmanovits returned to the theme that had concerned him from the very beginning of his political activities in London exile. He emphasized the connection between the situation in London in 1940 and in Paris in 1919: I have repeatedly pointed out and shall always hold the opinion that none of us is entitled to give up [the minority] rights which we enjoyed at home simply for the sake of a purely personal solution. [. . .] Any compromise arbitration etc. involves the danger that the person who may be called upon to represent Czecho-Slovak Jewry as ‘joint candidate’ does not consider himself as belonging to the Jewish nation. Should this happen, it would perhaps not mean a loss of prestige, but a defeat of the very idea which the ‘Comité des Délégations Juives’ and the ‘World Congress’ has stood for and for which it will have to fight. It would mean deviation from a line of policy, a deviation which may be fateful for European Jewry. [. . .] I have no scruples whatsoever in maintaining ‘expressis verbis’ that it is much better

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to have no Jewish representative at all on the State Council rather than having as a representative for the whole of Jewry a member of the Czech assimilationists or the Aguda.41

In his conclusions, Zelmanovits therefore appealed to the WJC to support the claims of the Jewish nationalists vis-à-­vis the Czechoslovak government. In this way, a powerless group of minor Jewish politicians from Czechoslovakia was able to trigger the interventions of the international Jewish agencies against the Czechoslovak government. Zelmanovits’s determination played a key role in this. In the following months, the leaders of the British Section of the WJC repeatedly visited Beneš and tried to persuade him about the necessity of reaching an agreement with the Jewish nationalists.42 Beneš, who, like his mentor, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, believed in the existence of a pro-Jewish lobby and the excessive influence of Jews over the press in the Western countries, in the end decided not to oppose the appointment of a Jewish nationalist. The fact that several important British and American Jewish personalities (including Sydney Silverman MP, Stephen Wise and Chaim Weizmann) backed the Zelmanovits group persuaded the Czechoslovak president that the matter could lead to undesirable publicity for him and that he could be presented as undemocratic, even antisemitic.43 This was a label that representatives of the minor Allies wanted to avoid at all costs. In June 1941, Beneš asked Zelmanovits to prepare a list of three potential candidates to the State Council.44 Evidently, the President wanted to be the one to make the final decision. The National Jewish Council obliged, but suddenly and without any intimations, they also nominated Frischer, at that time in Palestine, as their fourth and preferred candidate.45 Although Beneš eventually succumbed to idea of the excessive influence of international Jewish agencies, as an experienced politician he still appointed a Jewish member of the State Council according to his own perception of the priorities. All the actors involved later agreed that it was predominantly Zelmanovits’s persistence that had contributed to the nomination of a Zionist and the WJC repeatedly put him forward as the most suitable candidate.46 Yet the Czechoslovak exiles were aware of the potential danger that could result for the government from the appointment of the stubborn Zelmanovits, and thus Beneš rejected his nomination. There was strong resentment against Zelmanovits in the government, as well as among CzechoslovakJewish groups in London.47 Jaromír Nečas, a minister without portfolio familiar with the situation among the Jewish exiles, did not recommend the appointment of Zelmanovits either. He alleged that Zelmanovits had not lost his Polish accent (which Nečas apparently considered to be a problem), had not served in the army, and that his appointment would be rejected outright by the other Jewish groups. Fundamentally, Nečas concluded, Zelmanovits’s appointment would lead to a period of fighting and struggles, and would not help with the consolidation of the Czechoslovak exile movement. Zelmanovits was evidently considered politically unreliable, because of his public campaign to secure the Zionists’ representation in the State Council. Nečas noted that a member of the Czech-Jewish Assimilationists was the best choice of a Jewish member of the State Council. Because of the influential Zionist circles in the United States and Britain, it was, however, more reasonable to appoint a Jewish

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nationalist. Such statements cast considerable light on the motivations that shaped the exiles’ decision to reject the appointment of an assimilationist representative, even if he was the preferred candidate for the sake of the homogeneity of the resistance movement. Nečas knew Frischer personally and, as we have seen, most likely contributed to Frischer’s release from prison in June 1939. The minister supported Frischer’s nomination also because Frischer was a ‘good Czechoslovak’.48 Frischer in the summer of 1941 informally signalled his willingness to relocate to London. He also sent Beneš a speech that he had delivered in Palestine, in which he predicted a quick Allied victory in the war and the re-­establishment of Czechoslovakia, two views that Beneš would be pleased to hear and that confirmed Frischer’s devotion to the Czechoslovak cause.49 Thus, in early November 1941, Beneš announced the appointment, and Frischer soon sent his acceptance telegram.50 Shortly after the announcement, Viktor Fischl of the Foreign Ministry prepared a survey of the coverage Frischer’s appointment had received in the Western Jewish press, and he documented the positive appraisal of Beneš’s decision.51 Fischl concluded as well that representatives of the other competing Jewish groups, as far as he had an opportunity to informally consult them, welcomed Frischer’s appointment.52 This, however, was a gross simplification, because the Agudist press soon published the following poignant comment on the whole previous campaign: The ‘big guns’ were mobilized – all because there were no Jewish representatives in the Czech State Council. True, there is a war on, a war upon whose success depends the very life of Czechoslovakia, of world civilization – and of Jewry. True, the Czechoslovak Government was inspired by the spirit of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk; true, its leaders were President Beneš and Foreign Minister Masaryk, but nay – where was the Jewish representative? And he must be a Zionist; upon that there could be no compromise. [. . .] And now that the engineer, Frischer, has been appointed as member of the Council, now we learn that all will be well.53

In this way, the Agudists continued to construct the image of Jewish nationalists as a group of questionable loyalty to their Czechoslovak homeland, sentiments that were already shared by leading Czechoslovak exile politicians.54 Relations between the Jewish groups did not improve for the rest of the war. Much as in 1918, in 1941 the Jewish nationalists received recognition as the main spokesmen of the Czechoslovak Jews.55 For them, as Frischer later emphasized, this was evidence of ‘President Beneš’s sense of justice’.56 Yet the nature of the appointment remained unclear. It seems that it contradicted Beneš’s new philosophy concerning the post-­war national composition of Czechoslovakia and the existence of minorities in the country. Apart from the Ruthenians, who as Slavs apparently had a different status from non-Slavonic minorities, no other minorities received such recognition during the war. No German (apart from Karel Kreibich, who was, however, appointed as a Communist) or Hungarian was ever called to the State Council. At the same time, Frischer was officially appointed ad personam – in his personal capacity – and not as a representative of any political, national or ideological group. This was common practice when the exile community could not conduct any elections and members of

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the State Council were all appointed personally by Beneš. Also Zelmanovits, at a meeting of the National Jewish Council, conceded that Frischer was not their representative and that, because he had not previously been based in London, Frischer was also not bound to the organization by any personal connections and loyalties.57 Nevertheless, from the very beginning the Jewish press in Britain and the United States wrote about Frischer as the Jewish member of the exile parliament, and the Czechoslovak authorities also noted on several occasions that he ‘should look after the interests of the Jewish community’.58 This complicated and unclear arrangement later proved to be a major problem, when the National Jewish Council, as the organization that negotiated his appointment and represented the Jewish nationalists from Czechoslovakia in London, attempted to control Frischer’s activities, but to no avail. In fact, Frischer began to present himself as the unofficial leader of the whole community and pursued his own vision of Diaspora politics, parting ways not only with the Czechoslovak Zionists in Palestine, but also with the leaders of the Jewish nationalists in London.

Frischer and Czechoslovak Zionists In January 1940, Frischer and his wife Heřmína landed in Haifa, the main gateway to Mandate Palestine. In his early fifties, Frischer had lost most of the assets he had accumulated during a productive life in Ostrava and now had to start anew in a territory that had only recently, from 1936 to 1939, experienced Arab riots against British colonial rule and increasing Jewish settlement. Other recent olim (immigrants) had to cope with similar existential difficulties. Rufeisen, for example, who had been a successful barrister in Ostrava, now lived in a small rented flat in Tel Aviv.59 Over 450,000 Jews lived in Mandate Palestine in 1939. Between 10,000 and 12,000 of them had emigrated from Czechoslovakia, 8,000 in recent years.60 In the economic chaos that accompanied the Arab revolt, Palestinian society was hoping for the immigration of economists and other educated people who could immediately contribute to the development of the country. At the same time, the Jewish Agency for Palestine (Sochnut), a semi-­governmental body representing the Jewish settlers, offered positions and professional and occupational training to new immigrants. Yet the Jewish authorities, eager to emphasize the historical connection between the Jews and their land, demanded that the members of the administration use Modern Hebrew as their main language. Although Frischer was a leading Jewish nationalist, he had no working knowledge of Hebrew, and this shortcoming complicated his integration into the economic and administrative structures of Jewish Palestine.61 He worked as an engineer for the British Mandate authorities and also initiated several private projects to develop wartime Palestinian society.62 Hanuš, now Jaakov, continued with his studies at the Haifa Technion, and in his free time worked with his father on various projects in Jerusalem, such as building roads and railway stations.63 The youngest Frischer child, Fritzi/Friederike, lived in the Degania Bet kibbutz near the Sea of Galilee.64 In 1934, Czechoslovak immigrants in Palestine created Hitachdut Olei Czechoslovakia (HOC), an organization that facilitated further emigration from Czechoslovakia to Eretz

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Israel and provided assistance to the new olim. The leadership of the organization after 1939 was taken over by leading Czechoslovak Zionists, including Kugel, Goldstein and März. Rufeisen became chairman of the organization, which in the early 1940s represented about 2,000 Czechoslovak Jews.65 The HOC focused their energies and interests purely on the situation in Palestine. After the fulfilment of the Zionist dream, the new immigrants were expected to sever their ties with their former homeland and devote all their energy to building the Jewish homeland.66 This attitude soon led to the conflicts between the Zionists and Czechoslovak diplomats and military officials in the Middle East. In late 1939, the Czechoslovak Consul General in Jerusalem, Josef M. Kadlec, organized the recruitment of Czechoslovaks in Palestine. For Kadlec, all Czechoslovak citizens had to do their duty and join the army. The HOC, in contrast, stressed the difference between the Czechoslovak Jews who had come to the Middle East as immigrants, not as refugees, and Rufeisen roundly condemned the plans to send Jewish soldiers to ‘bleed in France’ for ‘a non-­existent state’. Other members of the HOC toured the British detention camps, where they lobbied among recent immigrants against the recruitment. The head of the Czechoslovak military mission in the Middle East, General Ondřej Mézl (1887–1968, cover name Andrej Gak), in his communication with the Czechoslovak exiles in London directly accused Goldstein and Kugel, both former MPs, of having launched a campaign among the enlisted men to desert from the Czechoslovak army.67 Frischer stood outside this conflict, and his name never appears in the reports prepared by the Czechoslovak diplomats and military. He was too old to serve in the army, so was spared the difficult decision of whether to enlist. Yet his son Hanuš/Jaakov, though in his mid-­twenties, ignored the first call-­up and did not enlist in the Czechoslovak army until May 1942.68 He later stressed that he had joined the army only because he wanted to protect his young wife, Hana (née Schembeck – they got married in Palestine), when the Wehrmacht was nearing Egypt.69 Even more than sixty years after the events, he felt the need to explain why he had joined up, a decision that he probably considered at odds with his Zionist beliefs. It does not explain, however, why he did not enlist in the British army in Palestine instead, as his sister Fritzi did several years later. It is likely that Hanuš joined the Czechoslovak army only after his father was appointed to the State Council in London, as a way to demonstrate the Frischers’ loyalty to Czechoslovakia. In June 1942, the Jewish Agency and the Czechoslovak government reached an agreement whereby only the Jews who did not intend to settle in Palestine would be enlisted in the Czechoslovak army.70 Zionists received permission from the Czech side to enlist in the British forces. Yet the strained relations between the Czech Zionists and the Czechoslovak authorities in Palestine never improved entirely. When Frischer, shortly before his departure for London, met with Goldstein to discuss his tasks as a new member of the State Council, the Czechoslovak military authorities immediately informed the Czechoslovak government in London about the meeting.71 Goldstein was considered disloyal, and Frischer became suspect simply for having consulted him about Czech-Jewish politics in London.72 Munich and the failure of Jewish integration in Czechoslovakia also widened the rift between the Zionists and the Jewish nationalists, or, put differently, the Zionist camp moved from the theoretical planning of future settlement in the Jewish homeland to the

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practical execution of its programme. Yet, the rejection by the HOC of any future existence of the Galuth, in the sense of a Jewish national minority, contradicted the ideological position that Frischer had advocated in the interwar years. He believed in the necessity of defending the rights of the Jews in Europe, even at a time when an increasing number of Jews had settled in Palestine, and complained about the short-­sightedness of the Zionist leaders in Palestine and in the HOC in particular.73 Frischer apparently felt isolated in Palestine. As early as 1940, he established contacts with the National Jewish Council in London, which prove his efforts to contribute to the negotiations with the Czechoslovak authorities about the position of the Jews in the country after the war.74 Nevertheless, his personal economic stability remained his priority, and in mid-1941 he was prepared to move to Iran to take up a position with the British Corps of Royal Engineers.75 It was at this time that he received the first telegram from London in which the leaders of the National Jewish Council enquired whether he would accept their nomination to the State Council. He consulted about the nomination his closest associates in Jerusalem, including his friend März, who expressed doubts about the necessity and advisability of continuing with Diaspora politics.76 Frischer, however, decided to accept the offer, even against the recommendation of the Czechoslovak Zionist leadership. The new parliamentarian abandoned his plans to move to Iran, and, on 5 February 1942, left Palestine for London. He travelled via Alexandria, Egypt, to Sierra Leone, and then continued along the African and European coast to Britain, where he disembarked in Liverpool in late March 1942.77 Frischer arrived in London when the Czechoslovak government had already outlined its future policies on ethnic minorities. In the autumn of 1940, Beneš revealed that, in his opinion, the Jewish nationalists could not remain in Czechoslovakia as Czechoslovak citizens. As part of the programme to change Czechoslovakia into a purely Slav country, the Jews would have the choice of either assimilating in the Czech or the Slovak nation or, if they preferred to remain Jewish in the national sense, they would have to move to the future Jewish state. Beneš promised to support the Zionist enterprise. There would not be any Jewish national minority in Czechoslovakia.78 These plans alarmed Jewish activists in Britain and the United States, but Frischer – regardless of his plans to continue with Diaspora politics – did not seem to be completely surprised. He had long been persuaded that the Jews could not demand any special minority rights and status in nation-­states, where ‘nationality and citizenship are considered identical’.79 In the past, as he explained, Habsburg Austria and pre-­war Czechoslovakia were minorities states, where several different ethnicities had lived side by side. There, the decision of individuals to declare themselves to be members of the Jewish nation was understandable, partly also as a way to avoid becoming part of the propaganda struggle between the other ethnic groups in the state, an attitude – or political decision – promoted already by Stricker at the turn of the century. In this way, Frischer distinguished Czechoslovakia and its Jews (especially in the Bohemian Lands) from the other multinational states, in particular Poland and Romania, where there live large masses of Jews whose cultural, social or economic life very much differs from that of their hosts, where the Jews have the need for a specific

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Arnošt Frischer satisfaction, particularly of their cultural and educational interests, and where they are interested [to ensure] that their national group is allotted the appropriate part of the public expenditure to which they have also contributed, and their group receives its part also in the economic life, i.e. in the quota of civil servants.80

As late as October 1943, Frischer believed that in certain countries in Eastern and Central Europe the internationally guaranteed protection of minorities would be necessary after the war. Similar to the situation in 1919, the post-Second World War peace treaties guaranteeing the existence of countries now under direct or indirect German rule – Poland, Hungary and Romania – would also need to protect the Jews against discrimination. These international treaties would also guarantee the Jews’ freedom to create certain organizations in which to conduct their communal and cultural lives, and secure the right of worship, language rights, and specific social and economic interests (here, Frischer mentioned Germany in addition to the previously named countries).81 In Frischer’s perception, the Jews in Czechoslovakia had not enjoyed any extensive minority rights before the war, apart from the right to declare themselves members of the Jewish nation in the census.82 It was clear, with the emigration after Munich and the Nazi persecution during the occupation, that they would not be able to improve their minority status after the war either. At any rate, Frischer was not persuaded of the advisability of the wording, and recommended that the Jewish activists avoid the term ‘minority rights’, which he considered ‘inopportune in these times’, after the role that territorial minorities had played in the disintegration of European states before the war. The term was often misunderstood and evoked special privileges for specific groups of people in comparison with the majority population, and it would be impolitic to provoke the Czechoslovak government. Other terms, he believed, such as the ‘rights of men’ or the ‘bill of rights’, better expressed the position of the Jews and their yearning for equality.83 Frischer hoped that such a ‘bill of rights’ ‘in favour of all people’ could be introduced generally in the world, or at least in the countries that would join a post-­ war international organization to secure world peace. Under certain conditions, a ‘bill of rights’ would also allow people to form groups that could use their own language and have religious and cultural rights.84 Although in principle the Jews should not make any concessions concerning their minority rights in Czechoslovakia, Frischer argued, they needed to find a different way to secure them after the war.85 Recollecting the struggle in interwar Czechoslovakia, he concluded that the activists should rather try to bring about practical arrangements that would yield a ‘real result for the Jews, particularly for their school work and their cultural activities’.86 Frischer believed that only a combination of various circumstances would allow the Jews to claim a special minority status in post-­war Czechoslovakia. In particular, there would have to be other recognized minorities in the country, such as Germans or Hungarians. Moreover, Subcarpathian Ruthenia, with its large, distinct Jewish minority, would have to remain an integral part of the republic.87 None of these conditions was later fulfilled, which shows that the main problem facing the Jewish activists in London was that for a long time they lacked any relevant information about the plans for the post-­war order in Czechoslovakia. They did not know whether minorities would be

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allowed to stay, or what sort of constitutional system the individual lands (Bohemia, Moravia-Silesia, Slovakia and Ruthenia) would be associated in. As Frischer repeatedly complained, it was impossible to make specific plans in a vacuum.88 In London during the war, Frischer was criticized by his National Jewish Council colleagues for his views on the Jewish position in Czechoslovakia. WJC headquarters also tried to argue with him about the need to secure minority rights for the Jews of post-­war Czechoslovakia and Europe in general.89 Yet, it is worth noting that very similar conclusions to Frischer’s were reached by Jacob Robinson (1889–1977), the Lithuanian-­born lawyer and activist, who also belonged to the second generation of Gegenwartsarbeit politicians. In the first years of the war, Robinson supported the reintroduction of minorities treaties after the war, but abandoned this plan in early 1943. As he perceived it, the Jewish catastrophe in Europe and the plans to introduce population transfers as a solution to the minorities question made any continuation of the fight for minority rights pointless. Although the WJC continued with their programme to negotiate the reintroduction of the minority system, Robinson, as an influential chairman of the Institute for Jewish Affairs, clearly abandoned the plans, and in fact praised Frischer for his sober approach toward the problem.90 There was, however, one point on which Frischer and Robinson could not agree. After he abandoned the fight for minority rights, Robinson fully focused on Zionism as the only possible solution to the Jewish question in Europe. He believed that there was no alternative, and the Jews should entirely abandon Diaspora politics.91 In contrast, the greatly changed environment in Czechoslovak internal affairs did not lead Frischer to abandon the field of nationally Jewish politics. In May 1942, he reiterated his personal views about Jewish emigration to Palestine as follows: Since my earliest youth I have considered it my task to support Zionist efforts to build a National Home in Palestine. But I think that immigration to Palestine should not be a matter of compulsion – either from inside or from outside – and I know that [the size of the Palestinian territory] is of necessity limited. I therefore have to intercede for [insist on?] a free life with equal rights for the Jews in the countries they have lived in for centuries.92

Although the minority status of the Jews was in doubt, it was necessary to facilitate the rehabilitation and material restitution of the Jews, and look after the interest of the survivor community. Furthermore, despite the changed environment in Czechoslovakia, Frischer believed that it would be possible to find a way to continue with nationally Jewish politics. In July 1943, despite the incoming evidence about the Nazi extermination of the Jews, Frischer appealed to the exile Jewish community to start preparing for the post-­war reconstruction: Believe me, night and day I think about what is happening to our loved ones at home, and about for which of them and how many of them Allied victory will come as a timely rescue. [. . .] And when I talk about post-­war reconstruction or the future status of the Jews in Czechoslovakia, I see before me not merely political

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Arnošt Frischer formulas, but people. I imagine how it will be when the war is over. How lovely it will be when those who have survived (O Lord, how many of them will there be? God willing, there won’t be too few!) will no longer have to fear that someone will deport them. How lovely it will be when our pale, gaunt Jewish children again go to the park and our men go . . . well, where will they go? Will they go to work? And here my thoughts somehow grow dim. [. . .] How will they gradually get back to their jobs, or, better said, any jobs to support themselves and their families?93

The preparation for the post-­war reconstruction of the Jewish communities required the concerted effort of the exiled Jewish activists. Frischer thus proposed the creation of an Association of Jews from Czechoslovakia (Svaz Židů z Československa) and envisaged the organization as a joint platform that would unite all the Jews, regardless of their political and ideological viewpoints. Yet they would need to recognize the special political and socio-­economic interests of the Jewish community, a precondition that excluded a large part of the Jewish Assimilationists.94 This organization would lay the foundation for the continuation of Diaspora politics after the war. Frischer also believed that for the time being the Association would have to defend the main minority right that the Jews had had before the war – namely, State recognition of Jewish nationality. Only the Jewish community in a liberated Czechoslovakia would, Frischer argued, have the authority to decide whether the Jews should abandon this right.95 Frischer addressed his appeal to the main Czechoslovak Jewish organizations abroad, including the WJC-affiliated Czechoslovak Jewish Representative Committee (CJRC) in the United States and Hitachdut Olei Czechoslovakia in Palestine. Although he did not believe that the Hitachdut, because of its exclusive focus on Palestine, could join the Association, he proposed that its members could create a separate organization that would be able to contribute to making the restitution and reconstruction plans.96 The idea of an umbrella organization for Czechoslovak Jews was, however, rejected by the Hitachdut. The debate between Frischer and the Hitachdut revealed fundamental ideological differences between the Zionists and Jewish nationalists, who hoped to continue with the Jewish politics in the Diaspora. Since the early 1900s, the secular Jewish nationalists had debated the relationship between Landespolitik and Zionism. The post-1938 settlement of the Zionist leaders in Palestine had cut the Gordian knot. Rufeisen summarized the Zionist perspective to Frischer: [T]he HOC offers absolute opposition to any attempt to create a special organization in Palestine with ‘landespolitische’ aims outside the Zionist programme and Zionist discipline. We are prepared to fight any such attempt with due firmness and energy. The HOC, as a Zionist body, considers itself the only legal representative of Czechoslovak Jewry in Palestine, and will not allow anyone to determine its tasks. [. . .] We Czechoslovak Zionists have ever been of the opinion that ‘Landespolitik’ in all its forms and phases is only an auxiliary means for the attainment of the Zionist aim (the solution of the Jewish Question). From this necessarily follows the primacy of the Zionist ideology and the belief that general Zionist interests rank higher than the interests of private people or groups,

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on whichever basis they might be organized. That was the reason why we always stood for putting our Landespolitik under Zionist control. [. . .] In short, we are convinced that it will also be impossible in future to continue without Zionist primacy and Zionist control. We are therefore afraid that you, dear Mr. Frischer, seen at least from the Zionist point of view, are on the wrong path, which will sooner or later lead you to a precarious situation, if not an impasse. After all, your real vigour can come only from the Zionist source of energy.97

Hence, in late 1943, Frischer definitively parted ways with the Czechoslovak Zionists. Yet he respected the wishes of the HOC, and so the plans to create an Association of Jews from Czechoslovakia were shelved. Frischer’s activities during the war were evidently limited by both the growing anti-­ minority sentiments in the Czech resistance and by the rejection of any further political activities in the Diaspora by the former leadership of the Zionists in Czechoslovakia. Despite these political constraints, Frischer pursued his vision of post-­war Czechoslovakia as a country that could again become a home for the Jewish minority. He believed that his cooperation with the Czechoslovak resistance movement in the State Council would manifest the Jews’ efforts to contribute to the renewal of the independent Czechoslovak state and would help present the Jews as loyal and reliable citizens.

Frischer as the Jewish representative on the State Council Frischer worked from his London office between late March 1942 and late March 1945. Other Jewish activists also served as members of the governments-­in-exile that had been established in London during the war. The Polish government-­in-exile had, in 1939, appointed Ignacy Schwarzbart (1888–1961), a Zionist and former MP from Cracow, to the Polish National Council (Rada Narodowa Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej), a consulting body of experts. In early 1942, Szmul Zygielbojm (1895–1943), who had escaped from occupied Warsaw, was included as a representative of the Jewish SocialDemocratic Bund. After Zygielbojm’s suicide in May 1943, the Polish president, Władysław Raczkiewicz (1885–1947), appointed another representative of the Bund, Emanuel Szerer, as his successor.98 The nature of Jewish politics as it developed during the war changed considerably from what it had been in the pre-­war years. From the moment he assumed his seat on the State Council, Frischer realized the precarious position he was in as the only representative of a non-Slavic ethnic minority in this exile body. He therefore sought to articulate a synthesis of Czech and Jewish politics, to pre-­empt any accusation of disloyalty to the Czechoslovak state by his non-Jewish colleagues. At public meetings in London, he helped to spread Czechoslovak propaganda, painting an idealized image of the interwar republic.99 He saw his appointment as the symbol of future CzechJewish cooperation, but concurrently stressed that he, as a Jew from Czechoslovakia, had a dual allegiance – as a Czechoslovak citizen and as a Jew.100 He argued: ‘[N]o one would be just in saying that a man cannot bear two loves in one heart; for one love does

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not exclude another one. Do you love both your mother and your wife? Or, do we not love each of our children equally?’101 In practical politics, he planned to focus on both particular Jewish matters and the general work of reconstruction.102 Comparing the situation in the State Council with his previous experience as a member of the town council in Moravská Ostrava, Frischer believed that he first needed to establish his authority by systematically working on the general agenda, and only then could he use the acquired prestige in the negotiation of specifically Jewish matters.103 A long essay entitled ‘The Way to a Better World’ (Cesta do lepšího světa), which he wrote on the journey from Palestine to London in early 1942, proves Frischer’s efforts to contribute to the general political reconstruction of Czechoslovakia and the world at large. The essay, never published, documents Frischer’s faith that only the introduction of a socialist system and federalization of the States of Europe could lead to a peaceful post-­war development.104 This political landscape would facilitate economic cooperation, and large federal units would also easily keep peace in the world.105 In the efforts to make the economy socialist, the world could, according to Frischer, learn from projects that had already been carried out. The Soviet Union provided evidence that to bring about a socialist society was indeed possible, though the project there had yet to be completed. The only pure example of the successful introduction of a socialist system was the Palestinian agricultural settlements, the kibbutzim, and Frischer suggested that a similar programme of agricultural collectivization could be executed in other places too, such as Subcarpathian Ruthenia and Scotland.106 Frischer’s ideas corresponded with the changed environment in Czech society after the experiences of the interwar period. There was a general call for an increase in the economic participation of wider groups, and the Czechoslovak exile administration, especially after the Soviet Union entered the war against Germany, also had a predominantly left-­leaning character.107 Frischer sent a copy of the manuscript to Beneš, but there was no subsequent discussion about his proposals. In practical politics, on the State Council, Frischer joined the work of all the committees (economic and social, technical, legal and defence) to gather comprehensive information about the political deliberations. From the Jewish perspective he combatted cases of antisemitism in the Czechoslovak army stationed in Britain and looked after the religious needs of the soldiers.108 Although the attacks were rarely physical, the soldiers often complained to the Jewish organizations, and Frischer understandably became one of the main figures they approached. The Czechoslovak authorities usually downplayed the complaints, explained the attacks as being marginal, and also blamed the Jews for being excessively sensitive. There were even Czechoslovak politicians who accused the Jews of having contributed to the resentment by their own behaviour, especially by their alleged attempts to seek privileges. Frischer experienced this rhetoric first-­hand on the State Council. One of his colleagues, Karel Janšta (1912–86), a first lieutenant in the RAF 311 Czechoslovak Bomber Squadron, criticized Frischer for demanding representation on all committees of the State Council, because the common practice was that each member joined only two or three committees at most. According to Janšta, these attempts to demand privileged treatment were causing antisemitic feelings.109

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The atmosphere of Czech ethnonationalism that developed in the Czechoslovak resistance led to Frischer’s decision to abandon almost all communication in German, public or private, and to use Czech and English instead. On one occasion, he even scolded members of the HOC for sending him a letter in German, which, he claimed, reflected their complete lack of understanding for the national feelings of the Czechoslovak exiles.110 He also frequently appealed to the exile Jewish community to increase their efforts to learn Czech properly, if they planned to return to Czechoslovakia. Their lack of knowledge of Czech would complicate their personal position in the liberated country, and could also harm the whole Jewish community in the eyes of non-Jews.111 These statements are not entirely surprising. Already in the interwar period, Frischer promoted the idea that the Jews should learn Czech and attend Czech educational institutions as a way of adjusting to the conditions of the Diaspora in Czechoslovakia. Although a member of several Jewish and pro-Zionist organizations in London, including the Executive of the British Section of the WJC, Frischer became more approachable and maybe even more reasonable in discussions with the Czechoslovak authorities about the post-­war solution to the Jewish minority status. Already in October 1942, he emphasized that the only option for the Jews was to join the new system of post-­war Czechoslovakia, where they could not demand any special lex judaica.112 Instead of focusing on political declarations and demands, he concentrated on the development of specific plans that would facilitate the individual rehabilitation of the Jews after the war. Frischer believed that a successful economic restitution was crucial for the reestablishment of Jewish life. In 1943, he created a research group, headed by the lawyer George (Georg) Weis (1898–1992), which prepared a study on post-­war restitution from the legal perspective, but it seems that he did not find willing listeners in London, and the group’s proposals led to no substantial discussions.113 This lack of debates in the Jewish groups led to frequent complaints that Frischer addressed to the WJC headquarters in New York. In his opinion, the WJC were ‘irresponsible in delay in submitting our demands for restitution of property. Our foes already prepare their argumentation against us and we have not even begun to fight for it.’114 He believed that ‘without any economic strength [the Jews] will have little influence and, therefore, little political rights’.115 Unlike Zelmanovits, Frischer opposed any direct interventions by western Jewish groups in internal Czechoslovak affairs, and demanded that every single matter first be discussed with him, the Czechoslovak Jews’ appointed representative on the State Council.116 These differences in political strategies led to conflicts with other Jewish activists in London that consumed much of Frischer’s time and energy. Furthermore, Frischer was a precipitate activist who stubbornly pursued his course against any opposition. In a personal letter to Bertl Zajitschkova, a friend in Jerusalem, Frischer explained his position in London: I am truly in a crisis [. . .] The main reason for that is that I am overworked (but also because I worry) and have frayed nerves. That’s not surprising. The horrible news I read in the newspapers and the reports I am told privately, which do not get into the papers, are so full of horrors! . . . and from that nervous irritability conflicts

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Arnošt Frischer then arise, further irritation, and so forth. [. . .] At present I am in a struggle in area of the WJC; I am struggling there against the conceptions of the local leading figures* (*These conceptions set great store by phraseology that arose twenty years ago. I represent politics that are more realistic, not merely declarative.) I truly think that I usually see situations and policies more correctly than they do. But in my methods and my pushing through of ideas I am intolerant, sometimes too proud, but certainly not English – because I reproach myself, my nerves are worse off. But otherwise I know that I am struggling for the right thing, have a sharp eye and am relentlessly logical. But I am too fanatical in everything – except that one thing is linked to the other; this drive of mine has its good and bad sides – but don’t think that means I have special troubles; people respect me very much. I am the one attacking. [. . .] I think that I am on good terms with the Czechoslovak elite. Even there I have attained a certain recognition and have friendly contacts on many sides. [. . .] I am learning a lot; the President in particular is a great teacher. It is my contact with practical politics which makes me sensitive to the weaknesses of mere declarative politics, the kind usually practised in our Jewish camp.117

During the war, the British Section of the WJC assumed the role of the leading authority in European Jewish affairs. This was often resented by exile activists, who perceived it as British-Jewish interference in the internal affairs of the Jewish communities of the Continent.118 This perceived interference, combined with the constant disputes and the aforementioned perceived lack of preparation for the post-­ war negotiations led Frischer to the decision to minimize contacts with Anglo-Jewry and focus on Czechoslovak matters.119 The crisis that escalated in summer 1944 reveals the different perceptions of the nature of Jewish Diaspora politics between Frischer and the British Section, the main pan-European pro-Zionist agency. In mid-1944, as the Red Army was nearing former Czechoslovak territory, the exile government decided to organize a delegation to follow in the wake of the Soviet soldiers and administer the liberated territories in the east. The National Jewish Council approached the government with the request to include in the delegation a Jewish member who would specifically look after Jewish matters. The request was declined because the Czechoslovaks did not want to include any representative of ethnic minority groups. During the following negotiations, Frischer proposed that it might be possible for Imrich Rosenberg, a vice-­chairman of the National Jewish Council and an official at the exile Ministry of Agriculture, to join the delegation as a nominee of his ministry, thus not specifically as a Jewish member. At the meeting of the British Section of the WJC, Frischer defended this policy, but was opposed by Alexander L. Easterman (1890–1983), Political Secretary of the WJC, who ‘listened to Mr. Frischer’s point of view with anxiety’. The British-Jewish activist insisted that because the Jews were recognized in Czechoslovakia as a national minority, Rosenberg should be appointed as a Jewish member. Frischer was supported by Albert Cohen (1895–1981), an envoy of the Jewish Agency, who remarked that, for example, Free France would never appoint a Jewish member to its delegation to liberated territories. Frischer urged the WJC not to raise the minorities question with the Czechoslovak government because narrowly Jewish demands would likely result in a

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‘harmful association’ with the German minority. He recommended instead that the Jewish groups must ‘try to achieve the fulfillment of [their] demands in a roundabout way’.120 Consequently, Frischer defended the strategies he had adopted during the 1930s, when matters of prestige and straightforwardness gave way to practical political considerations. Although it seemed that Frischer had won over the WJC, in the following days Easterman approached the Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk on the matter. This intervention led to Rosenberg’s appointment as the Jewish member of the Delegation to the Liberated Territories, but his departure was delayed for several months and he left for the Soviet Union only in November 1944 (the first part of the Delegation had left already on 21 August). Rosenberg later described his inclusion in the Delegation as the second most important achievement of the Jewish nationalists in London after Frischer’s appointment.121 Nevertheless, Frischer, in protest against what he believed was Easterman’s unsolicited intervention, quit the Executive of the British Section. Both parties exchanged several strongly worded public letters and their relations were suspended.122 In spite of Easterman’s successful intervention, Frischer never wavered in the political course he had set out on in London. In November 1944, he appealed to a large audience of Jewish activists in New York to voice their understanding for post-­ war Czechoslovakia and its planned new system in relation to the ethnic minorities that would be decided by the Czech and Slovak people. Instead of diplomatic interventions, the activists in the United States were asked to focus on practical social support for the destitute survivors.123 The political activities of the Czechoslovak Jewish nationalists in London were further overshadowed by a deep dispute that gradually developed within the National Jewish Council.124 Frischer, who after his arrival in London joined the work of the National Jewish Council, repeatedly accused Zelmanovits of neglecting his duties as chairman and not devoting enough time and energy to the organization. The situation was caused by the difficult economic position of the exiles, when Zelmanovits and other members of the National Jewish Council had to earn their own livelihoods and could not focus exclusively on political work. Frischer also rejected the efforts of the Jewish nationalists, who tried to control his work on the State Council and instruct him in what he was to say at the plenum.125 Conversely, Zelmanovits repeatedly accused Frischer of ignoring the opinions of the National Jewish Council, the organization that had secured his appointment to the exile parliament. He also upbraided Frischer for having made statements in the name of the Czechoslovak Jews when his sole authority was as Beneš’s ‘adviser on Jewish affairs’ and not as an elected representative.126 Members of the National Jewish Council even complained that it was impossible to work with Frischer in a democratic institution. They did not blame him for intentionally harming the Jewish cause. Frischer, they agreed, did the utmost for the Jews, but his views were outmoded.127 Frischer’s conflict with Zelmanovits eventually went so far that these two leading Czechoslovak Jewish nationalists in London stopped working together.128 The nationalists spent almost two years in 1940–1 fighting for the appointment of their nominee in the State Council, but by 1944 they realized that their candidate followed his own political line and did not respect their decisions. Yet Frischer was accountable only to Beneš, the sole authority

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who could dismiss him. In the conditions of exile, the National Jewish Council had no instruments with which to impose their will on Frischer, who, thanks to his appointment, became the sole spokesman of the Czechoslovak Jewry or at least of the Jewish nationalists. Frischer clearly began to perceive himself as the leading authority on the Jewish community of Czechoslovakia, and the financial security provided by his salary as a member of the State Council allowed him to focus purely on political affairs. He worked exceptionally hard, attending all the meetings of the State Council, as well as of various Jewish organizations in Britain. Between July 1942 and June 1943, he almost singlehandedly published the occasional Židovský bulletin/Czechoslovak Jewish Bulletin (see Chapter 5). In March 1944, he prepared a comprehensive memorial treatise on the most pressing matters facing the Czech and Slovak Jews and outlining possible solutions for the post-­war reconstruction of Jewish life in the country.129 The treatise anticipated that the Czechoslovak politicians would keep their promise to ensure the smooth post-­war reintegration of the Jews. The Czechoslovak exile government had already declared in December 1941 that they would not recognize any property transfers made under duress, and effectively invalidated the ‘Aryanization of Jewish property’ in Czechoslovakia.130 In 1943, the Minister of the Interior, Juraj Slávik (1890– 1969), responded to Frischer’s interpellation that the anti-Jewish laws introduced in the Protectorate and Slovakia would not be valid even ‘for a single minute’ after the liberation.131 Frischer also wanted confirmation that the laws adopted during the short-­ lived Second Republic would be invalidated. Foreign Minister Masaryk therefore issued a cryptic statement that after the war the rights of ‘decent Jews’ as well as ‘decent non-Jews’ would be secured.132 Nevertheless, although Frischer returned to Czechoslovakia with a detailed programme for the reconstruction of the community, the post-­war developments and the need of the Czechoslovak authorities primarily to satisfy all strata among ethnic Czechs and Slovaks made most of his efforts futile. Despite the promises made in London, the first post-­war years were filled with the efforts of the Jewish activists to secure the basic civil rights of the Shoah survivors (Chapter 7). In late October 1944, Frischer made his first and last voyage across the Atlantic to the United States. He received a warm reception from the Czechoslovak Jewish community on the East Coast, and held several public meetings. The largest gathering, in New York on 18 November, was attended by over 1,000 people, including the leading American and British Jewish activists, and representatives of the Czechoslovak consulate.133 Frischer delivered a long speech in which he outlined the future of the Jewish community in Czechoslovakia, as well as the general plans for the post-­war character of the country. He endorsed the intentions to nationalize the key industries and to introduce a centrally planned economy. He also publicly supported the Czechoslovak plans to expel the Sudeten Germans from the country, because there was, he claimed, ‘little hope that the German minority could adjust itself within the framework of Czechoslovak life.’ Nevertheless, those who could prove that they had remained loyal to Czechoslovakia should be allowed to stay or return from exile. This change in the national character of Czechoslovakia inevitably led to ‘the conclusion that the position

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of minorities [. . .] will politically be much weaker than in the past. [. . .] It is also obvious that the establishment of a policy for [the small Jewish minority] will present a rather delicate situation, even though the leading authorities have no intention of harming the Jewish element.’ Frischer believed that the attitude of the population in general towards the Jews would be friendly and the post-­war economic conditions would allow them to lead decent lives: ‘Let me sum up: I believe that Jews will find again their rightful place in restored Czechoslovakia.’134 In public, Frischer painted a rosy picture of the Jewish position in liberated Czechoslovakia, but his private talks with the exile authorities during the last months in London reveal a somewhat different perception of the situation. In October 1944, the State Council debated the preparation of the repatriation laws that would prohibit the return of Bohemian and Moravian Germans to Czechoslovakia. An individual’s choice of nationality he or she declared in the 1930 census was to determine his or her identity thereafter. The draft law stipulated that only Germans who had actively fought against the Nazi regime had the right to be repatriated to Czechoslovakia (from exile or concentration camps). Frischer turned the attention of the State Council to the fate of the Jews, who had, based on the valid laws and the language they used, declared German nationality before the war. None of them had supported Sudeten German irredentism. Would there be enquiries, he asked, as to whether they had been sent to concentration camps for their political position or simply for racial reasons? ‘How could [the Jews] prove that?’ Frischer continued. He thus suggested that not only those who had actively fought against the Germans, but also those who ‘suffered’ during the war should be included in the law. It was a matter, he said, of Czechoslovakia’s reputation in the world that those who had remained loyal would be allowed to live in the country.135 This proposal was later accepted, but the practical implementation of the law turned out to be far more problematic. At the beginning of the war, the Jewish nationalists in London expressed their desire to return to pre-Munich politics. In reality the situation during and after the war resembled a return to the Second Republic, when the Jewish activists had to defend the basic civil and economic rights of the Jews. Already in early 1943 Frischer was correctly predicting the changing nature of Jewish politics and the difficulties that Jews, across ideological and national boundaries, would face: I realize that in future it will be much harder than it has so far been to be involved in Jewish politics. In politics, absolute and relevant numbers are naturally of great importance. If we want to think at all about closing Jewish ranks, we have to work hard to ensure that the unfortunately small handful of us that will remain in the west and the centre of the republic are, if possible, united [. . .] I have the impression that many of us actually do not yet understand what has actually happened at home in our country, that the misfortune is indescribable. We are still drifting in our quite pleasant and in any case superficial life in emigration. And that is why they are acting towards themselves and also towards others as if, after the war, we could simply carry on where we left off, as before. I detest this incomprehension with all my heart.136

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These preparations for the new political, social and economic order after the war were being made at a time when the real extent of what we now call the Holocaust or Shoah was finally – at least officially – acknowledged in the Allied countries. Frischer, as the Jewish member of the State Council, was from the very moment of his arrival in London preoccupied with the efforts to alleviate the plight of the Jews in occupied Europe.

5

Coping with the Catastrophe

I don’t understand how, even today, some people can be so concerned with having fun, when they know how much our people at home are suffering. Only by working for the whole will we assuage our consciences and overcome depression. Frischer, 11 October 19421 I smell burned bodies in Treblinka.

Schwarzbart, London, 25 June 19442

In late June 1942, Ignacy Schwarzbart, the Zionist member of the Polish National Council in London wrote in his diary: [Sunday:] This is a day of rest. It is always the most trying day. All your suppressed thoughts emerge like worms after rain. And you can’t get rid of them; it is better to kill them by continual work. But my old-­time weakness for a little bit of greenery consumed me this afternoon. So I took a bus to Hampstead Heath. Londoners say it is beautiful there. I found nothing to please my eyes. Somewhat hilly, a lot of grass, and that is all. How can you relax if your mind is utterly occupied by the terrible catastrophe of mankind and the hellish sufferings of our people[?]3

He wrote these lines when the first detailed information about the Nazis’ mass murders of the Jews in Eastern Europe reached London. The Bund Report, written at the beginning of May 1942, stated that over 700,000 Jews had been murdered in German-­occupied Poland since the outbreak of the German-Soviet war in June 1941.4 In late June 1942, the report was publicized in Britain, and the BBC European Service extensively covered the Nazi persecution of the Jews. In the Warsaw ghetto, the famous historian Emanuel Ringelblum (1900–44) rejoiced after hearing a BBC broadcast, hoping that once the Allies revealed the Nazi plans, the position of the Jews would improve.5 Schwarzbart’s diary entries, however, present a different perspective. As exiled Jewish activists began to receive information about the immense suffering of the Jews, they were also realizing that they were unable to offer any tangible help. Jewish responses to Nazi persecution have been among one of the main themes of Shoah historiography since the end of the war. But scrutiny of Jewish wartime behaviour has moved far beyond historical inquiry. Jewish participation in resistance groups has been emphasized to counter the widespread popular assumption that the

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Jews went ‘like sheep to the slaughter’.6 Numerous works scrutinizing the activities of Anglo-Jewish and American-Jewish organizations during the war have also been published. Critical research on Anglo-Jewry’s responses to the Shoah reveals how the assimilated community, deeply troubled by internal conflicts, was concerned about the implicit emancipation contract with the British government, and decided to keep a low profile in order not to raise the question of their loyalty to the State.7 Yet, the ultimate failure of the Jewish organizations, overall a powerless entity, was caused by the lack of political skills and because they had no leverage to change the policies of the major Allied powers.8 The efforts of exile Jewish activists in neutral and Allied countries have received little academic attention. The main exceptions are two detailed works that depict the tireless but generally unsuccessful efforts of the exile Polish-Jewish politicians to convince the Allied governments of the desperate position of the Jews in occupied Europe.9 Frischer also soon encountered political challenges in London that far exceeded any he had ever faced before. Shortly after he took the position in London, he had to cope with the incoming reports that depicted the radicalization of the Nazi and Slovak anti-Jewish policies. He tried to publicize reports about the systematic nature of the persecution, and attempted to design specific relief programmes that could alleviate the plight of the European Jews. Concurrently he had to cope with his own concerns about the fate of Czech and Slovak Jews, including his relatives and lover.

Jewish activists and the first reports about the Shoah Frischer and the other exile representatives of the Jewish communities centred a major part of their activities on Jewish matters. Their interests evolved gradually, as can be demonstrated by Schwarzbart, who served as a member of the Polish National Council throughout the whole war. Between 1939 and 1941, he negotiated with the Sikorski government about matters concerning the post-­war position of Jews in Poland. His agenda changed in the autumn of 1941 and the spring of 1942, as information about intensification of Nazi anti-Jewish policies reached Britain.10 The spring of 1942 was also when Zygielbojm and Frischer commenced their political activities in London, and from the very beginning they were understandably preoccupied with reports about the persecution of European Jews and with efforts to help them. Only later, when Europe was about to be liberated, did the matters concerning Jewish restitution and reconstruction of Jewish communities return to the agenda. Schwarzbart had been one of the most distinguished Jewish politicians in Poland before the war, but Frischer and Zygielbojm were not experienced political players. It has also been argued that Zygielbojm was appointed only because no other suitable candidate was available.11 During the war, when Jewish members of the exile governments and related bodies lived in the free world, they felt a heavy responsibility for the fate of the persecuted Jews.12 The activists represented individual religious, ideological and political branches of Jewish politics, such as Zionism or Bundism. Relations between them were often tense, and examples of working together are hard to find. Furthermore, during the war

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they worked amongst non-Jewish colleagues whose intense patriotism and ethnic nationalism dominated their lives. The Poles, Czechoslovaks, French and others in London saw the war through the lens of their own national ambitions, and perceived any other causes as mere distractions. Hence the representatives of the Jewish groups also had to take into consideration the question of loyalty to the exile resistance movements that could appear if they decided to challenge the policies of their governments. When Frischer arrived in London, the Nazis had already radicalized their antiJewish policies in Europe. Over a million Jews were shot by the Einsatzgruppen (Special Death Squads) behind the Eastern Front after 22 June 1941, and the first death camps in occupied Poland were opened by the spring of 1942. In the Protectorate, following Hitler’s orders, the Nazi administration in October 1941 began the wholesale deportations of the Jews. The first trains from Prague and Brno went directly to the eastern ghettos of Łódź (renamed Litzmannstadt) and Minsk. On 10 October 1941, Reinhard Heydrich (1904–42), the Deputy Reich Protector and an SS general, decided at a meeting in Prague that Czech Jews would, before deportation to the east, be concentrated in one or two ghettos in the Protectorate. Eventually, the fortress town of Theresienstadt (Terezín) was selected as the main assembly and transit point for Czech Jews. The first train carrying 342 deportees arrived there on 24 November 1941.13 At the same time, the government of the Slovak State institutionalized the anti-Jewish laws in the ‘Jewish Codex’ of 9 September 1941. In early 1942, the Tiso government made an agreement with Germany that 20,000 young Slovak Jews would be deported to occupied Poland for work assignments. In the end, between late March and October 1942, almost 58,000 Jews out of a population of 88,000 were deported to the ghettos of eastern Poland, near Lublin, and to Auschwitz.14 From the beginning of the war onwards, the Czechoslovak government-­in-exile and its official press had made public the continuing persecution of Jews in the Protectorate and Slovakia, but there was no systematic approach to relaying information to the public.15 Frischer joined the campaign shortly after his arrival in London and attempted to change this unsatisfactory situation. He held a press conference where he informed journalists about the deportations from the Protectorate to Theresienstadt, a town that Heydrich had officially designated as the ‘place where all Czech Jews will ultimately be confined’. In fact, Frischer continued, Theresienstadt was only a ‘transit camp’ for the Jews on their way to Poland. He perceived the deportations of Jews from Slovakia in an identical manner. They were just part of preparations to deport all Czechoslovak Jews to Poland, to ‘a reservation area which the Nazis plan[ned] to establish for all of Europe’s Jews’ in Galicia.16 Hence Frischer had already in late April 1942 emphasized the totality of the deportations to the east. In Frischer’s first public appearances, we can see the impact of his personal experience with Nazi policies against the Jews in the Protectorate, where he had only narrowly escaped the October 1939 deportations from Moravská Ostrava to eastern Poland. His words suggest that he still perceived Nazi policy as a continuation of the unsuccessful 1939 campaign to create a Jewish Siedlungsgebiet – the ‘Jewish reservation’ in the Lublin district. This could explain why Frischer in his speech used Nazi terms like ‘reservation’. It is worth considering that other activists and press agencies continued using the Nazi

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vocabulary. Between 1939 and 1942, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency frequently used the term ‘Jewish reservation’ when referring to Nazi reports about planned deportations to the east.17 They were still learning how to deal with the unprecedented situation in Nazi Europe and worked only within the familiar frame of reference. By using the inverted commas, however, the journalists and activists questioned the meaning of this Nazi newspeak and rejected the Nazi portrayal of their plans for the Jews of Europe. Frischer clearly considered the information campaign among the exiles, as well as in the British community, his priority. In the summer of 1942, he assembled a small group of journalists and established his own Židovský bulletin/Czechoslovak Jewish Bulletin, the first issue of which was published on 7 July 1942. The Bulletin brought to public attention speeches made by Frischer and other Czechoslovak officials, gave information about recent German and Slovak persecution of the Jews, published private correspondence from the Protectorate and the Slovak state, and listed confirmed deaths of Jews in occupied Europe.18 This cyclostyled journal was published irregularly, every third issue in English, but otherwise in Czech, and Frischer managed to publish only twenty-­six issues in all. The British Ministry of Supply decided in the summer of 1943 to stop its publication as part of a larger initiative that, because of the paper shortage, discontinued all periodicals that had not been published before 1941.19 Although its publication consumed much of his time and energy, Frischer continually rejected suggestions that he should enlarge the editorial board and include members of the National Jewish Council.20 In late 1943, he again and again appealed to the British to renew its publication, but in vain.21 The main source of Frischer’s information about the fate of the Jews of Czechoslovakia was Fritz Ullmann, a representative of the Jewish Agency in Geneva. Ullmann was born in the village of Luka (Luck), near Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad), in the Bohemian part of the Habsburg monarchy. In the interwar period, he had been active in the Zionist movement in Czechoslovakia and helped organize Zionist Congresses. In August 1939, he emigrated legally from the Protectorate and found refuge in Geneva, where he was appointed deputy to the head of the Geneva office of the Jewish Agency, Richard Lichtheim (1885–1963). Ullmann established a complex network of contacts with the occupied territories and the Slovak State. Geneva gradually became a hub where various Jewish organizations could function, and activists there were the best informed of anyone outside of the Nazi Empire about events in the Reich and occupied territories.22 Ullmann maintained contacts with the Community leaders in Prague: Hannah Steiner, Otto Zucker and Franz Kahn. He also facilitated contact between Frischer and Lilli Skutezky, with whom Frischer maintained an extramarital affair. Later, in November 1942, he was able to establish a postal connection with the Theresienstadt ghetto (see Chapter 6). Ullmann worked with Gerhard Riegner (1911– 2001), the head of the WJC’s Geneva office, and Jaromír Kopecký (1899–1977), the Czechoslovak representative to the League of Nations and the International Labour Organization, whom the Swiss authorities allowed to remain in his position even after the disintegration of Czechoslovakia. Crucially, Kopecký had the facilities to transmit Ullmann’s messages to Czechoslovak diplomatic centres abroad, including London.23 Ullmann also often made proposals about possible rescue or relief operations. Frischer’s

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task was to approach the Czechoslovak or British authorities and try to negotiate their approval. Exiled Jewish activists were at the forefront of the campaign to inform the public in Britain about the radicalization of the Nazi policies. In June 1942, the first comprehensive reports of Nazi mass murders of Jews in Eastern Europe were published in the mainstream London press. On 25 June 1942, the Daily Telegraph relayed the aforementioned Bund Report (about 700,000 murdered Jews), provided by Zygielbojm. Four days later, on 29 June 1942, in what appeared to have been a competition between the exile Jewish groups, the WJC convened a press conference with Schwarzbart, Frischer and Silverman. In his statement, which received wide coverage in British newspapers, including the Times, Schwarzbart suggested that over a million Jews had already been murdered in Nazi Europe.24 At the conference, Frischer emphasized the enormity of the Nazi deportation of the Jews, something that was, in his opinion, linked to the outbreak of the American-German war in December 1941. Frischer believed that Hitler had for a long time used Jews as hostages in political negotiations with the Western democracies, because of the perceived influence of Jews on American public opinion. After the Americans entered the war, the Germans ‘dropped all inhibitions’. Frischer concentrated in what he said on the deportations and the incarceration of Jews in the east. In fact, the whole speech addressed what he perceived as the main feature of Nazi anti-Jewish policy – the ‘ghettos’.25 As he described the situation in Europe and the current stage of Nazi oppression of the Jews, Frischer urged the Allies not to believe Nazi propaganda: In Poland the Germans simply declared entire cities or town quarters populated by Jews to be camps of internment which, for propaganda purposes, were dubbed Ghettos. Into these Ghettos they herded the Jews and are making them suffer terrible hardships. To the Jews are allocated rations representing but a fraction of those allowed to other sections of the population and insufficient to sustain life. Medical supplies are either forbidden altogether or allotted in ridiculously small quantities. No medicine may be given to sick children under five and adults over forty-­five.26

Frischer claimed that the word ‘ghetto’ should not be used in connection with the situation of the Jews under Nazi rule. The term might not, according to Frischer, evoke purely negative connotations but instead suggest possibilities for Jewish self-­ government in enclosed territories. Ghettos might have meant relative freedom for the Jews and provided support for an argument sometimes used by the Nazis: that the ghettos were also in the Jewish interest, since they protected them from hostile nonJews.27 Frischer recommended instead using the term ‘Jewish internment camps’. This would portray the situation Jews were facing under Nazi rule more precisely. It could also enable Allied statesmen to comprehend the situation the Jews were in, if the Nazi policies were presented in the framework of the German persecution of the political prisoners and prisoners of war. The internment camps (ghettos) in the east gradually became places where the Jews of Central Europe were also sent. Frischer believed that Hitler had two reasons for

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issuing the deportation order. First, he used the deportations of all the Jews as a substitute for the absence of the promised military victory. Second, ‘Hitler suffers from a Jew complex. Feeling that his hour of destiny is near, he drives the Jews into Poland and concentrates them in certain localities so as to be able to easily destroy them when the Germans will be forced to retreat.’28 Frischer expressed concerns about the Jews of Central Europe now incarcerated in ghettos, because their fate was, ‘if possible, even more tragic than that of the Jews of Poland. They are accustomed to a higher standard of living, are not acclimatized, and fall an easy prey to disease prevalent locally, including several varieties of fever. The depth of misery into which these people are plunged is unimaginable’.29 The press conference ultimately sent out a mixed message. On the one hand, Schwarzbart talked about one million victims of Nazi violence, and gave examples of mass murders of Jews in Polish towns and villages (‘The whole Jewish population of the town of Homsk was wiped out’).30 Frischer, on the other hand, depicted the fate of the Jews in the ghettos where they had been incarcerated by the Nazis, with the intention of murdering them before a future German retreat from these territories. In his speech, Frischer did not refer to any already committed mass murder. The following day, on 30 June 1942, Frischer and Schwarzbart personally relayed the content of the statements to the US Ambassador to the exile governments, Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, and they both provided the ambassador with memoranda for the American government.31 Biddle forwarded the documents to Washington, DC, in mid-August 1942.32 Despite the relatively accurate picture they had about the situation in Nazi Europe (though portions of the deportees from Central Europe had already been murdered by the Einsatzgruppen or in the death camps), the activists could not come up with any specific means of intervention that could force the Germans to change their policies and would, at the same time, be acceptable to the Allies. The prospects were much better regarding the German satellites and in particular the relative independence of Slovakia presented the Czechoslovak exiles with the possibility that strong interventions from abroad could persuade the Tiso regime to discontinue the deportations. Jozef Tiso, the president of Slovakia, was a Catholic priest, and the Roman Catholic Church was the dominant religion in the country. The activists thus hoped that the Holy See could have the leverage to influence Slovak policies on the Jews. In Switzerland, Lichtheim and Riegner tried to secure the intervention of the Vatican diplomatic officials already in March 1942, when they had received the first information about Slovak governments’ preparations for deportations.33 With the beginning of the deportations later that month, Czechoslovak exiles also considered the option of contacting the Vatican, but that was made more complicated by the absence of official diplomatic relations between the two parties. The Czechoslovak exiles had to turn to Catholic officials in Britain and hope that they would convey the reports to the Holy See.34 In late June 1942, Frischer met with Viktor Fischl, a Zionist activist working for the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry, and Vladimír Slavík (1884–1952), the Foreign Ministry official for Catholic affairs. Based on the material supplied by Frischer, Fischl, an experienced journalist, prepared an aide-­memoire concerning the situation in Slovakia.35 Thanks to Slavík’s personal contacts, the delegation, consisting of all three Czechoslovak politicians, was granted an audience with Edward Myers (1875–1956),

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who was the Bishop of Lamus and Auxiliary to Cardinal Arthur Hinsley (1865–1943), the Archbishop of Westminster. They informed Myers about the deportations from Slovakia and asked whether Cardinal Hinsley could communicate the contents of the aide-­memoire to the Vatican. The aide-­memoire briefly explained that the Slovak government had deported more than 30,000 Jews to Poland by mid-May 1942 and planned to expel between 15,000 and 18,000 more by the end of May. In the east, the Jewish population from Slovakia shares the fate of the Jewish population from Poland, on the subject of which the Holy See has doubtless already received detailed reports. The conditions of life, as regards food, hygiene and the most primitive necessities, in the areas to which the Jewish population from Slovakia is being deported, are, in the view of the Czechoslovak Government, an outrage upon humanity [. . . and] grossly at variance with the principles of Christian ethics.36

The Czechoslovak government thus asked the Holy See to intervene with the Slovak authorities to discontinue the deportations and ensure that those already deported could ‘live under tolerable conditions’.37 The official notes from the meeting suggest that Bishop Myers cordially agreed to inform Cardinal Hinsley about the contents of the aide-­memoire, and assured the delegation that the Cardinal would convey its content to the Vatican.38 But a slightly different perspective on Myers’s response is provided by Fischl’s private diary: Bishop Myers [. . .] skillfully shifted the discussion to a remote topic, and though I do not doubt that he will intervene at the Vatican, it was interesting to observe how he was reluctant to start a discussion about the matter of the Jews. He preferred to tell us about his journey around America and his experiences with the American school system.39

The activists soon learnt that even the officials who were willing to grant them audiences were often reluctant to engage in lengthy discussions about the fate of the Jews. We do not know whether Hinsley forwarded the aide-­memoire to the Vatican or whether the Holy See on this occasion contacted the Tiso government. During the war, Pope Pius XII (1876–1958) and the Apostolic nuncio in Bratislava, Giuseppe Burzio (1901–66), intervened with President Tiso and Prime Minister Vojtech Tuka (1880– 1946) on several occasions, but any real impact of their interventions on the fate of the Jews has yet to be established.40 The organization of the visit to Myers reassured Frischer that the Czechoslovak government-­in-exile were willing to support his interventions. His official position as a member of the State Council had clearly become momentous. He also worked closely with Jewish activists from Anglo-Jewish organizations and representatives of the exiled Jewish communities, especially with Schwarzbart. Yet the conflict between various ideological groups continued in the field of information campaigns and efforts to initiate rescue operations. There was a continuous bitter personal struggle between Schwarzbart and Zygielbojm in the Polish National Council. Similarly, Frischer rarely cooperated with the Czechoslovak Orthodox Jews, and both parties tended instead to

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convene competing press conferences and public demonstrations. They also did not present any bipartisan initiative when trying to secure audiences with Allied diplomats, who subsequently complained about their inability to comprehend the internal divisions among the groups.41 In their public appearances, the Agudist Federation of Czechoslovak Jews as a rule dealt with Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia, where large Orthodox communities had lived.42 Thanks to the Agudist underground channels, the Federation had access to detailed information from Slovakia. They were able to court the support of the Czechoslovak government, which was eager to give publicity to the crimes committed by the renegade Tiso government.43 Two months after the deportations to Poland had begun, Meir Springer, secretary of the Federation, reported that already 40,000 Slovak Jews, almost half of the whole community, had been deported to ‘labour camps in occupied Russia [in fact in occupied Poland].’44 In protest against the deportations, the Federation organized a public demonstration in London. More than 300 delegates listened to a succession of distinguished speakers who included the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, Joseph Hertz (who was born in Slovakia), Victor Cazalet MP, Rhys Davies MP, Oliver Locker MP, Lord Strabogli and several Czechoslovak ministers and other officials. The meeting, attended also by Frischer, Schwarzbart and Zygielbojm, passed a resolution that condemned the Slovak policies by which ‘fathers and husbands are separated from their children and wives, and imprisoned in concentration camps; and the entire Jewish population is being deported out of the country’.45 In mid-July 1942, Springer was a member of the Agudist delegation that was granted an audience with US Ambassador Biddle, during which he asked the British and American governments to issue warnings of retribution to the Slovak authorities.46 Shortly after the JTA published information about the audience, Frischer complained to the Czechoslovak government about Springer’s activities and condemned the fact that Springer was presented at the embassy as a representative of the Czechoslovak Jews. This affair further documents that the Czechoslovak Jewish groups in exile were unable to form a united front even when seeking diplomatic interventions on behalf of the persecuted Jews in Nazi Europe.47

Help for the ‘ghettos’ The activists did not consider themselves mere pipelines for the transmission of information about the fate of the Jews, and they repeatedly proposed specific relief initiatives to the Allied governments. For Frischer the initiation of humanitarian interventions was not a matter of personal choice – it was an obligation. On 29 May 1942, he addressed a public gathering organized by the British Section of the WJC, which was attended also by representatives of the Czechoslovak government-­in-exile, including Prokop Maxa (1883–1961), Chairman of the State Council, Jaromír Smutný (1892–1964), the head of Beneš’s office, and Hubert Ripka (1895–1958), the Minister of State at the Foreign Ministry. Frischer concluded his emotional speech with a strong appeal to the present statesmen, Jewish and non-Jewish alike: ‘It is up to us who –

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thanks to the mercy of God – are living free or have escaped from hell to freedom to do our most. We must do it, I entreat all present, we must do it!’48 But what kind of help could the Allies offer to the deportees? Because it was unlikely that the Germans would suddenly allow Jews to leave Europe or that the Allies would be willing to accept any large number of refugees, the proposals were only for ways to improve the lives of those in the Nazi ghettos and camps. Frischer raised the matter of Allied interventions in the second part of his speech at the WJC press conference on 29 June 1942 and called for reprisals against the German population for the crimes committed against the Jews.49 Also other Jewish activists, as well as representatives of the exile governments, frequently called for military attacks against German civilian targets in reprisal for Nazi crimes. It was, however, made clear by the Allies that as liberal democracies they could not employ any methods of warfare that did not pursue a clearly military objective. Frischer thus sought to turn the attention of the Allies to the planned humanitarian scheme, which was intended to provide inmates of Nazi ghettos and camps with food and medicine. This idea had been born several months before Frischer took up his position in London, at a time when the Czechoslovak authorities had received information about the deportations from the Protectorate to Poland.50 The Czechoslovak Red Cross in exile was created on 1 September 1940. One of its main tasks was to provide help to the Czechoslovak citizens held in POW and internment camps. With the cooperation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Czechoslovak Red Cross was able, in 1942, to dispatch its first parcels from Switzerland and Portugal to the internment camps in unoccupied France.51 The scheme was operated with the help of Czechoslovak diplomats in neutral countries, especially František Čejka, the Czechoslovak Consul in Lisbon, and Kopecký in Geneva, and was financed by donations from Czechoslovaks in the United States.52 In early January 1942, the Czechoslovak authorities approached the British Red Cross and enquired about the possibilities of sending parcels with food and clothes to individual addresses of Czechoslovak deportees in Poland.53 The British Red Cross, however, immediately rejected the proposal, since British government regulations did not allow sending parcels to Germany. Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were part of Reich territory, without independent local governmental agencies or charitable organizations. It would therefore be impossible for the Red Cross to ascertain whether the parcels had been delivered.54 The obstacles stipulated by the British Red Cross were part of the British economic blockade of the Continent, introduced immediately after the outbreak of the German-British war in September 1939. Any export of supplies that could potentially prolong the conflict was forbidden. There were exemptions from the blockade regulations, but only when a scheme was organized by humanitarian organizations. This was mostly the case with help for Western Allied POWs, whose treatment, based on the Geneva Conventions, could be supervised by the Red Cross. Citizens of the occupied countries that had become part of the Greater Reich, including Czechs and Poles, were not recognized as POWs, even if they were interned in camps. Under the Geneva Conventions, moreover, the deported Jews were considered civilian internees (‘unassimilated’), and not subject to its provisions concerning the Treatment of Prisoners of War. The Red Cross could not

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supervise the delivery of the parcels and preclude their confiscation by the Germans. The ICRC headquarters in Geneva was, in addition, cautious not to challenge German policy, for they were concerned not to have the activities of the Red Cross in the Reich curbed in retaliation for any such interventions.55 Consequently, the proposed Czechoslovak scheme was shelved in early 1942.56 Immediately after his arrival in London, Frischer attempted to resurrect the talks. In one of his first speeches in the State Council, he appealed to the Czechoslovak government-­in-exile to start sending packages to the deportees in Theresienstadt and Poland.57 He also repeated this call at the WJC press conference in late June 1942, where he directly accused the Allied governments of a lack of compassion for the Jewish internees: Regular aid is being sent to British prisoners of war, to American internees, to Greece, to France, to the white civilians in Hongkong. Why does the fount of mercy run dry where Jews are concerned? [. . .] Why do the appalling sufferings of the Jews leave the world cold? Has it not yet learned that Germany begins with the Jews, but does not stop there? Does it not realise that the fate of the Jews inevitably becomes that of the non-Jews?58

Ullmann, in his emotional letters, sent from Geneva, urged Frischer to continue in his efforts to change the Allies’ policies: ‘It seems that the plan to concentrate all the Jews into the district of Lublin will now be consistently carried out. From these regions again come the worst reports; people are outright begging for bread.’59 The launching of the parcel programme clearly became a priority for the activists, and Ullmann finished his letter to Frischer with a strong appeal that illustrates the desperate position in which the activists found themselves in mid-1942: Do everything in your power, sir, so that with this modest gesture we can at least preserve the last hope and faith in life for these poor wretches who have lost everything [. . .] All successes of a political nature for the post-­war period will only have meaning if we save the lives of our people. If we leave them without help today, they will die, and all the welfare that is now going to be prepared for the future will no longer help them.60

The negotiations of the relief parcel scheme were under the authority of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Social Welfare (MSW), the Foreign Ministry, and the Ministry of Finance.61 When dealing with these ministries, Frischer pointed to the parallel negotiations that were being held by the Polish government, and the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry agreed to investigate the possibility of a joint operation with the Poles.62 Frischer’s efforts were paralleled in Geneva by Kopecký and Ullmann, who approached the local offices of international humanitarian organizations, including the Commission mixte de secours du CICR et de la LSCR (Joint Aid Commission of the ICRC and the Red Cross League), which was willing to organize the parcel scheme if the Czechoslovak government would finance it.63

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The Czechoslovak ministries in the end decided that the scheme was not feasible because of the British economic blockade prohibiting any transfer of funds to neutral countries that could be used for activities supporting the enemy. The Foreign Ministry, in fact, also clearly expressed scepticism regarding the delivery of packages in occupied Poland and privately suggested that they preferred the ‘equally’ important parcel scheme for Czechoslovak citizens in unoccupied France, where they could at least guarantee that the dispatches reached the internees.64 Curiously, at exactly the same time Kopecký informed the Foreign Ministry that the Polish representatives in Switzerland had already begun to send parcels to occupied Poland (funded by the Polish government) and confirmed that the addressees were receiving them.65 The Czechoslovak authorities in London also later confirmed that the Polish government had obtained the permission of the British Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW) to transfer £3,000 (around US$200,000 in 2015) per month to Lisbon to organize the parcel scheme.66 The Czechoslovak government, however, was not ready to challenge the British restrictions and attempted instead to shift the responsibility for this operation to private agencies, such as Jewish charitable organizations that as they argued, might be able, and more suitable, to undertake the whole programme.67 Frischer had in fact already begun personal negotiations with British-Jewish organizations and diplomatic representatives of the Allied governments. He also established close cooperation with the exiled Bohemian-­born sociologist Franz Kobler (1882–1965), who was collecting statistics about the living conditions of the Jews in Nazi-­occupied Europe. Frischer hoped that the information about the Nazi policies against the Jews, which reached London in June 1942, would make the Allies more supportive of the proposed relief measures. On 26 June, he and Kobler visited Leonard Stein (1887–1973), the head of the Joint Foreign Committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jewry and the Anglo-Jewish Association, and tried to court his support for the parcel scheme. Stein was rather sceptical about getting British government approval for the sending of food, but was more optimistic about the success of sending medicine. Frischer therefore suggested that ‘medicaments might also be taken to include concentrated vitamin foods and certain baby foods’. Stein promised to consider the proposals, but remarked that Frischer first of all needed to consult the British government.68 Thus, several days later, Frischer repeated the proposal to the British ambassador to the Czechoslovak exile government, Philip B. Nichols. According to Frischer, 100,000 out of 180,000 Czechoslovak Jews had already been expelled to ‘internment camps’ in Poland, where they had to live under unbearable conditions. He asked the British government to permit a scheme that would allow the exiles to send medicine and concentrated foodstuffs for children to the deportees. Nichols was rather evasive and suggested that Frischer contact the Polish Jewish Relief Committee that had already received permission to undertake relief work in occupied Poland. More specifically, the ambassador advised Frischer to prepare some cut and dried scheme before approaching His Majesty’s Government: and [. . .] said that it might be well, when the scheme was ready, for the Czechoslovak Government, rather than private persons [sic], to approach His Majesty’s Government with a view to obtain the necessary permission for the passage of the

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articles in question to some neutral country for eventual distribution in Poland. [Nichols reminded Frischer], too, that he would of course have to obtain the permission of the Germans and the assistance of some international organisation such as the International Red Cross, the Quakers etc., before the success of any scheme could be assured.69

During the discussion, Frischer realized that the British did not intend to initiate any relief schemes on their own and that they, instead, expected the activists to work with the exile governments and international humanitarian agencies. Unknown to Frischer, the MEW was at this point considering the scheme proposed by the Polish government. The British Foreign Ministry, however, recommended not disclosing the information to the Czechoslovaks, because the British could not deal with Czech Jews ‘as a specific category’.70 The comments show the precarious situation of the British government that was constantly being approached by competing agencies, and did not want to create a precedent by giving too many ad hoc concessions. Taking Nichols’s advice, Frischer, in cooperation with Kobler, drew up a comprehensive memorandum entitled ‘Help for the “Ghettoes” ’. According to the memorandum, Frischer and Kobler perceived the Nazi policy as a plan to annihilate the Jews by keeping them in unbearable conditions. This perception of Nazi policy was highlighted in the memorandum conclusion: ‘There is no precedent for such organized wholesale dying in all Jewish history, nor indeed in the whole history of mankind.’71 Frischer and Kobler thus acknowledged the systematic Nazi approach, but at the same time rejected or, for various reasons, did not find it advisable to refer to the reports depicting the organized mass murder of the Jews (for example, Schwarzbart had already, in late June, talked about the threat of the ‘complete annihilation’ of the Jews72). Their presentation of the situation in occupied Europe corresponded with the understanding of the Nazi policies among the activists in Britain and the United States. It took until mid-December 1942 before the Allies officially acknowledged the Nazi extermination campaign against the Jews – this industrialized mass murder being carried out by an educated, civilized, modern society in Central Europe. Furthermore, it is still unclear how far this political statement reflected the perception of the situation by the Allied leaders and whether they were really able to comprehend the systematic nature of the Shoah.73 In order to persuade the Allies to help the Jews in the ghettos, Frischer and Kobler described the horrific conditions in which the people incarcerated there were forced to live, especially the inadequate housing, overpopulation and insufficient food supplies (‘starvation rations’).74 Comparing the conditions in the ghettos to life in the Middle Ages, they wrote: ‘Death haunts the “Ghettos” [. . .] as in the days of the Plague.’75 Based on this perception and presentation of Nazi plans, Frischer and Kobler focused their proposals on attempts to alleviate the plight of the Jews. At that time the activists already realized that the Allies rarely differentiated among the victims of the Nazis based on their race or religious affiliations and that the governments for various reasons preferred not to emphasize the fate of the Jews as a specific group. Frischer and Kobler therefore emphasized the uniqueness of ‘the unparalleled plight of the Jews’, but concurrently warned the Allies that the Jews were only the first in the series of civilian

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victims living under the Nazi regime. According to Frischer and Kobler, who attempted to play on the Allies’ own concerns about their nationals living in occupied Europe, any support the Jews received could also help future victims among the other nations.76 Frischer and Kobler acknowledged that numerous obstacles stymied the efforts to provide material support to the Jews in the ghettos, in particular the fact that international organizations could not monitor the delivery of the humanitarian aid. They thus compared the fate of the Jews to that of the POWs: ‘Germany has declared the Jews her enemies. [. . .] In close custody, they are detained in segregated camps, which are shut off by walls from their surroundings and are wrongly called “Ghettos” [. . .] so the status and rights of war must be claimed for the Jews deprived of their liberty.’77 This was an interesting strategy when the German racial policies against the Jews were labelled a ‘war’ and the ghettos were in this sense presented as POW camps. This argumentation may appear peculiar, especially with our knowledge of the singularity of the fate met by the Jews at the hands of the Nazis. We could argue that it could have caused more harm than good to the Jewish cause to link in the minds of the Allied statesmen the fate of the Jews to that of relatively decently treated Western POWs, who, though incarcerated, were not systematically persecuted. The activists’ efforts, however, need to be perceived against the background of the situation in mid1942 when some groups of prisoners in German hands could receive humanitarian aid from abroad while others were not supported at all. In the sense of the Allied universalization of Nazi policies, other prisoners, including the Jews, ought, so the activists argued, to have been included as well. These attempts to portray the possible relief schemes in universal terms appear throughout the memorandum. Frischer and Kobler repeatedly appealed to the humanity and moral values of the Allied leaders, at least to those ‘to whom humanity still constitutes a value, and who, for this very reason, are not prepared to accept the destruction of continental Jewry as inevitable destiny.’78 Moreover, they tried to urge the world to help the Jews by linking the Nazi war against the Jews with the global conflict led by the Allies against the Axis powers. Appealing to the Allies’ own propaganda, which depicted the conflict as being waged by the forces of light against the dark, evil forces of Nazism, Frischer and Kobler reminded the Allied leaders that there was more at stake than just a purely military defeat of Nazi Germany: This war is not being waged with bombs and guns alone, nor will the nature of the coming world be determined only by the outcome of battles. The victory of morality is the issue in this war. Should we succeed in no more than mitigating the enemy’s foul design against his most hated victims, it would amount to partial victory.79

The rescue of the Jews or at least partial relief of their plight should, they implied, become one of the Allied war aims. The memorandum was a comprehensive analysis of the possible relief scheme to support the Jews. Frischer shared the document with Allied diplomats and the British Section of the WJC distributed copies among activists and politicians in Britain. There was, however, no immediate effect.‘Help for the “Ghettoes” ’ also demonstrates Frischer’s

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deep emotional involvement in the rescue and relief efforts. His anxieties were further amplified by the unsuccessful efforts to initiate the relief parcels scheme and by the continuous flow of reports describing the progressing persecution of the Jews in the Nazi-­held territories.

‘We are not guilty!’ Our picture of the Jewish politicians in London would be incomplete without considering their meetings with Allied statesmen. The Jewish politicians were desperate to secure help for the Jews of Europe but were mostly met with indifference or presented with what they perceived as purely bureaucratic obstacles. Schwarzbart repeatedly noted in his diary his impressions of audiences he and Frischer had been granted with Ambassador Biddle, their main contact in the American administration. After their first audience, in late June 1942, Schwarzbart wrote: ‘Biddle was not only polite, but cordial. “God bless you” were his final words. But what will really emerge from this intervention?’80 The following audience that the two activists were granted in March 1943 intensified their feeling of hopelessness after months of unsuccessful interventions and triggered an emotional response in the case of Frischer, who was generally the more impulsive of the two men: [Frischer submitted] a suggestion for help by sending parcels for Jews in Czechoslovakia, particularly in Theresienstadt. Biddle seemed to have been utterly uninformed about what this means. He made an impression as if he would have never heard the name Theresienstadt. No wonder, it is not in the U.S.A. Frischer explained what it is about by using the comparison that the help to be given is analogous to that organized by Poland. [. . .] and then in a Frischerian manner, quite undiplomatically, charged the Allied governments with not having approached the Germans to [allow the Jews to escape from Europe] because ‘the allied governments are afraid that the Germans may agree.’ Biddle tried to veil his indignation in a somewhat ironic smile, but he did not say a word. [. . .] Biddle was exceedingly polite, which is usually an indication of a lack of sincerity. [. . .] Summing up I had the feeling of a beggar in the lobby of a mighty uninterested protector. But no sacrifice is too great if only a means for rescue could be found.81

At these meetings, politicians without any substantial experience faced long-­serving diplomats who knew exactly that their role was not to discuss these matters with Jewish activists, but only to gather intelligence and forward it to the real decision makers. When Frischer and Schwarzbart were met with real sympathy, it was mostly only from parliamentary backbenchers with no real influence on their governments.82 Frischer personally suffered due to his inability to provide the Jews with any tangible support. The Allies’ general approach was not an attitude that he was able to comprehend. He concisely communicated his feelings in a letter to Ullmann: ‘My dear friend, I am, like you, very depressed by the terrible news which is reaching us continuously. The most depressing fact, however, is that we are unable to help.’83

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Months of unsuccessful attempts to initiate the scheme gradually left their mark on Frischer’s mental state and in the language he used in public. On 2 September 1942, the British Labour Party organized a mass protest meeting against the Nazi persecution of the Jews, where Zygielbojm again publicly repeated the information about the extermination campaign in Poland. A major British political party thus directly endorsed the veracity of the rumours that circulated in London.84 Shortly thereafter, on the occasion of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Frischer published in his Czechoslovak Jewish Bulletin an emotional letter addressed to all Jews living under the Nazi yoke. It shows some of the ways in which he attempted to come to terms with the world that, to use Zygielbojm’s words, had ‘gone crazy.’85 It was written in Czech, and aimed at a limited audience, particularly if one considers the number of people who could read it in Britain. But its content clearly had another dimension, and it should not be considered only an imaginary letter to people living under the Nazis. Simply the title, ‘Pozdravy pro které není cesty’ (‘Greetings that cannot reach their address’), make it clear that Frischer knew the addressees would have no opportunity to read it. He assured the readers that even though the war separated the community, those living in the free world were still thinking of the persecuted Jews: ‘We love you, we are with you, our hearts yearn for you so much that we feel the beating of your hearts. In these days and these nights, our spirits will be together despite all the Nazi evil.’86 Rosh Hashanah, the festival when Jews as a community should be together, could not be celebrated in this way in 1942. The Jews, including individual families, were separated by the war. Nonetheless, Frischer wished to say that he was celebrating the Jewish holidays with all Jews, creating an imaginary bond with the community. But there was more at stake here, because the whole letter is not only about the New Year; it is also about the impossible situation of the Jews in Europe and Frischer’s own inability to help them. As a consequence, his public addresses became filled with emotion: Do not think that because we are not helping you we have forgotten you – we would help, but are unable to. Not only the walls and barbed wire that surround you – the sea, the borders, the soldiers – but the whole war separates us. We would send to all of you who are interned little packages of food, like those the POWs receive, but they tell us that you are not ‘prisoners of war’ and, anyway, the world is so terribly dim-­witted. Believe us: we are not guilty.

Desperate, Frischer concluded the letter with a statement that was supposed to lift the spirits of the Jews regardless of where they were. It bore glimpses of hope for the Jewish community as a whole, and highlighted the Zionist message, but also the message of Jewish defiance to Nazi oppression, revenge for their crimes and, first and foremost, that Jewish life would continue: We shall pray for you, as you will pray for us. It will join us – you, Mother, you will think of your son and your daughter, and will vividly imagine how they walk, with their heads up, across the furrows of a sunny field in Palestine, and, although in tears, you will smile, and think ‘At least them . . .’ And you, Father, who walk the

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whole day with your fists clenched in your pockets because you do not know how to cope with your hatred for those who have prepared this terrible fate for you, you should know that your son walks with a helmet on his head and a rifle in his hand, helping to guard the coast of England against the invasion of the Huns who torment you. And he awaits the day when he will take revenge for you.87

The Jewish members of the exile parliaments considered themselves not only mouthpieces of the Jewish communities, but also their protectors. These public addresses were thus also expressions of powerlessness, and attempts to come to terms with a world in which one group of people could be murdered (or left to die) simply because of their ethnicity while the world watched in silence and, in the perception of the Jewish exile activists, incomprehensible indifference. Frischer’s public addresses show that he was more of a private person than an experienced politician. He arrived in London and immediately had to cope with incoming information about the Nazi extermination campaign against the Jews. Although he was an experienced public speaker, these were certainly Frischer’s first speeches in English, and he was addressing ambassadors of the Allied governments, leaders of the exile resistance movements, and representatives of British Jewry. Hence he was often not able to keep a proper diplomatic milieu during the negotiations and in his public proclamations. The personal situation and experiences of the Jewish politicians in exile had a clear impact on their statements. During the war, they were constantly reminded that they had only narrowly escaped the Nazi ghettos, concentration camps, and death. Both Frischer and Zygielbojm had personal experience of the Nazi anti-Jewish policy (Zygielbojm had served in the first Warsaw Judenrat (Jewish Council) created after the September 1939 German invasion of Poland). Though both men had managed to escape, their relatives and friends stayed behind. Frischer’s extramarital relationship with Lilli Skutezky was publicly known among the activists. As early as December 1941, Ullmann forwarded to Frischer short notes from Lilli, who at that time still lived in Prague.88 After his arrival in London, Frischer asked Ullmann whether he would be able to get Lilli out of the Protectorate or at least protect her family against deportations and send them vitamin tablets for the child.89 In mid-1942, Ullmann had no means to help the Skutezkys, and Frischer during the war in his private correspondence repeatedly expressed concerns about their fate and described how this anxiety was affecting his mental stability. He also knew that his sister Wilma was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942, though he was not aware that her husband had perished in Auschwitz in early February that year. In London, Frischer shared a flat with the family of his daughter Liese, but he felt lonely and avoided social life in the community.90 Meanwhile, further highly disturbing reports continued to come in from Switzerland.

The Declaration of the Allied governments Throughout 1942, as reports about the Nazi extermination campaign kept reaching London and Washington, activists tried to persuade the Allied statesmen to issue a

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public declaration that would condemn the Nazi policies and promise help to the Jews. For a long time these efforts were unsuccessful because the Allies were reluctant to acknowledge the singularity of the Jews’ fate and did not want to differentiate among the Nazi victims based on their ethnicity or religious affiliation. The situation gradually – though only temporarily – changed in the autumn of 1942. On 3 September 1942, Easterman, the Political Secretary of the British Section of the WJC, visited Masaryk, the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, and shared with him a copy of what has become known as the ‘Riegner Telegram’. The message of one short paragraph sought to reveal to the Allies the contents of a secret interview Riegner had had with the German industrialist Eduard Schulte (1891–1966), who informed the Jewish activists about the plans to murder between 3.5 and 4 million Jews in Nazi Europe.91 Easterman hoped that Masaryk would ‘find it desirable to place this communication before [his] colleagues with a view of considering what action should be taken by the Allied governments’.92 More than three weeks later, during the subsequent efforts to verify the contents of Riegner’s report, the WJC delegation, including Frischer, visited President Beneš. The delegation shared another telegram with the president, which they had received from Riegner, where he warned that the ‘plans [were] already in execution’.93 During the meeting, however, Beneš cautioned the delegation against spreading any information until they were able to verify it. He even suggested that the whole report might be Nazi propaganda to provoke a reaction that would give them a pretext to intensify their policies against the Jews.94 The president promised to investigate the content of the message, and at the beginning of November advised Easterman and Frischer that, according to his sources, the Nazis did not plan any extermination campaign and in fact that the situation of the Jews in occupied Europe had recently improved.95 Frischer was thus an eyewitness to the head of the Czechoslovak government-­in-exile denying the veracity of reports at the time when most of the Jews of Poland had already been murdered and when trains with Czech-Jewish deportees were continuously rolling from Theresienstadt to the east. We have no information about Frischer’s impressions of the meeting with Beneš. As late as October 1942, many Jewish activists, including Stephen Wise, had their doubts about the existence of Nazi systematic extermination of the Jews, though it seems that the Riegner Telegram persuaded them about the veracity of the rumours.96 It is possible that many Jews in Britain and the United States simply could not, or did not want to, believe the reports coming from Europe. They were clinging blindly to the hope that although the Jews were living under horrific conditions in the east, there could be a way to help them and alleviate their plight. Moreover, it would have been hard for them to justify their continuous campaign for humanitarian aid for ghettos and camps had the plan for the complete annihilation of the Jews been accepted as an indisputable fact. It is probably impossible to imagine the internal turmoil the activists were experiencing at this time. All Frischer’s diplomatic interventions were contingent on the incoming reports. Yet the activists in London had far less information about the Czech and Slovak Jews deported to the east than, for example, the representatives of the Polish Jews had about their communities. Furthermore, reports that would offer a global perspective on

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the Nazi policies against the Jews were scarce. In mid-October 1942, when Beneš was allegedly enquiring about the veracity of the Riegner Telegram contents, Frischer received a report containing eyewitness accounts of Nazi anti-Jewish policies in occupied Poland, which provided far-­reaching conclusions about the situation in the east. The accounts, originating in mid-August 1942, described the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. The Jews were deported to special camps, including ‘Belzek’ (Bełżec), where they were shot en masse by the Germans. The Jews in Lwów met a similar fate, being ‘murdered on the spot’. The report also specifically mentioned the Jews deported from other countries, including Slovakia, among those ‘condemned to death’, and emphasized the German efforts to conceal the crimes from the outside world: ‘As these murders, if committed in the west, would arouse more indignation, it was thought advisable to deport these people first to the east, where news does not leak through so easily’. Concerning Theresienstadt, the authors of the report presented the ‘camp’ only as ‘an intermediary station’, and concluded that ‘the same fate awaits the inmates of this camp, as the rest. As soon as fresh room is created through these wholesale murders, further deportations [to the east] take place.’97 The report suggested that all the Jews, without distinction and regardless of their country of origin, were condemned to death. The situation among the Allies in London and Washington finally changed in the second half of November 1942, after Jan Karski (1914–2000), a courier for the Polish underground, arrived in London with first-­hand information about the mass murders in Poland.98 His report was further corroborated by eyewitness accounts provided by a group of Palestinian Jews who had been caught in Poland in 1939, and were exchanged, in November 1942, for German nationals residing in Palestine.99 Now the rumours about the fate of the European Jews were confirmed from several independent sources. Easterman and Barou therefore in a letter to Masaryk concluded that it was now established beyond any doubt that the Nazis ‘were engaged in carrying out the deliberate and systematic annihilation of all the Jews in occupied Europe in accordance with Hitler’s proclaimed policy to exterminate the Jews as his “final solution of the Jewish problem in Europe”. Millions of Jews are facing death under these diabolical plans which [were] now in process of execution.’100 The subsequent negotiations led to the publication of the ‘Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations’ of 17 December 1942, which publicly condemned the Nazi policies ‘of cold blooded extermination’ of the Jews. Czechoslovakia came out in support of the declaration, and three members of the cabinet – Masaryk, Ripka and Slávik – in BBC broadcasts informed the Czechs and Slovaks about the Nazi policies and asked them to provide assistance to the persecuted Jews. Frischer worked with the Czech ministers on the preparation of the broadcasts.101 The response of the Czechoslovak exile administration to the reports remained ambiguous. Frischer later said that after they had received the first confirmed reports, the WJC delegation (in his presence) was warmly received by Beneš, who promised to support any declaration against the Nazi crimes and even offered to initiate negotiations with other Allied governments if the WJC desired.102 Nevertheless, the Czechoslovak politicians stayed in the background during the subsequent negotiations, which were clearly led by the Polish politicians.103 Frischer, in particular, criticized the Czechoslovak State Council for not having adopted any official declaration condemning the Nazi

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policies. Their passivity sharply contrasted with the Polish National Council, which had passed a public resolution already on 27 November 1942.104 The State Council debated the possibility of convening a protest meeting, but in the end abandoned the idea. There were conflicting voices emanating from the negotiations, when for example an assimilated Czech Jew (most likely Julius Fürth) argued as ‘a Czech and not a Jew’ that although a protest meeting was in the Czechoslovak interest, there was no need to have a Jewish speaker at the gathering. Concerns that the stress on the fate of the Jews could overshadow the persecution of other groups, in particular Czechs, were strong. Consequently, the Jewish activists decided to withdraw from the negotiations and left the decision to the State Council.105 Although some of the Czechoslovak Jewish activists wanted to insist that the State Council should adopt a special declaration and convene a protest meeting, Frischer in the end rejected putting pressure on the Czechoslovak administration and opposed any ‘hollow demonstrations’ that would be organized by the reluctant members of the State Council.106 It is also plausible that he did not want to challenge the policies of his government and parliament at this critical juncture. He knew that he would need their support in the future negotiation of possible relief and rescue initiatives. Members of the State Council raised the matter of the Jewish persecution only at its regular session on 21–2 December 1942, during the debate about the government budget for 1943, though they again did not issue any official declaration. The vice-­ chairman of the State Council, Josef David (1884–1968), not a Jew himself, roundly condemned the Nazi persecution of the Jews (their ‘diabolical plan’ to exterminate 7 million Jews) and called on the Allies to initiate rescue and relief operations to help them.107 Frischer too used this opportunity and issued another moral appeal to the conscience of the Allied statesmen: Up until this point, the Czechoslovak Jews and the rest of the population of the Czechoslovak Republic were in the same boat; now most of the Jews are only in the lifeboats of that boat, and some of the lifeboats are unfortunately already sunk. The other unfortunate shipwrecked people are fighting for their lives, and here it is of course up to all of us to continue helping them, and perhaps, after all, keep them alive until their rescuers arrive.108

Frischer later also made sure that his and David’s statements were published in the Czechoslovak Jewish Bulletin. The Allies’ information campaign in December 1942 was a rare occasion during the war when the plight of the Jews was systematically brought to the attention of the public in the British Empire and the United States, as well as in occupied Europe. In their efforts to move the Allies to issue an official declaration, publicize the reports and initiate humanitarian interventions, Frischer and the other activists had to leave the boundaries of their national politics. Now, they had to negotiate with foreign diplomats and representatives of various international humanitarian agencies. It was almost a year and a half after the outbreak of the Soviet-German war and the beginning of the extermination campaign in the east before the Allies, facing mounting evidence about the Nazi crimes, could no longer remain silent. Frischer, however, did not rejoice at the

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publication of the Declaration. In spite of the optimism that filled the activists in December 1942, the final text fell short of their expectations. Apart from the reference to planned post-­war retribution for the crimes committed by the Nazis and their collaborators, the Allies promised no measures that would bring immediate relief to the European Jews. The British and American governments also again rejected calls for reprisals against German civilians, which were made by the Jewish activists, including Frischer.109 He thus continued to vent his feelings during public appearances even after the Allied Declaration. In early January 1943, at a public meeting in Cardiff, he returned to his previous appeals: ‘At this very moment there is an opportunity for the world to show that it has the will – which in former times it so often failed to show – to tear the victims of barbarity from their fate.’ Anticipating practical difficulties that could be used by the Allies as an excuse not to allow the refugees to escape the Nazi grasp, Frischer concluded his address with a rhetorical question: ‘What would the Allies do if they were to capture one or two millions of Germans? Would their transportation and maintenance prove impracticable for the Allies who, after all, rule over four-­fifths of the world?’110 The Allies publicly condemned the extermination campaign against the Jews only at the point when almost three-­quarters of all the victims of the Shoah had already been murdered. For Viktor Fischl, the fact that the Allies had finally spoken out was evidence that the United Nations ‘were aware that the present war [was] being waged above all in the name of humanity’ and that the ‘issue at stake [was] to win the war and to defeat Hitler not only on the military but above all on the spiritual plane’.111 This atmosphere of anticipation filled the activists with the hope that the major Allied powers would finally intervene. There was a prevailing feeling in London and Washington at the beginning of 1943 that something needed to be done at least to appease public opinion. The activists used the propitious environment and immediately returned to the rejected relief and rescue initiatives.

6

Help for the Jews

My dear friend, please believe me, day and night I think about those people suffering at home and I continuously try to help save them and assist them. One day, when we meet again, you will learn that I have made countless attempts. . . . I only hope that Theresienstadt is spared. That is my chief concern. Frischer, 27 January 19451 23 June 1944 was a special day in Theresienstadt. After several months of preparation, the ghetto was visited by a delegation of the Red Cross. The visit had been carefully planned by the SS in order to counter the mounting evidence about the Nazi extermination campaign against the Jews. As part of the visit, Paul Eppstein (1902–44), the second Jewish elder who replaced Edelstein in January 1943, informed the delegation about the relief parcels the inmates frequently received from humanitarian organizations in the neutral countries. Dr Maurice Rossel from the ICRC, who headed the commission, was strategically led to the post office building at the exact time the employees were distributing a large number of parcels that recently arrived from abroad. Rossel in particular noted numerous packages from Portugal, containing tinned sardines. Later, when the delegation continued on the carefully planned walk through the ghetto, they witnessed a jovial encounter, when the feared ghetto commandant, SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Rahm (1907–47), offered tins of sardines to a group of Jewish children. Surprisingly, they rejected the treat with the words: ‘Onkel Rahm, schon wieder Sardinen?’ (‘Uncle Rahm, sardines again?’).2 The parcels with sardines that reached Theresienstadt and concentration camps from Lisbon were part of a larger humanitarian operation organized by the Czechoslovak government-­in-exile and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The Czechoslovak exile politicians, diplomats and activists, including Frischer, were the main driving force behind the scheme. Several historians have recently researched Allied governments’ attitudes towards the relief initiatives. Zweig, for example, draws far-­reaching conclusions about the nature of the help that the relief parcels could offer in wartime, arguing that it ‘had greater potential for saving lives than the chimerical hopes of any negotiated last-­ minute reprieve by the Nazi authorities for the concentration camp internees’.3 Zweig inaccurately dates the origins of the operation to June 1943, when the ICRC initiated trial shipments to camps in Germany, but he traces a real increase in the scheme only in June 1944, after the American government had persuaded the British to relax the

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economic blockade of Europe.4 He suggests that there was only one exception to blockade practice prior to 1943 – namely, in 1942, when the Allies allowed humanitarian aid to reach occupied Greece, troubled by great famine.5 Hindley has partly contested these conclusions. She gives more examples of pre-1943 exceptions in the blockade practice, and emphasizes the role that the ‘increasingly testy’ governments-­in-exile played in persuading the British to expand the concessions. Her research, however, overall confirms Zweig’s observations that the economic blockade constituted a fundamental element of Allied policy, and that any humanitarian interventions were, naturally, subordinated to military objectives. By late 1942, the Allies, she remarks, ‘knew the Jews had little time’, but ‘they remained reluctant to alter policies engineered to produce the defeat of Nazi Germany’. This reluctance was caused by their deep belief that the blockade was working.6 Focusing on the non-­governmental sector, Cohen shows that Jewish emissaries in Switzerland, especially Abraham Silberschein (1882– 1951) a former member of the Polish Sejm and founder of the Relico – had already organized minor shipments to occupied Poland, including the Warsaw ghetto, in the first years of the war. He prepared the shipments as a private enterprise and against the opposition of American and British Jewish leaders, who rejected any activities that went against the Allied priorities in the war against Germany, including the economic blockade.7 Frischer’s story tends to confirm Hindley’s and Cohen’s conclusions. There had indeed been successful initiatives to organize extensive relief parcel schemes even before 1944. The organization of the humanitarian aid presents another, so far largely overlooked, perspective on the Jewish responses to Nazi persecution. Frischer’s involvement in the relief parcel scheme – in fact his central role in the initiation and execution of the programme – requires that we deal with the humanitarian aid for the ghettos and camps at length. It was, however, only one part of his efforts to rescue the Jews, or at least to alleviate their plight. The Nazi efforts to use Theresienstadt as a disguise for the Final Solution played a key role in the plight of the Protectorate Jewry during the Shoah and in Frischer’s efforts to provide them with humanitarian aid. The exile activists had to deal with the lack of reliable information, the false propaganda intentionally spread by the Nazis, and the Allied reluctance to engage in any comprehensive humanitarian initiatives. Despite these obstacles, Frischer continuously explored options of how to save the remnants of the Jewish communities, including his family, his lover and her child.

Humanitarian aid for the ghettos and camps Despite the initial setbacks that he encountered in summer 1942, Frischer continued exploring options to initiate Allied humanitarian aid to the ghettos. In late September 1942, he informed the Czechoslovak Red Cross in London about his successful efforts to discover the first 2,000 names of Czechoslovak-Jewish deportees to Poland, including their addresses there, a necessary prerequisite for any possible shipments. He also made the first attempts to ensure that the ICRC and the German Red Cross would cooperate with the possible shipment of relief parcels to Theresienstadt.8 His efforts to reach the Bohemian ghetto were triggered by the arrival of a report from the

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Protectorate that depicted the pace of deportations from Czech cities to Theresienstadt, where the Germans had created a ‘main old people’s home’ (Zentral-Altenheim) for elderly Jews from the Reich. The report emphasized the high concentration of the deportees in the ghetto, with about 7,000 young and 40,000 elderly Jews living in the fortress town. All of the inmates arrived in the ghetto without their personal belongings, apart from the small piece of luggage which each deportee was permitted to take along.9 The deportees, even if they were allowed to stay in the ghetto, evidently faced a looming humanitarian catastrophe. Frischer’s interest in Theresienstadt further increased after a conversation with Joseph J. Schwartz (1899–1975), the European director of the Joint, who revealed details about the parcel schemes organized by the Polish government and Western humanitarian organizations. Their schemes were very successful, Schwartz argued, with a delivery rate of between 80 and 85 per cent, but were focused exclusively on Poland. Frischer therefore suggested to the Czechoslovak government that if they managed to start a scheme, they could send parcels mainly to Theresienstadt. He estimated that 15,000 of the 40,000 inmates in the ghetto were Czechoslovak citizens. The Council of Elders was ‘in the hands of Czechoslovaks’, known as ‘the most reliable social workers’, who could be confidentially informed that the parcels were intended for Czechoslovaks only.10 The Czechoslovak exiles clearly did not want to use their scarce resources on foreign nationals. In November 1942, representatives of the Jewish Agency in Switzerland were surprised by the arrival of letters sent by their colleagues, who were in charge of the Council of Elders in Theresienstadt. It was at this point that the Nazis embarked on their propaganda campaign, using the ‘model ghetto’ as evidence that the Jews were living safe and sound under the new German order. As a part of these efforts they also opened a postal connection between Theresienstadt and Switzerland.11 Edelstein, the first Jewish Elder of Theresienstadt, sent a letter to Ullmann, and Zucker, his deputy, sent one to Lichtheim. The letters depicted a difficult but bearable life in the ghetto.12 Despite the neutral tone of the letters, Lichtheim immediately concluded that the authors had written under coercion.13 Nevertheless, Ullmann maintained these contacts in the following years, and his ability to communicate with the ghetto contributed to the eventual development of the relief parcels scheme organized by the Czechoslovak exiles for the inmates, who frequently asked for food and medicine to be sent from abroad.14 In spite of the renewed efforts in late 1942, the main obstacles preventing the launching of the parcel scheme had not been overcome. The British kept refusing to issue a permit to the Czechoslovak government to transfer funds to Portugal or Switzerland. Furthermore, the activists realized that even if the Czechoslovak government received permission, it would be unable to finance the whole operation without contributions from private individuals or humanitarian agencies. Frischer therefore approached British and American Jewish organizations with a request to include Theresienstadt in their humanitarian schemes. In autumn 1942, the Board of Deputies of British Jews received permission to transfer £3,000 monthly to Lisbon and planned to use the money for parcels to be sent to the Polish ghettos (the programme started only in February 1943). The Board agreed with Frischer that it was easier to

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monitor the delivery of parcels to Theresienstadt, but the permission that they had received from the British Treasury (the Exchequer) limited their activities to Polish territory.15 The situation began to change at the time of the Allied Declaration in December 1942. The Czechoslovak government approved the allocation of £6,000 for the parcel scheme for deported Czechoslovak citizens and decided to organize a fundraising campaign in the United States and Latin America.16 If successful, they believed, it would be possible to circumvent the British blockade. Unfortunately, the fundraising campaign outside Britain did not take place. In the meantime, Finance Minister Ladislav Feierabend (1891–1969) negotiated with representatives of the British Treasury who gave preliminary agreement to transfer limited funds to Portugal and Turkey, but they warned Feierabend that they would most likely reject permission to transfer money to Switzerland, the hub from where the major humanitarian agencies operated.17 The main reason seems to have been the very low reserves of Swiss francs held in the British banks during the war.18 Hence the Allied Declaration evidently contributed to the British willingness to consider a minor exception in their otherwise strict blockade practice. The Czechoslovak government received permission from the British government on 2 March 1943, shortly after Frischer again directly urged the British to make this concession.19 The British Ministry of Economic Warfare presented a long list of conditions that the Czechoslovaks had to comply with. The scheme could be used only for Czechoslovak citizens, not for anyone else, even if they were imprisoned in Theresienstadt. The British also insisted that the whole operation was to be conducted in the utmost secrecy. The government was allowed to transfer £3,000 monthly, but only to Portugal. The Czechoslovak diplomat in Lisbon, František Čejka, who organized the purchase and shipment of the consignments, was obliged to cooperate with the British Embassy there and to respect their instructions, for example, with regard to the delivery company or the company from which he could buy foodstuffs for the parcels. No more than four tonnes of foodstuffs (8,000 parcels) could be sent per month. Only local Portuguese shipping companies could be used to send the parcels, and no one was allowed to know the true origin of the shipments. In the end, the words ‘Association of Portuguese Exporters of Tinned Fish’ (‘Gremio dos Exportadores de Conservas de Peixe’) appeared on the parcels as the principal sender. Čejka was allowed to send only local, Portuguese food and not imports that had passed through the British blockade. The kinds of food permitted for export by the Portuguese government were highly limited, consisting mostly only of dried figs, pine nuts and tinned sardines.20 The conditions set by the British government necessitated that the Czechoslovak authorities had to create a comprehensive card index of deportees, including their precise addresses, to ensure that only Czechoslovak citizens were included. The lists were compiled by all Czechoslovak-Jewish organizations in Britain, the United States and Palestine. The Czechoslovak Ministry of Social Welfare then created a special coordinating committee in charge of the scheme and fundraising, consisting of representatives of several Czechoslovak ministries, the Red Cross, Frischer and members of various Jewish groups.21 After he was informed about the British concession, Frischer rejoiced that the months of constant interventions had finally led to a breakthrough.22

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Čejka started with the systematic dispatch of parcels in late April 1943. He gave priority to the people deported to Theresienstadt, but a minor part of the consignment also went to the Czechoslovak deportees in French camps.23 Between 30 April and early September 1943, he sent 11,039 parcels (half a kilo each) to Theresienstadt (to the Jewish Council (Ältestenrat) that distributed them to the addressees) and 1,673 to France.24 Ullmann and Kopecký soon reported that they had received the first confirmations from Theresienstadt that the parcels had been delivered.25 Kopecký organized further dispatches from Geneva in cooperation with the Joint Aid Commission. In May 1943, they sent to Theresienstadt two train carriages full of condensed milk, soup cubes and dried prunes.26 They prepared another group shipment, including medical paraphernalia, in September 1943. The WJC and the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry (through the offices of the Czechoslovak Red Cross)

Figure 9  Parcel sent from Lisbon to Prague in the framework of the Czechoslovak Relief Action.

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jointly funded these consignments.27 On this occasion, Frischer managed, with the help of Eleanor Rathbone MP (1872–1946), to obtain ad hoc permission from the British government, which allowed Czechoslovak exiles to transfer 100,000 francs to Geneva. Kopecký and Ullmann also planned a third consignment for the near future.28 The successful initiation of the parcels scheme raised the unavoidable question of funding. The Czechoslovak government promised to provide the initial £6,000 – funds sufficient to run the scheme for two months. After that, the government expected the scheme to be kept running by private donations. The Czechoslovak government appointed Frischer to run the fundraising campaign in Britain.29 Later, the government also created another body, the Czechoslovak Relief Action (Československá pomocná akce – CRA), to coordinate the campaign. The CRA consisted of representatives from several ministries, the Red Cross and Jewish organizations, including Frischer.30 He wanted to start a fundraising campaign in Britain and the United States as soon as possible, but the main problem was that because the government was allowed to send parcels only to Czechoslovak citizens, only Czechoslovaks who lived abroad could be approached to donate funds.31 In spite of their efforts, the fundraising campaign did not start until late autumn 1943. In the meantime, the Czechoslovak Jewish émigrés in America entered into negotiations with the Joint, which was willing to organize the programme, but only on condition that it would not be financed by fundraising campaigns.32 The promising beginning with the involvement of the Joint soon vanished. The American ambassador to Lisbon refused to allow the scheme because the Joint could not provide individual receipts from the inmates in confirmation of delivery of the parcels. The activists again ran up against the brick wall of the blockade when the Allies were reluctant to permit new humanitarian schemes if they had concerns that the Germans could confiscate aid.33 Frischer incessantly intervened with the American authorities, but the Joint was not able to reach an agreement with the ambassador in Lisbon until late September 1943.34 Though efforts to secure new funds for the scheme or pass the responsibility to a humanitarian agency were unsuccessful, the need to include larger groups of inmates and even new camps was constantly increasing. Until spring 1943, the Czechoslovak government had only limited information about the fate of the Czechoslovak Jews deported to occupied Poland. It was only in May 1943 that details about some of the concentration camps and ghettos where the Czechoslovak Jews were incarcerated gradually got to Switzerland and from there to London. On 17 May 1943, Ullmann informed Frischer about the fate of the Slovak Jews who had been expelled to occupied Poland during the large wave of deportations in 1942. Some of them, Ullmann claimed, had been deported to Birkenau in Upper Silesia. At this stage, Ullmann apparently was unaware that Jews from Theresienstadt were also being sent to the camp. About a month later Ullmann received further reports about Birkenau and the lives of the inmates, in which their forced labour under unbearable conditions in coal mines was described. Frischer thus approached the government with a request to approve the sending of parcels to Slovak-Jewish forced labourers in the camp. The Jewish organizations in London had already received the first lists of between 200 and 300 Slovak-Jewish prisoners in ‘Birkenau bei Neu Berun’, though there was some confusion

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about the real name of the camp. (Frischer thought that Neubrunn sounded more plausible.) Frischer also warned Čejka to send the parcels gradually rather than all at once, since the Germans might begin to suspect that complete lists of deportees had reached enemy and neutral countries.35 Čejka made the first test shipment, containing thirty-­two parcels, in late July 1943. The number of parcels sent to Birkenau was quickly growing, and by late November 1943 Čejka had already sent over a thousand parcels in one consignment (each parcel containing 0.5 kg of tinned sardines).36 The received reports confirm the lack of detailed information available to the exiles in Geneva and London. The camp in Birkenau was an integral part of the Auschwitz system (about 3 kilometres from the main camp at Auschwitz and only about 110 km from Moravská Ostrava). Information about Auschwitz, as the most notorious concentration camp where thousands of prisoners were dying of mistreatment or were being murdered by the guards, was widely available in the Allied countries. By mid1943, Auschwitz-Birkenau had already become one of the main extermination centres in Europe (and even more so after the Treblinka camp was dismantled in late summer 1943), but it was known to only a small circle of government officials outside Germany. For others, even if they had a vague knowledge of Birkenau, the camp functioned as a place of slave labour.37 Despite the lack of reliable reports, Jewish activists, in particular Ullmann and Frischer, kept trying to increase the number of deportees the parcel scheme could reach. In July 1943, Ullmann reported that the deportations from the Protectorate were almost complete, and only about 2,000 Jews remained in Prague. Nevertheless, only 20,000 of the 50,000 inmates in Theresienstadt were Czechoslovak citizens, which clearly signalled that the ghetto was a temporary holding centre, not a final destination, and the deportation trains continued rolling further to the east. Ullmann was able to establish contacts with deported Czech and Slovak Jews in labour camps in Ossava (Osowa) near Chełm (in fact only several kilometres from Sobibór), Trawniki (near Lublin), Birkenau, Monowitz, Jawischowitz (all in Silesia), Tomaszów and Włodawa (Lublin district), all in occupied Poland.38 They were all asking for food deliveries. Ullmann concluded: ‘Everything must be done to ensure that large shipments of foodstuffs go to Theresienstadt in order to keep [the inmates’] hope alive, and an attempt has to be made to send parcels to the labour camps.’39 The activists, however, were always one step behind German policies in occupied Europe. Moreover, they could often operate only within an area outlined by the German authorities, and depended on the information that the Germans allowed to leak abroad. During 1943, as a part of the German campaign to deny the veracity of the reports coming from occupied Europe, the SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered a temporary halt on all deportations from Theresienstadt to the east. Consequently, no deportation train left the ghetto for more than seven months after early February 1943. In early September, the German administration in the ghetto then ordered the deportation of 5,007 inmates, officially to construct a new labour camp in the east, but in reality they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In contrast to all previous transports, they were not subjected to the infamous ‘selection’ at the ramp, and all of them were transferred to a special section in the camp, where they created the so-­called ‘Theresienstadt Family Camp’. The SS even allowed the leaders of the transport to send postcards to

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Theresienstadt and Switzerland.40 Historians generally suggest that it was another attempt by the SS to conceal the real fate of the Jews in the east.41 Shortly thereafter, in mid-October, Ullmann contacted London with information about the deportation of 1,800 Jews from Theresienstadt to Birkenau.42 He also referred to the card he had received from Leo Janowitz (1911–44), the former chairman of the Palestinian Office in Prague, who wrote from Birkenau that the deportees were constructing ‘a new camp’ there.43 Other recent deportees from Theresienstadt asked Ullmann to give his regards to Relico, which clearly implied that they were desperate for food parcels.44 The now-­confirmed mass resettlement of the Jews to what was presented as a labour camp in Birkenau spurred Frischer to work harder to increase the number of parcels sent there. But this proved to be a complicated enterprise, because the Czechoslovak government lacked the names and details of the deportees. Frischer therefore proposed that Čejka increase the number of parcels sent to the Slovak Jews in Birkenau, arguing that ‘whatever gets there will help the whole group of them’, unaware that most of the Slovak deportees had already been murdered. In the same letter, Frischer appealed to the government to include the deportees in the ‘Majdánek internment camp’ in the parcel scheme. According to the information he possessed, the Germans considered Majdanek (in a suburb of Lublin) a camp for civilian internees, and the German Red Cross could monitor the delivery of the parcels. Consequently, Frischer concluded that mass shipments to Birkenau and Majdanek ‘should be considered even more urgent than shipments to Theresienstadt’.45 Two months later, Ullmann adjusted his previous estimates, and suggested that the number of deportees sent from Theresienstadt to Birkenau between 15 July and 30 September 1943 was in fact 6,800, rather than 1,800.46 He based these estimates on a letter from František Friedmann – a veteran Zionist activist, who, in the summer of 1943, became Chairman of the Council of Jewish Elders in Prague. Friedmann reported that 5,000 Jews had been deported to Birkenau, where, under the leadership of Leo Janowitz and Fredy Hirsch, a renowned youth leader, they were working on the construction of a new camp for 35,000 inmates.47 Friedmann correctly estimated the number of deportees (in fact 5,007), but Ullmann added the figure to the previously received estimates of 1,800 deported prisoners. In this way, an incorrect estimate reached London. Ullmann’s correspondence with Friedmann and inmates in Birkenau demonstrates that he was often able to obtain detailed reports about the deportations from Theresienstadt. The Germans, however, were willing to pass on only a limited amount of information about the camps in the east. Ullmann, for example, did not receive details about the second wave of deportations from Theresienstadt to the family camp in Birkenau in December 1943, when two trains brought another 5,000 deportees to the camp, swelling its size to over 10,000 (though a large number of the deportees soon succumbed to the conditions in the camp).48 In the meantime, Kopecký from Geneva provided Čejka with the first lists of almost 2,000 inmates in Birkenau and Majdanek, but he refused to believe Frischer’s information about Majdanek being a camp for civilian internees; it was, in fact, a labour camp. The only way to reach the inmates was through the Jüdische Unterstützungstelle (JUS – Jewish Aid Office), which was operated by Michal Weichert (1890–1967) in Cracow. Weichert’s activities had led to controversy in occupied Poland even during

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the war. Jewish as well as non-Jewish resistance groups believed he collaborated with the Germans by helping them to hide from the world the true nature of their extermination campaign against the Polish Jews. The JUS was closed down in late 1942 during the destruction of the Polish ghettos, but Weichert was allowed to reopen it in March 1943. In the following months, he composed lengthy reports about his social work and, with German consent (or at their instigation), sent them to humanitarian organizations abroad. The Czechoslovak government-­in-exile also received the reports through these channels.49 In late October 1943, Čejka agreed to send a test shipment to Weichert’s address in Cracow, with twenty-­six parcels (one for Weichert) intended for Czechoslovak inmates in Majdanek, Lublin and Trawniki.50 He did not believe that these parcels would ever be delivered, but thought it necessary to explore every possible route to reach Czechoslovak deportees. Weichert soon confirmed Čejka’s communication, but noted that no parcels had arrived at his address by January 1944.51 Čejka thus sent no further parcels to Weichert, and the Czechoslovak scheme never helped the deportees in occupied Poland outside of the Auschwitz complex. Prior to this, in May 1943, Čejka had received from the customs office in Berlin a returned shipment containing a parcel he had sent to Izbica in the Lublin district, with a notice that the Jews in Poland were not allowed to receive parcels. The parcel had been opened and most of its contents were missing.52 The scheme of sending parcels to Poland organized by the Board of Deputies also ran into difficulties, and by mid-1943 the British organization could not even scrape together a sufficient number of addresses to send parcels to. Because they were unable to spend the monthly allowance of £3,000, Frischer again proposed that instead of Poland, they should send the aid to Theresienstadt, which was, he claimed, under ‘the supervision of the German Red Cross’ (this was shortly after the visit of the German Red Cross delegation to the ghetto in June 1943). The Board entered into negotiations with the British MEW, but it seems that they did not receive the required permit.53 The relief parcels scheme, as it developed in the second half of 1943, raises the question of whether the exile activists were able to comprehend the nature of the German extermination campaign against the Jews. They attempted to send help to Birkenau and Majdanek as the extermination campaign in Poland was almost complete. Although the information about the mass murder in Poland had reached western countries by mid-1942, the content of the reports was not fully understood by those in authority. Čejka’s shipment of parcels to Weichert coincided with one of the last massacres in the Lublin district, when the Germans, in operation Erntefest (harvest festival) killed 42,000 Jews who had managed to survive in labour camps in eastern Poland. Some of the Jewish activists – and here we are not able to provide any definite conclusions about Frischer – were aware of the hopeless situation in the east, but they still tried to help every single individual they could reach, even if it meant that the Germans confiscated most of the parcels. Štěpán Barber articulated this point of view in a letter to the Board of Deputies in March 1943, when he asked the British organization to send parcels to his relatives who had been deported from Theresienstadt to eastern Poland almost a year before: ‘The only trace I could find so far was the name of my grandfather who is somewhere near Lublin if he is still alive. . . . I am unfortunately

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only too well aware of the low degree of probability that these parcels will arrive in time, but still it is our duty to do all in our power to help them as much as we can.’54 This, however, does not explain why the Czechoslovak government-­in-exile continued with the scheme. It is evident that the government would have never approved of the sending of the parcels had they believed that most of the Jews were no longer alive.55 Furthermore, the number of shipments dispatched to Theresienstadt and Birkenau kept increasing in 1944. After lengthy negotiations, and several interventions by Frischer, the Joint managed to overcome the opposition of the American ambassador in Lisbon and joined the programme. Although it had previously been informally agreed that the American agency would take over the Czechoslovak scheme, the Joint started its own private operation and sent parcels to non-Czechoslovak internees in Theresienstadt. In this way, humanitarian aid could reach many internees, yet failed to solve the problems that the Czechoslovak government experienced with the funding of their part of the operation. In October 1943, the government finally launched a fundraising campaign in Britain. Yet it was unlikely that it could bring any tangible results by the end of the year and the government, which had already contributed £22,000 (almost four times more than originally planned), was seriously considering stopping the whole scheme due to the lack of available funds.56 At this stage, Frischer entered into negotiations with Schwartz, the European director of the Joint, who promised to lend money to the Czechoslovak government to cover expenditures in November and December 1943.57 Yet this support only postponed the problem for several months. Furthermore, by February 1944, it became evident that the hopes invested in the fundraising would not be fulfilled. The first wave of the campaign brought only £6,035, with almost half of the amount coming from two Western Jewish organizations. The organizers of the campaign bitterly complained that the Czechoslovak governmental offices in particular made only meagre contributions. On top of that, the Joint asked to have their expenses reimbursed, though Frischer eventually persuaded Schwartz not to insist on the refund.58 The Czechoslovak government agreed to provide an initial contribution to the scheme in 1944, but insisted that the organizers had to continue with the fundraising, or assign that task to one of the Western humanitarian agencies. Frischer thus confronted the President of the Board of Deputies, Selig Brodetsky (1888–1954), with direct questions about the wealth of the British Jewish community, which ‘undoubtedly is financially strong enough to support the action [but] has so far contributed very little’. It has recently been argued by one historian that the Board eventually contributed £9,000, though this figure does not seem to be confirmed by my research in the Czechoslovak records.59 Another historian has asserted that the relief parcels scheme did not suffer from any lack of funding, but his conclusions should also be reconsidered.60 The activists frantically attempted to scrape funds together from all available sources, and Frischer even on one occasion angrily wrote to Brodetsky: ‘I am quite determined to obtain the necessary money, even if I should go from door to door like a beggar.’61 The support of the Czechoslovak government (which eventually contributed about £40,00062) and Jewish organizations eventually allowed Čejka and, later, Kopecký to continue sending parcels throughout 1944, but the activists were repeatedly faced with the danger that the whole scheme could be suspended.

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Despite the problems with funding, the scheme ran smoothly in the second half of 1943 and during 1944. Čejka kept shipping thousands of parcels to Theresienstadt and Birkenau, Kopecký and Ullmann negotiated large shipments from Geneva, and a smaller part of the scheme was run from Turkey by Milan Hanák, the Czechoslovak consul in Istanbul and from late 1944 in Ankara (he sent large parcels of 5 kg each).63 Ullmann received hundreds of postcards from the inmates, who confirmed receipt of the parcels. Among the first people Frischer included in the lists of addressees were Lilli Skutezky and her daughter Hanna, both of whom later acknowledged the delivery of parcels from Lisbon and Istanbul.64 Ullmann and Čejka also received confirmation from Birkenau that some of the parcels with sardines had reached the inmates.65 The situation changed in June 1944, when Čejka received reports that caused the optimism of the organizers to begin to evaporate. In late March 1944, the Theresienstadt Jewish Elder Eppstein sent a letter to Lisbon confirming the total number of parcels the inmates had received from Portugal. Instead of the almost 70,000 parcels sent by Čejka and the Joint (39,233 and 30,000 respectively) by the end of March 1944, Eppstein confirmed the delivery of only 7,294 parcels.66 Čejka immediately stopped the shipment of new consignments until the Czechoslovak government decided how to proceed. In London, the activists and government officials split in two groups. The officials, especially from the Finance Ministry, argued for the discontinuation of the scheme, because their task as the managers of the State budget was to protect Czechoslovak money against any non-­economic expenditure. By contrast, Frischer and other Jewish members of CRA argued that in this case the government had to take a chance. The CRA finally concluded that the parcel scheme would continue but could not be funded from government money, only from other available funds (donations from humanitarian organizations and fundraising). The CRA still had £4,500 available. In the meantime, the government decided to investigate the situation and clarify the reasons for the discrepancy between the number of parcels sent and the confirmed deliveries.67 Ullmann immediately tried to provide information to counter Eppstein’s letter. He argued that the lack of confirmation about deliveries was caused by the fact that only a limited number of inmates were allowed to communicate with people abroad. The limited correspondence seemed to offer a plausible explanation for why only 10 per cent of the addressees had directly confirmed delivery. Frischer, however, had to concede that Ullmann’s rationale did not explain the numbers in Eppstein’s letter. In the meantime, in another letter, Eppstein confirmed the delivery of 13,444 parcels between 10 April and 3 July 1944. This would mean that overall 20,738 of about 130,000 parcels (68,564 from Čejka, the rest from the Joint) had been delivered to their addressees.68 Despite Eppstein’s letters, the activists desperately tried to prove that the parcels were really reaching the ghetto. Frischer pointed to the information originating from German sources that allegedly 20,000 parcels had arrived in Theresienstadt in the course of June 1944. Although he conceded that German propaganda often lied, he added that ‘even a liar sometimes tells the truth’.69 Ullmann, in late August, then reported that in the last days he had received ‘hundreds’ of individual confirmations sent from Theresienstadt in June and July 1944, including letters from well-­known

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personalities in the ghetto, such as Zucker, Kahn, Hannah Steiner, Weidmann, Desider Friedmann (1880–1944), Stricker, and Leo Baeck (1873–1956). They all stressed the importance of the parcels for the sustenance of the ghetto. Concurrently, Eppstein acknowledged the arrival of fifty-­two boxes of medical supplies sent to Theresienstadt by the Joint Aid Commission in cooperation with Kopecký (probably the third shipment sent from Geneva).70 In Lisbon, Čejka checked the delivery of the parcels with Arnold Imhof, the Joint Aid Commission representative in Portugal. Imhof cautiously suggested that the number of delivered parcels must be higher than the number confirmed by Eppstein, but also emphasized that the ICRC could not ask the German government for an explanation, since the Germans might consider it an expression of non-­confidence.71 The activists’ efforts to continue with the Lisbon scheme were in the end futile. Although Čejka wanted to reopen the route, the landing of the Allies in Normandy and their advance in August 1944 cut all the transport lines in France, and the Portuguese companies were no longer able to export parcels to European countries apart from Spain.72 The Czechoslovak government, however, received permission from the British MEW to transfer the approved monthly allowance to Switzerland, and Kopecký, in the last months of 1944 and at the beginning 1945, organized shipments from Geneva.73 Further limited humanitarian aid reached Theresienstadt thanks to the Czechoslovak diplomats in Sweden and in Turkey.74 Only in February 1945, after he had found out about the mass deportations of 18,000 Theresienstadt inmates to the east in the autumn of 1944, did Frischer conclude that it would be impossible to continue with the parcel scheme. The activists did not have the lists of the deportees available and could not justify the continuation of the programme when they knew that most of the addressees were no longer in the ghetto.75 The number of parcels delivered to the inmates is still a matter of historical inquiry. After the liberation, Moci Kohn, who had worked in the Theresienstadt post office, informed Ullmann that about 120,000 parcels had reached the ghetto by October 1944.76 Other survivors also recalled the delivery of parcels. Yet the historian Kárný maintained that the Germans allowed the delivery of only 15.9 per cent of all shipped parcels. Another historian, Blodig, concludes that the Germans confiscated 55 tonnes of parcels and allowed the distribution of only about 10 tonnes.77 Even so, this was an exceptionally high number in comparison with other concentration camps and ghettos.78 The higher delivery rate was related to the purpose the ghetto fulfilled in German propaganda, especially when the Germans organized the June 1944 visit of the Red Cross delegation. Indeed, some of the inmates noticed an increase in the number of parcels that reached the ghetto in the spring of 1944.79 Lilli Skutezky sent her first confirmation about the delivery of parcels from Istanbul only in December 1943. But she sent no less than seven confirmations (plus two for Hanna) between March and early July 1944, precisely when the German authorities were preparing for the visit of the Red Cross.80 At exactly the same time, Willy Mahler (1909–45), who worked in the Theresienstadt post office, noted in his diary that the Theresienstadt administration received permission to distribute the parcels that could not be delivered because the addressees had already been deported to the east. He noted that the work assignments in the post office suddenly became sought after, a statement that suggests that the

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Germans had only recently allowed the distribution of a large numbers of parcels among the inmates.81 Ultimately, Eppstein’s letters still present historians with an insolvable question. The historian Kárný argued that the SS was highly interested in the continuation of the scheme and they therefore forced Eppstein to send the confirmations to Lisbon. The SS hence also included the distribution of the parcels in the tour of the ghetto they organized for the Red Cross. Moreover, the film Theresienstadt: Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet, about life in the ghetto, prepared in 1944 by a Czech film crew for German propaganda, included a sequence from the post office where the inmates are receiving parcels and, later, a family scene in which a prisoner opens a parcel he has received from abroad and shares the contents with his relatives.82 Nevertheless, if the Germans wanted the scheme to continue, why did they not force Eppstein to include higher numbers confirming that most of the parcels were reaching their destination? Eppstein was no doubt eager to make sure that the scheme continued, because even a small number of delivered parcels helped improve life in the ghetto. To complicate the situation even more, the historian Čtvrtník believes that a higher number of parcels than previously claimed reached the inmates and emphasizes the moral and psychological value of the parcels for the detainees.83 Likewise, Tošnerová and Beneš quote a document from 28 February 1945 in which the last chairman of the Council of Jewish Elders, Benjamin Murmelstein (1905–89), informed the SS commandant that between May 1943 and February 1945, 117,083 parcels from Portugal reached the ghetto. Although the mentioned historians conclude that most of the parcels never reached the inmates, the document suggests that the Jewish Elder was aware of the total number of parcels shipped to Theresienstadt.84 Unfortunately, the whole situation remains unclear. After the liberation of the ghetto in May 1945, the activists who organized the scheme believed that the parcels had really been delivered, and Ullmann, who during the war had maintained contact with the prisoners, received letters of gratitude for the services he provided for the ghetto community. Frischer also thanked him for all he did for his family (the Skutezkys and his sister Wilma).85 More than 80,000 parcels were sent to the ghettos and camps in the framework of the Czechoslovak scheme, which started, after more than twelve months of negotiations, in the spring of 1943. Over 90 per cent of the parcels went to Theresienstadt, and a smaller proportion to the Auschwitz complex (in particular to Birkenau), but help also reached internees in France, Belgium and concentration camps in Germany (such as Oranienburg).86 The negotiation of the relief parcel scheme was a key part of Frischer’s activities. In 1955, a year after Frischer had passed away, Ullmann wrote: [Frischer] was the one who would rouse the world’s consciousness in tireless work to help the prisoners in distress in death camps and concentration camps. He was the one who, at the impetus of Geneva, would get the International Red Cross to provide more care to the Jews in concentration camps. Thanks to his cooperation the big parcel scheme started, organized by Jewish and non-Jewish organizations from Geneva, Lisbon, Stockholm, Istanbul and other neutral cities, which in thousands of cases brought humanitarian relief, great charity, or was even life-­ saving.87

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Frischer was not the only activist in London who had contributed to the scheme. Various Jewish organizations – Zionist, Orthodox (Federation of Czechoslovak Jews) and Assimilationist – had joined the effort. They negotiated with the Allies, helped with the fundraising and took on administrative responsibilities. The fact that most of the parcels did not reach their destination, nor could they have, was the sole responsibility of the German authorities. They confiscated the shipments sent to Theresienstadt, but, more importantly, they had deported the intended recipients to extermination camps before the parcels could have reached them. Even less is known about the fate of the parcels sent to Birkenau. Čejka had sent 12,425 parcels – half a kilo each – containing tinned sardines to this death factory in which more than one million Jews were gassed during the war. Almost none of those packages were ever delivered to their addressees. Although the relief parcel scheme presented the most tangible result of the activists’ efforts, Frischer concurrently explored other routes that could lead to saving at least some of the persecuted Jews. In these cases, however, he also encountered the reluctance of the major Allies, who were not willing to let the activists challenge the main priorities in the war against Germany.

The Allies and the Shoah The response of the major Allied governments to the Nazi persecution of the Jews has been a subject of intense debate among historians since the 1960s. The perceived failure of the Western liberal democracies to save any significant number of Jews has raised questions about their indifference to the Jewish plight, leading some historians to claim that the Allies ‘abandoned’ the Jews.88 Others have defended the Allied policies and argued that they did more to save the Jews than their critics are willing to admit. Furthermore, once the Nazis took their decision on the Final Solution, the mass murder of the Jews became an integral part of the Nazi war effort.89 Regardless of the disputes amongst historians on this point, it is generally agreed that for the Allies the main war aim remained military victory over the Axis powers and ‘no measures [could have been undertaken] that might be construed as inconsistent “with the successful prosecution of the war” ’.90 As we have seen, serious relief and rescue initiatives began to be considered only following the Declaration of 17 December 1942, which provided activists with leverage against the Allied governments. Nevertheless, after the major extermination campaign in 1942, only small remnants of the once-­flourishing Jewish communities in Eastern Europe languished in ghettos and camps, hidden among the non-Jewish population, or struggled to stay alive in forests. In January 1943, the Germans finished deporting Jews from the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia to Theresienstadt, and by mid-1943 almost all ‘full Jews’ had been removed from Prague. Only the so-­called Mischlinge (half-­breeds) and people in mixed marriages could legally live in the Protectorate. In Slovakia, about 24,000 Jews remained under the Tiso regime after the major deportation wave in 1942. From the former Czechoslovakia, only the Jewish communities in southern Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia still lived almost intact under Hungarian rule. Yet these territories had also suffered deportations, when over 13,000

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of mostly foreign Jews had been deported from Ruthenia to Ukraine in summer 1941 and were massacred near Kamenets-Podolsk. In the course of 1942, Frischer repeatedly approached the Allies with calls for increased efforts to rescue the Jews. He believed that cautious negotiations with the Germans, their satellites, and European neutrals could lead to the successful evacuation of at least the most innocent members of the Jewish community – children: No enemy, however cruel, would refuse to grant and make possible the free withdrawal of children from a besieged fortress. [. . .] It would be expedient to proceed by evacuating first from Vienna, Czechoslovakia and Germany and taking to Switzerland those children who have not yet been deported to Poland. Germany might subsequently be prevailed upon to transfer from the Polish internment camps [ghettos] to transit camps those children who have already been deported from these countries to Poland. [. . .] Whether or not this scheme shall come into operation, will indeed be a test of humanity. Belief in humanity would be shattered should the world not make an attempt at saving even these children.91

These utopian proposals that entirely misread the motivations behind the Nazi persecution of the Jews did not lead to any specific proposals. The Allies were neither willing nor able to negotiate with the Germans and there was no place available where the potential refugees could settle. Most important, the Germans were unwilling to release any large number of Jews, regardless of age. Frischer became more vocal in the calls for the evacuation of Jewish children after the Allied Declaration.92 At about the same time the British government debated the possibility of permitting the emigration of a limited number of Jewish children from German satellites in Southeastern Europe to Palestine, but only within the framework of the White Paper policy. Colonial Secretary Oliver Stanley publicly announced the scheme in the House of Commons on 3 February 1943. In early 1943, about 29,000 Palestinian certificates were still available (until 31 March 1944).93 Frischer immediately took the initiative, and proposed to the Czechoslovak authorities and the British Ambassador Nichols that 1,000 Jews from Slovakia could also be evacuated. The negotiations took several months, before the British finally agreed to permit the evacuation of 1,000 Jews (500 from the Protectorate and 500 from Slovakia) to Palestine on the condition that the German and Slovak authorities would allow their departure and the refugees would obtain transit visas. But the scheme never came to fruition, partly because the British were not willing to accept the German conditions, but also because the Auswärtiges Amt rejected Palestine as the destination for the evacuees.94 This was in the end the only specific rescue proposal made by Frischer that was seriously considered by the Foreign Office, in spite of the mounting evidence about the deteriorating situation among the Czech and Slovak Jews. During his meeting with Nichols in late February 1943, Frischer described the deportations from the Protectorate to Poland, but also claimed, erroneously, that the Jews were being deported to Transnistria (in contemporary Moldova), where they were living in catastrophic conditions. He urged the British to immediately do all they could to help the Jews. The report Frischer submitted to Nichols stated that of the 140,000 people deported to

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Transnistria (presumably from Romania), 70,000 were already dead. ‘The remainder,’ the author wrote,‘are living in cellars of half-­demolished houses, without any equipment of heating, 30 persons sharing one room. Typhoid fever is raging there. 5,000 children, whose parents have died during the transports, are asking for help.’95 The Jews from the Protectorate were never deported to Transnistria, and the original source of the information is unclear.96 Nevertheless, the Foreign Office was not moved by the reports and advised Nichols that it was not the intention of the British government to initiate unilateral negotiations with enemy governments ‘in order to get Jews released for the purpose of reception in British territory’. The British believed that the only possible solution was through organized international actions, which they planned to discuss with the American government at the forthcoming Bermuda Conference.97 The Bermuda Conference (the major Anglo-American conference during the war exploring possible rescue initiatives) finally opened on 19 April 1943, on the same day that the last survivors of the Warsaw ghetto rose against the German attempt to liquidate the once largest ghetto in occupied Europe and to deport all the remaining inmates to Treblinka. The Czechoslovak Jewish activists in London tried to influence the Anglo-American negotiations. The National Jewish Council wanted the Czechoslovak government-­in-exile to discuss the agenda of the planned conference with the British government, but also expected the exile governments to join the Bermuda talks.98 Frischer approached Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Masaryk with a similar request, and at the same time continued to mobilize the British and exile activists to support rescue efforts.99 On 4 April 1943, the Anglo-Jewish Conference in London suggested a long list of measures that the Allied governments ought to take into consideration while preparing for the Bermuda Conference, in particular the facilitation of Jewish emigration from the enemy territories.100 Frischer addressed the conference in an emotional appeal: [I]f the war were to end now by a collapse of Germany or if only the Nazi regime were to turn into another system, 50,000 Jewish lives out of the former 180,000 [in the Bohemian Lands and Slovakia] could still be saved. [. . .] [T]hese 50,000 Jews who are still alive could probably be saved from death even now in another way.

Frischer believed that British public opinion favoured immediate interventions on behalf of the Jews and clamoured that it must be left to those who understand the politics of this country better than we do, to explain, why in spite of the desire of the majority of the people in this democratic country to help the Jews, up to the present time no resolute means have been taken. We – I admit frankly – are at a loss to understand.101

These efforts to influence the outcome of the Bermuda Conference were unsuccessful. The Czechoslovak government rejected any interference in the AngloAmerican negotiations, which were in any case called a ‘preliminary’ conference, with further discussions planned for the future.102 Nor did direct Anglo-American talks, intentionally planned for a place far from any possible lobbying groups, bring any

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breakthrough.103 The failure to reach any decisions on the rescue elicited a wave of criticism among the activists. Osbert Peake (1897–1966), Under-Secretary of State for the Home Office, defended the British government’s policies at the House of Commons session on 19 May 1943. Frischer and Schwarzbart watched the session from the gallery.104 Most of the speakers opposed the government’s policy, with only a minority backing the Bermuda decisions.105 The prevailing feeling among the activists was of a deep disappointment. Frischer voiced his frustration in a personal letter to the MP Rathbone, who at the session delivered the main criticism of the government, praising her and her ‘friends’ noble attitude [that] will save the honour of the British nation when history describes how it happened that European Jewry perished’.106 This failure to create and implement rescue policies brought back the feeling of powerlessness among the Jewish activists. Zygielbojm, who in May 1943 received reports about the final liquidation of the inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto and the death of his wife and son, could not bear the situation any more and committed suicide. Although the responsibility for the massacres of the Jews rested mainly with the German perpetrators, Zygielbojm wrote in his letter of farewell to the Polish government, it also falls indirectly upon the whole human race, on the Allies and their governments [. . .]. By their indifference to the killing of millions of hapless men, to the massacre of women and children, these countries have become accomplices of the assassins. [. . .] I cannot remain silent. I cannot live while the rest of the Jewish people in Poland, whom I represent, continue to be liquidated.107

Zygielbojm’s suicide shocked Schwarzbart and Frischer. Schwarzbart in his diary wrote that Zygielbojm’s face was haunting him,108 and, with some paranoia, remarked that people were looking at him and wondering why he had not committed suicide as well.109 Frischer believed that Zygielbojm had reached a state of mental isolation because of his previous unwillingness to cooperate with the other Jewish activists in London. He committed suicide, Frischer felt, because he could not keep the promise he had given to his comrades – namely, that he would work with all his might to save Polish Jewry. [. . .] [H]is decision was wrong because by sacrificing his life he will not break the indifference of the leading politicians, but we understand him and honour his memory. He fell as a hero on the battlefield.110

Schwarzbart, too, concluded that Zygielbojm had politically ‘wasted his sacrifice, because nothing will change’.111 The Bermuda Conference dashed any hopes for a major rescue operation. Shortly thereafter, Frischer conceded in a letter to Ullmann that ‘all attempts to save individuals from the occupied countries [. . .] have fallen though’.112 The relief parcel scheme that finally started in late April 1943 thus constituted the only source of hope for Frischer. He articulated these conclusions clearly at the National Conference of the British

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Section of the WJC in December 1943. He believed, rightly, that approximately 20,000 Jews were still alive in Slovakia and that of the 60,000 deported to Poland, only small groups of young people survived in the camps of Birkenau and Majdanek. He estimated that 50,000 Slovak Jews had already died. The situation was even worse, he had heard, in the Protectorate. Only 5,000 Jews, Frischer asserted, mostly in mixed marriages, lived in Prague and the provinces. Of the remaining 70,000 Jews, only 23,000 were in Theresienstadt, the others having been deported to Poland and, most recently, to Birkenau (7,000 Jews): [T]here is little hope for the remnants of Jewry in occupied Europe if the war should continue for one more year. [. . .] We can only pray to God to hasten the day of the complete liquidation of the Nazi regime, for never before were people so impotent in giving help to their suffering brethren as they are now.113

In the last years and even months of the war, Jewish activists kept proposing minor rescue schemes, such as exchanging small groups of the persecuted Jews for German nationals held in Allied countries. Nevertheless, they mainly focused on the transmission of reports about the plight of the Jews in Europe, and appealed to the Allies to issue warnings to the Axis governments in the event that concrete information about the plans of the Germans or their satellites reached London. There was not much more they could do. In November 1943, Frischer received a report about the plans of the Protectorate authorities to sterilize Jews who had not been deported, including those who lived in mixed marriages.114 At his insistence, Czechoslovak minister Ripka broadcast a warning to the Protectorate authorities and appealed to Czech doctors not to take part in Nazi crimes.115 It is not quite clear if the Protectorate authorities seriously considered such plans, but the broadcast was heard in occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and collaborationist Czech journalists felt obliged to respond. Rather than dealing with the allegations, the journalists condemned Ripka and the exile government for being under the influence of the Jews.116 Ripka’s broadcast reassured Frischer that the Czechoslovak government was supportive of proposals to help the remaining Jews, which was confirmed in early 1944, when Kopecký informed London about Slovak plans to renew the deportation to Poland.117 Since the temporary suspension of deportations in October 1942, the Jewish activists restlessly kept an eye out for any signs that might suggest that the Slovak authorities were about to renew the expulsions. Kopecký was warned about the plans by Oskar Neumann (1894–1981), the new chairman of the Jewish Council (Ústredňa Židov) in Bratislava. Neumann asked for Palestinian certificates and transit visas, and Kopecký proposed that the Czechoslovak government could also get the Vatican representative (Apostolic nuncio) in Bratislava to intervene.118 Frischer personally endorsed the proposals.119 Following Frischer’s interventions, Slávik, the minister of the interior, broadcast another warning over the BBC to the Slovak government.120 Furthermore, the Czechoslovak foreign ministry provided Bishop Myers with an aide-­memoire on the situation in Slovakia for the new Archbishop of Westminster, Bernard Griffin (1899– 1956).121 They praised the previous interventions by the Holy See in summer 1942,

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which, they believed, had led to the ‘temporary’ suspension of the deportations to Poland. In 1944, the Czechoslovak government concluded that the only possible way to save the Jews was by the direct intervention of the Holy See.122 Archbishop Griffin submitted the aide-­memoire to the Apostolic Delegate in London, and the protest note reached the Vatican.123 Frischer also approached the WJC in the United States with similar proposals. His correspondence led Maurice Perlzweig (1895–1985), a leader of the WJC in the United States, to intervene with the Apostolic Delegate to the United States, Amleto Giovanni Cicognani (1883–1973). The WJC was informed in several weeks that the Pope was carefully watching the situation in Slovakia and that the Catholic delegates had been assured by the Slovak authorities that the plans to deport the Jews would not be executed.124 The Slovak government did in fact plan to renew the deportations in early 1944. After the visit to Slovakia of the Reich emissary SS Gruppenführer Edmund Veesenmayer (1904–77) in late 1943, President Tiso agreed to concentrate all Slovak Jews in designated locations in preparation for deportation by 1 April 1944.125 But in late January 1944, a majority of the Slovak ministers rejected the renewal of the deportations, and the plans were shelved even before Frischer’s interventions had reached the Vatican.126 The Jewish exiles hence received reliable information about new dangers facing the Jews on the Continent. The Slovak Jewish underground groups had good connections to Switzerland, from where Ullmann and Kopecký could quickly inform London about any new developments in Slovakia. This proved to be an important channel in May and June 1944, when one of the most comprehensive reports about Nazi policies to exterminate the Jews was written in Slovakia. On 7 April 1944, two Slovak-Jewish prisoners – Walter Rosenberg (also known as Rudolf Vrba) and Alfred Wetzler – escaped from the extermination camp in AuschwitzBirkenau. They reached Slovakia, and with the help of the Slovak Jewish underground prepared a comprehensive report about the Auschwitz camp complex, usually referred to as the Vrba-Wetzler report. Another two Jewish prisoners – Czeslaw Mordowitz and Arnošt Rosin – escaped from Birkenau in late May 1944, and provided further details about recent events in the camps. The Vrba-Wetzler report was transmitted via several channels to Hungary and the Vatican, and with the help of the Czechoslovak underground to Switzerland, where it reached Kopecký and the Jewish activists. Vrba and Wetzler had spent almost two years in Auschwitz and Birkenau, and witnessed all the stages of the murderous process in this death factory. They estimated, inaccurately, that about 1,765,000 Jews had been killed in the Auschwitz camp complex between April 1942 and April 1944 (in fact the number of victims in Auschwitz reached approximately 500,000–600,000 by April 1944). The report also included significant details about the Czech-Jewish deportees in Birkenau. Vrba and Wetzler described the liquidation of the September 1943 transports to the Theresienstadt Family Camp in March 1944. They also warned about the liquidation of the transports sent to the Family Camp in December 1943, which was planned to take place, after the six-­month quarantine, on 20 June 1944.127 These details were further corroborated by reports sent by the Polish resistance in late April 1944, informing about the gassing of 3,800 (or 4,000) Jews who had been deported to Auschwitz from Theresienstadt. The Polish government published the report in

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Dziennik Polski (The Polish Daily) on 9 June 1944, under the headline ‘7,000 Czech Jews murdered in Oswiecim [Auschwitz]’.128 Frischer was informed about the content of the Polish reports almost immediately. The following meeting of the National Jewish Council debated possible responses, including interventions with President Beneš, and there were also demands for radio broadcasting to the Protectorate that would call upon the Czechs to support the Jews. Frischer, however, warned against any hasty reaction, and asked for more time to investigate the veracity of the reports.129 The accounts had been written in April, but by June he still had no similar information from other sources. He contacted the London Office of the ICRC and the Czechoslovak government, but both denied any knowledge of the events.130 Confirmation came soon. In the following days, Kopecký sent the first summary of the Vrba-Wetzler report, focusing on the warning about the planned liquidation of the Family Camp on 20 June.131 The Czechoslovak government, on 14 or 15 June 1944, released the content of the first dispatches, and the Czechoslovak Service of the BBC broadcast a warning to the Protectorate against the planned liquidation of the prisoners (even though the Protectorate authorities were not in charge of the concentration camps in the east). On 19 June 1944, the Czechoslovak State Council adopted a solemn declaration that condemned the ‘execution’ of 7,000 (in reality 3,702) Czechoslovak Jews in Auschwitz and Birkenau and threatened those who were guilty of this crime with retribution.132 Frischer in the following days informed the WJC in New York that the reports about the murder of Czech Jews in Birkenau seemed to be confirmed, but he added that any rumours about the liquidation of the Theresienstadt ghetto that had emerged at that time were incorrect.133 The revelation that Birkenau was an extermination camp shocked many Jewish activists. Leaders of the WJC in New York had, until then, believed that it was a labour camp where the prisoners had to live and work under harsh conditions, but were not systematically murdered.134 Before 20 June 1944, the Czechoslovak government continuously broadcast the warning about the planned massacre. The camp was in fact not liquidated in June, and some of the prisoners were sent to labour camps in Germany. But the approximately 6,500 remaining prisoners were gassed between 10 and 12 July 1944, which brought the mysterious existence of the Family Camp to a violent end.135 The exiles were left in the dark about the fate of the prisoners. In September 1944, Frischer enquired whether the Czechoslovak foreign ministry had any information about the mass murder the Nazis planned to commit in June and about the rumours that another group of Theresienstadt prisoners had been deported east in May 1944 (it was in fact the last part of the Family Camp).136 The foreign ministry had no information to share, and an internal report only summarized that ‘at least 7,000 Jews – but probably much more – had been deported to Birkenau’, and 4,000 of them had been murdered. Since mid-June 1944, the Czechoslovak exiles had not received any new reports. At the point when over 26,000 Jews from Theresienstadt had been sent to Birkenau, the foreign ministry could confirm the deportation of only less than a third.137 It was not until late 1944 that Ullmann received indirect evidence that at least some of the Czech deportees previously in Birkenau were alive in other camps, for example, Sachsenhausen.138 In any case, the Vrba-Wetzler report caused outrage in the Allied countries, which reached far beyond the structures of the Czechoslovak government. In late June 1944,

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Kopecký sent an extended summary of the report to London, warning that, according to the latest information, the Germans had already begun the daily deportations to Auschwitz of a total of 12,000 Jews from occupied Hungary (the Wehrmacht invaded Hungary on 19 March 1944), starting with Subcarpathian Ruthenia, Transylvania, and the Košice district of Slovakia, where 320,000 Jews used to live.139 Kopecký, together with Riegner and Ullmann, prepared six proposals, including an appeal to the Allies to threaten the German and Hungarian governments with reprisals against their nationals in Allied hands. They also asked the British and Americans to bomb the crematoria in Auschwitz and Birkenau and the railway lines connecting Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia with Poland, especially the railway bridge near Čop (Csap) in Hungary near the Slovak border.140 The Czechoslovak government shared Kopecký’s telegrams, including the proposals, with the other Allied governments, but directly endorsed only a public warning to ‘Hitler’s government, which is undoubtedly responsible [. . .] for this organized perpetration of barbarous crime’.141 On 16 July 1944, Ripka broadcast the information about the German crimes in Auschwitz and Birkenau over the Czechoslovak Service of the BBC.142 Frischer was more radical in his demands. He now believed that warnings and threats failed completely, and, ‘in view of the present circumstances, [the Jewish organizations] might succeed in moving the Allied governments to take more drastic and sufficient steps’. He specifically suggested that the major Allies, ‘possibly all three simultaneously, should threaten to raze Budapest to the ground with bombs if the deportations and extermination of Jews from Hungary should continue’. Such threats could lead to a conflict between Hungarians and Germans, which Hitler could not afford at this stage of the war.143 Frischer concurrently raised the question of a military operation against the gas chambers in Auschwitz. He believed that their destruction would be a ‘powerful token’, though he clearly had doubts about the advisability of a direct Allied attack on the camp.144 He described his position in a letter to Leon Kubowitzki, the head of the Rescue Department of the WJC: Birkenau was formerly, as other camps in Upper Silesia, a labour camp. Now it seems that the people there are being exterminated [. . .] Personally I recommended to carry out the suggestions [. . .] to bomb the railway communications between Hungary and Poland. I am however, very doubtful as to the usefulness of bombing the crematoria in these camps. I believe that in consequence of an air-­attack the Nazis would immediately order the complete extermination of the inmates, which can be carried out also in another form than up to the present, perhaps in one even more cruel. Personally I think that perhaps these camps should be bombed if the Polish Underground movement were able to organize assistance to the inmates in escaping by making use of the confusion at the time of the bombing. However, I cannot judge whether this could be reliably arranged.145

The leaders of the Jewish organizations in Britain, Palestine and the United States were not united in their views on the advisability and feasibility of a military action against Auschwitz and the railway lines.146 From mid-June 1944, various Jewish leaders beseeched the American and British governments to carry out the military operation.

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But Kubowitzki, Frischer’s main contact with the WJC in relation to rescue operations, opposed the attack. He believed that an air raid on the camps would lead to too many casualties among the prisoners and would allow the Germans to present the dead as victims of the Allied forces.147 The succession of reports that kept reaching London in the hot summer of 1944 quickly made many statements and communications obsolete. Even before Frischer received Kubowitzki’s response to the letter where he expressed doubts about the advisability of an Allied military attack on the camp, he had sent another dispatch to the WJC leader, in which he clearly and unreservedly backed such a military operation. It seems that he had succumbed to the impression that the recent rapid Soviet military advance in eastern Poland (including, for example, the Soviet liberation of the Majdanek camp in late July) could soon bring the Red Army to Upper Silesia, where the Auschwitz complex was located: I believe that destruction of gas chambers and crematoria in Oswiecim by bombing would have a certain effect now. Germans are now exhuming and burning corpses in an effort to conceal their crimes. This would be prevented by destruction of crematoria and then Germans might possibly stop further mass exterminations especially since so little time is left to them. Bombing of railway communications in this area would also be of importance and of military interest.148

Although Kubowitzki evidently opposed such a military operation, he passed the proposal to the American authorities, first to John Pehle, the director of the War Refugee Board (WRB), and then to John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary at the Ministry of War. In the letter to Pehle, Kubowitzki, however, referred to his previous communication, in which he opposed the bombing and suggested an attack by Soviet paratroopers or Polish partisans instead, and made his preference clear.149 The military operation against the camps was in the competence of the American Ministry of War, and it had already dismissed similar proposals before. In response to Frischer’s letter, McCloy wrote to Kubowitzki: After a study it became apparent that such an operation could be executed only by the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations elsewhere and would in any case be of such doubtful efficiency that it would not warrant the use of our resources. There has been considerable opinion to the effect that such an effort, even if practicable, might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans. The War Department fully appreciates the humanitarian motives which prompted the suggested operation, but for the reasons stated above it has not been felt it can or should be undertaken, at least at this time.150

Frischer repeated his appeal in mid-September 1944, emphasizing that the Allies had recently bombed fuel refineries near Birkenau. These military operations demonstrated that the Allied air forces were able to execute a military operation near the camp. Nevertheless, despite Frischer’s repeated efforts (again in November and

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December 1944 during his stay in the United States), the Americans never bombed the gas chambers or crematoria of the camps.151 Awaiting Kubowitzki’s response in August 1944, Frischer also explored the possibility of securing, with the help of the Czechoslovak government, a promise of a military operation against the camps by the Soviet and British air forces.152 Similarly, Nahum Goldmann of the WJC approached Minister Masaryk, in early July 1944, to ask President Beneš to mention the plan to bomb Auschwitz, Treblinka (in fact already dismantled in late 1943) and Birkenau in his talks with the Soviet authorities. The Czechoslovak foreign ministry was sceptical about the proposal.153 In a letter to Goldmann, Masaryk referred to the summary of the Vrba-Wetzler report, prepared by Kopecký and Jewish activists in Geneva, which had already proposed such a military operation. The Czechoslovaks shared the document with all Allied governments on 4 July 1944.154 No new or direct appeal to the major Allied powers was issued in response to Goldmann’s or Frischer’s appeals. In fact, the Czechoslovak government was quite confused about the matter at that time. Some Czechoslovak foreign ministry officials, for example, believed that the US Army Air Forces had already attempted to attack the camp.155 Historians generally agree that the rejection of proposals to bomb the camps was motivated by the profound belief of the Allied leadership that military equipment should not be used for humanitarian purposes and that the only way to save the Jewish population was by the liberation of Europe. In recent decades, the failure to bomb the camps has become a major point of contention among historians who research the Allied responses to the Holocaust. Yet, as two leading scholars of the subject, Breitman and Lichtman, remark: ‘That was not the case at that time in the United States. Even American Jewish leaders knew little about Auschwitz, and most Americans would have agreed that the military’s job was to win the war as quickly as possible.’156 Historians and journalists also often list the Czechoslovak government-­in-exile among the staunch advocates of Allied military action against the camps and railway lines. This, however, is an assumption, and incorrect. Kopecký’s summary of the Vrba-Wetzler report was the only document in which the government mentioned the proposal. All subsequent negotiations with the Allies were conducted by Frischer, who, although a member of the State Council, could not in this case be considered an envoy representing the views of the Czechoslovak government. This conclusion is supported by the fact that Frischer appealed to the American government through the WJC office in New York and the Czechoslovak government ignored his attempts to reach the British and Soviet governments. The belief that the rescue of the Jews could be achieved only by a quick military victory was shared by all major Allies. In the late spring of 1944, the Soviet military offensive brought the Red Army closer to the eastern Polish territories to which tens of thousands of Czech and Slovak Jews had been deported. Already in his early writings, in 1942, Frischer expressed concerns that the deportees would be in imminent danger during a German withdrawal from the occupied territories.157 With what he perceived to be the coming liberation, Frischer proposed to the Soviet embassy in London that the Red Army could dispatch paratroopers or partisan troops to take control of the camps shortly before the arrival of the regular troops, and protect the prisoners against any last-­ditch German attempt to massacre them or deport them to other camps.158 He

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was able to foresee the final chapter of the Holocaust, the death marches that caused such immeasurable suffering to tens of thousands of prisoners in the final months of the war.159 He made a similar appeal in January 1945, when the Soviet troops were nearing the Auschwitz camp complex.160 These appeals did not move the Soviet authorities to reconsider their military strategy. Echoing the views of the western democracies, the Soviets informed Frischer that the rescue of the Jews was possible only by means of the liberation of the occupied territories.161 The rescue of the last surviving Czech and Slovak Jews in Europe thus would come only with the arrival of the regular Allied troops. Frischer, too, gradually realized that the only hope for the Jews was to ensure that the Germans would not kill all the remaining prisoners before their ultimate military defeat. The question that he and other Jewish activists in London, Geneva, New York and Jerusalem had to ask themselves was how they personally could contribute to the survival of the last ghettos and camps for as long as possible.

Do not provoke the Nazis! By mid-1943, there were only two major centres in occupied Europe with a high concentration of Jews from former Czechoslovakia: Theresienstadt and the territories annexed by Hungary. Whereas London had almost no information about the fate of the Jews in southern Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia, they had a relatively good idea of the situation in Theresienstadt.162 They were aware that the Jewish inmates lived in very harsh conditions in the overcrowded town, but also that there were no massacres in the ghetto. The Jewish activists in Switzerland and Britain soon realized the special position Theresienstadt played in German propaganda. In response to German policies, Frischer decided to take a special approach, and argued that the exiles should accept the rules of the game and should not – in public – question the German treatment of the Theresienstadt prisoners. He believed that this was the only way that could secure the survival of the ghetto until the end of the war. In late 1943, Frischer described Theresienstadt with its at least 60,000 inmates as ‘probably the largest ghetto in Europe’.163 According to his information, there were 30,000 Czech Jews in the ghetto in mid-1943, together with another 30,000 Jews from Germany and Austria. Although 7,000 Czech Jews had been sent to Birkenau in late summer 1943, they were replaced by deportees from the Netherlands.164 Based on the reports he received, partly from the German Red Cross, Frischer stated that there was ‘a certain amount of Jewish autonomy’ in the organization of everyday life in the ghetto. Although he concluded that the ghetto was terribly overcrowded, and that people were starving and suffering from a lack of clothes, the overall description presented a reasonably bearable life for the Jews.165 At a meeting of the National Jewish Council, Frischer confirmed this perception of the situation by complaining about the hunger that ruled in the overcrowded ghetto, but at the same time stating that the inmates enjoyed relative freedom and were permitted to organize theatre and music performances.166 He also believed that the warnings issued by the Allies in December 1942 led to the improvement of the conditions in Theresienstadt.167

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Although Frischer shared the reports he received from Ullmann at meetings of Jewish organizations, he became increasingly sensitive about any publicity given to the situation in Theresienstadt. In June 1943, in the London-­based fortnightly Free Europe, Alfred Joachim Fischer, a German-Jewish émigré, published an article entitled ‘Theresienstadt – a German Alibi?’168 The article was later reprinted in the New Yorkbased magazine Aufbau, under the title ‘ “Musterghetto” Theresienstadt’. Fischer contrasted the relatively good conditions in Theresienstadt with the situation of the Jews in other territories and ghettos in occupied Poland, where ‘death sows its sad harvest’. The only explanation for the German regime in Theresienstadt, Fischer concluded, was their effort to have an alibi ready for themselves after the war. They therefore permitted the Jews to manage their affairs in the ghetto, allowed extensive contacts between the inmates and people in neutral countries, and they delivered relief parcels sent to the inmates by Western humanitarian organizations.169 Frischer was furious when he found out about the articles, and complained that if a copy of Free Europe reached the Germans, the inmates would suffer the consequences. The success of the relief parcels scheme depended also on its confidentiality. In particular, the author’s remarks that ‘Eichmann is growing nervous’ led Frischer to conclude that Fischer ‘seems not to have considered how much further harm that statement may mean for those poorest of the poor in Terezín’.170 Frischer tried to stop the distribution of that issue of Free Europe outside Britain, but he was too late.171 The situation in Frischer’s opinion became even more serious in early 1944, when Swedish and British newspapers carried reports about the German plans to destroy the Theresienstadt ghetto and send all the remaining prisoners to their deaths in Poland.172 Ullmann in Geneva also complained about these rumours, because any such reports were taken with displeasure by the Germans, who in turn accused the Theresienstadt inmates of spreading false information about the planned liquidation of the ghetto.173 After Frischer’s intervention, the Czechoslovak foreign ministry informed the press agencies to be careful when relaying unconfirmed reports about Theresienstadt.174 Significantly, the Auswärtiges Amt immediately issued a statement of denial, claiming that 25,000 ‘dwellers’ lived in Theresienstadt and had between 800 and 900 physicians at their disposal, and that only ten prisoners had been sent to eastern Poland. The reports about the liquidation of the ghetto, the Germans argued, were only part of the Allied atrocity propaganda.175 The statement confirmed that the German authorities carefully followed the reports on Theresienstadt published abroad. Frischer evidently believed that the Jewish activists needed to carefully consider any statement made on behalf of the Jews which could be read or heard by the Germans. Whilst Schwarzbart and Zygielbojm repeatedly addressed the Jewish population in Europe by means of Polish radio broadcasting, Frischer avoided any direct contact with radio listeners in occupied Europe, although he would have had access to the BBC service if he wanted.176 He summarized his perspective in a letter to Schwarzbart, in which he complained about his colleague’s previous broadcast: I am of the opinion that we must be as concerned about the Jews living under the Nazi dictatorship as about a seriously ill person. Anything that in the slightest threatens their weak thread of life must be avoided. You have – and many others

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have – in my opinion repeatedly failed to take this precaution. I have repeatedly brought it to your attention that I disagree with you on this point. Only last week, for example, I told you that I look at the announcement [broadcast?] of Yiddish radio programmes to Poland with very mixed emotions, and that I fear that little of it will reach the Jews and be of benefit to them but that carelessness could cause harm.177

Frischer’s careful approach to any public statements was resented by other Jewish activists in London, and the mutual disagreements reached their peak shortly after the German occupation of Greater Hungary. The German invasion also meant that the last of the Jews from the former Czechoslovakia, 160,000 in Subcarpathian Ruthenia and southern Slovakia, fell under German rule. Czechoslovak-Jewish activists in Britain, Switzerland and Palestine despaired. They had hoped that the large Jewish settlements in the eastern territories of Czechoslovakia would form the backbone of the post-­war Jewish community in the restored republic, or that the Zionists’ emigration to Palestine would further support the building up of the Jewish national homeland.178 In Britain, the occupation of Hungary led to the frenzied activity of Jewish organizations, whose members quickly recognized the real danger now facing the almost 800,000 Jews there. The British Section of the WJC and the Board of Deputies immediately arranged meetings with the British government officials and urged the Allies to issue stern warnings to the Germans and Hungarians.179 Frischer opposed these hasty reactions, partly because he had been left out of the decision-­making process despite his being a representative of the ‘Czechoslovak’ Jews now under German occupation. He recommended that the WJC ‘wait some two or three days until the situation would be more clear’: I have always been an opponent of the lightning methods [and] ‘hectic activities’ [. . .] when the life of hundreds of thousands of Jews is at stake. In such moments not a hysterical reaction but an attitude of responsibility should prevail. [. . .] Initiating broadcasts without having an idea what should be said is a real danger. The Foreign Office, President Beneš, Minister Dr. Ripka have repeatedly warned us against such tactics. We must not create a situation by which 1. the Germans should feel provoked to show their strength against a certain propaganda from outside on the helpless Jews. 2. We must not predict [sic, provoke?] a situation so that the Germans have nothing to lose by creating such a situation (which are President Beneš’s exact words).180

Frischer did not automatically reject the efforts to get the Allies to make public warnings and declarations, but he believed that the Jewish activists should use them ‘very carefully’.181 This clash of opinions, however, further escalated the conflict between Frischer on one side and the British Section of the WJC on the other.182 During the critical year of 1944, when reports about the massacres in Eastern Europe continued to pour in to London, Frischer engaged in lengthy, wearying and, ultimately, pointless personal conflicts.183 Regardless of the approaching end of the war, the situation in the former Czechoslovakia further worsened in the course of 1944. The warnings and interventions

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of the Allied statesmen in March did not forestall the rapid organization of deportations from Hungary to Auschwitz. The Jews in the provinces, including southern Slovakia and Ruthenia, had been among the first victims of Eichmann’s machinery and most of them died in the camp. In late August 1944, the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising led to the quick occupation of Slovakia by German troops. In the last months of 1944, almost 13,500 Jews were deported to the camps and several thousand were murdered during the suppression of the Uprising.184 When the information about the German plans in Slovakia reached London from Switzerland, Frischer pleaded with the Czechoslovak government to ask the neutral governments (Sweden and Switzerland), the Vatican and the Red Cross to help the Jews. The Czechoslovak government did so, but only half-­heartedly, particularly because of their unwillingness to initiate – even indirect – diplomatic negotiations with the renegade Tiso government.185 In any case, in contrast with the preceding period, the deportations were in the hands of the German authorities and the appeals to the Slovak government could not save the Jews. Only the arrival of the Red Army in the spring of 1945 brought liberation to the last remnants of the Slovak-Jewish community. Theresienstadt remained one of the few places in Nazi Europe where large numbers of Jews were concentrated.186 As mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, in late June 1944, the Germans allowed a delegation of the Red Cross to visit the ghetto. The delegates subsequently prepared two separate reports in which they presented the ghetto as a ‘last stop’ from where the prisoners were not deported further to the east. They also praised the Jewish self-­administration for providing for all the needs of the inmates.187 Ullmann, who conferred with Rossel, the Swiss delegate, immediately warned Frischer that the reports presented an unrealistic image of the camp and should not be believed. As we have seen, the activists had previously obtained reliable reports that tens of thousands of the Jews had already been deported from Theresienstadt to Birkenau and other camps.188 Although Frischer repeatedly warned against any publicity given to the German treatment of the Jews in Theresienstadt, he was aware of the uncertainty facing the inmates in the last months of the war and tried to secure help through secret channels. In mid-August 1944, he together with Ullmann explored the possibilities of initiating an exchange of Theresienstadt prisoners who held Palestinian certificates for German civilians held in Allied countries. Frischer expressed displeasure that so far ‘none of the proposed rescue actions took Czechoslovak Jews into consideration, particularly as regards those in Terezín’.189 The British and American governments were quick to reject the official enquiry made by the Czechoslovak foreign ministry.190 Nevertheless, Frischer, right up until the end of the war, did not abandon the idea that at least some of the Theresienstadt inmates could be rescued. In November and December 1944 in the United States, he had several meetings with American politicians, including Sol Bloom, the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Adolph Sabath, a Congressman, Fiorello La Guardia, the mayor of New York, and representatives of the WRB.191 During the meetings, he returned to the question of including the Jews of Theresienstadt in the prepared prisoners’ exchange negotiated between the Americans and the Germans. He warned the American politicians that the Theresienstadt prisoners were ‘in great danger, because the Nazis will probably want to consider them

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material to be exchanged for themselves’. No one knew what to recommend if such a situation arose. It was unlikely that the Allies would accept such conditions and Frischer worried that the ghetto inmates would most likely be left to their fate.192 At a meeting with George L. Warren, a State Department adviser on refugees and displaced persons, Frischer offered to compile a list of 100 Theresienstadt inmates who should be given priority in any exchange scheme with the Germans. After returning to London, he prepared the list in collaboration with Czechoslovak-Jewish social activists. Though the list has not been found, it seems, from comments Frischer made, that it contained the names of prominent leaders and social activists in the ghetto – Czechs, Austrians and Germans – with thirty-­six names considered to be the most urgent cases (we are unfortunately not able to ascertain whether the list contained the names of relatives and friends of the exile activists).193 He also tried to arrange another Red Cross visit to Theresienstadt, as a reminder to the Germans that the international community was keeping a close watch on the ghetto.194 Soon afterwards, on 7 February 1945, 1,210 Jews from Theresienstadt arrived in Switzerland. Frischer immediately rejoiced that his appeals to the American government were successful. But he soon realized that there were only ninety-­seven Czech Jews in the transport (consisting mostly of Dutch Jews), which had been the result of private negotiations between Jean-Marie Musy, the former president of Switzerland, and Himmler. The talks were initiated by Orthodox Jewish organizations and had no direct relation to Frischer’s activities in the United States.195 None of the leading Zionists, who had in any case been deported to Auschwitz several months before, or Frischer’s relatives and friends were in the transport. In late 1944, as Frischer tried to negotiate an exchange scheme, Ullmann received reports about new deportations from Theresienstadt to labour camps, which also stated that only children and the elderly now remained in the ghetto. In several weeks, he was able to establish that about 18,000 Jews had been deported in recent months (a very precise estimate), but he told Frischer not to conclude that the deportations meant the final liquidation of Theresienstadt (in reality, only approximately 11,000 Jews remained in the ghetto).196 The information about renewed deportations from Theresienstadt arrived when the first detailed reports about the situation in liberated Poland reached London. Small groups of Czechoslovak Jews had been found in the Lublin district and, later, in Częstochowa and Łódź, but otherwise none of the tens of thousands of deportees were found alive.197 In the end, Theresienstadt was the only ghetto in Nazi Europe that survived until the liberation. Of the more than 150,000 Jews who had entered its gates, 88,000 were sent to the east and almost 35,000 died within its walls. But over 30,000 (including many recent concentration-­camp evacuees) lived to be liberated by the Red Army on 8 May 1945. Frischer’s efforts to ensure the survival of the ghetto inmates or to secure their rescue were also clearly driven by personal motivations. In the summer of 1943, Frischer found out that Lilli and Hanna Skutezky were deported to Theresienstadt and he immediately requested that the parcels, up to that point sent to their Prague address, were diverted to the ghetto.198 In the following years Frischer and Skutezky exchanged very brief notes with Ullmann as the go-­between. In Theresienstadt, she was in permanent contact with Frischer’s sister Wilma. Lilli knew that Frischer was in London, though it is not clear whether she was aware of his appointment. Frischer was very

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Figure 10  Postcard sent by Lilli Skutezky from Theresienstadt to Fritz Ullmann in 1944. careful not to reveal his prominent position in correspondence that had to pass through the German censors (Ullmann only secretly informed Zucker, member of the Jewish Council and Frischer’s pre-­war deputy from the Jewish Party, about Frischer’s renewed political activities).199 The collaborationist Czech journalists in the Protectorate found out about his role in the Beneš administration only in the second half of 1944. They subsequently published a series of articles in the weekly Árijský boj (The Aryan Struggle), attacking the Jew in the exile government who was preparing to return to Czechoslovakia, but the news most likely did not reach the ghetto.200 Already during the war, Frischer decided not to return to his wife Heřmína, and chose instead to start a new life with Skutezky. Heřmína reproached him for helping Lilli, which further contributed to Frischer’s bitterness towards his wife. He expressed his personal feelings in a letter to Zajitschkova: In no circumstances should hatred go so far – for the simple reason that it was me who saved her [Heřmína] and made arrangements for her life, and though perhaps not a joyful life, at least one that was decent and safe – and I did that even though I was sacrificing someone who was very close to me, or at least leading them into extreme danger and unimaginable distress. You know whom I mean. [. . .] [If], God willing, she survives, I will not abandon her, even if she is sick or has aged – I have to acknowledge the joy that she brought into my life and the pains that she suffered in return. I am linked to her and would not forget her even if she were no longer here. It would be dreadful for me, a life-­threatening shock.201

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Frischer is sometimes criticized for allegedly accepting the propaganda strategy of the Czechoslovak government-­in-exile, which tried to avoid giving prominence to the fate of the Jews. He is also accused of publicly painting a rosy picture of Jewish life under the Nazis, even though he allegedly had access, relatively early, to secret intelligence reports about the Nazi extermination campaign.202 The available evidence, however, suggests that although Frischer did not publicly question the Nazi treatment of the Jews in Theresienstadt, he privately cautioned against any optimism and consistently appealed to the Allies to save at least the most endangered groups of prisoners. He also believed that the success of the relief parcel scheme to the ghetto was contingent on the activists’ willingness to accept the Nazi propaganda game with Theresienstadt. He was driven in his efforts by personal motivations to save his lover and her child, as well as the family of his sister Wilma. He chose a particular strategy and believed that it best served the interests of the persecuted Jews. The activists, he argued, ought not to provoke the Nazis and should simply hope that remnants of the communities would be able to survive until the liberation by the Allied armies. Theresienstadt survived, but it would be unfair to claim that the ghetto was not liquidated due to the efforts of the London and Geneva-­ based activists. The ghetto prisoners played the role of a bargaining chip in the negotiations between the SS leaders and the Western Allies. With the inevitability of the military defeat, Himmler tried to secure the withdrawal of the Western Allies from the war, and used Theresienstadt in the negotiations.203 Luckily enough, it also meant that tens of thousands of Jews survived the war. The Jewish activists in London worked under difficult conditions. Schwarzbart, in July 1943, visited the office of the National Committee for Rescue from Nazi Terror, the main organization of British activists who explored possible ways to help the European Jews. He was shocked by the rudimentary conditions of their offices: ‘In the house of the publisher Gollancz, in a little room with deteriorating walls, sit three men preparing files about the rescue of Jews from Hitler’s clutches. [. . .] This is the picture of the bureau which is supposed to save millions of Jews: a rotten little room with three people keeping records’.204 Frischer could not rely on any extensive apparatus either, though his income from the State Council and funds provided by Jewish émigrés in Britain allowed him to employ at least a private administrative assistant.205 That said, the activists in London and Switzerland, including Frischer, worked tirelessly on the initiation of the relief parcel scheme and other rescue initiatives. This was an entirely new type of politics for the Jewish activists. The readiness of their governments to support rescue initiatives shaped the activists’ views on the post-­war reconstruction of the Jewish communities in liberated Europe. On 26 October 1944, Schwarzbart wrote in his diary: ‘Let’s get divorced from Poland.’206 He was outraged by what he perceived as the inadequate response of the Polish government-­in-exile and the home resistance to the greatest catastrophe that had ever befallen the Jewish people. There was no future for the Jews in a country that did not protect them against the Nazi racial onslaught. Schwarzbart’s criticism was part of the larger struggle of the Jewish activists during the war to persuade the Polish government to address the problematic Polish-Jewish relations in occupied Poland, as well as among the exiles.207

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Although the final balance of the German policies in Czechoslovakia was also devastating, Frischer believed that the Czechoslovak exiles were attempting to alleviate the plight of the Jews and that the main parties to blame were the Germans, as the initiators of the extermination campaign, and the major Allied powers, who put obstacles in the way of rescue.208 Unlike Schwarzbart, Frischer believed that the Jews had a future in liberated Europe. In March 1945, full of concern about the fate of his relatives and friends, he set out on the journey back to Czechoslovakia.

7

Squaring the Circle: Diaspora Politics in Post-War Czechoslovakia

It is really hard to be a Jew. Schwarzbart to Frischer, 30 November 19451 God has dealt us a hard blow. He has reprimanded us too harshly. Those who were granted survival, who were saved from the deluge of blood on the mountain of life now bear the responsibilty to rebuild Jewish life. Frischer, 1 September 19452 In the early spring of 1945, Frischer was preparing for his return to Czechoslovakia. Units of the Red Army had already liberated most of Slovak territory. Beneš and the leading members of his exile government left London and flew to Moscow for negotiations with the Czechoslovak Communist exiles. The negotiations were concluded with an agreement whereby the leaders of the Western and Communist exiles formed a government of the National Front, under the newly appointed Prime Minister Zdeněk Fierlinger (1891–1976), a Social Democrat and until then the Czechoslovak ambassador in Moscow. The state bureaucracy in London was wound up, and the State Council was disbanded. Nevertheless, Frischer still enjoyed privileges reserved for the former members of the exile administration and travelled to Slovakia in the second group of Czechoslovak Western exiles who left London in late March 1945. Shortly before his departure, Frischer convened a farewell reception, where he outlined his plans for the reconstitution of Jewish life in Czechoslovakia. He told his audience that the Jews needed to understand the changed internal circumstances in Czechoslovakia. He anticipated that the post-­war rise of Czech and Slovak nationalism would negatively affect the lives of the Jews. He hoped, however, that the economically ruined Jews would be able to seize the opportunities emerging after the planned transfer of the German and Hungarian minorities, and also benefit from the introduction of a more socialistic economy and political system in the country. Simultaneously, the Jews, he argued, should insist on the restitution of their own property, at least to a degree that would not clash with the nationalization programme. The Jews should demand to be treated as equals of the majority population and have their civil, religious, cultural and social rights guaranteed.3 At the reception, Frischer

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was optimistic about the Jewish survivors’ future in Czechoslovakia. He praised the Czechoslovak exile authorities for their cooperation with him during the war, and also promised to the future government that the Jews would now loyally join the Czechs and Slovaks in the reconstruction of their homeland.4 He personally, in a private letter, expressed hope for a quiet life, and wanted to revive his construction company as a private person in Moravská Ostrava.5 Not fully able to comprehend the murderous dimension of the Nazi extermination campaign, he believed that Jewish activists, who had led the community in the Protectorate during the war, and those who had survived in hiding, would now assume responsibility for future communal affairs.6 Frischer travelled by ship to Istanbul and then, via the Soviet Union, to liberated Slovakia. He temporarily settled in the eastern Slovak city of Košice, the provisional seat of the Czechoslovak government. Frischer soon re-­established contacts with SlovakJewish groups in Košice, Prešov and Bratislava, and gave public speeches in several Slovak cities and towns. As someone who still had access to the president and cabinet ministers, Frischer became an unofficial spokesman of Jewish survivors. In mid-May 1945, after the Czechoslovak president Beneš and government, Frischer arrived in Prague, desperate to find out whether any of his relations had survived.7 Earlier, while still in Košice, Frischer received a report that Lilli and Hanna Skutezky had been sent to Auschwitz in the autumn of 1944. He despaired, because the chances were slim that a mother with a small daughter would survive there. Yet the report proved to be false. Shortly after arriving in Prague, Frischer received a letter from Lilli, who was still in Theresienstadt.8 Her daughter, Frischer learnt, had also survived the Shoah. In a letter to Zajitschkova, Frischer expressed his great relief to have found both Lilli and Hanna alive and the happiness that filled his life when all three moved into his new four-­bedroom flat in the Prague district of Vinohrady, previously owned by a Prague German family: [In Theresienstadt] I thus found her, on the whole not much changed from when I parted with her four and half years before that [. . .] You know very well what that means to me. [. . .] You, who know how I love small children, and like to watch them and bring them up, will understand what it means to me to have a little nine-­ year-­old girl with me – she is a well-­developed child, with a sweet face, and she is bright.9

Zajitschkova, like some of Frischer’s other correspondents, also expressed her joy that Frischer had been able to reunite with Lilli, that he had ‘found the one so dear to [his] heart’.10 Regardless of this moment of happiness, the Nazi extermination campaign heavily affected Frischer’s and Skutezky’s families. Frischer’s elderly mother, Augustine, died in 1941, before the deportation, but his sister, Wilma Bloch, was gassed in AuschwitzBirkenau in October 1944. Marianne (1917–2005), his 28-year-­old niece, was the only survivor from the Bloch family. She was imprisoned, together with her brother Jindřich, for activities in the Communist underground, and spent almost four years in Nazi prisons and camps, including Auschwitz. Jindřich died, allegedly, as a slave labourer

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removing rubble from the destroyed Warsaw ghetto. Marianne returned to Brno after the war, but was not a member of the religious community and pursued a career in the Communist Party.11 Lilli and Hanna Skutezky were the sole survivors from their family. The only additional survivors from Frischer’s extended family were the father of his son-­in-law, Isaak Buchsbaum, and Frischer’s brother-­in-law Otto Rufeisen, both of whom returned from the Soviet Union to Ostrava in 1945.12 The result of the Nazi policies against the rest of the Jewish population was equally devastating. The Jewish community in Czechoslovakia immediately after the war was less than 15 per cent of what it had been before the war. Fewer than 25,000 Jews (including 8,500 repatriates from Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia) now lived in the Bohemian Lands, and about 30,000 Jews lived in Slovakia.13 Frischer’s hopes for a quiet, private life were not fulfilled. In Prague, he learned that the wartime Czech-Jewish and Czech-Zionist leadership had been almost totally wiped out. Edelstein had been deported to Auschwitz in December 1943 and executed, together with his family, in June 1944. The Nazis murdered the remaining Jewish leaders, including Weidmann, Zucker, Steiner, Kahn and Krämer in the autumn of 1944 upon their arrival in Birkenau. Only the Zionist Friedmann, protected against the deportation by his ‘Aryan’ wife, stayed in Prague and lived to see the liberation. Not even fifty, but in poor health, he died almost three weeks after the end of the war, on 28 May 1945. Other pre-­war leaders of the Czechoslovak Jews – Goldstein, Kugel, März and Rufeisen – remained permanently in Palestine.14 The lack of experienced and recognized Jewish leadership in the Bohemian Lands, in contrast to Slovakia, convinced Frischer to change his retirement plans. Indeed, the next thirty months constituted the peak of his political activities as the leader of the community. He pursued his vision that the Jewish minority would be able to exist in Czechoslovakia as a politically and nationally reliable group, and that it would be possible to find ways to continue in nationally Jewish politics. In these efforts, the Jewish activists faced new challenges caused by the national radicalization and impoverishment of the Czech society after six years of war and occupation.

The reconstruction of Jewish life in Bohemia and Moravia In May 1945, on his way from Košice to Prague, Frischer stopped in Brno, where he had grown up and attended university. Here, he was directly confronted with the sight of the survivors returning from concentration camps: streams of people dying of starvation, who were just skin and bones, dragging themselves along in their striped prison jackets and trousers [. . .] these poor wretches trudged along under their various loads, [. . .] day and night, they lay in stations on the tracks, till finally, repeatedly risking their lives, they got on a train that took them a bit further. [. . .] At first we were optimistic. This person or that came back, so why shouldn’t my brother, my sister my wife, our boy? But soon the stream dried up. What we considered the vanguard was not followed by the main guard.15

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Once he settled in Prague, Frischer visited the former Theresienstadt ghetto on four occasions, and witnessed first-­hand the physical state of the survivors in the town stricken by a typhus epidemic. Most of the survivors in Bohemia and Moravia were destitute and needed immediate medical attention and social support. They also began to search for any surviving relatives, and the Jewish community institutions were their first point of reference. When Frischer arrived in Prague in mid-May 1945, the previous Jewish community structures were in ruins. The Jewish Council of Elders (Ältestenrat der Juden in Prag), which had functioned in the last years of the occupation, was disbanded and a new National Committee for the Liquidation of the Council of Jewish Elders was headed mostly by assimilated Jews in mixed marriages. They established the first social services for repatriates, but also aimed to work on the liquidation of the Jewish question in the country through a full integration, even assimilation of the survivors. They believed that the Jews should not form any separate group in the society and that regardless of their specific fate during the war, they should not articulate any particular demands in post-­war Czechoslovakia.16 Hence it was unlikely that they would be able to establish any close collaboration with Frischer and other representatives of the Jewish nationalist camp. Rabbi Hanuš Rezek (born Rebenwurzel, 1902–48), who attended the first meeting Frischer organized with the members of the National Committee, even asserted that the main reason why people who otherwise had nothing in common with Judaism were interested in Jewish public affairs was the immense amount of Jewish property left behind by the Germans, which the disbanded Jewish Council of Elders had administered.17 Also Frischer privately noted that one of his first tasks in Prague was to make sure that the Jewish Community would get access to the communal property taken over in the first days after the liberation by the National Committee. Not surprisingly, the meeting was held in a stormy atmosphere, and Frischer was unable to establish any close cooperation with members of the National Committee.18 Immediately after his return to Prague, Frischer recognized the need to create a new central organization to coordinate the distribution of social assistance for the repatriates and to establish a more representative Jewish community structure in Bohemia and Moravia.19 On 29 May 1945, he convened the first meeting of the Prague ‘Kehilah’, and created a Steering Committee of the Prague Jewish Community, which coordinated affairs until the elections of a new Prague leadership. In the transitory period the Prague Community organized the establishment of Jewish community organizations in other localities across Bohemia and Moravia.20 Eventually, fifty-­three local Jewish community bodies in Bohemia and Moravia came into being.21 The Prague Steering Committee soon received the official recognition of the Ministry of Education and Enlightenment, as the representatives of the Jews in the Bohemian Lands, and replaced the above-­mentioned National Committee.22 Representatives of the re-­established Jewish Communities, including Frischer, were also later, in November 1945, invited by the Ministry of Job Security and Social Welfare to join a new National Administration to deal with the Jewish communal property administered during the war by the Jewish Council of Elders in Prague.23 The tasks of the Jewish Communities after the liberation dramatically changed in comparison with pre-1939. Before the occupation, the Jewish Communities had

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focused purely on religious and charitable activities.24 After the liberation, it became evident that these institutions would have to extend their field of activities far beyond the pre-1939 status. These effectively remained the only functioning Jewish organizational structures in Bohemia and Moravia. Apart from religious services, therefore, they had to look into the physical, social and economic recuperation of the survivors and repatriates, negotiate with the Czechoslovak authorities about the restitution of Community property and property owned by individual Jews, provide the survivors with legal advice, run the registration of the Jews, and answer enquiries from all over the world about the fate of thousands of individuals. Since the Jewish Party was not re-­established, the new Jewish Community also became the political body that claimed to represent the Jews in the Bohemian Lands. The Slovak-Jewish community had their own religious and political organizations that developed separately and were not subordinated to the Community in Prague. Similar to the situation before the war and in exile, several ideological groups could claim the leadership of the Jewish Community.25 In Prague, they decided to work together and joined the Steering Committee of the Prague Jewish Community.26 Apparently, war and persecution revived the sense of belonging to the Jewish community even among people who before the war had been almost entirely assimilated. The need to re-­establish the Community and especially to facilitate social services for everyone affected by Nazi racial policies blurred the borders between otherwise conflicting ideological groups, such as the Orthodox (Agudists), the Assimilationists (a distinct group from those who after the liberation of Prague led the abovementioned National Committee), and the Zionists.27 Representatives of the Zionist groups sat on the same board as ardent Assimilationists who addressed the meetings with speeches about the need not only to talk in Czech, but also ‘to think and feel Czech’.28 By contrast, community affairs in post-­war Slovakia remained firmly in the hands of the Zionist leadership, for example, Rabbi Armin Frieder (1911–46), Emanuel Frieder (1913–95), Oskar Neumann (1894–1981) and Vojtech Winterstein (1903–70).29 Less than four months after the liberation, the Prague Jewish Community organized a general meeting of all Bohemian and Moravian Communities which, in early September 1945, elected the Council of the Jewish Communities in Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia (Rada židovských náboženských obcí v zemích České a Moravskoslezské – hereafter ‘the Council’), an umbrella organization representing the Jews in the Bohemian Lands. Frischer was unanimously elected its chairman. He was the only politically experienced member of the Community who could rely on his previous relations with the Czechoslovak authorities. His opponents from London either did not return to Czechoslovakia (for example, Zelmanovits) or joined the Czechoslovak civil service, like Rosenberg.30 Frischer’s team in the Council was thus eventually put together mostly from activists who had survived the war in occupied Europe. The new chairman could rely on the skills and enthusiasm of a whole range of young colleagues. From the Zionist camp, Kurt Wehle (1907–95), a young lawyer from Jablonec nad Nisou, took the position of the General Secretary of the Council. Before the war, Wehle had practised law in Prague. He had been deported to Theresienstadt in 1943 and later survived the

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Theresienstadt Family Camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau and the concentration camp in Schwarzheide. He joined in community work immediately after his return to Prague. During the next two years or so, he proved himself a tireless fighter for the rights of the Jewish survivors, using his legal skills in negotiations with the Czechoslovak authorities. The Assimilationist camp was represented in the Council by activists coming from both the older and the younger generation of the Czech-Jewish movement. Julius Lederer (1871–1956), a nearly 75-year-old veteran of Jewish politics in Bohemia and Moravia, figured rather as a symbol of the Assimilationist movement, who did not actively partake in the Jewish Community affairs.31 The position of the actual leader of the Assimilationist camp was assumed by František Fuchs (1905–81), an active member of the Social Democratic Party. Fuchs had trained as a construction engineer, and before being deported to Theresienstadt had worked for the Prague Jewish Community. After Frischer’s election to the Council, the chairmanship of the Prague Jewish Community was taken over by the lawyer Karel Stein (1906–61), another representative of the Zionist camp. During the occupation, until he was deported to Theresienstadt and then to the east, Stein had led the provincial department (venkovské oddělení) of the Prague Jewish Community.32 The establishment of a united Jewish Community organization and the equal representation of the Zionists and Assimilationists signified a fundamental shift in the Jewish politics of Bohemia and Moravia. The western Jewish organizations criticized this shift towards closer cooperation with the Assimilationist movement and at the same time appealed to Frischer that the Council ought to cooperate with international Jewish bodies and join the ranks of the World Jewish Congress, a pro-Zionist agency. Yet Frischer was unwilling to jeopardize cooperation with the Assimilationists, who opposed joining an international organization with a clearly Jewish nationalist agenda. In particular, he soon realized the difficult situation the Zionists faced in Bohemia and Moravia. Many Zionists had managed to escape from the country before the Nazis closed the borders, and most of those who had remained perished during the war. The Zionist headquarters were moved to Bratislava, and the leadership remained in the hands of the Slovak Zionists (Oskar Krasňanský). The Czech-Jewish community after the war consisted disproportionately of Jews who lived in mixed marriages and people that Frischer labelled as living ‘on the periphery of Jewish life’.33 There was also a large group of repatriates from Ruthenia, who decided to settle in Bohemia and Moravia after the easternmost province was ceded in late June 1945 to the Soviet Union, amongst whom were many Zionists. Coming from the shtetls in the east, these people were, however, often perceived as an alien element, even by the local Jews, and were never really integrated into the post-­war Jewish community. Frischer therefore believed that even the parity in the Council between Zionists and Assimilationists was an achievement for the former. He was unwilling to cause a rift with the Fuchs group and stressed the need for cooperation across ideological boundaries: ‘[I]f we were not united, our struggle for securing appropriate conditions of life would be even harder than it is now. We have to concede that our companions in the Council are behaving very fairly.’34 The WJC increased its pressure on Frischer in the following months, and suggested that his decision not to join the WJC led to the ‘danger of isolation from the rest of the

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Jewish world’.35 However, Frischer did not try to push the proposed affiliation with the WJC through the vote in the Council. It is also evident that his own so-­often-articulated reservations about the interference of Western Jewish groups in what he considered internal Czechoslovak affairs played a key role. Whereas the Slovak-Jewish groups joined the WJC soon after the liberation, it was only in early 1948, shortly after the partition plans of Palestine were approved by the United Nations, when the Assimilationists in Bohemia and Moravia agreed to the affiliation of the Council with the WJC.36 The close cooperation of the Jewish groups in Bohemia and Moravia was fundamental for the successful rehabilitation of the survivors. The Council agenda was constantly increasing, and the number of tasks that the initially small administration had to tackle soon surpassed their limited powers. From the first days after the liberation, there were hundreds of letters coming from overseas enquiring about the fate of the family members and friends that bombarded the newly opened offices and took up the majority of the administration’s time. The Council only gradually created a functioning administration system that effectively dealt with the correspondence. In two years, between November 1945 and October 1947, the Council received 125,000 letters and telegrams, and dispatched 75,000 letters and 4,000 telegrams.37 Another problem that troubled the Council was a lack of financial resources. Frischer praised the initial response of the Czech society to the returning survivors. They received extra food from the local population and in hospitals, and were allocated new flats (mostly after expelled Germans, though often large groups of survivors had to share one apartment).38 However, such help did not last long and the Jewish Community had to search for other sources. Because they did not have any available assets and the survivors could not contribute to the social funds, the efforts of the Council were entirely dependent on western humanitarian organizations, in particular the Joint. In April 1945, shortly after his arrival in Košice, Frischer had already contacted the Joint headquarters and invited their representatives to join him in Prague as soon as possible after the forthcoming liberation.39 Between 1945 and 1948, the Joint remained the main sponsor of all Council activities, including its social services.40 In 1946, the Council was successful in obtaining 60 million Czech crowns from the Czechoslovak government, a part of the so-­called ‘Theresienstadt Estate’ (Terezínská podstata – the clothes or money left behind by Jews who had been deported from the Protectorate during the war), but even these funds were not sufficient from a long-­term perspective.41 Social services for the survivors soon took up most of the Council agenda. Contrary to previous practice, the Council decided to look after the interests of all whom the Nazis had said were of Jewish origin. They therefore also supported, at least temporarily, so-­called ‘B-Jews’, people whom the Nazis had racially defined as Jews, but who had no affiliation with the religious community.42 The Council was thus most likely the only organization in Czechoslovakia (at least officially) that seemed to use ‘racial criteria’ in its work. The Czechoslovak State rejected any such categorization of its citizens, and introduced a general social system that supported all the victims of Nazism equally. It soon became evident, however, that Jewish needs were different in nature from those of the rest of the population, especially because most of the survivors could not count on

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any support from their relatives, most of whom had been killed during the war.43 The Council repeatedly urged the authorities that special care for the Jewish survivors would be the only just approach to rectify the impact of Nazi persecution. Yet all their appeals were to no avail, and the Council had to keep supporting the survivors, whose needs exceeded the help provided by the general welfare system, or who for various reasons were ineligible for state support. The social department of the Council saw to the health of the survivors (many of whom were infected with tuberculosis), and established old-­age homes, orphanages and recreation centres for young people. To the survivors, they distributed clothes and other appliances from the confiscated Jewish property left behind by the Germans (but they had to donate 40 per cent to the State for general rehabilitation purposes). They also supported the survivors with immediate financial help and provided monthly subsidies to those unable to sustain themselves.44 Furthermore, the community could count on relief parcels that kept arriving from Switzerland, Sweden and the United States.45 Last but not least, the Council looked after the religious needs of the survivors, though they had to cope with a lack of experienced rabbis, a problem that was solved only in 1947, when Rabbi Gustav Sicher (1880–1960) returned from Palestine to take up the office of the Chief Rabbi of Bohemia. The initial repatriation and rehabilitation of the Jews was progressing well, and in May 1946 Frischer stated that most of the Jews in the Bohemian Lands no longer needed any support from the Community. Nevertheless, more than a year after the liberation, in October 1946, the Prague Jewish Community was still supporting 928 people who were unable to make ends meet on their own.46 Although he admitted that the situation was far from ideal, the position of the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia, Frischer claimed, was much better than in Slovakia.47 It was an achievement of the Jewish activists that most of the survivors were able to re-­establish themselves surprisingly quickly. Yet, soon after the liberation, it became evident that social care would be only one part of the Council efforts to restore Jewish life in the country. They soon faced other challenges, coming from the State administration, and had to fight hard for the basic civil rights of the Jews in liberated Czechoslovakia.

‘Maintaining the legal system’ On 20 March 1947, at the peak of one of the worst crises facing the Jews in post-­war Czechoslovakia, the community leadership met with President Beneš. After he had listened to the grievances presented by the delegation headed by Frischer and Winterstein (a leader of the Slovak Jews), Beneš admitted that there had been problems with the restoration of Jewish life in Czechoslovakia, but that both Jews and non-Jews should not waver in their determination to maintain the legal system established by the new regime. All their efforts, he said, should lead to the normalization of life in Czechoslovakia.48 Beneš’s following words that the new regime should not differentiate between Jews and non-Jews had to sound bitter to the Jewish delegation, for they, after all, had spent the previous two years fighting precisely for the basic citizenship rights of the Jews in Czechoslovakia and were well aware that the fight was not over.

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Figure 11  Frischer’s meeting with President Beneš, at Prague Castle, 1947.

Much has been written about post-­war antisemitism in Europe, especially in Poland, but the situation in Czechoslovakia differed slightly.49 Czechoslovakia, and Bohemia and Moravia in particular, was not a country of crude, violent or physical antisemitism, or of mass pogroms. With minor exceptions (of frightening character) in Slovakia, the main obstacles encountered by the Jewish survivors in the country were of a bureaucratic nature.50 The Council systematically fought against any injustice against the Jews and frequently appealed to the government to speed up the implementation of democratic changes in the whole territory of Czechoslovakia.51 They also attempted to secure a place in Czechoslovakia even for the Jews who were not willing to assimilate completely into the Czech and Slovak nations. The activists constantly negotiated with the leading politicians, as well as low-­level bureaucrats. At Frischer’s initiative, the Council renewed the publication of Věstník, eventually a fortnightly, which became a mouthpiece of the Community that publicly debated some of the most pressing issues faced by the Jews after the war.

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In Bohemia and Moravia, the Council had to focus on several contentious matters that had affected the lives of individual Jews. The main task proved to be the efforts to secure the citizenship rights of the Jews who before the war had not declared Czechoslovak nationality. Post-­war Czechoslovakia pursued a programme of the ethnic homogenization of the Republic, especially the complete eradication of the German and Hungarian cultures, if not minorities from Czechoslovakia. The transfer of the German minority was confirmed by the Great Powers at the Potsdam Conference, but a spontaneous transfer, that is, the violent removal or deportation of the German minority – accompanied by thousands of deaths – had already begun.52 The legal framework for the expulsion was provided by the Decrees of the President of the Republic – namely, Constitutional Decree No.  33/1945Sb. about the citizenship of former Czechoslovak citizens of German and Hungarian nationality. Individuals’ identities were established retrospectively, based on their declarations in the 1930 census. The Czechoslovak legislation explicitly guaranteed full civil rights only to people who were of Czech or Slovak (or other Slav) nationality. Fundamentally, the Constitutional decrees (the transitional legislation) provided no central directive for how local authorities should deal with the citizenship applications of people who had declared Jewish nationality in 1930, or whether people of Jewish nationality even needed to apply for confirmation of their ‘national reliability’ and citizenship. In spring 1945, while in Slovakia, Frischer encountered the first cases of individual survivors who had to fight endless battles with the State bureaucracy in order to regain their civil rights and property.53 Rabbi Rezek, during his trip to Moravia in early July 1945, documented cases in Brno, in which National Committees, the new local revolutionary administrations, were marking the corners of documents ruling on the national reliability of the Jews with the note ‘Non-Aryan’. This meant that these persons’ subsequent applications for property were either ignored or rejected. In Olomouc, people who had in 1930 declared Jewish nationality had to prove that they used Czech at home if they wanted to receive the same rights as the non-Jewish Czech-­associated population.54 These individual excesses were soon superseded by systematic bureaucratic persecution of selected, often vaguely defined, groups of Jewish survivors, for example the Jews who were associated with non-Slav cultures. There was a whole range of other pressing matters that consumed much of the Council’s time and energy. Another group of Jews facing uncertainty about their future in the country consisted of repatriates from Subcarpathian Ruthenia who had settled in Bohemia and Moravia after the war. The Czechoslovak-Soviet agreement – by which the province was ceded to the Soviet Union – stipulated that only those people who had declared Czechoslovak nationality in 1930 (and later, based on a directive issued by the Czechoslovak government on 24 August 1945, also those who during the war had served in the Czechoslovak army even if they had declared Ukrainian or Rusyn nationality, and their family members) were allowed to opt to remain in Czechoslovakia. Since almost 90 per cent of the Jews of Subcarpathian Ruthenia had declared Jewish nationality in 1930 (and neither the original agreement nor the subsequent directive mentioned Jewish nationality), they could now, under the agreement, be forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union.55

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Complications accompanying the restitution of their confiscated property, regardless of the nationality they had declared before the war, further contributed to the predicament of the Jews in the country. Only Czechoslovak citizens were eligible for the restitution of property after the war.56 There were, however, also cases of Jews who had declared Czechoslovak nationality before the war but had to undergo long negotiations with the bureaucracy before they could get their property back.57 Additionally, there was the question of heirless Jewish property that the Council wanted to use for the reconstruction of the community, but, at the same time, the central Czechoslovak authorities intended to nationalize for general rehabilitation purposes.58 In the background of all these legal battles and interventions lurked the spectre of antisemitism and ethnic nationalism. According to article 2 (1) in Decree No. 33/1945Sb., individuals who had in the 1930 census declared German or Hungarian nationality now had six months (until 9 February 1946) to submit an application if they wanted to regain their citizenship (and then get their property back). Those who could prove that they had never betrayed the Czech or the Slovak nation, had remained loyal citizens, and had either fought against the Germans or been persecuted (that is, suffered under the Nazi or fascist Slovak regime), stood some chance that their applications would be successful. Yet the interpretation of loyalty was vague and depended on a decision of local authorities, the National Committees. Furthermore, the fact that many of the survivors did not fit neatly in to the particular national categories often led to unpredictable decisions by low-­level bureaucrats. The local authorities considered the applications on a case-­by-case basis and often used arbitrary methods to establish the previous loyalties of individual claimants.59 In August and November 1945, the Ministry of the Interior issued new directives stating that under certain circumstances, the declaration from 1930 was not the only criterion by which one’s loyalties were determined. The local authorities could also take into account other factors, such as one’s education, the language in which one had submitted reports to the authorities before the war, one’s language of daily use, and membership in political parties, clubs and associations. The list was long.60 This directive further increased the power of the local authorities – led by nationalist and economic motivations – who could impose identities on individuals based on fabricated understandings of one’s loyalties and where one belonged.61 The Czechoslovak civil service also singlehandedly complicated the application process of Jewish claimants. Until April 1946 and an intervention by the Council, the archive of the Ministry of the Interior made notes on reports of the claimants’ nationality, stating the language in which they had completed the census form in 1930. Thus even those who had declared Czechoslovak nationality, but had completed the form in German, faced the danger that they would not be considered ‘nationally reliable’, with all the further implications.62 Frischer received a confirmation of his ‘national reliability’ quickly, but his family members experienced difficulties. In 1947, Heřmína Frischerová, who after the war stayed in Jerusalem, applied for a new passport, and had to provide evidence of her ‘national reliability’. Since the National Committee in Ostrava, which dealt with her application, was unable to ascertain the nationality she had declared in 1930, they investigated the ‘national behaviour’ of the whole family and even inquired into what

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schools Heřmína’s children had attended before the war. At one point, the officials went so far as to send investigators to the Frischers’ former neighbours to enquire about her national leanings before 1939.63 Although Frischerová’s citizenship was ultimately confirmed, it is astounding that the local bureaucrats went to such lengths to establish the national reliability of a Jewish claimant, particularly in this case, where the claimant’s husband had served in the exile parliament during the war. The Council had been excluded from the drafting of the Presidential Decrees and other laws that directly affected the lives of the Jews.64 Frischer was given a final opportunity to submit comments about the prepared decrees only during the war in London and had not been consulted since. Council attempts to get Jewish representatives appointed to central offices were ignored. In September 1945, Frischer asked Prime Minister Fierlinger, whether the ‘Jewish church’ (‘Židovská církev’) could be represented in the newly formed Provisional National Assembly (elected indirectly by members of National Committees). The task of their representative would be to look after the interests of the Jews.65 Frischer also asked whether a special coordinating committee could be formed within the government, to help alleviate the effects of the Nazi persecution of the Jews.66 Fierlinger evidently was unimpressed by the proposals, and tried to foist the responsibility on to other ministries. No Jew was appointed to the Provisional National Assembly. Although a coordinating committee was eventually formed, as a way to appease public opinion (abroad) after the pogrom in the Slovak town of Topoľčany in September 1945, its members met only once and there seems to have been no practical result from their deliberations.67 Shortly after the government introduced the new legislation, the Council was approached by a number of people whose citizenship applications had been rejected, who could not restitute property, and in many cases were threatened with ‘transfer’ (deportation) to Germany together with other ‘Germans’. The Council, as well as Czechoslovak-Jewish groups abroad, repeatedly appealed to the Czechoslovak government to issue central directives that would unify the decision making of the local authorities regarding the citizenship applications of the Jews. Yet the central authorities persistently refused to issue a general law, since it would allegedly be based on racial criteria and would, in their opinion, entail the undemocratic treatment of the Jews. People whose citizenship was in doubt had to apply for citizenship and defend their loyalty individually, regardless of whether they were Jews or non-Jews.68 George Weis was an experienced lawyer who spent the war in London and cooperated with the Czechoslovak authorities, including Frischer. In 1942, he had already warned Jewish organizations that the prepared population transfer of Czechoslovak Germans would threaten parts of the Jewish community.69 After the war, still in London, Weis was not pleased that his prognosis was proved correct. For one thing, as a Jew who had declared German nationality in the 1930 census, he too faced problems with his citizenship. In a letter to Frischer in October 1945, Weis clearly identified the problematic nature of the post-­war laws and regulations that attempted to pigeonhole everyone into neat national categories: Are we right to advise people who reported in 1930 as Jewish but were educated in German schools and spoke German at home to apply for confirmation? What if

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they reported in 1930 as Jewish, spoke Czech at home, but in their youth went to German schools? If they reported themselves Czech but if one of the parents was a German-­speaking Jew, if therefore German was sometimes spoken at home and the name was written in the German way (say, Robitschek [instead of Roubíček]). Is it thought in Prague that such a man should apply even if he went to Czech schools only? How is a German-­speaking Jew expected to answer the question of his nationality? Jewish?70

Consequently, the Council had to keep providing moral support and legal advice to Jewish claimants, including some prominent members of the Zionist movement in Bohemia and Moravia. One such example is Richard Weissenstein (1876–?). He was a veteran Zionist activist, the pre-­war chairman of the Jewish Community in Jihlava/ Iglau, the owner of a factory in the town, and a survivor of Theresienstadt. Shortly after the liberation, Weissenstein applied to the Jihlava National Committee for the confirmation of his ‘national reliability’. Although six witnesses were willing to confirm his loyalty to the nation and the State, the local authorities kept postponing the decision. It is plausible to assume that there were people in the town who wanted to hinder Weissenstein’s restitution of the factory he had owned in Jihlava. When they were informed that Weissenstein had declared Jewish nationality in 1930, the National Committee decided to investigate his behaviour during the occupation. At one point, he was informally advised that although the authorities knew that he was a Zionist, he had behaved as ‘a German’, which was manifested by his children attending German schools in the town and by Weissenstein conducting his pre-­war business correspondence in German. Weissenstein bitterly commented that unfortunately there had been no Czech school in the town before the war (Iglau was a German enclave in predominantly Czech territory).71 Nevertheless, the local police concluded that Weissenstein could not be considered as nationally and politically reliable. Another witness also suggested that in 1940 he had seen Weissenstein speaking German in public with the local librarian. After Weissenstein’s appeal, Frischer wrote a letter to the Regional National Committee in Jihlava, in which he vouched for Weissenstein’s reliability and emphasized that Weissenstein’s decision to declare Jewish nationality in predominantly German Jihlava/Iglau had been a clear manifestation of his loyalty to the Czechoslovak State. Frischer also emphasized that Weissenstein had appealed to other Jews in the town to declare Jewish nationality, and they thus numerically weakened the German majority in the town.72 In his negotiations with the National Committee, Weissenstein used Frischer’s letter and presented it as support from a former member of the State Council in London. He also wrote a long essay in which he sought to explain in detail the differences between Zionists and German Jews (with whom he had long battled since 1906), and he also defended his activities in the interwar period, when, as the head of the Jewish Community, he introduced Czech as the main administrative language (his activities remind us of Frischer’s pre-­war efforts in Moravská Ostrava). His regular contributions to the Czechoslovak Red Cross and fundraising for the defence of the State before 1938 were further evidence of his loyalty.73 The National Committee in the end confirmed Weissenstein’s reliability to the State, and he was granted his citizenship

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in March 1946, almost seven months after he had submitted his application. Nevertheless, following the accusation that Weissenstein maintained contact with the German librarian during the war, he was briefly investigated under the so-­called ‘lesser retribution decree’ (Decree No. 138/1945Sb.), which made punishable offences against ‘national honour’. Hence after the authorities finally confirmed that he had been ‘nationally reliable’, Weissenstein now had to fight to prove that he did not dishonour his nation during the war. It took another several months, but the investigation was eventually stopped for lack of evidence.74 Personal contacts with Frischer helped Weissenstein during the investigation. We can only wonder how similar protracted negotiations developed in the case of claimants who could not rely on any direct and personal support from the leaders of the Jewish Community. Indeed, for a long time the more than 2,000 remaining ‘German Jews’ – labelled as such by the Czechoslovak authorities – were in danger of being deported to Germany, and some of them even received a summons to show up for transport.75 Frischer’s Council fought against the prepared deportation. Frischer even directly confronted Beneš’s Chancellor Jaromír Smutný with the statement that if the murdered ‘German Jews’ were good enough to be included in the total number of wartime Czechoslovak victims of the Nazi regime, those who survived should not be excluded from the nation and country either.76 Some historians claim that ‘hundreds’ of German Jews were expelled from post-­war Czechoslovakia,77 but this assertion has yet to be substantiated by available evidence. Even unbiased contemporary observers denied that German Jews were ultimately deported (‘It is evident that none of them was sent away’78). Later, at a public meeting of the Council, Wehle too affirmed that none of the Jews who asked the Council for help because they had been threatened with deportation were ultimately sent to Germany.79 Possibly some individuals were included – without the knowledge of the Czechoslovak ministry of the interior – in the deportations to Germany, but here too the evidence is patchy.80 On the other hand, some ‘German Jews’, as after Munich, decided to leave Czechoslovakia voluntarily, in deportation trains organized by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) for German ‘anti-­fascists’ (this also meant that they could take some of their property with them). The nationally homogenized country was not a place where they could feel at home and they knew they would not be able to integrate into Czech society. The Council, however, refused to take part in the organization of the transports.81 The situation was further complicated by the fact that many of these ‘German Jews’ lived in mixed marriages. Their German spouses were also threatened with expulsion and it was almost impossible for them to stay in Czechoslovakia unless they could prove their active involvement in anti-Nazi resistance. We can expect that their Jewish partners were thus inclined to leave the country together with their families. Another group that suffered similarly in the immediate post-­war period consisted of individuals who had spent the war in exile and then applied for repatriation to Czechoslovakia after the liberation. It was much easier for the Czechoslovak authorities to hinder the repatriation of a Jew from exile if they could prove his or her previous affiliation to a non-Slav nation. In such a case, a Czech bureaucrat would face no embarrassment as in the case when they would have to actively expel a survivor from Czechoslovakia and the nature of the cases – when the applicants and bureaucrats were thousands of kilometres away – also made it more difficult for the Council to intervene.82

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The situation, at least according to Frischer, stabilized at the end of 1945, but again sharply deteriorated before the first post-­war general elections in May 1946, when after several radical nationalist statements by leading Czech politicians, the local National Committees began to use more stringent criteria when assessing citizenship applications submitted by Jews. At this point, some of the German-­speaking Jews were in imminent danger of being deported to Germany. Frischer repeatedly ascribed this escalation in the nationalist rhetoric to the election campaign, and hoped for an improvement in the situation after the appointment of a new government.83 It was only in September 1946 that the Ministry of the Interior issued a directive that all the Jews who had declared German or Hungarian nationality were eligible to retain their Czechoslovak citizenship, with the exception of those few who had been active in Germanizing or Magyarizing the local population. The ministry also made it clear that it was henceforth explicitly forbidden to include Jews (‘Jews or the people of Jewish origin’) in the deportation trains leaving for Germany. Moreover, the directive finally included a clear definition of what the local authorities should understand under the term ‘Germanization’ and ‘Magyarization’. Jews in the Bohemian Lands, and also activists abroad, praised Frischer and the Council for having achieved this concession.84 Frischer rejected the praises and emphasized Wehle’s role instead.85 It is, however, more likely that the final government concession was made as a result of the unfavourable publicity that the Czech policies had received in the foreign press. It was also a way to present Czechoslovakia as a democratic country shortly after another outbreak of antiJewish violence in Slovakia, this time in Bratislava in early August 1946. (The congress of former Slovak partisans was accompanied by extensive anti-Jewish riots, including robberies and beatings of Jews in the city. Although the rioters caused only material damage and no one was killed, it was several days before the riots were suppressed.)86 Nevertheless, there were other issues the Council had to face at the same time. The situation of the Ruthenian Jews also deteriorated during 1946, because the Czechoslovak authorities were unwilling to oppose the Soviets in cases when they insisted on repatriation. There was also grassroots resentment in Czech society against eastern Jews settling in Prague and the former Sudetenland, because they were conspicuously an alien element in majority society. The Czechs gave priority to granting citizenship to Jews (and their families) who had fought in the ranks of the Czechoslovak army. Gradually, they also approved the applications of Jewish migrants who could prove that they had attended Czech or Slovak schools in Ruthenia. (This was a particularly interesting turn of events, if one recalls how in the interwar period the Jewish nationalists had fought for independent Hebrew schooling in Ruthenia. Now the fact that some of the Jews attended Czech schools could save them from repatriation to the Soviet Union.) The plight of the remaining Ruthenian Jews remained unclear for a long time. The Council fought hard for the right of those who had declared Jewish nationality to stay in Czechoslovakia. They pointed to the existence of two different versions of the Czechoslovak-Soviet Treaty. According to the Slovak version, people who had right of domicile (domovské právo) or permanent residency (trvalý pobyt) in Ruthenia on 29 June 1945 and now wanted to stay in Czechoslovakia had to opt for Czechoslovak citizenship. The Soviet version was slightly different from the Slovak, and only people who were physically present (that is, had permanent residency) in Ruthenia on 29 June

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1945 had to deal with both the Czech and the Soviet authorities. According to the Council’s interpretation, Ruthenian Jewish nationals who lived (had permanent residency) in the restored Czechoslovak territory on 29 June 1945, even if they had the right of domicile in Ruthenia, were not obliged to undergo the bureaucratic process and automatically had leave to remain in the country.87 The situation remained chaotic during 1946 and 1947, with each party presenting different interpretations of the treaty. The Soviets continuously changed their minds, at one point demanding that the Jews be repatriated, at another allowing Jews to leave the assembly centres, or sending them back at the border with a clear statement that they were not interested in Jews. Both the Council and the international Jewish organizations appealed to the Czechoslovak authorities to abandon the plans, because any deportation was against UNRRA instructions on the treatment of non-­repatriable displaced persons. Frischer on several occasions frantically turned to leading Czechoslovak politicians, including Beneš, Masaryk, Nosek and Václav Kopecký (Communist Minister of Information).88 Frischer believed that their intervention with the Soviets to persuade them not to insist on repatriation was the only possible way to preclude the deportation. At one point, Frischer wanted to travel immediately to Paris to intervene personally with Masaryk, who at that time attended the Peace Conference with the former Allies of Germany.89 In March and April 1946, he tried to help some of the most threatened Jews cross the border into US-occupied sectors of Germany and Austria. The Czechoslovak authorities tacitly appreciated such initiatives, for they could help rid the country of unwelcomed aliens while protecting the government against criticism from the international community for having returned people to the Soviet Union against their will. The WJC and the American ambassador to Prague, Laurence Steinhardt (1892– 1950), also tried to facilitate the ‘infiltration’ of the threatened Ruthenian Jews to the American-­occupied parts of Germany, from where they could continue to Palestine.90 In mid-October 1946, Frischer estimated that 2,000 (he mentioned 1,000 to Masaryk)91 of the original 6,000 or so repatriates (Frischer’s estimates of their number decreased from 8,000 in March 1946) had escaped abroad before the Soviets could repatriate them.92 Another 2,000, mostly former soldiers, had been allowed to keep Czechoslovak citizenship, but the remaining part of the community was ‘absolutely uncertain’ about their fate.93 Some of the Jews were eventually most likely sent to the Soviet Union (the evidence is again inconclusive), though most of them managed to avoid repatriation. It seems that by the end of 1947 all but a few of the remaining Ruthenian Jews already had Czechoslovak citizenship.94 Yet, after the Communist takeover in late February 1948, most of them left Czechoslovakia for good.95 Another two crises in 1947 threatened the consolidation of the Jewish community in the country and led to Frischer starting to doubt the possibility of a full recovery. In March 1947, local Communist organizations in the north Bohemian town of Varnsdorf, supported by the Communist-­led trade unions, staged public demonstrations and strikes against the former owner of a local textile factory, Emil Beer, in an effort to hinder the restitution of his business. The protests against Beer, whose ownership of the factory was confirmed by the local court, were accompanied by anti-Jewish propaganda and slogans, which, in the Bohemian Lands for the first time since the war, led to public demonstrations with an antisemitic background.96 The Council, in

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particular Wehle, fought for Beer’s restitution rights. They visited Beneš, ministers and members of the parliament, but all these efforts were in the end fruitless.97 Later, in July 1947, the National Assembly in Prague debated what to do with heirless Jewish property in Czechoslovakia. A new law stated that it would be used by the State for general restitution purposes and not specifically for the benefit of the Jewish community. This decision effectively threatened the work of Frischer’s Council, which at this stage was entirely dependent on the financial support of the Joint. There were discussions about changing the law, or at least about making sure that part of the funds would be provided to the Council, but no decision was reached before the Communist coup in February 1948.98 In the first months after the liberation, Frischer was optimistic about the forthcoming rehabilitation of the Jews. He was cheered by any signs of a general improvement in the situation of the Jews of Czechoslovakia, and also welcomed the economic and social transformation of society. But this transformation and the accompanying nationalization also offered new avenues for chauvinist nationalism that affected the Jews (and the German-­speaking Jews in particular).99 Over time, with the increasing number of problems faced by the survivors, Frischer became more cautious. He did not criticize the Czechoslovak government in public, but in private he complained to leading politicians about the lack of official interest in Jewish matters. He also accused the security forces of negligence when they had allegedly ignored or failed to notice the warning signs before the Topoľčany pogrom in September 1945 and Bratislava riots in August 1946.100 In May 1946, one year after the end of the war, Frischer warned individual ministers that there could be no democracy in the country if one part of the population was not equal with others before the law. He argued that if one brick is taken out of the legal system, the whole structure can collapse. Adapting the rhetoric of the ethics of Tomáš Masaryk and Edvard Beneš, Frischer emphasized that the restitution of the Jews was a matter of morality, and all Jews asked for was the restoration of the legal system.101 Much as he had during the war, Frischer now opposed any interventions coming from abroad and constantly complained about the foreign press relaying unconfirmed reports about the situation of the Jews in Czechoslovakia.102 He kept emphasizing to Western Jewish organizations that the only way the situation of the Jews could be improved was by systematic work and negotiations with the central authorities.103 The Czechoslovak government also approached the Council with a request to counter the reports appearing in the foreign press.104 The Council was willing to oblige, but at the same time emphasized that their work would be easier if the government clearly made a greater effort to support the Jews’ reintegration.105 In early 1946, during the hearings before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine (a body investigating the situation of the Jews in Europe prior to making recommendation about the future of Palestine), the Council delegation, led by Frischer, faced a delicate situation. They supported the creation of the Jewish state, and thus needed to suggest that at least part of the Jewish population in Czechoslovakia wanted to leave the country. At the same time, they did not want to be accused of giving bad publicity to Czechoslovakia, and so they portrayed the country in a positive light: ‘We are sure that [antisemitism] will diminish after some time, especially as President

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Beneš and all the members of this government, as well as the leading personalities of the intellectual movements are repudiating fiercely the ideology of antisemitism, as being incompatible with the principles of a civilized nation.’106 One of the foreign members of the Anglo-American Committee later contrasted Frischer’s rhetoric with the more confrontational approach adopted by the Slovak delegation.107 The situation kept changing for the worse over 1946 and 1947, when, in Frischer’s words, the Jews in the Bohemian Lands began to ‘lose the ground under their feet’.108 The Council was not consulted by the authorities, most of the ministers ignored the requests to meet, and Frischer often had only lower-­ranking officials to deal with. Yet he was willing to challenge the Czechoslovak authorities publicly for the first time only a little more than a year after the liberation, during the anti-Jewish riots in Bratislava in August 1946. He even proposed sending volunteers from the Jewish war veterans or members of the Maccabi association to Bratislava to protect the Jews. Moreover the Council threatened the government with a plan to publicize details of the riots in newspapers during the Paris peace negotiations with Hungary, which could harm Czechoslovakia’s diplomatic efforts. Eventually, the government met Frischer’s demands, and the Czech Press Agency (ČTK) published a report in which they acknowledged the local sources of the riots (in contrast to the original reports that blamed Hungarian agents for inciting the riots). The government publicly promised that the guilty would be punished, and the Ministry of the Interior immediately sent an official to the Slovak capital to investigate.109 Frischer considered the press release and the government’s promises to be a victory for the Council, achieved by political negotiations and carefully crafted behind-­the-scenes threats.110 It was only during the Varnsdorf Affair in March 1947, and later that year, at the point when the Czechoslovak National Assembly approved the law that confiscated Jewish heirless property, that Frischer finally appealed directly to the WJC to intervene with the Czechoslovak authorities by all possible means.111 It seems that in particular the financial difficulties the Council faced persuaded Frischer to step up his public pressure on the government. In a speech to the representatives of Jewish Communities in Bohemia and Moravia in late October 1947, he issued a public warning: If the Government doesn’t want the news to spread quickly around the world, that the operations of the famous Community of Prague and the other Jewish Communities of Czechoslovakia, as well as their top organization, were stopped for lack of financial means, if the public is not to witness the demonstrations of our employees, whose wages we shall not be able to pay, the responsible officials will have to cut through the red tape, so that our just cause achieves its aim in the coming weeks.112

The Council also pointed out to the government that Czechoslovakia was the only country in Europe that had confiscated heirless Jewish assets, and Frischer said this was as if the Polish government had confiscated the Jewish property left behind in Auschwitz.113 Crucially, in an official memorandum to the government, the Council for the first time clearly accused the central authorities of issuing directives that were harming the Jews in the country, but to no avail.114

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Nevertheless, in an analysis of the situation in post-­war Czechoslovakia written almost forty years after the events, Wehle concluded that despite the difficulties that the Council had to cope with at that time, by early 1948, the Jewish community in the country was on its way to recovery.115 Frischer – despite the problems – was also optimistic about the future. As he remarked in the October 1947 speech: ‘We too believe in a good future for the Jews in Czechoslovakia, if the world is at peace. We base our optimism on the nature of the Czech people, their intelligence, traditional humanism, education and adaptability. As part of them, we want, despite all the hardship, to cross over into the better future.’116 Frischer’s speech presenting the Jews’ hopes for their equality in the country, however, raises questions that we now need to address. How did Frischer and the Council envision the position of Jewish nationalists in the Galuth, and how did the debated creation of the Jewish state in Palestine affect Frischer’s views?

Synthesizing Diaspora politics and assimilation After the end of the war, the possibilities for mass Jewish emigration from Europe seemed very bleak. The Western democracies, including the United States, adhered to their restrictive immigration policies. Palestine, which appeared as a natural destination to many Jewish survivors, was still ruled by the British Mandatory Power, and Whitehall had not changed the policy introduced in the White Paper of May 1939, which set strict limits on the annual entry of immigrants.117 There were tens of thousands of Jewish survivors in the DP camps in occupied Germany, Austria and Italy who were looking for a new homeland.118 Anti-Jewish violence in Poland soon indicated that there was another group of more than 200,000 Jews, most of whom wanted to leave Europe as soon as possible.119 The period from the end of the war in early May 1945 to early 1948 thus saw the Zionist struggle for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The Czechoslovak government vocally defended the international plans to establish two independent states (Arab and Jewish) in Palestine, and the Czechoslovak delegation in the United Nations voted in favour of the proposal.120 Czechoslovakia also facilitated Jewish migration from Eastern Europe to Palestine when more than 170,000 Polish Jewish refugees passed through its territory on their way to the Adriatic ports.121 With such a situation in East-Central Europe, most of the Jews of Czechoslovakia – despite the problems they encountered in their homeland – decided not to risk any immediate flight. Perhaps the sight of the convoys of the Brihah, Polish-Jewish refugees passing through the country, also persuaded Czechoslovak Jews that their situation was not desperate enough to force them to leave their homes and set out on this long, uncertain journey. Nevertheless, the volatile political situation forced members of the Council – both Assimilationists and Zionists – to articulate their vision of the future Jewish settlement in Czechoslovakia. In late May 1945, after Friedmann succumbed to physical and mental exhaustion, Frischer remained the only experienced Jewish politician in the Bohemian Lands. Before the war, the Jewish nationalists continuously fought for the recognition of their political programme by the Czechoslovak government and in the Jewish community.

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The situation in liberated Czechoslovakia, however, strengthened Frischer’s confidence in the correctness of the statements he had made in London, when he cautioned Jewish activists against making any demands for special minority status in post-­war Czechoslovakia. In November 1945, he was approached by members of the Hechalutz movement in Prague, an organization whose task was to prepare Jewish youth for life in Palestine, to address the listeners of the so-­called ‘Chanukah Spoken Newspaper’, a series of lectures that took place in the Jewish Town Hall in Prague. Instead of preparing a new speech, Frischer returned to ideas he had previously expressed.122 He emphasized that it was not possible to continue the national Jewish politics of the interwar period. Since, he argued, the Jews had not been accepted as partners in the peace negotiations after the Second World War, all they could hope for now was that their voice would at least be heard and that the world would recognize that antisemitism was a dangerous ideology not only for the Jews but for non-Jewish societies as well. Frischer anticipated that the world would continue to support the Jewish colonization of Palestine and would allow Jewish immigration there (he expected that Palestine could absorb 100,000 Jews a year). The building of the Jewish homeland was no easy task, Frischer said, and the Jews needed time to make it suitable for any large-­scale colonization. This transitionary period, in his view, would provide opportunities for the Arab population to mature politically and economically, and they would eventually realize the need to work together with the Jewish settlers. Frischer believed that there was still a great need to formulate political plans for the rebuilding of the Jewish life in the Diaspora. Though they would no longer be able to achieve the same economic status as they had enjoyed before the war, the Jews should now, he argued, accept the opportunity to join the new Czechoslovak society and integrate in the socio-­economic sense. Frischer predicted that the Zionist–Assimilationist dichotomy would continue in the post-­war period. With the decreased numbers of Jews, the nationalists needed to carefully plan new political strategies that would allow them to continue their fight for the interests of the Jewish Diaspora. Their situation was now far more complicated than it had been before the war. After the suffering they had endured under Nazi rule, the tendencies to support practical Zionism would increase. There were, he said, also strong tendencies in the Jewish community to continue the Assimilationist programme, or to embrace other, new ideologies (he most likely meant Communism). Furthermore, few Jewish nationalists would, he reckoned, in the end decide to stay in Czechoslovakia: ‘This will be a hard test of the character and morality of Jewry. Will Jewry stand up to the occasion?’123 Frischer’s predictions were largely in line with those of other activists. Rosenberg, in conversation with Easterman only two months after the liberation, asserted that a large number of Jewish survivors in Eastern Europe were Zionists; to them, he remarked, ‘Zionism means getting certificates for Palestine – nothing else, and they are not interested in anything else. [. . .] They are not interested in rebuilding their lives in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, or indeed anywhere else in Europe.’124 He anticipated the end of Jewish life in Czechoslovakia, because the remaining part of the community wanted to assimilate and had nothing in common with their Jewish origin.125 We have no reliable information about the strength of the Zionist movement in liberated

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Czechoslovakia, but it seems that the Jews in Slovakia in particular would be happy to leave the country in the near future.126 Many survivors also explored other emigration routes, and, for example, contacted relatives abroad, in particular in the United States, and enquired about obtaining emigration affidavits. Representatives of the Czechoslovak-Jewish agencies abroad were inundated with letters in which survivors asked them for help to leave Europe.127 Also the Council, in a memorandum they prepared for the delegation of the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry on Palestine in early 1946, concluded that a certain number of people, regardless of their affection for Czechoslovakia, would ultimately decide to leave the country. The Council explicitly mentioned the repatriates from Ruthenia, German-­speaking Jews who would find it difficult to acculturate in Czech society (the Council predicted that between 1,000 and 1,500 of the 2,500 would like to leave, but ‘naturally’ not for Germany – which proved to be a wrong assumption128), Zionists, especially those from the younger generation (several hundred members of the Hechalutz movement), orphans who had relatives abroad, and, lastly, survivors who thought they would psychologically be unable to stay – with their relatives dead and traces of antisemitism ‘even among such a highly civilized people as the Czechs’, they simply felt it necessary to emigrate. The Council and the SlovakJewish leadership admitted that the environment in Slovakia was even worse and that 60 per cent of the Jewish survivors were allegedly desperate to leave as soon as possible, 90 per cent of them for Palestine. They could not provide definite numbers, but predicted that ‘the tendency to go to Palestine will be very strong among them, because [after having suffered among non-Jews] they will have the desire to live in Jewish surroundings’.129 The Council thus declared its support for the creation of the Jewish homeland in Palestine, a statement that was approved by Zionist and non-Zionist members alike.130 Nevertheless, to balance their pro-Zionist statement, the Council noted that they expected a decrease in the number of potential émigrés among the Jews once the rule of law was re-­established throughout the Czechoslovakia and especially after the promised implementation of the restitution law in Slovakia (which officially happened only in May 1946131). Many of the Jews would eventually realize that they had roots in Europe and that they wanted to share their future with the Czech and Slovak nations: ‘At the decisive moment they will become conscious of how fast they are tied to the places in which their forefathers had settled hundreds of years ago’.132 The Council, led by Frischer, optimistically expressed their confidence that ‘in due course, the Jews, who will take their place in the general structure of the Czechoslovak Republic, which is going to be a national state of Czechs and Slovaks, will find here the conditions necessary for their economic life.’133 Even if we allow for political exaggeration in statements of this sort, the fact remains that no general exodus of Czechoslovak Jews took place in the first post-­war years. Only approximately 5,000 Jews left Czechoslovakia for Palestine between 1945 and 1947.134 Another scholar offers different numbers, claiming that 10,805 Jews emigrated from Czechoslovakia (all over the world) between 1945 and 1947, but the source of the information is unclear.135 Despite the public declarations about the bright future, Frischer was aware of the unfriendly environment in post-­war Czechoslovakia and recognized the challenges the

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Council faced in a post-­war society that was ill disposed to the renewal of the nationalists’ political activities. However, he hoped that a way to secure the interests of the nationalists among the survivors would be found, even when it was clear that they could not achieve parliamentary representation in the next general election.136 In mid-1945, Frischer convened leading members of the former Jewish Party who had survived the war, and they almost unanimously passed a declaration stating that the Jewish nationalists were willing to abandon their right to declare Jewish nationality and would from now on declare that they belonged to the Czech or the Slovak nation. Frischer also consulted the decision with the leaders of Slovak Jews and other activists, including Leo Herrmann. Frischer believed that it would be a ‘heavy burden’ for the small community of survivors to have a special status in the new republic, which had been transformed into a nation state of Czechs and Slovaks.137 In exchange for this manifestation of loyalty, they asked the Ministry of the Interior not to consider their pre-­war adherence to the Jewish nationality as an act hostile to the Republic, a statement which provides telling insights into the atmosphere in post-­war Czechoslovakia. They also hoped that the government would automatically confirm their right to retain Czechoslovak citizenship.138 Frischer estimated that there were approximately 11,000–14,000 Jews in Czechoslovakia (3,000– 4,000 in the Bohemian Lands and 8,000–10,000 in Slovakia), who had declared Jewish nationality before the war.139 In the letter that Frischer eventually sent to Minister Nosek one month later, he made the following statement: I declare that I am willing to recommend to Czechoslovak citizens who previously declared Jewish nationality on the basis of rights granted to them by the Czechoslovak Republic that in the future they should declare Czech or, as the case may be, Slovak nationality. I would decide for that recommendation only if I were certain that the Government saw in such a stance the efforts of the Czechoslovak Jews to contribute in today’s circumstances to the political coherence of the Czechoslovak Republic, and on the further conditions that the Government saw to it that no difficulties were made for a Czechoslovak citizen now declaring Czech or Slovak nationality even if in the 1930 Census or on another occasion he had declared Jewish nationality and that the Government would take suitable measures (legal or administrative) to ensure that an earlier declaration of Jewish nationality would in no way be to his detriment and he would in any case be treated like a Czech or a Slovak.140

Despite the ambiguous statement, it was clear that the Jews lost one of the major political rights they had held before the war. Less than a week later, after he was informed about the pogrom in Topoľčany, Frischer in a letter to Winterstein expressed doubts whether sending the letter to Nosek was a good decision.141 Yet the decision had no real value because few Jewish nationalists remained in post-­war Czechoslovakia, and the status quo established by the Czechoslovak authorities (the national homogenization of the country) would in any case never allow the Jews to declare their Jewish nationality.142 It has been inaccurately suggested by at least one historian that Frischer singlehandedly abandoned one of the main rights the Jews had in Czechoslovakia.143

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Also some of the survivors later blamed him for taking this fundamental decision without any mandate from the community.144 Yet Frischer had consulted the Zionist activists in the Bohemian Lands and they had approved the decision. For example, Karel Rosenbaum, a pre-­war judge and Zionist activist who lived in Hranice, central Moravia, informed Frischer that he had voluntarily declared Czech nationality after the war (even before Frischer sent the letter to Nosek). He did so partly because of the ‘catastrophic decrease in the number of members of the Jewish nation’ in the country and it now seemed pointless to do so, but also out of respect for the new character of Czechoslovakia as a nation state of Czechs and Slovaks.145 Others opined that rather than new declarations from the government, it was more important to build a feeling of community amongst the survivors and maintain relations with Eretz Israel. Last but not least, committed Zionists simply concluded that there was no need to fight for the recognition of Jewish nationality, because they planned to move to Palestine soon in any case.146 Conversely, members of the international Jewish agencies disliked the idea that Jews had given up fighting for their rights. Goldmann of the WJC advised the Czechoslovak Jews not to publish this symbolic declaration and, instead, to make sure that the onus for taking this right away from the Jews was strictly on the Czechoslovak authorities.147 Schwarzbart went even further, commenting to Frischer in a letter: ‘I never dreamt that the sons of the Jewish people would turn ethnically into Slovaks. I felt humiliated.’148 As on so many occasions in the past, Frischer was unwilling to accept any criticism. In a sharp response to Schwarzbart, he defended the strategy and accused his former London colleague of being ill-­informed about the situation of the Jews in Europe: People who emigrated years ago have not the right inside view of the conditions in Europe and, as they do not share the fate and the suffering of the Jews who remained there, they should be at least respectful. [. . .] As to the feeling of humiliation, I think that at present Jews are in no position to feel humiliated in any place of the world even in regard to the conditions in which they are living. So we should leave the feeling of ‘humiliation’ to ourselves if you don’t prefer to feel humiliated by the position of the Jews elsewhere.149

Frischer’s decision to send the letter to Nosek is clearly a reflection of the changed situation in Czechoslovakia, and the response of the Czechoslovak authorities further corroborates this observation. Although the leading politicians, including President Beneš and Prime Minister Fierlinger, explicitly expressed their appreciation of the planned declaration, the official authorities never officially responded. In his letters to Nosek, Frischer proposed that the minister could issue a public declaration that the government from now on would allow the Zionists to declare Czech or Slovak nationality.150 The Interior Ministry in December 1945 issued an internal directive stating that people who had declared Jewish nationality in the census should be treated as people who had not declared German or Hungarian nationality, and they should have the opportunity to declare themselves to be members of the Czech or the Slovak nation.151 The authorities did not, however, make any public declaration. Furthermore,

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such people still had to go through the bureaucratic process of submitting applications for certificates confirming their national reliability (as we have seen in the case of Weissenstein).152 Lower-­level bureaucrats often (in some cases intentionally) failed to understand the complicated instructions they received from the Ministry of the Interior, and were consequently left to interpret them.153 Laws and official regulations in Czechoslovakia continued to state that only people of Czech, Slovak or another Slav nationality had any rights in the country. The Council had to struggle hard with the authorities to make sure, for example, that the people who had declared Jewish nationality could participate in the 1946 general election. On several occasions, Beneš remarked that the State had to differentiate between people of Jewish nationality who had lived in a Czech (or Slovak) milieu and those who adhered to German culture and language.154 Much as before the war, the category of Jewish nationality and especially the fact that many among the people of Jewish nationality in the country used a ‘nonJewish’ language, presented an unwelcome complication to what was otherwise perceived as a clear-­cut categorization of people in Czechoslovakia. It was symbolic of the situation in liberated Czechoslovakia that what the nationalists had considered as their major achievement before the war (that is the right to declare Jewish nationality) was regarded by the Czechoslovak authorities as a matter of such minor importance after 1945 that they did not even take the time to reply to Frischer’s letter.155 The Jewish national programme evidently had no place in post-­war Central Europe. Facing these many difficulties, the Council complained that although the Czech authorities constantly reminded the Jews about the necessity to integrate into the Czech nation, the Czechs were unwilling to accept the Jews. Both parties, the Council stated, ought to make a genuine effort to complete the process.156 From their side, the Council continuously attempted to demonstrate that a large part of the survivors wanted to remain in the country as loyal and reliable citizens. The Council, as well as the Jews of Czechoslovakia in general, adopted two ways to justify their desire to stay in the country: by emphasizing how Czechoslovak Jews had participated in the resistance during the Second World War and by employing Assimilationist rhetoric. Jews formed a considerable part of the Czechoslovak armed forces stationed in the Middle East, Britain and the USSR during the war.157 Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Czechoslovak-Jewish soldiers were killed in battle for the liberation of their country. Many Jews fought and fell in battles near Sokolovo (near Kharkiv in Ukraine) and at Dukla (south-­east Poland, near the Slovak border). Frischer had already in London emphasized that the Jewish organizations needed to publicize the information that ‘Czechoslovak Jews, as Jews, [were] participating in the fight for liberation of their country’.158 After 1945, Věstník, the official bulletin of the Council, repeatedly carried short memoirs of former soldiers or commemorative speeches by their commanders and comrades. Czechoslovak politicians were also frequently reminded about the sacrifices made by the Czechoslovak Jews.159 The Assimilationists kept highlighting the participation of Czech Jews in the home resistance during the war – people such as Karel Bondy (1906–45), his teacher Josef Fischer (1891–1945), Viktor Kaufmann (1900–45) and Anna Pollertová (1899–1945).160 These speeches served as testimony that the Czech Jews had paid dearly for the liberation of their homeland. In an article

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published in the first issue of Věstník, Štěpán Barber, who between 1940 and 1945 had served in the army, emphasized that after the war Jewish soldiers could proudly look everyone at home in the eye. Although Barber admitted that the soldiers could understand the initial difficulties after the war, they still hoped that those who had for several years faced death with their fellow citizens would also eventually have equal rights and be treated as such in the restored republic. He concluded his article with a rhetorical question addressing the concerns of many of the Jews of post-­war Czechoslovakia: if this equality proves to be permanently evasive, ‘then what did we fight for?’161 Equally important were the survivors’ perspectives on the shared community of Czechs and Jews. Many early post-­war memoirs published in Czech by survivors of the Theresienstadt ghetto and concentration camps are filled with references to CzechJewish culture, in several cases even white-­washing the German-Jewish past of the authors.162 Survivors also sought to demonstrate their belonging to the Czech nation by changing their German-­sounding surnames (for example, Fürth to Firt; Lilli Skutezky to Lilli Skutezká163) and quickly trying to improve their proficiency in Czech. With the national homogenization of the country in full swing, thousands of Jewish survivors became aware of their peculiar position because of their former upbringing in, and adherence to, the German cultural milieu (there were cases of National Committees using the pre-­war lists of subscribers to German theatres as a way to determine ‘national reliability’ of applicants164). It also became a matter of pure necessity, because speaking German in public could potentially be life threatening.165 In their effort to demonstrate their desire to share the future with the Czech nation, the Council used powerful stories from the recent horrific past. They repeatedly referred to the events of 8 March 1944 (this date became the symbol of Czech-Jewish suffering during the war), when the first part of the Theresienstadt Family Camp, 3,702 people, were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The story that the Jews, while being forced into the gas chambers, sang ‘Hatikvah’ (‘The hope’, the Zionist anthem) together with the Czech national anthem ‘Kde domov můj?’ (Where is my homeland?) was claimed to be evidence of the deep love felt by the Jews for Czechoslovakia.166 According to the Assimilationists, it was the German occupation that reminded them of their being Czechs. When in the concentration camps, they suffered deeply from their having been uprooted from Czech surroundings and from the Czech nation. As Fuchs plausibly noted in 1947, a hope for a new life among Czechs in the future gave the concentration camp prisoners the strength to struggle for their survival while in the camps; the sons and daughters of the Czech nation longed to reintegrate into Czech society.167 An ideological shift was apparent especially in the case of the Jewish nationalists. Frischer, in his public statements, attempted to articulate a synthesis of the nationally Jewish programme and the Assimilationist rhetoric. His post-­war ideology reflected the necessity of finding a new modus vivendi with the State by means of political and socio-­economic integration. During a Council audience with Beneš in late 1945, Frischer stressed that although there were few Jews remaining in the country, their spirit had not been broken and they were ready to join in the difficult task of working for the common ‘ideal of a better future’ with the Czech and Slovak nations for the

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benefit of their common homeland.168 Two years later, in his opening address to the European Zionist Conference, in 1947, Frischer repeatedly addressed the audience in the name of ‘we, the Czechoslovak Jews’ and advised the Zionists present there that although the Czechoslovak Jews wanted to provide the Jewish homeland with new immigrants, they (‘we’) also wanted to stay in Czechoslovakia as a ‘Jewish group’ and a community.169 This attitude was more an expression of their inner feelings, reflecting how deeply they were rooted in the country, than it was any clearly articulated programme. These sentiments should not be mistaken for a desire to assimilate; Frischer certainly did not wish the Jews to disappear as an ethnic and cultural community (or group).170 They were rather a synthesis of Jewish cultural nationalism and assimilation, which, evidently in Frischer’s mind, was no impossibility, though it was unclear how this ideology would work in post-­war Czechoslovakia. It seems that Frischer imagined their position in Czechoslovakia in a very similar way as Zionists constructed their policies and loyalties in Western Europe. As mentioned before (Chapter 2), Frischer already in the interwar period believed that Jews should not demand any special group rights in nationally homogeneous countries (such as Britain and France). At the same time, after their almost total destruction in the last war, the Jews had a renewed sense of belonging to the community of the remaining Jews in the world; they were one big family. Even after the establishment of the Jewish state, the Jews, Frischer believed, should still be responsible for maintaining and developing their societies in the Diaspora.171 Frischer’s effort to reformulate the Diaspora politics was criticized by the Slovak Zionists.172 At the Zionist Conference in Luhačovice, east Moravia, in July 1946, they publicly rejected Frischer’s efforts: The people are inclined to disregard completely local politics and believe that all energies should be concentrated on the speediest removal of persons and, if possible, their property. [. . .] [I]t was impossible to inject into the discussion of the plenum the problem of Landespolitik. [. . .] Frischer came in for rather sharp criticism at the fractional [factional?] meeting of the General Zionists. [. . .] However, it was not made clear what specific line of conduct is expected from Zionists acting as community leaders. Some delegates from provincial towns in Frischer’s ‘medine’ [land] expressed their conviction that Frischer conducts the best policy under the circumstances and that he is getting the Czecho-Juden [that is, Assimilationists] to collaborate through very clever maneuvering [. . .] In his closing address[,] Winterstein warned against indifference to matters of Landespolitik but again I think there was no visible response.173

Frischer, just as he had in London, remained unwilling to accept the authority of any institution that sought to control his political activity. In a typical response, because of the criticism, he rejected any appointment to the Zionist organizational structures in Czechoslovakia and focused on Community affairs. In 1947, during elections to the Prague Jewish Community, the two ideological opponents – the Zionists and the Assimilationists – presented a united ballot and appealed to the electorate to vote the ‘List of Unity’. The joint programme reflected the two-­fold ideology of the community leadership: the necessity of joining the Czech and Slovak nations in building a new

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society and advocating the rights of the Jews as equal citizens, while supporting the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine open to emigration for those who wished to move there.174 More or less without any significant opposition, the List of Unity won the election, and both parties continued their cooperation until the Council was purged in early March 1948, shortly after the Communist takeover. All factions in the Council thus agreed that it was necessary to create a Jewish state in Palestine. This may perhaps seem surprising coming from the Assimilationists, who themselves admitted after the war that many Czech Jews had opposed the creation of a Jewish state before 1939.175 But the situation had been changed by the war and by the fate of European Jewry under the Nazis. After the war, the Assimilationists, too, began to call for the ‘normalization’ of the Jewish question in Europe. Their ultimate aim was to make the Jewish question eventually cease to exist by means of strict policies of either assimilation or Zionism.176 According to Fuchs, the Assimilationists fully understood the desire of Jewish nationalists to move to Palestine, and supported their efforts. They understood the difference in national sentiments between the two groups, but also the desire of the Jews who wanted to emigrate from Czechoslovakia for other, for example, family reasons. Fuchs expected that only people who wanted to live in Czechoslovakia and desired to be part of the Czech and Slovak nations would remain in the country.177 United Nations approval of the partition plan for Palestine, in November 1947, led to celebrations among the Jewish communities in Czechoslovakia. On 14 December 1947, the Council organized a huge meeting in the Smetana Hall of the Municipal House (Obecní dům), Prague. The floor was decorated with the Czechoslovak flag and the Zionist (Israeli) flag, and with pictures of Edvard Beneš, Tomáš Masaryk and Theodor Herzl. An audience of more than 1,400 people listened to Frischer’s celebratory speech in which he outlined the history of the Zionist movement and the colonization of Palestine, and expressed his appreciation for the support that the Jewish desire to have a homeland had received all over the world. Frischer, however, used this opportunity to present again his views on Jewish Diaspora nationalism, strongly influenced by Assimilationist rhetoric. Palestine offered a solution to Jews who felt, or were being, persecuted, or those who for other reasons did not feel they could live in their current homelands anymore. Yet the Jewish part of Palestine was a small country (roughly 14,425 square kilometres), which had never been intended as a homeland for all the world’s Jews, estimated in late 1947 at about 10 million. According to Frischer, the establishment of a Jewish homeland, as promised in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, was not intended to have an impact on the status and political rights of Jews living in other countries. Although the Jews in the Diaspora would look to the Jewish state as their spiritual and cultural centre, Frischer asserted, it would not reduce their feelings of patriotism towards their current countries of residence. Jews, like Catholics and Communists, could look to a centre elsewhere – Jerusalem, Rome or Moscow – but all these groups could at the same time be good patriots in the Diaspora. The creation of the Jewish state would not solve the Jewish problem all over the world.178 Furthermore, the celebration confirmed that although the nationalists and Assimilationists in the Council could suddenly find much common ground in their programmes, fundamental differences persisted. The Czech-Jewish Assimilationists quickly responded to the changing international situation, and on 16 January 1948

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Figure 12  Frischer addressing a meeting of the Jewish Community.

re-­established the Association of Czech Jews as the mouthpiece of their movement.179 At the founding meeting, speakers voiced their belief that the Jews could be part of the Czech nation, regardless of the problems that accompanied rehabilitation and restitution of the survivors. The meeting also adopted a resolution, which sent a clear message to the Jews in the Bohemian Lands, but especially to the Jewish nationalists: We declare that our home is here in the country of the Czechs and in the midst of the Czechs. We trust that the entire civilized world will assist in securing the Jewish State in Palestine. With the creation of the Jewish State in Palestine Zionism outside Palestine loses its right of existence.180

The Assimilationists supported the Zionists in their efforts to establish a Jewish state, but, when its establishment was finally sanctioned by the international community, Zionist political activities in the Diaspora lost their reason for being. The coming Zionist migration was welcomed by Assimilationists for another reason too: the Jews who constantly reminded non-Jewish Czechoslovaks of Jewish particularistic demands and emphasized their distinctiveness would eventually leave the country. One of the main obstacles on the path to Assimilationist success was going to disappear. These were fundamentally different expectations to the ones articulated by Frischer. Yet it is not clear how the nationalists, who were unwilling to leave Czechoslovakia, would respond to these new challenges.

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*  *  * The ties between the Jewish community and their representatives had been severely harmed during the occupation. For many Jews, the Jewish Councils had been puppets in the hands of the Nazi administration. This resentment persisted even after the liberation.181 On several occasions, members of Frischer’s Council had to defend themselves in Věstník and tried to persuade the disquieted community that they were doing their utmost to secure equal rights for the Jews.182 They also published articles in which they commemorated the wartime Jewish leadership (in particular Edelstein and Weidmann) and praised them for their work on behalf of the persecuted Jews.183 Before returning to Czechoslovakia, Frischer had believed that after a short transitory period the Jews would be easily integrated into society. The reality of life in Czechoslovakia, however, meant that this was not to be. In my previous work, I have emphasized that we need to see the predicament of the Jews in connection with the general rise of anti-­minority sentiments and ethno-­nationalism in Czechoslovakia after Munich and during the war. Another part of the problem may have been what has been called the ‘antisemitism of a bad conscience and greed’ among ordinary Czechs in the post-­war period.184 Especially the first part, however, is a problematic suggestion, because the notion of Czech guilt for what happened in the Shoah simply did not exist in post-­war Czechoslovakia. Czechs believed that they had done their utmost to support the Jews and that the persecution was done by the German occupier while the Czechs helplessly and hopelessly looked on. Conversely, Frischer asserted in May 1946 that the problems the Jews were encountering after the war were not caused by antisemitism in the guise of ‘pure nationalism’, but by general demoralization and socio-­economic factors: ‘For many [Czechs] it is only because they are uninformed; for others it is a matter of laziness of the mind and heart. But for many it is a matter of mere greediness for flats and property – still unreturned.’185 All the problems the Jewish community experienced after the war complicated Frischer’s efforts to start a new life in Czechoslovakia. At the beginning of June 1945, he set out on a trip to Moravia and visited Moravská Ostrava. The city had changed almost beyond recognition in a mere six years. The Nazi persecution and extermination completely destroyed the Jewish minority, and now only between 630 and 720 Jews lived in Ostrava, less than 10 per cent of the pre-­war Jewish population.186 The German population that had formed an important economic and cultural part in city life was expelled shortly after the end of the hostilities, and there were instances of brute force by Czechs against the Germans.187 Multiethnic Ostrava was a thing of the past. In 1945, Frischer considered returning to Ostrava. He did not want to be a professional politician, and declined the possibility of a regular income from the Jewish community.188 He also indignantly opposed any suggestion that he be a consul in Czechoslovakia for the international Jewish communities.189 In Ostrava, however, he found his former business totally destroyed. Furthermore, before recognizing his professional licence, the Association of Civil Engineers in Ostrava decided to find out what nationality Frischer had declared in the 1930 census. Although he already held the certificate of national reliability from the Interior Ministry, the Association investigation took more than nine months.190 In spite of the obstacles, he later reopened his company in Ostrava and was able to secure minor contracts. Because of his constant

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political commitments he was not able to leave Prague for extended periods and had to hire someone to run the business in his absence. By mid-1946, Frischer concluded that he would have to close the office, but in the end succeeded in keeping it open until the Communist takeover in 1948. He also planned to focus on the import of American construction machinery as a potential source of income.191 Frischer never clearly stated that he intended to stay in Czechoslovakia, and in private letters mentioned his concerns about the deteriorating relations between East and West and the danger of another armed conflict in Central Europe. He explored possibilities for employment abroad, and repeatedly offered his professional services to Jewish agencies and general reconstruction organizations based in the United States.192 He made these suggestions at the moments when he believed that the situation of the Jewish community seemed about to be stabilized. Yet these bright points of stability were soon superseded by new crises. At such points Frischer re-­joined community work with all his strength, presenting himself as ‘a captain [who has] to stay on the bridge of my ship as long as we are steering through stormy weather’.193 The available correspondence attests to the respect and authority Frischer held both within and outside the community in the post-­war period, though he again did not avoid personal conflicts even with his closest associates, including Wehle.194 How Frischer was perceived by his colleagues in the Council is revealed in a satirical comment published in July 1947 on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday by the editorial board of Věstník: It was partly thanks to [Frischer’s] initiative that the Jews here have been given an effective instrument for the defence of Jewish interests; thanks to his unflagging energy Věstník has become a voice that cannot be ignored. The strong, though impulsive, personality of the man celebrating his birthday today, full of uncommon vitality, is often expressed in the editorial board, though only rarely to the comfort and joy of the staff. Heated rows with him, inevitable when determining and co-­ creating the line of a paper that is so publicly visible and reacting so sensitively to events related to Jewish interests, however do not allow doubts that he reflects a level-­headed concern, connected with the foresight of a statesman. Frischer (and the editors of Věstník can confirm this best) can cool hot heads with cold showers of criticism, but can equally, with his ardent enthusiasm for the Jewish cause, warm cold indolent hearts. [. . .] But also in the bitterness that the excessive severity of his criticism leaves in us, we cannot but take note of his exceptional knowledge, his serious interest in the well-­being of the Jews, his ample experience in guiding the shared fate of the Jews. [. . .] We express the following sincere wish: we are ready to meet with the man whose birthday it is today in a passionate editorial debate, which will certainly erupt as soon as he learns that an article has again been published with whose tendencies he absolutely does not agree, against whose publishing he most emphatically protests, because he does not intend further to put up with this editorial board doing whatever it wants and that the situation must be rectified.195

Almost fifty years after the events, Wehle remarked that he believed historians had not acknowledged the strenuous efforts of the handful of individuals who had

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reconstructed the Jewish community in Bohemia and Moravia from the ashes of Nazi destruction.196 Since then, a couple of scholarly articles have appeared that do recognize the successes of Frischer’s and Wehle’s work.197 Besides their efforts to reconstruct community and religious life in the Bohemian Lands, Frischer and Wehle had first of all to fight against the passivity or obstructionism of the regime. They had to cope with a situation in which leading members of the government were suggesting that Jews who wanted to stay in the country had to assimilate completely. The government, moreover, adopted legislation that could in effect lead to the expulsion of a considerable number of Jews in the Bohemian Lands, either to Germany or to the Soviet Union. With the approval of the partition plans for Palestine, the pressure on the Jewish community increased even more. Now, in the eyes of the Czechoslovak government, there was no reason for Jews who wanted to be Jewish to stay in the country. Under these circumstances, and with half of the Council consisting of Assimilationists, Frischer tried to blend the Assimilationist outlook with the last remnants of nationalist Diaspora politics. In the post-­war period, he set the nationalist agenda among the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, and became the indisputable leader of the community. Yet developments in late February 1948 made any continuation of these efforts futile.

8

The Second Exile

He was a dynamic personality, a fine orator, and a man of high principle, always determined to fight for Jewish dignity with dignity. He will be remembered as an unselfish and devoted fighter for the well-­being of the Jewish people. Lev Zelmanovits, Frischer’s obituary, 6 August 19541 After the first post-­war general elections in May 1946, the National Front continued to govern or, perhaps better said, rule Czechoslovakia without any opposition. The Communists won 38 per cent of the vote and their chairman, Klement Gottwald (1896–1953), was made prime minister of a coalition government. The tensions increased in the course of 1947, when the Communists and their pro-­democratic partners repeatedly clashed over the radical left-­wing programme pressed for by the Communist ministers. The final crisis was ignited in February 1948, when the Cabinet members from the National Socialist Party, the People’s Party, and the Slovak Democrats, altogether twelve ministers (less than a majority) refused to attend the Cabinet meetings because of the politically motivated changes in the police corps executed by the Communist interior minister Nosek. On 20 February 1948, the dissenting ministers submitted their resignations to President Beneš, hoping that he would not accept them and would force Gottwald to negotiate. But the Communists took advantage of their network of supporters and organized mass meetings in Czech towns, including a general strike of two million people (about a sixth of the whole population), in support of Gottwald. On 25 February, Beneš succumbed to the pressure and accepted the resignation of the ministers. Two days later he appointed Gottwald’s second government of the ‘regenerated’ National Front, completely dominated by the Communists and their sympathizers. The increasingly isolated President Beneš resigned from office in June 1948 after he refused to sign the new Communist constitution that defined Czechoslovakia as a ‘People’s Democracy’ on its path to Socialism. The undemocratic parliamentary elections of 30 May 1948, when one could vote only for the single ballot, and the election of Gottwald as president, only confirmed that absolute power in Czechoslovakia was in the hands of the Communist Party.2 The change of the political system soon impacted on the Jewish community, and on Frischer’s public and private life.

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The purge Speaking on behalf of the Communist Party shortly after the takeover, minister Kopecký officially declared that the new regime would not interfere in internal Jewish affairs.3 The foreign minister Vladimír Clementis (1902–52) (who replaced Masaryk after his death on 10 March 1948) gave similar assurances to the British Jewish activist Easterman, who believed the promises.4 Despite the statements, the purge of public life in Czechoslovakia affected the Jewish community too, and Frischer was one of its first victims. The Communist and pro-Communist members of the Council joined the general strike on 24 February 1948, and major changes in the Council leadership were executed only days after the takeover. On 27 February 1948, following the example of other official institutions, the pro-Communist members of the Jewish community established the so-­called ‘Action Committee of the Council of the Jewish Communities in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia’. They initially intended to only look after the interests of the employees, but soon began to call for a purge of the Jewish leadership of anyone who opposed the new Socialist order. They wanted to ensure that the Jews in the Bohemian Lands would henceforth be actively involved in the promotion of Socialism in Czechoslovakia.5 The following purge was executed at the insistence of the local Communist authorities in Prague. The principal initiator of the changes in the Council was Alexander Knapp (1910–?), a Communist who had since 1947 worked as Assistant Secretary to Wehle and continued to inform the Party about internal Council developments.6 Laura Šimková (1902–59), an employee of the Cadre Office of the Communist Party and a member of the Prague Jewish Community, became the chairman of the Action Committee.7 Wehle later claimed that the Communists clearly prepared the whole takeover of the Council beforehand and executed it with the utmost efficiency.8 Developments within the Action Committee and in the Council were at first unfolding only gradually, and that gave him and Frischer hope that they would be able to continue their work. Frischer’s Council accepted the formation of the Action Committee, and on 27 February 1948 sent a telegram to the Central Action Committee in which they declared their support for Gottwald’s government and offered their services to the new authorities.9 The situation changed soon thereafter. Wehle described the purge in detail: On Saturday, 28 February, Dr [Karel] Stein, the chairman of the Jewish Community in Prague, was called into the office of the Communist Party, where he was received by two functionaries, both Jews. [. . .] It was brought to the attention of Dr Stein that the Action Committee of the Council was taking over all the business, and that they found Mr Frischer and myself unacceptable. [. . .] Only when the employee from our offices pointed out that the work of the Council was unthinkable without me did the gentlemen declare that they were willing to tolerate my being in office. One of the two functionaries declared that he had been called in by Action Committee headquarters as a kind of supervisor of the Council and of the Jewish Community in Prague. During the conversation – while Dr Stein, who is completely apolitical, acted very bravely – the activities of the Council so far, its struggle to achieve the rehabilitation of the Jews, were treated disparagingly, and it

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was expressed that only the fight against antisemitism and related discrimination should be continued.10

The purge clearly signalled the Communists’ intention to curb the Council activities and not to allow any repetition of the independent acts that had embarrassed the Communists in the past two years (such as during the Varnsdorf Affair, when the Council backed Beer’s restitution claim and fought against the Communist-­inspired strikes and demonstrations). The Zionists, and anybody who wanted to fight for the rights of the Jews as a distinct group, had to be removed from the leadership positions sooner or later. Despite the small size of the Jewish community, a purge in their ranks was clearly considered a priority by the Communist regional leadership in Prague. Both Wehle and Frischer were surprised by the sudden speed with which the Communists took over the Council.11 Although they tried to organize a general meeting of the full board that would react to the new situation, the Action Committee stopped all preparations.12 Members of the Action Committee also repeated that Frischer would not be allowed to remain the chairman of the Community (‘because he was not “adaptable” ’), a decision the Council accepted in order not to upset the new Communist regime.13 The purge was finished at the general meeting of the Council on 2 March 1948, where Frischer had to passively observe as the Action Committee declared the new priorities of the Jewish Community in the public life: For the sake of appearances, Frischer [. . .] and Stein [. . .] were asked to sit at the chairman’s table. The representative of the local ‘Action Committee’ for Prague [Wehle probably meant Josef Schwarz, secretary of the Central Council of the Trade Unions], where the Jewish offices were located, a non-Jew, announced that the Council and the Jewish Community of Prague would henceforth have to obey, without right of appeal, each and every directive issued by the Jewish ‘Action Committee’.14

The Action Committee immediately adhered to the Assimilationist rhetoric in both the national and social sense, and rejected any Jewish opposition to the new regime. The main task of the Action Committee was to ensure that in the future ‘reactionary’ and ‘subversive’ elements among the Jews would not undermine the new regime. In fact, already at this point – one week after the takeover – people attending the meeting questioned the Zionists’ loyalty to Czechoslovakia.15 The Communist members of the Action Committee were joined by the leaders of the Assimilationists, such as the incumbent Council vice-­chairman, Fuchs, who praised the victory of progressive forces in Czechoslovakia and appealed to the Jews not to cooperate with non-Communists – labelled as right-­wing reactionary forces – who ‘smile to your face, but stab you in the back’. From now on, Fuchs continued, assimilation was the only alternative for the Jews of Czechoslovakia. They needed to feel and think like the Czech nation. He also guaranteed that the new order would do away with all the previous religious, racial and economic discrimination of the Jews, and that antisemitism would disappear.16 Assimilationists and Communists, including people who before February had not been involved in Jewish affairs or were not even interested in the life of the Jewish

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community, dominated the newly appointed board of the Council. Surprisingly, the chairmanship was first offered to an elderly representative of the Assimilationists, Lederer. But he immediately declined the offer, partly because he lived far from Prague. He was therefore made an honorary chairman instead, together with the famous Communist journalist Egon Erwin Kisch (1885–1948). The actual chairmanship was assumed by a pro-Communist undersecretary at the Ministry of Health, Emil Ungar (1894–1970).17 Fuchs remained the first Vice-Chairman, and an employee of the Ministry of the Interior, Edmund Schwarz, became the second Vice-Chairman. The Communists took over the Council Board and Presidium, as well as the administrative committee. Zionists, including Frischer, and people who originated from Soviet-­ annexed Ruthenia were almost completely purged from all prominent positions.18 The only major exception was Stein, who remained the chairman of the Prague Jewish Community until he was purged in June 1948. He then emigrated to Israel in April 1949.19 Although the Action Committee promised not to settle accounts with the previous chairmanship, they immediately criticized Frischer’s presidium for not comprehending the new political and socio-­economic system of post-1945 Czechoslovakia as a country on its way to Socialism. They neglected education and failed to lead the survivors to the new way of life in Czechoslovakia as citizens loyal to the new Socialist order and people who without any reservations would support the nation state of Czechs and Slovaks.20 Frischer’s and Wehle’s fight to facilitate restitution of the Jews and reconstruct the communities was suddenly portrayed as going against the interests of the Jews and their efforts to become integral parts of Czech and Slovak society. Ungar presented the full criticism in early February 1949, a year after the Communist takeover. He outlined the difficult financial situation the Council was in, and blamed the unwise financial policies of the previous leadership. Ungar concluded that financial contributions from humanitarian organizations, such as the Joint (50 million Czechoslovak crowns), had been misspent, mostly on an oversized staff, while other key activities, such as health care for survivors, had been neglected. In line with the Communist position on financial restitution, Ungar rejected the Jewish Community’s right to claim the heirless Jewish property, a source of funding that Frischer and Wehle had hoped to use to run the Council’s activities in the future. Ungar also condemned the previous Council’s support of individual restitution cases, including ‘rich capitalists’, which clearly went against the interest of ‘progressive’ (that is, Communist) forces in Czechoslovakia. The old leadership of the Council was further criticized for having supported Jewish refugees and transmigrants who left Poland and Hungary in 1947, when, Ungar argued, there had been no reason for Jews to leave Socialist countries (in contrast to the summer of 1946, when, as he claimed, right-­wing reactionaries had caused chaos in Poland).21 Their activities on behalf of the Jews, as a particular group, simply went against Communist ideology. Because of their overt and covert support of backward, capitalist, nationalist and socially unproductive elements, Frischer and Wehle, according to Ungar, simply had to be removed. In the new Socialist country, he argued, the Jews needed to abandon all traces of ‘chauvinist nationalism’, ‘pseudo-­patriotism’ and ‘national two-­facedness’. Although not mentioned explicitly, the only option for the Jews was full integration

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and assimilation. Ungar had already indirectly pointed out that people who kept supporting Jewish particularism were in fact backing reactionaries against the new regime and its Socialist order. The only solution to the Jewish problem in Czechoslovakia, he concluded, was the final victory of the ‘democratic and progressive’ forces and the building of Socialism, which would lead to a complete eradication of the Jewish question in the country.22 These statements clearly elucidate the reasons for the previous purge of the Council. The purge was also accompanied by articles in Věstník, where authors, who before February 1948 had fought for the rights of the Jews, now explained their previous criticism of the slow and inadequate restitution process as attacking the ‘reactionary elements’ in the Czechoslovak administration and not the new Socialist order in the country. The Communist takeover, they claimed, made any further criticism superfluous.23 Shortly after the purges, members of the Zionist groups in Slovakia, particularly Winterstein, condemned Frischer and Wehle for the manner in which they had handled the crisis. In conversations with Easterman, who visited the country in March 1948, they compared the situations in Prague and Bratislava, where the Zionist leadership remained in their positions. In response to the developments in Prague, they immediately created the Action Committee of the Jewish Communities in Slovakia, which, however, consisted of the same personnel as the previous Community leadership, and did not include any Communists. Winterstein argued that the coup in the Prague Council had been carried out without any instructions from the Central Action Committee, and was the result solely of Frischer’s and Wehle’s passivity. The Prague Council was,Winterstein alleged, the only religious institution in Czechoslovakia – including the Catholic and Protestant Churches – where the Communists created an Action Committee. By contrast, the Slovak Jewish leaders had not allowed the Communists to conduct any purge in their ranks. Easterman sided with Winterstein’s conclusions, and suggested that the Action Committee had imposed all the key changes in the absence of Wehle and Frischer, who had ceased to attend meetings with the Action Committee. [. . .] Winterstein and the others are convinced that the Jewish leaders in Prague [had] ‘lost their nerves and heads’ [. . .] and that their capitulation to the few and unimportant Communists on the staff of the [Council] [had been] unnecessary and could have been resisted without difficulty had there been any show of leadership or vigour.24

Easterman was optimistic that Winterstein’s leadership in Slovakia would be able to continue in their active policies of defending Jewish rights. He was far less sanguine about the prospects for Prague: ‘The former leaders of the Jewish community of Bohemia and Moravia (Frischer, etc) have become thoroughly demoralised. They fear to speak or act, and have withdrawn from active participation in Jewish affairs, thus leaving everything in the hands of the Communists. Their attitude is “we are helpless. Nothing can be done. We are lost”.’25 Winterstein and Easterman were wrong to conclude that the takeover had been carried out without any direct involvement of the Communist Party, because representatives of the Communist-­affiliated organizations had been present at all the

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meetings in late February and early March. Nor did either of the two men acknowledge the atmosphere in Prague, which had, in the second half of February 1948, become the epicentre of the takeover, where major public manifestations of Communist power took place. Lastly, they also failed to take into account the age difference between Frischer (sixty-­one years old) and the younger, more energetic Winterstein (forty-­five years old), who may, moreover, have had an easier time without Assimilationists and pro-Communist members in the leadership of the Slovak Jewish organizations. Winterstein and his colleagues could also rely on their previous experiences with similar situations, when during the war, as members of the Slovak-Jewish (underground) groups, they had dealt with the authoritarian Tiso regime. The short-­sightedness of Winterstein’s and Easterman’s conclusions was confirmed in less than six months, when the Communist authorities decided to crush the still relatively independent Slovak Zionist groups. In the autumn of 1948, the police arrested the two leading Slovak Zionists, Winterstein and Krasňanský. Although they were later released, further arrests among the Zionists followed in early 1949 (Emanuel Frieder and Leo Rozenthal).26 Not surprisingly, Winterstein and Krasňanský decided not to wait to see how things would develop, and left Czechoslovakia forever.27 Shortly afterwards, Zionist organizations were banned in Czechoslovakia. The Joint, as a Western humanitarian organization, was also asked to leave the country in January 1950.28 Although the Communist policies towards the Jews underwent considerable twists and turns in the first years of their rule, the situation eventually took a turn for the worse and Zionists were soon included among the main class and ideological enemies of the new regime.

The Jews in the early years of Communist Czechoslovakia After the February takeover, the Communist Party issued several statements in which they assured the Jews that their position in the new people’s democracy was safeguarded, because the Communist revolution had finally brought equality for the Jews in the country.29 Whereas the 1945 liberation had torn down the walls of the ghetto, the Communist victory removed the last remnants of the old capitalist order and reactionary circles that had continuously taken advantage of the Jewish question in their fight against progressive forces.30 The purged Council soon followed suit, and celebrated the new Communist Constitution of May 1948 for having officially (and explicitly) banished any manifestations of fascism or Nazism, including racial and religious hatred, in Czechoslovakia. They compared the fact that antisemitism had now been outlawed in Czechoslovakia to the Emancipation of the Jews in the Habsburg monarchy in 1848.31 In the international arena, Communist Czechoslovakia – following the line laid down by Stalin in 1947 – continued with the previous Czechoslovak support for the Jewish fight for independence in Palestine. The Communists preferred the creation of two independent states, both of which would be under the banner of the working-­class movement. Soviet and Czechoslovak hopes were based on the notion that the Jews, who owed their liberation and lives to the victorious Red Army, would eventually

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transform the newly independent Jewish state into another member of the Socialist camp. The Soviets also took advantage of the situation to try and cause a rift in the Anglo-American alliance.32 Czechoslovakia therefore continued selling weapons to the Jewish Agency and later the State of Israel, even though the United Nations strictly prohibited such armament deals, and helped with the military training of Jewish defence forces (Haganah).33 In May 1948, Communist Czechoslovakia was one of the first countries to recognize Israel de jure.34 The creation of Israel brought back the question of Jewish emigration. The Communists officially differentiated between the motivations that were leading Jews to leave the country. They commended those who were idealistically motivated by their Zionist conviction and left to work the land in their new country or wanted to contribute to the rise of the working class, and thus support the camp of peace in the Middle East. By contrast, those who sought to improve their economic position or wanted to leave Czechoslovakia because they disagreed with the new Socialist order were warned against emigration.35 In reality, the government adopted a very lenient attitude towards Jewish emigration, an exception from their otherwise strict policies of keeping the doors closed.36 This approach was at least partly influenced by the latent antisemitism of the Communist leadership. In their perception, most of the Jews in the country were employed in unproductive professions, such as trade, and they were allegedly not suitable for the physical labour necessary for the construction of the Socialist system in Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, those who decided to leave the country after the February victory of the working class could rightfully be considered nationally and politically unreliable.37 More than half of all the Jews left Czechoslovakia in 1948–9. The number of emigrants dramatically increased in the second half of 1948. In that year, 5,000 Czechoslovak Jews left for Israel, and 3,000 for other countries (though officially they had applied for emigration to Israel). Some Jews also joined the first wave of anti-Communist political refugees who left the country clandestinely after the February coup, but it is almost impossible to determine their exact number. In late 1948, the Czechoslovak Bureau of Statistics estimated that 42,000 Jews lived in the country, a noticeable drop in comparison with estimates for 1945 (about 55,000; this number does not include the natural increase that was relatively high especially among the Ruthenian Jews).38 The main opportunity to leave Czechoslovakia for Israel was offered by an agreement between the Czechoslovak state and the Israeli ambassador to Czechoslovakia, Ehud Avriel (1917–80), which was approved directly by the inner circle of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and not even discussed by the government.39 The Communist leadership promised to allow the emigration of 20,000 Jews to Israel during the early months of 1949, until 15 May. But potential emigrants faced bureaucratic obstacles and had to pay high emigration fees, which caused considerable difficulties for those who lacked financial means. Furthermore, only individuals who were not seen as valuable to the Czechoslovak economy, especially those considered unnecessary for the completion of the first five-­year plan (1949–53), were allowed to leave. Those excluded were mostly physicians, nurses and certain groups of engineers.40 Similar to the situation after Munich, many potential emigrants hesitated when ultimately faced with the decision to leave Czechoslovakia. As early as 1949, many

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Czechoslovak Jews were uncertain whether to ‘give up [their present] comparative comfort’ and move to the uncertainty offered by the new state of Israel, which had only recently survived a war of independence.41 Although the Communists were slowly tightening the screws, the antisemitic campaign of late Stalinism did not start in Czechoslovakia until 1950. According to one reliable source, 18,879 Jews left Czechoslovakia for Israel in 1948–50, while more than 7,000 emigrated to other countries.42 Other equally reliable sources suggest that instead of the 20,000 Jews agreed upon between Avriel and the Communist leadership, only between 15,000 and 15,500 left the country in 1949.43 The last large wave of emigrants left Prague on 26 July 1949.44 Only about 14,000–18,000 Jews remained in Czechoslovakia after that date.45 Despite their active initial moral and military support for the Jewish state, the Communists soon voiced concerns about whether Socialism would prevail in Israel. They criticized the Israeli leadership for their alleged support of ‘bourgeois’ Zionism and neglecting the social liberation of the working people.46 Over 1948–9, similar to the Soviet Union, the Communists, whilst supporting Israel, gradually curbed the activities of Zionist groups in Czechoslovakia.47 Furthermore, Israel oriented its internal and external affairs to the Western countries. The critical points appeared to be the January 1949 general elections in Israel, in which the Soviet-­oriented parties suffered a heavy defeat, and then the approval of an American loan of $100 million, which the Eastern Bloc perceived to be another form of American economic imperialism, similar to the Marshall Plan for Western Europe.48 Official Czechoslovak policy throughout 1949 remained ambiguous and despite an increasing number of public denunciations of the new Israeli establishment, the government still allowed a considerable number of Jews to leave the country. A dramatic change in official relations between the two states occurred only in the autumn of 1949 and later, in 1950 and 1951, when cordial relations quickly deteriorated into overt hostility.49 The new course of Czechoslovak policy on Israel finally closed the doors to Jewish emigration.50 Minister of Information Kopecký, previously a supporter of Israel, confirmed the change in Czechoslovak policies, when in a public speech he compared any further emigration of Jews to the Middle East to sending mercenaries to the future front of an imperialist war against the Soviet Union.51 In February 1951, President Gottwald at a meeting of the Central Committee warned the members of the Communist Party against Zionism and Cosmopolitanism, as some of the main ideological enemies of Communism.52 At that time, several prominent members of the Communist Party who were of ‘Jewish origin’ were already incarcerated. The inner-Party purge, following examples of neighbouring Socialist countries, developed into a show trial, where the defendants were accused of siding with ‘Trotskyism’, ‘Titoism’ (the renegade Yugoslav Communists), and especially international Zionist circles and cosmopolitans in the service of the American imperialism. Eleven of the fourteen defendants in the trial, including the deposed General Secretary of the Communist Party, Rudolf Slánský (1901–52), were ‘of Jewish origin’, and the fact was overtly emphasized during the proceedings. Although the Communists in their public statements tried to differentiate between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, the trial and the accompanying extensive campaign clearly had an

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antisemitic underpinning.53 Eight of the ‘Jewish’ defendants (including Slánský) and three non-Jews received the death penalty and were executed in early December 1952.54 In the following year, other smaller trials against alleged centres of Zionist subversion in Czechoslovakia also took place. The public campaign was gradually stopped after the death of Stalin in March 1953, but relations with Israel and the treatment of the Jewish communities did not considerably improve for decades.55 Evidently, Communist Czechoslovakia was not a place for the further development of Jewish nationalist activities and efforts of the communal politicians as in the times before the takeover. Not surprisingly, Frischer soon decided – for the second time in his life – to leave the country and look for a new homeland elsewhere.

Emigration and settlement in a new country Frischer was demoted from his position as Chairman of the Council in early March 1948, and clearly now faced another dilemma about his future in Czechoslovakia. He was allowed to remain on the Board of the Prague Jewish Community and be an economic adviser to the Council, but these were both only symbolic positions.56 Even before the takeover, Frischer had considered his stay in Czechoslovakia to be only a temporary solution to his quandary. After experiencing his second purge, however, he was more inclined to leave Czechoslovakia forever. Although they faced no imminent threat to their security, the former Community leaders felt that there was no longer any future for them in the Communist State. Wehle, for example, left for Paris (most likely via Switzerland) even before the purge of the Council was completed. He arrived in the French capital on 4 March 1948, one week after the Communists established their rule in Prague. In fact, he had already applied for the relevant US immigration papers in December 1946, and eventually settled in America.57 Jewish organizations abroad had difficulties understanding the changed political situation in Prague. They were alarmed by the information from the Western press agencies and reports spread by the relatives of leading Jewish activists, which expressed concerns about the fate of non-Communist Jewish politicians. The London-­based wife of Jiří Libáň, the head of the WJC office in Prague, contacted Riegner in Geneva shortly after the takeover and begged him to help get her husband out of Czechoslovakia as soon as possible. She compared the new Communist regime to the days of Nazi rule in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, with the difference that after February not only Jews but also all non-Communists would be persecuted. Anni Libáň pointed to the individual excesses of the regime against publicly prominent figures, like Frischer, who had lost their positions in public life, and also to the first cases of imprisonment of non-Communists. She asked Riegner to provide Libáň with a letter of invitation, which would allow him to get a Czechoslovak exit-­visa.58 Also Wehle, shortly after his arrival in Paris, appealed to Riegner to get Libáň out of Czechoslovakia immediately. Riegner complied with the requests, and Libáň was soon able to leave for Switzerland.59 Although the borders of Communist Czechoslovakia were closed immediately after the takeover, it was still possible for individuals, provided they were not perceived as ‘dangerous elements’ by the new regime, to leave the country legally. Furthermore,

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many people, including leading pre-February politicians, seized the opportunity before the Communists were able to consolidate border controls, and escaped to Germany illegally. Another possibility was to bribe the border guards or police.60 The situation was more complicated for people who had families and did not want to risk the illegal crossing together with small children. Shortly after his arrival in France, Wehle contacted Barber in London and Riegner in Geneva, and tried to obtain, with the help of the WJC and the Jewish Agency, visas for at least a handful of Jewish activists. He specifically mentioned Frischer, together with Lilli Skutecká and her daughter, and Karel Stein.61 Wehle concluded that although Frischer was still cautiously optimistic about his future in the Council, he definitely planned to leave the country. Matters were complicated by his difficult financial situation, and the decision to leave Czechoslovakia would be made easier for him if he received a job offer, for example, to work for the Jewish Agency as a construction expert.62 Another option, mentioned by Riegner, was to get American visas for those people who felt threatened by the new regime. He was willing to try to secure Swiss transit visas that would allow people to leave Czechoslovakia if travelling directly to the United States turned out to be impossible.63 Things, however, calmed down in the following weeks, thanks partly to the impressions gained by Easterman, who visited Czechoslovakia in mid-March 1948 as part of a delegation to attend the funeral of Jan Masaryk. Easterman used the opportunity to monitor the situation of the Jews in the country and discuss the Communist policies with Clementis, the Acting Foreign Minister. (Gottwald, Slánský and Kopecký declined to meet with Easterman.)64 During his nine days in Prague, he met with Frischer four or five times, and also talked to other leaders of the Jewish Community, including the Action Committee members in Prague and Winterstein, who had come to Prague from Bratislava for this purpose. Easterman concluded that there was no imminent danger for the Jews, but most of them were in a hopeless situation – because of the new economic programme of nationalization and the introduction of Socialism – and they wanted to leave Czechoslovakia as soon as possible.65 In a private letter to Schwarzbart, he described his impression of Frischer from their repeated meetings in Prague. Overtly critical of Frischer’s conduct during the fateful February days, Easterman reminded Schwarzbart of how stubborn Frischer had been in London during the war: I would have wished that Frischer had shown in adversity as much doggedness as he showed in circumstances like those which prevailed in London, during his temporary association with us. Please do not misunderstand me. I have never been a wildly enthusiastic admirer of Mr. Frischer, but when I saw him in Prague I had nothing but the utmost sympathy for him and in his difficulties. I forgot and have still forgotten all my irritations and I am glad to say that I have done a number of things in Prague and in London to help him in the extremely sad situation in which he now finds himself.66

Easterman’s is the only report we have that describes Frischer’s mental state after he was demoted from the Community leadership. We also know that he stopped taking part in Council activities, and withdrew to the private sphere. His behaviour now

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resembled his conduct shortly after the Munich Conference, at a time of growing antisemitism in Czecho-Slovakia. Yet, Easterman’s report also revealed that although the Jewish agencies were willing to facilitate Frischer’s emigration from Czechoslovakia, there was no real likelihood that they would allow him to join the organizational structures either in Britain or the United States. They had not forgotten their difficulties with Frischer during and after the war. Easterman kept his promise and explored the possibilities that would allow Frischer to emigrate together with Lilli and Hanna Skutecká. He visited Frischer’s daughter, Liese, in London and informed her about the situation. Frischer still hoped that an invitation from the Jewish Agency would allow him to leave the country. His tasks in Prague, Frischer had told Easterman, ‘now appear to be concluded’, and he wanted ‘to come to Palestine to assist in the work of construction’. Frischer was apparently anxious to leave Czechoslovakia ‘with the full knowledge and consent of the Czechoslovak authorities’. Taking into account the good relations between Czechoslovakia and Jewish Palestine, Frischer believed that the Communists would not decline this request.67 The prospects for his emigration were not entirely hopeless. He had celebrated his sixtieth birthday the previous summer, and it was generally easier for older people to leave Czechoslovakia because they were not considered indispensable for the economy (actually, they were a potential burden). Nor was he regarded as an enemy of the regime, which is confirmed by the fact that he was benevolently allowed to stay in the Council bodies, though not in any influential position. His withdrawal into passivity was part of a strategy to avoid drawing too much attention from the Communist police, and by this seemingly loyal position obtain permission to emigrate. Nevertheless, his efforts to negotiate an invitation from the Jewish Agency or the WJC were futile. The agencies, once concerns about the quick deterioration of the Jewish position in Czechoslovakia proved exaggerated, failed to address the question of Frischer’s emigration. With the upcoming date of the British departure from Palestine, the Jewish organizations faced more pressing matters. Frischer repeatedly tried to contact Easterman (cautiously by means of the British Orthodox leader Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld (1912–84)). He complained about his isolation in Prague, and that he had not received any information about the negotiations concerning his and Skutecká’s possible emigration. The letters also confirm Frischer’s feeling of uncertainty about his personal situation. He had asked the Jewish organizations not to send any information or material to his home address, preferring instead to visit the WJC office in Prague to ensure that he was sufficiently informed about their work.68 In the meantime, Frischer’s new family continued with their preparation for emigration. Lilli Skutecká had already applied for a new passport for a trip to Palestine in March 1948, at a time when all her and Frischer’s plans to leave Czechoslovakia were still in the clouds. The Ministry of Social Welfare approved her application (it means that she was not considered indispensable for the Czechoslovak economy), and in midApril 1948 Frischer’s family received permission to emigrate.69 It took another two months before they actually left. Palestine (later Israel) officially remained their destination, but they evidently had other plans. The emerging Jewish state was the only place where Jews could officially emigrate from Czechoslovakia (unless special circumstances, such as family reunification, applied).

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Although the Communist authorities permitted many Jews to leave Czechoslovakia, they were stricter about letting people take their property with them. As a rule, the Jews were allowed to take only their personal belongings and there was no compensation for flats and other real estate, or items necessary for ones’ employment. The Joint in its annual report even compared the Jewish emigrants, who could leave with only 100 kilos of personal belongings, to the Jewish deportees during the Second World War.70 Some emigrants therefore tried to smuggle money, valuables and clothes out of Czechoslovakia, but the border controls were very strict.71 The process of leaving Czechoslovakia was described in detail by Ruth Elias: Each family was allowed to take one lift (a large wooden container) filled with furniture and belongings out of the country. We had to make detailed lists enumerating every plate, spoon, and handkerchief we wanted to take. These lists were then checked at the customs office. When we got them back, we found to our dismay that everything of any value had been crossed off the list: pictures, rugs, musical instruments, glassware, and china. We had all spent a lot of effort, money and patience in making new homes for ourselves after we came out of the camps. The Germans had taken everything from us, and now the Czechs were trying to do the same. But in one respect things were different: Our possessions were not confiscated; we were allowed to sell them. But many Czechs exploited this situation and paid us very little. We couldn’t take any money with us, and only the rich could afford to buy foreign currency on the black market. Officially, we were permitted to take out only five British pounds, which we picked up at the Czech National Bank.72

Most Jewish emigrants thus left Czechoslovakia without any significant assets, and this was also true of Frischer’s family. For example, he received nothing for his Ostrava construction company (though its post-­war value was probably negligible in any case). Nevertheless, while carrying out its nationalization policies and otherwise introducing Socialism, the new Czechoslovak regime did not omit Frischer’s company. Before the nationalization was carried out, the Ministry of Engineering enquired of the local authorities in Ostrava whether there were grounds for confiscation of this company as enemy-­owned property, based on Presidential Decree No. 108/45Sb. The investigation, without any active involvement from Frischer (who had left Czechoslovakia months before), again documented the ease with which the post-­war Czechoslovak bureaucracy imposed identities on individuals. For almost three years, Prague and Ostrava officials tried to reach Frischer, and exchanged several letters enquiring into his whereabouts. When they were unable to get in touch with him, the National Committee in Ostrava unilaterally decided that Frischer was a German and his property was confiscated.73 The circle was closed. More than forty years earlier, Frischer had fought against the Austrian Imperial authorities imposing German identity on Jews. Now, in 1951, he was again officially made a German. Frischer’s personal story, which began in the late nineteenth century, shows how the authorities, first Austrian and later Czechoslovak, rarely accepted the idea that adherence to secular Jewish nationalism in the Diaspora was a genuine expression of a Jew’s personal beliefs and feelings.

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On 24 June 1948, Frischer’s family finally left Czechoslovakia by train from Prague to Paris. The Joint paid for their tickets.74 Although Israel would seem a natural destination for a Jewish nationalist who had been attracted to Zionism since his university days, Frischer ultimately decided to settle in London. His friends and colleagues in Israel criticized his decision, and Frischer therefore felt obliged to explain his plans in a long letter, written in German (it is remarkable how easily Frischer abandoned Czech after his final emigration from the country), to Zajitschkova in Jerusalem: I would have a hard time finding a flat, my sparse savings would be used up very quickly on the almost unparalleled high local prices, and I do not believe that it is possible for me to find a job with halfway decent pay. I am sure that all positions in the government were filled a long time ago with people who have personal contacts. Today it would be easier than it was in 1940 to tell me that I do not speak Hebrew well enough to work as a civil servant. [. . .] I say all this without bitterness [. . .]. Right after the takeover in Czechoslovakia, I asked Berl Locker through Easterman to arrange an invitation for me to visit Palestine. I said that I would come as a technician or political worker. And I explained that I would be happy to accept an invitation to work as an engineer there (not only for the purpose of getting permission to leave Czechoslovakia on the basis of such an invitation) if they were serious. Bert Locker promised to arrange everything, but to this day of course no letter [of invitation] has arrived. Meanwhile I could have been detained in Czechoslovakia, just as Krasnaňský is to this day and Winterstein was, if my information is correct. I would have been offered as little help as they were offered or could have been offered. This too I say without any bitterness; [. . .] When, in addition, you take into account my personal situation, and in particular consider that I have to earn as much as possible to support [Heřmína] at least in part; if you can still think realistically (and that was never your strong point), you have to admit that I simply cannot go to Israel right now [illegible]. For that reason and because I am still frightened at the prospect of a world war, I would like to go overseas. But you know how hard, almost impossible, it is for someone without really close family there and who has not been on a waiting list for a long time. The other problem is that I would have to go without Lilli, because to get two visas at the same time is doubly difficult. I especially hold it against [Heřmína] because she conceals her unwillingness to grant a divorce behind impossible financial conditions or what she would squeeze out of me. Any English housemaid would see that it is unfair and unworthy of her not to grant a divorce to a man that does not want to live with her. [. . .] [Heřmína], although I do not want to live with her, and naturally never will do so again, could have stayed within the circle of people close to me. She locked herself out, with the stubbornness of her stupidity. True, she behaved superbly in those hard and heroic times, but for me she is like the cow in the fable that gives a full pot of milk, and then knocks it over with a kick of her hoof.75

A combination of economic and personal motivations thus led to Frischer settling in Britain instead of Israel. There are also indications that at least one of his old

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colleagues, Schwarzbart, did not abandon him and facilitated his relocation to London.76 The temporary move to the British capital – Frischer would have preferred to move to the United States or Canada – turned out to be permanent.77 He was naturalized in August 1950.78 In 1949, his first wife Heřmína died in Jerusalem, and a year later Frischer married Lilli Skutecká. They lived in Kingsbury, north-west London, not far from his daughter Liese. The economic difficulties encountered by the elderly Frischer, when he was in his second exile and could not rely on any savings, took their toll. Ageing, facing failing health, and trying to establish a new life in London, he was ‘disappointed and broken’ by the events that had driven him out of Czechoslovakia.79 Frischer worked as a sales agent of Building and Allied Equipment, but he was unable to earn a steady income. In September 1950, he was granted a monthly allowance of £50 for the period of six months by the Joint (thanks to his colleague from the war Joseph J. Schwartz), ‘in the view of [his] really outstanding services in Czechoslovakia’, with the hope that after half a year he would succeed in becoming self-­sufficient.80 Regrettably, we know little about the rest of his life, but it is unlikely that he remained active in public affairs. The deterioration of relations between the international Jewish organizations and Czechoslovakia, as well as the extensive emigration of the Czechoslovak Jews, diminished Frischer’s importance for Jewish agencies. Moreover, all the key positions, for example, in the WJC administration, were held by other (often much younger) exiles from Central Europe, such as Schwarzbart, Barber or Zelmanovits. Frischer was simply no longer needed. Although he lived in London, he was rarely consulted on matters pertaining to the Czechoslovak Jews, a fact that contributed to the bitterness he felt in his later years.81 One rare piece of evidence that we have about Frischer’s attitude to the situation of the Jews in Czechoslovakia comes from the time of the Slánský trial, and reveals his concerns about the fate of the Jews in his homeland. The WJC was preparing an official protest against the antisemitic campaign accompanying the trial, and Easterman wanted to learn Frischer’s views on the situation. Frischer wrote his response shortly before Slánský and his co-­defendants were sentenced to death and therefore he probably did not yet fully realize the brutality of the trial and the judgement. It also shows that he was still not able to understand the nature of the regime and the involvement of the defendants – in particular Slánský – in the previous political crimes committed by the Communist Party (though they were, of course, not accused of these crimes). First of all, Frischer emphasized: None of the Jewish people now on trial was to my mind a member of the Jewish community. [. . .] Most of the people showed a certain mental solidarity. Loebl probably most; Slánský least. I think that all of them had clean hands and, except for the fact that they were devoted disciples of Communism in all its consequences, they were decent men.

In Frischer’s view, the Communist tactics clearly resembled the modus operandi of the Nazi regime. They were looking for scapegoats who could be blamed for the difficult economic situation and utilized the fact that ‘the Jewish Communists are the object of

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a special hatred’ in society. Frischer opined that the Jewish organizations needed to condemn Communist practices, but, as during the war, he was concerned whether a public statement to embarrass the Communist regime would not cause further deterioration of the Jewish position in the country: Competent circles should express astonishment that Zionism is treated as if it would be a crime, which is in contrast to the positive attitude to Zionism and Israel shown in the past. It should be added that none of the men on trial have ever been Zionist. In spite that they did not confess either Jewish faith [or] nationality, one cannot look on them other than as on Jews. If one does [look at them as Jews], the Prague trial is a sort of pogrom. On the other hand, such a declaration might endanger the Jews in Czechoslovakia who are helpless hostages. It could give a pretext to punishment or annihilation. Possibly a diplomatic action with the embassy would be better than a public declaration. Tell it to the Czechoslovak Government in a time of friendship. But something of this sort should, to my mind, be done. The people in Prague should be aware that the trial of so many Jews is a sort of provocation and is being watched carefully by Jewry, and that sympathies are in danger of being lost.82

Until the very end, it seems, Frischer preferred practical diplomatic interventions in contrast to public demonstrations. Nevertheless, much as during the war, the WJC opposed Frischer’s views and adopted a public declaration condemning the Slánský show trial.83 Frischer’s financial situation slightly improved in summer 1954, when he was granted a regular monthly allowance of £30 from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany. In a letter to Saul Kagan (1922–2013), the founding director of the Claims Conference, Frischer complained about his irregular income, but also about his deteriorating heath (diabetes and angina pectoris) and emphasized the frustrations he had suffered in recent years.84 His health ailments turned out to be more serious than Frischer thought. Shortly after this letter, on 2 August 1954, he died at home of a heart attack. He was buried at the Adath Yisroel Cemetery in Enfield, London. The British Section of the WJC organized a memorial service for Frischer in the Congress House in London. Representatives of several Zionist groups, including Easterman and Barber, commemorated the life and work of one of the most influential Jewish activists from the Bohemian Lands of the 1930s and 1940s.85 Other people, including Frischer’s wartime rival Zelmanovits, published obituaries in which they praised him as a ‘courageous and uncompromising defender of Jewish honour’, who contributed immensely to the life of the Czechoslovak Jews in recent decades, and they mourned his untimely death.86 The journalist Josef Fraenkel (1904–88) concluded Frischer’s obituary (in German) as follows: Czechoslovakia produced many Jewish figures whose names are familiar in the Jewish world. Now the Czech Jews mourn their leader, Ernst Frischer who for fifty years fought for the welfare of the Jews. He was a tragic figure, a headstrong idealist, and a fearless defender of his people.87

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The end of Jewish politics in Czechoslovakia? Official Jewish politics after the February takeover and the purge of Frischer’s Council were entirely in thrall to Communist ideology. The Council was under the constant surveillance of the Action Committee, where the Communists and trade unionists had a clear majority.88 The subordination of the Council to the Communist Party became final with the adoption of a new law on the churches in November 1949. Henceforth, the government paid the salary of all Council officials (as well as officials of other churches) and also controlled the budgets of all the religious organizations.89 The first meetings shortly after the February takeover made clear the changing priorities of the Council. Instead of rectifying past injustices, the Council declared their intention to look to the future and, first and foremost, to see to the enlightenment of the Jews in the sense of making them aware of the benefits of the new political and socio-­economic order in the country.90 Leading members of the Communist Party used Věstník to explain to the Jewish community that they should be grateful to the Communists for having achieved the equality of the Jews in Czechoslovakia and solving the Jewish question in the country.91 There was no middle ground for the Jews. Shortly before the elections in May 1948, when the National Front ran only a single slate – consisting exclusively of Communists and pro-Communist members of the other parties – Věstník appealed to the Jews to support the regime, and also warned that any opposition to the Communist Party could lead to the return of reactionaries and even the reimposition of the requirement that Jews wear yellow Stars of David.92 Based on the notion that emanated from the public statements of the Jewish leadership after February, the Jews needed to prove to the society they lived in that they deserved to enjoy the benefits of the new Socialist order. They ought to follow the example of Israel, where the whole country and society, the Communists claimed, were being built by the efforts of the Jewish working class and peasantry. They needed to go to the mines, or work on the roads. In this way they would prove that all the accusations that ‘reactionary circles and antisemites’ made about the Jews’ alleged inability or unwillingness to engage in manual labour were baseless. Věstník thus made a pledge in the name of all the Jews that they would fully participate in the first five-­year economic plan of the Communist government. Although the Council made the statements with the intention to prove the Jews’ determination to join the new Socialist system, they at the same time showed that socio-­economic antisemitic prejudices still persisted in the society.93 During the first two years of the Communist regime, the Council had to cope with the contradictions in Communist government policies. Although the Party supported the creation of the state of Israel and allowed thousands of Czechoslovak Jews to emigrate there, the government kept stressing that there was no reason for the Jews to leave Czechoslovakia.94 Yet the general feeling in the Jewish community was the opposite.95 Many Jews, especially members of the middle class, professional people and owners of small businesses, felt that the Socialist changes in Czechoslovakia – in particular the nationalization policies – would have a seriously adverse effect on their living standards and employment opportunities. The coming of the Cold War also

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reminded them that in the event of an armed conflict between East and West, Central Europe would likely become the first theatre of war. Furthermore, there were serious concerns in the community that the publicly known fact that many prominent Communists came from Jewish families would lead to an increase in antisemitism. In the event of a counter-­revolution, the Jews would be the first targets of the antiCommunist forces. Consequently, foreign observers, who had recently visited Czechoslovakia, concluded, as early as March 1948, that there was ‘only one problem and one topic of conversation among Jews [. . .] – emigration en masse’.96 The attitude of the new leaders of the Jewish Community towards emigration to Israel remained ambiguous.97 During 1948 and 1949, they never appealed to the Jews directly to stay in their current homeland; an individual’s decision to leave for Israel was beyond dispute. The situation changed slightly in early 1949, after the general election in Israel.98 Yet although the chairmanship of the Council was aware that they could not deter a considerable part of the Jewish population from seeking a new homeland in Israel, the emigrants were supposed to have been people already indoctrinated in Communist ideology, who would continue to support the class struggle of the Israeli proletariat.99 Thus issues of Věstník from that time are filled with references to the 1917 Russian Revolution, which had, the authors claimed, entirely changed the course of history and offered the Jews equality and security in a classless, Communist society. The Soviet Union was praised as the country that had liberated the Jews from the Nazi yoke and saved the remnants of the once-­flourishing communities. Later, in stark contrast to the ‘British imperialists’, the Soviet Union backed and facilitated the creation of the Jewish state in Palestine.100 More specifically, Pavel Reimann (1902–76), a Communist ideologue of Jewish background and a member of the Central Committee’s Committee on Jewish Affairs, appealed to the Jewish community that only membership in the family of states with the Soviet Union and other people’s democracies could ensure the existence of the Jewish state.101 As late as August 1949, when emigration to Israel from Czechoslovakia became virtually impossible, Věstník kept addressing the internal quandary of Czechoslovak Jews concerning their plans for emigration. Besides ideological reasons, the mouthpiece of the Community in particular centred on the difficulties associated with life in the Jewish state. Israel was presented as a state without a functioning economic and social system and thus not as a country for people who had become used to what was presented as an easy and comfortable life in Communist Czechoslovakia. The social and pension system, as well as an adequate health care system, were non-­existent in Israel. Yet, at the same time, Věstník highlighted the upcoming struggle of the Israeli proletariat against capitalist exploiters, a struggle in which the workers had nothing to lose, only to gain. Israel was in a pre-­revolutionary stage, with a wave of strikes paralysing the country and brutal policemen trying to stop the working class from making their just demands. The victory of the Israeli proletariat could ensure that in the future the immigrants would be easily integrated into the life of the community; Israel would eventually find its way into the camp of ‘peace and progress’. The readers were left wondering whether they were expected to leave for Israel and partake in the struggle of the Israeli proletariat or to wait in Communist Czechoslovakia for the outcome of this inevitable clash.102

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Arnošt Frischer

Did the activities of the Council between March 1948 and late 1949 signal the end of independent Jewish politics in Czechoslovakia? In his report from March 1948, Easterman suggested that it was unlikely that the new Council would continue in the struggle for Jewish equality. Probably unable to comprehend the nature of the changes in Prague, he remarked that the new members of the Council (he specifically mentioned Fuchs and Knapp) lacked the skills and had a lukewarm attitude to Jewish affairs, and these, he concluded, were the main reasons for the anticipated decline in Council activities.103 Wehle, shortly after his emigration to France, also concluded that any further open fight against discrimination and for the rehabilitation of the Jews was now impossible. This was one of the reasons, apart from his personal safety, that he had decided to leave Czechoslovakia.104 Even the Joint in its reports asserted that the Council had simply become an arm of the Communist Party and no longer represented the interests of the community.105 Regardless of these claims, it would be too simplistic to conclude that the members of the Action Committee and the new members of the Council presidium simply blindly followed Communist Party orders. Many Jews after the war sincerely believed in the Communist and Assimilationist programmes, and imagined a bright future under the Soviet banner.106 The fact that Jewish Communists and Assimilationists formed a coalition after the February purge, also strongly suggests that both groups were able to articulate a common programme that would, in their opinion at least, lead to the eradication of antisemitism and to the successful integration of the Jews into Czech society. With the creation of the Jewish state, they were given an opportunity to renegotiate the position of the Jews in Czechoslovakia, as a group of people who (or at least some of whom) adhered to a different religious practice than the remaining population, but otherwise shared their willingness to rebuild Czech society on Socialist foundations. The new Jewish leadership in the Bohemian Lands was willing to sacrifice their previous demands for the restitution of individuals’ property, and also promised to re-­educate the Jews along Socialist lines. This was meant to be their contribution to the safety and equality of the Jews in Socialist Czechoslovakia. The changing relations with Israel in 1949, however, led to the Council being increasing subjugated to the State.107 The Council work of 1948 and 1949 thus does not mark the end of Jewish politics in the country. In essence, their plans for the position of the Jews did not markedly differ from the ideological path Frischer set out on after 1945. The main difference was that the pre-February Council sought to rectify past wrongs and get material restitution for the community and its members. Although Frischer planned to articulate a new vision for Diaspora nationalists in Czechoslovakia, it is unclear how he would square the theory with the reality in the country. Despite the Council’s efforts to create conditions for the Jews to stay in Communist Czechoslovakia, large parts of the Jewish community, as on so many other occasions in the past, took little notice of these efforts and decided instead to follow their own paths. Most of the Jews left the country as long as emigration was still possible. This was also the case with the last of Frischer’s close relatives in the country, his son Hanuš, who returned to Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1945 in the ranks of the Czechoslovak army that had fought in the West. He stayed in Prague, partly because he was seriously

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ill in the early months after the war. When he recovered, he worked for UNRRA, and after the Communist takeover he found employment in an engineering company in Prague. His position in the country soon became precarious. In October 1948, police reports had already stated that the young Frischer was an adherent of Western ideology and often made jokes about the new Socialist order and their representatives, in particular the president’s obese wife, Marta. He was also considered politically unreliable due to his previous membership in the right wing of the Social Democratic party. Hanuš was in the last wave of emigrants who left Czechoslovakia in July 1949, and after seven years (since he enlisted in the Czechoslovak army in 1942) he joined his wife Hana in Israel.108 In the following decades, he worked for the Israeli civil service. Frischer’s daughters never returned to Czechoslovakia. Liese stayed in London, and Fritzi/Bedřiška married a soldier she had met during her army service in Cairo, and they moved to Pretoria, South Africa. Frischer’s niece, Marianna Blochová (later Kudílková), a devoted Communist, was then Frischer’s only relation in Czechoslovakia.109 Whereas in 1938 Frischer and his whole family had lived in Czechoslovakia, after 1948 they were dispersed all over the world. This too was one of the ways in which the totalitarian regimes of Central Europe affected the lives of individual Jewish families, at least of those who had survived the Nazi extermination campaign of only a few years before.

Epilogue: Who Was Frischer?

The Canadian Jewish Chronicle asked precisely this question in November 1941, even before Frischer had made his most important contributions to Jewish politics. Activists who thirteen years later penned Frischer’s obituaries praised him as an idealist and a person who had worked tirelessly for the Jews from the Bohemian Lands. Viktor Fischl, another Czech Zionist activist from this period (perhaps today even the best known), recalled in 2005 that although Frischer had not been amongst the adored Jewish leaders, he had been widely respected for his political abilities.1 Frischer was a skilful politician, working within the constraints of a Czechoslovak political system that was not favourably disposed towards the heterogeneous Jewish community unevenly dispersed all over the territory of this still multiethnic state. To Frischer, being a Jew meant a sense of belonging to an ethnic, cultural and religious community (though Frischer himself, like most of the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia at that time, was not a practising Jew2). It was above all about maintaining the community and educating one’s children in the Zionist spirit and thus preparing them for the colonization of the Jewish homeland in Palestine. Yet, for Frischer, Jewish nationalism could exist in the Diaspora even after the creation of the state of Israel, with the Jews being a loyal and reliable minority group in the countries where they lived. To judge at least from the available sources from after 1920, one has to conclude that throughout his life Frischer was remarkably consistent in his worldview. Previously, in the inter-­war period, he had articulated the conditions under which Jewish nationalists could demand official recognition of their minority status in European states. As long as Czechoslovakia remained multinational, the Jews could legitimately demand the rights granted by the Constitution to other minorities. As soon as the Munich Agreement had changed the rules of the game, Frischer was among the first Jewish politicians to recognize that Jewish nationalists, if they wanted to find a modus vivendi with the leaders of the Czechoslovak resistance to Nazi Germany, would have to renegotiate their position in the country. Once the Czechoslovak government-­inexile began to pursue their vision of a Slav nation-­state, the Jews, Frischer believed, also had to accept the changed conditions, and could no longer demand special privileges. He simply believed that the Jewish minority ought to respect the conditions of life in the countries where they settled. Frischer’s political moves during the 1940s provoked criticism from his colleagues in Czech-Zionist and international Jewish organizations. Frischer, however, stubbornly believed in his abilities to read the current political situation correctly. Although since his student years before the First World War he had been at the forefront of the struggle for State recognition of Jewish nationality, after May 1945 he initiated a debate about the decision, when the Jews unceremoniously abandoned this main pre-­war minority

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right. In fact, Frischer had assumed already before the war that skilful negotiations could lead to practical achievements even without previous public declarations by the government. He believed, rightly, that the Jews of Czechoslovakia in their daily lives had not really benefited from the minority treaties implemented between the wars. They did not need any new empty promises after 1945. Frischer’s life can tell us a good deal about the history of the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia in the first half of the twentieth century. Mainly, Frischer’s life journey attests to the flourishing of Jewish politics, starting from the last decades of the Habsburg Empire and leading all the way to the reconstruction of Jewish life in post-­war Czechoslovakia. The latter was an achievement of a tiny group of activists under Frischer and Wehle’s leadership, which has yet to receive its due acknowledgement. Frischer’s life is an example of the continuous efforts of Jewish activists to fight for the rights of the Jews under the diverse political regimes that one after another emerged and collapsed in Central Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. This was not the case only with the Jewish nationalists, who are, understandably, amongst the main interest of the current publication. Frischer’s political activities complicate our current understanding of the history of Zionism in the Bohemian Lands. It has been cogently argued that in Bohemia and Moravia – in contrast to the neighbouring countries – it is almost impossible (or at least impractical) to differentiate between Zionists and Jewish nationalists.3 Yet there were differences in the worldview that Frischer articulated during his life and those of leading Zionists in Bohemia and Moravia, such as Rufeisen and März. The divisions were not so noticeable in the interwar period, but they became more clearly articulated with the growing threat from Nazi Germany, particularly after 1938. Frischer’s post1945 efforts to reconstruct Jewish communities then clearly contradicted the priorities of leading Czechoslovak Zionists who believed that the end of Jewish life in the Diaspora – at least from the nationalist perspective – was a fait accompli. Frischer’s attitude towards the languages he used in private and public over time is also revealing of the situation in the multilingual Jewish community of Bohemia and Moravia. Born and brought up in the German milieu, Frischer mastered Czech as well, though we have no evidence that he used it before 1918. After the establishment of Czechoslovakia, he continued to communicate in German within the Jewish community, but when communicating with the state authorities he began to use his rusty Czech as evidence of his loyalty to the new political establishment in the country. He also insisted that Jewish children learn Czech. Although German remained his main language even in the following decades, after Munich Frischer kept all communication in German to a bare minimum, and instead used English when communicating with international Jewish agencies (he had used German before 1938) and Czech when dealing with members of the Czechoslovak exile movement. In 1945, in Prague, he switched to Czech even in private. Yet, after the Communist takeover in late February 1948, and his final emigration from Czechoslovakia, he immediately returned to German in his private life,4 abandoning Czech altogether. No longer active in Czech (-Jewish) politics, there was no need for Frischer to demonstrate loyalty to the Czechoslovak political regime and respect the specific conditions of life in the country. His attitude towards the language he used, and towards the language that he believed

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the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia should use, offers us valuable insight into his personal view of Jewish life in the Diaspora. To be properly understood, this attitude must be seen in conjunction with the specific conditions in Bohemia and Moravia, a multiethnic territory, where the Jews did not use any specifically ‘Jewish’ language and thus had to use the language of one of the other ethnic groups. The other nationalities often constructed for themselves the Jews’ loyalties based on the language the Jews used. Hence, facing the volatile political situation, the Jewish nationalists had to take crucial decisions about how to stymie accusations of disloyalty from the non-Jewish population, as well as from the Assimilationist (Czech or German) branches of the Jewish community. This book about Frischer helps, I sincerely hope, to fill a lacuna in the history of the Jews of the Bohemian Lands. It also offers novel perspectives on the immense efforts of the exile Jewish activists during the Shoah. One year after Frischer’s death, Ullmann, one of his closest associates during the war, wrote about him: ‘Still no monument whatsoever shows his greatness, still no publications of his documents report on his valuable work in Jewish politics. But the Czechoslovak Jewish associations of the world and the Zionist foundations and institutions will surely recall his work by erecting a Mossad [institution] or monument honouring his name.’5 Ullmann, however, remained the only Zionist and Israeli activist who repeatedly publicly recalled Frischer’s political activities. Later, in the 1970s, Lilli Frisher (née Popper, later Skutezky, and Frischer) expressed the hope that her late husband’s wartime activities on behalf of the Jews would eventually be acknowledged in history books.6 This monograph was written with that hope in mind.

Notes Preface 1 Canadian Jewish Chronicle, 7 November 1941, 12. 2 Author’s interview with Uri Meretz, 16 November 2005. 3 Wyman, 1984, and Gilbert, 1981.

1  The Formative Years 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Feiwel-Stricker, 1898: 3. AMB, B1-39, kartotéka domovského práva, Veit Frischer. Vobecká, 2013: 48; Volkmann, 1934: 170–3. Kieval, 2000: 21f. Kestenberg-Gladstein, 1968: 27; Vobecká, 2013. Rachmuth, 1937: 199–242. Kestenberg-Gladstein, 1968: 35–7. Author’s interview with Jaakov Frischer, 14 November 2005. Haas, 1908: 58–64. Hecht, 2010. Kieval, 1988; 2000: 27–9. On bilingualism, see Rozenblit, 2001: 25–8. Pařík, 2010. Kieval, 2000: 33. The first Czech-Jewish organization in Moravia was established only in 1913. Miller, 2011: 335. Miller, 2011: 333–5. Frischer’s younger sister, Wilma, may have been named after the German emperor, Wilhelm I. ‘Privatbesitzer, Geschäftsangestellter, Geschäftsfrau’. AMB, B1-39, kartotéka domovského práva, Veit Frischer; AMB, Z-1, policejní pobytová evidence pro Brno z let 1918–1953. AMB, N 57, inv. č. 8144, school year 1904/5, Zeugnis, Ernst Frischer. MZA, B 34, enrolment lists, 1905/6–1911/12. ABS, 425-231-1, Frischer’s curriculum vitae, 25 September 1945. Wistrich, 1990: 357–60, 383. Wistrich, 1990: 347–70; Rozenblit, 1983: 161–6; Schoeps, 1982: 155–70. Schoeps, 1982: 155–70. Ibid., 165. Die Welt, 25 June 1897, 4–6. Gaisbauer, 1988: 61. Die Welt, 25 June 1897, 4–6; Rabinowicz, 1971: 23; Goshen, 1971: 181. Die Welt, 7 September 1906, 15f.

200 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

Notes to Chapter 1 LBI, Ernst Müller, ‘Wiener Universitätsjahre’, MS, n.d. Gold, 1929: 167. Rosenfeld, 1912: 61. Miller, 2011: 337–9. Miller, 2004: 117. Samuel Hugo Bergmann, ‘Berthold Feiwel’, Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 6, 2007: 744; Gaisbauer, 1988: 61. Die Welt, 17 June 1898, 8. Ibid., 7f., and 24 June 1898, 5f. LBI, Müller, ‘Wiener Universitätsjahre’, MS, n.d. Die Welt, 25 June 1897, 4–6. MZA, B40, box 2909, Statuten der Verbindung freisiniger Hochschüler ‘Veritas’, 24 September 1895; MZA, B26, box 2627, Rudolf Zeisel to the Police Headquarters, 22 April 1895; K. K. Statthalter to the Police Headquarters in Brünn, 1 April 1899. On the situation in Bohemia, see Wein, 2008: 122–4. Čapková, 2012: 177–81. Jüdische Zeitung, 17 December 1909, 8. Goshen, 1971: 175. Die Welt, 18 February 1898, 8. MZA, B26, box 2627, Veritas correspondence with Police Headquarters, Brünn. Die Welt, 5 February 1909, 4; 14 February 1908, 13f. Jüdische Volksstimme, 20 March 1909, 4f; 10 July 1909, 4f; 10 November 1909, 4; 30 March 1910, 5; 20 July 1910, 5; 16 November 1910, 4; 19 July 1911, 5f; 25 October 1911, 6; 4 July 1912, 5. The society was founded in 1900 and was modelled on a similar organization that had existed in Vienna since 1862. Feiwel-Stricker, 1898: 5–8. Ibid., 9. Ibid., 10. Ibid., 11. Gaisbauer, 1988: 97–103; Shanes, 2012: 163f. Shanes, 2012: 192–6. Gaisbauer, 1988: 332ff; Rechter, 2007: 92 and 102. P. Kantor, ‘Stricker as Member of “Veritas”’, in Fränkel, 1950: 49–50. Lev Zelmanovits, ‘Stricker, the “Landespolitiker”’, in Fränkel, 1950: 74–6. LAC, Barber Papers, vol. 31, Josef Fraenkel, ‘Tschechische Juden trauern: Zum Tode von Ing. Ernst Frischer’, Juedische Rundschau, 24 September 1954. See also Die Welt, 14 March 1902, 10. Rechter, 2007. Gaisbauer, 1988: 317. Jüdische Zeitung, 12 February 1909, 6. Hlošek, 1925: 52. Jüdische Zeitung, 26 March 1909, 8; Stricker, 1929: 22–6. Jüdische Volksstimme, 15 January 1906, 4. Wiener Jüdische Volksstimme, 8 May 1913, 3. Kieval, 2010: 33f. Kestenberg-Gladstein (1968: 59f.), by contrast, believes that ‘Moravia, or at least the old Jewish congregations there, was the only Western European country where Zionism was associated with Jewish tradition’. Shanes, 2012: 219, 237–40; Rechter, 2007. Rozenblit, 1982: 174.

Notes to Chapter 2 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98

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Rechter, 2007. Rosenfeld, 1917: 664–71. Ibid., 670. The Austrian government had reached a similar decision already in February 1906. Rechter, 2007: 101. Jüdische Zeitung, 12 November 1909, 1f; Rosenfeld, 1917: 667. Miller, 2004: 118. The Jews had the right to challenge the decision and claim that they did not belong in the national group. Rozenblit, 1982: 177–83; Jüdische Zeitung, 28 August 1908, 6; Die Welt, 28 September 1906, 23. Borman, 1972: 148; Die Welt, 23 January 1903, 10. Die Welt, 16 February 1906, 20. Shanes, 2012: 207–8. MZA, B 26, box 2627, report of the meeting on 16 February 1906. Die Welt, 6 July 1906, 7. MZA, B 34, fascikl no. 525. Jüdische Volksstimme, 1 May 1907, 5; 15 April 1907, 5. Jüdische Volksstimme, 1 May 1907, 5. Jüdische Volksstimme, 20 May 1908, 5. Jüdische Zeitung, 27 March 1908, 7; 3 November 1911, 3. Rozenblit, 1982: 180. Ibid., 182–6. ABS, 425-229-2, Frischer’s statement in the Defense Committee of the Czechoslovak State Council, 22 September 1942. MZA, B 34, fascikl č. 804, report about Frischer’s final examination, 23 March 1912. Wiener Jüdische Volksstimme, 3 April 1913, 6; Jüdische Zeitung, 23 July 1909, 7. Jüdische Zeitung, 29 December 1911, 3; Wiener Jüdische Volksstimme, 9 January 1913, 6. Jüdische Zeitung, 29 December 1911, 3. Jüdische Volksstimme, 20 October 1907, 1. AMO, ÚNV Ostrava, 8682/47, i.č. 113, Der Kom. Polizeidirektor Mähr. Ostrau, 17 April 1939. AMO, Notářství dr. Munk, box 45, spis 30719, prenuptial agreement 24 October 1915. AMO, OÚMO, 1855–1941, box 394, i. č. 235, a note sent by the Brünn town council, undated. Frischer, ‘Feuilleton’, Jüdisches Volksblatt, 10 February 1920, 1f. Rozenblit, 2001: 74–81. Aschheim, 1982. Rozenblit, 2001: 110–13. Jüdische Zeitung, 2 February 1917, 8.

2  In the Czechoslovak First Republic 1 Jüdisches Volksblatt, 18 February 1919, 5. 2 AMO, ÚNV Ostrava, 8682/47, i.č. 113, Der Kom. Polizeidirektor Mähr. Ostrau, 17 April 1939. 3 Rozenblit, 2001: 128–61; Kieval, 2010: 103–19. 4 Rabinowitz, 1968: 218–21. 5 Ibid., 219.

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Notes to Chapter 2

6 ZAO, PŘMO, box 180, sig. 1381, report about riots in the Mährisch Ostrau district, 8 July 1917; Čapková, 2012: 110. 7 Strobach, 2010: 23–53. 8 Rozenblit, 2001: 142. 9 Lichtenstein, 2014: 2–20; Láníček, 2013: 3–11. 10 Rabinowicz, 1968: 238. 11 Čapková, 2012: 43. 12 Mendelsohn, 1993: 40. 13 Ibid.; Crhová, 1999–2001 14 Mendelsohn, 1983: 154. Mendelsohn, and I would agree, considers it a remarkable achievement. Felix Weltsch called it an ‘honourable defeat’. Crhová, 2007: 91. 15 Lichtenstein, 2015: 3. 16 AMO, ÚNV Ostrava, 8682/47, i.č. 113, Der Kom. Polizeidirektor Mähr. Ostrau, 17 April 1939. Frischer registered in Ostrava on 16 July 1919. 17 AMO, AMMO, Nová registratura, Stavitelské koncese, box 593, i.č. 629, sign. XII/167, Frischer’s licence to work as a construction engineer in Moravská Ostrava, 28 September 1921; ZAO, Krajský soud, Moravská Ostrava, box 73 and 199, documents of the Pokora-Skála company. 18 On the life in Ostrava, see Löwy, 2013: 9–45; Frinton, 1994: 3–114. 19 Crhová, 2007: 104f. 20 Wein, 2001: 55. 21 Rabinowicz, 1971: 31f; Crhová, 2007: 102–20. 22 Frischer, ‘Die jüdische Jugendbewegung’ Pt I, Jüdisches Volksblatt, 9 November 1920, 1f. 23 Ibid. 24 Frischer, ‘Ein jüdischer Jugendtag’ Pt I, Jüdisches Volksblatt, 8 March 1921, 1. 25 Frischer, ‘Ein jüdischer Jugendtag’ Pt II, Jüdisches Volksblatt, 11 March 1921, 2. 26 Frischer, ‘Die jüdische Jugendbewegung’, 2. 27 Frischer, ‘Ein jüdischer Jugendtag’ Pt III, Jüdisches Volksblatt, 15 March 1921, 1. 28 Frischer, ‘Ein jüdischer Jugendtag’ Pt II, Jüdisches Volksblatt, 11 March 1921, 2. 29 Frischer, ‘Die jüdische Jugendbewegung’ Pt II, Jüdisches Volksblatt, 12 November 1920, 3. 30 Shimoni, 1995: 113–15. 31 Frischer, ‘Ein jüdischer Jugendtag’ Pt IV, Jüdisches Volksblatt, 18 March 1921, 1. 32 Rabinowicz, 1971; Čapková, 2012: 169–240. 33 The number of shekel payers in Czechoslovakia was relatively low, ranging from between 3 and 8 per cent of the adult Jewish population. Wein, 2001: 85. 34 Lichtenstein, 2009: 192f; Brada, 1971: 590–2. Brada gives the number of 5,895 Palestinian certificates issued to the Czechoslovak Jews up to March 1939. 35 Wein, 2001: 93. 36 Gold, 1974: 83. 37 Otisk, 2004: 45. 38 Věstník, 12/60 1998, 6–9. 39 ZAO, PŘMO, box 1196, sig. 10/622, protest meeting in support of Jewish Palestine, Moravská Ostrava, 31 August 1929. 40 ZAO, PŘMO, box 1215, sig. 10/456, protest meeting against the persecution in Germany, 12 April 1933. Frischer’s speech. 41 Židovské zprávy, 4 May 1934, 4f. The lectures about Palestine were attended by 1,500 people. During the war, the Czech pro-Nazi collaborationist weekly Árijský boj (Aryan Struggle) suggested that Frischer had repeatedly travelled to Palestine, including once

Notes to Chapter 2

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54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

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with his whole family, and gradually transferred his assets there. It is, however, unlikely, considering Frischer’s life after 1939, that he had been able to transfer any substantial assets to Palestine. Árijský boj, 26 August 1944, 5; 9 September 1944, 6. Löwy, 2013: 35. Frischer, ‘Die jüdische Jugendbewegung’, Jüdisches Volksblatt, 9 and 12 November 1920. Židovské zprávy, 19 May 1938, 2f. Löwy’s family left Czechoslovakia on 5 September 1938. Author’s correspondence with George Löwy, 20 January 2015. Rufeisen emigrated only after Munich, but his children were already living on a kibbutz by that time. Author’s correspondence with Z. H. Weigl, 20 August 2006. Hugo Bergmann, a Zionist leader from Prague, emigrated to Palestine in 1920. Hugo Hermann (1887–1940), who published the Jüdisches Volksblatt in Ostrava from 1919 to 1921, first visited Palestine in 1925 and emigrated there in 1934. Lichtenstein, 2015: 4–8. Jüdisches Volksblatt, 22 June 1920, 1. Orzoff, 2009: 20. ZAO, PŘMO, box 1171, sig. 499, Lecture ‘Die Juden und die Volkszählung’ organized by the local Zionist organization, Moravská Ostrava, 7 February 1920; NA, Margulies Papers, box 8, meeting of the Political National Committee of the Jewish Party, 18 November 1930. Frischer, 1936: 3–5. Židovské zprávy, 19 May 1938, 3. Židovské zprávy, 19 May 1935. AMO, Sčítací arch (Zählbogen), 16 February 1921, Bahnhofstrasse 91, Přívoz. In 1930, the whole family declared Jewish nationality and the ‘možiské’ (incorrect Czech spelling for ‘Mosaic’) religion. Information from the 1930 census was provided by archivists in the National Archives, Prague. Blau, 1948: 150–2; Friedmann, 1933. Čapková, 2012; ABS, 425-233-07, an undated letter [1945?] by Pavel Klein, MD. Lichtenstein, 2012; Klein-Pejšová, 2015. ZAO, PŘMO, box 1164, sig. 2046, meeting of the Committee of Jewish Army Privates, 11 November 1918. Jüdische Zeitung, 15 November 1918, 1; 22 November 1918, 5 (the previously reported news about a pogrom was premature, only cases of looting occurred in the city). Ten thousand refugees from Galicia lived in Moravská Ostrava in late 1914. Most of them returned to Galicia by early 1919. Przybylová, 2009: 139–42. ZAO, PŘMO, box 1166, sig. I-1050, Meeting of the Česká státoprávní demokracie about the shortages of apartments in the city, 16 April 1919; ZAO, PŘMO, box 1167, sig. 1891, Rufeisen’s speech on 8 August 1919. Przybylová, 2009: 135–54. A similar census was also organized in Slovakia. Klein-Pejšová, 2015: 47–62. The census allowed the Jews to declare Jewish nationality even before the 1920 Czechoslovak constitution codified this right. Frinton, 1994: 12; Wechsberg, 2012. Jüdisches Volksblatt, 21 February 1919, 4. Przybylová et al., 2013, 337; Statistický lexikon obcí na Moravě a ve Slezsku (Praha, 1935), pp. 91f. Wechsberg, 2012, kindle edition, location 3437.

204

Notes to Chapter 2

68 Lichtenstein, 2009: 153. For the election results in Moravská Ostrava between 1921 and 1929, see: Židovské zprávy, 26 June 1925, 2; 27 March 1925, 7; AMO, OÚMO, box 58, the Ostrava Jewish Community to the Land Office in Brno, 13 February 1933. 69 ZAO, PŘMO, box 399, sig. 2768, report about the reliability for the State and good character of the new members of the Jewish Community in Moravská Ostrava, 18 June 1936. Only seven members (out of 60) were described as Jewish Czechs, including one Zionist, one Orthodox Jew, and one Jewish Slovak. 70 Himmelreich, 1921–1922: 121–6. 71 Wein, 2015: 77. 72 AKPR, D6772/25. On behalf of President of the Moravian Council (zemská spravá politická) to the Presidium of the Council of Ministers, 2 February 1922. 73 See the report on Moravská Ostrava prepared by a member of the Czechoslovak resistance, who in 1942 escaped from the Protectorate to Switzerland. TNA, FO371/30387, report sent by Bruce Lockhart to Ambassador Nichols on 30 June 1942. 74 Lichtenstein, 2009. 75 ZAO, PŘMO, box 353, sig. 1513, Ústřední sionistický svaz v ČSR, akce pro přeorientování židovstva v národnostní otázce, 2 June 1933. 76 ZAO, PŘMO, box 1220, sig. 10/1043, Congress of the Jewish Party, 31 December 1934–1 January 1935. 77 MZA, B40, box 248, i. č. 6197/36, meeting of the local group of the Jewish Party in Znojmo, 11 May 1936. 78 ZAO, PŘMO, box 1215, sig. 10/456, 12 April 1933. Two thousand people attended this protest meeting organized by the Jewish Party in Moravská Ostrava. 79 Ibid., sig. 10/412, meeting of 30 March 1933. 80 Friedmann, 1933: 18f; Lichtenstein, 2009: 195–9. 81 The local authorities could insist that the school also offered compulsory classes in the official language of the State. https://archive.org/details/cu31924014118222. Accessed 16 July 2015. 82 Frischer, ‘Die jüdische Jugendbewegung’ Pt II, Jüdisches Volksblatt, 12 November 1920, 3. 83 ZAO, PŘMO, box 1205, sig. 10/4, meeting of the Jewish popular union ‘Sion’ in Moravská Ostrava on 5 January 1931, comments by Singer and Margulies; box 1212, sig. 10/704, Goldstein’s comments at the public meeting of the Jewish Party, 7 May 1932. 84 Kieval, 2000: 135–58. 85 Miller, 2011: 332–8; Zahra, 2008: 13. 86 AKPR, D5496/20, JNC (A. Engel and M. Brod) to the Ministry of Education and National Enlightenment, 14 May 1920. 87 AKPR, D2865/21, JNC (Fleischmann [? signature unclear] and Singer) to the Ministry of Education and National Enlightenment, 20 May 1921. 88 Zahra, 2008. 89 AKPR, D5496/20, JNC (A. Engel and M. Brod) to the Ministry of Education and National Enlightenment, 14 May 1920. 90 Crhová, 1999–2001. 91 Przybylová, 2003: 378–98. 92 Crhová, 2007: 115; AMO, OÚMO, sign. VII/36, budget for 1936. A tenth of the Jewish Community budget was usually allocated for the needs of the Jewish school. 93 Zahra, 2008: 133. 94 Rozenblit, 2013a: 108–47.

Notes to Chapter 2

205

95 ZAO, PŘMO, box 1225, sig. 10/927, report about the meeting of the Association of Czech Jews in Moravská Ostrava, 27–28 September 1936; Ibid., box 1244, sig. 21, meeting of the Association of Czech Jews, Moravská Ostrava, 6 January 1939. 96 AMO, OÚMO, sign. VII/36, minutes of the Jewish Community meeting, 15 March 1936; Ibid. Association of Czech Jews (Bondy) to the Land Office (Zemský úřad) in Brno, 12 February 1938. 97 Lichtenstein, 2009: 195–8. 98 AMO, OÚMO – pres. spisy, box 20, sign. 144, statistics from 10 October 1927. In 1921/2, 572 Jewish children attended German schools, 157 attended the Jewish school, and 62 attended Czech elementary and council (obecné a měšťanské) schools, by 1927/8 the numbers were reversed, with 139 Jewish children attending German elementary schools, 157 attending the Jewish school, and 227 attending Czech schools (numbers for grammar schools are unfortunately not available). 99 Elias, 1998: 22. 100 AKPR, i. č. 2202, 300073/49, memorandum submitted by the CZU to the President of Czecho-Slovakia, 10 January 1939. In the school year 1936/7, 84.9 per cent of the children of Jewish nationality (34,582 of 40,735) attended Czech, Slovak, or Rusyn schools; only 4.5 per cent attended German schools, 8 per cent Hungarian schools, and 1.7 per cent Hebrew schools. Their proportion even increased in the following school year, with 90 per cent of Jewish nationalists’ children attending Czech, Slovak, or Rusyn schools. In the Moravian-Silesian Land, 93 per cent of the Jewish nationalists’ children (1,322) attended Czech schools. 101 Przybylová, 2003: 392–6; Rozenblit, 2013a: 139–45. 102 AMO, Gymnázium Ostrava 1, Hlavní katalogy státního československého reálného gymnázia v Přívoze, 1929–1933. 103 AMO, Öffentliche Fachschule für Frauenberufe, main register, sig. OŠŽP V-17, school year 1933/4. 104 AMO, Matiční gymnázium Ostrava, Hlavní katalog státního čsl. gymnasia, inv. č. 73, sign. GR III. 105 Wechsberg, 2012, kindle edition, location 3435. 106 Židovské zprávy, 26 June 1925, 2f; Frischer, ‘Die jüdische Jugendbewegung’ Pt II, Jüdisches Volksblatt, 12 November 1920, 3. 107 Author’s interview with Avigdor Dagan, 24 November 2005 in Jerusalem. 108 Zahra, 2008; Rozenblit, 2013b: 110. 109 As a member of the Town Assembly in Moravská Ostrava, Frischer never spoke German during the assembly meetings (ABS, 425-233-4, Frischer to Tomšíček, 13 March 1946). ZAO, PŘMO, box 1195, sig. 10/94, meeting of the Jewish Party in Moravská Ostrava, 22 February 1929. Frischer spoke in German, Goldstein in Czech. 110 On bilingualism see also Frinton, 1994: 8; Rozvoj, 15 November 1925, 2; 1 December 1925, 7. Rozvoj, the mouthpiece of the Czech-Jewish Assimilationists, presented Frischer as an opportunist, who spoke German among the Jews, but used Czech to get business for his construction company. 111 Liese Ruth and Fritzi even spent some time in an upper secondary school in France. AMO, ÚNV Ostrava, 8682/47, Státní bezpečnost v Ostravě to Národní výbor Ostrava, 19 July 1947. 112 USC VHA, interview 21149, G.L. 113 Elias, 1998: 18; Otisk, 2004: 45–9; Lichtenstein (2015: 8) talks about the nationalization of ‘people’s private and public worlds’.

206

Notes to Chapter 2

114 Frinton, 1994: 43; Löwy, 2013: 21, 35; USC VHA, interview 21149, G.L.; interview 13130, H.H. 115 Otisk, 2004: 30f. 116 Rabinowicz, 1971: 284; NA, Margulies Papers, box 8, März to Margulies, 30 December 1930. 117 Frischer, ‘Wahlen’ in Selbstwehr, 11 October 1929, 1. 118 Ibid., 1f. 119 Hirschler, 1971: 161; Rabinowicz, 1971: 297; Crhová, 1999–2001. 120 Mendes, 2014. 121 The mainstream of the Zionist movement was left-­leaning. Čapková, 2012: 203–7. 122 ZAO, PŘMO, box 1168, sig. 1220, meeting of Poale Zion, Moravská Ostrava, 30 September 1919. 123 Rudolf Kohn, ‘Kdo ohrožuje jednotnost palestýnské práce?’, Židovský socialista, 5 December 1919, 1; ZAO, PŘMO, box 1168, sig. 1220, meeting of Poale Zion, Moravská Ostrava, 30 September 1919. 124 ZAO, PŘMO, box 1170, sig. 1060, public meeting convened by Poale Zion (1,000 people), 28 June 1920. 125 Frischer, ‘Poale Zion und die Zionistische Organisation’, Jüdisches Volksblatt, 6 January 1920, 1f. 126 Strobach, 2007: 94–112. It was only at the end of the 1920s that the right-­wing faction of Poale Zion re-­established its activities, though only locally, including Moravská Ostrava. ZAO, PŘMO, box 1188, Poale Zion announces the creation of their local branch in Moravská Ostrava, 18 January 1929. 127 Strobach, 2007: 108; Lichtenstein, 2016: 269–314. 128 In 1925, Frischer was nominated in second place on the electoral list in Moravská Ostrava, but had no hope of being elected. Židovské zprávy, 6 November 1925, 1f. 129 NA, Emil Margulies, box 7, minutes of the meeting on 28 April 1928; Crhová, 1999: 179–81. 130 Mendelsohn, 1983: 53–5. 131 Borek, 2003:109; Židovské zprávy, 18 October 1929, 2f. Frischer was nominated as number 6 in the Prague A district. 132 NA, Margulies Papers, box 9, Frischer to Margulies, 9 October 1929; the Central Election Committee of the Jewish Party to the District Election Committee, Prague, 10 October 1929. Čapková, 2012: 223. 133 Crhová, 2007: 163–217; Čapková, 2012: 224f. 134 Ibid.; NA, Margulies Papers, box 7, meeting between the Polish parties and representatives of the Jewish Party, Moravská Ostrava, 28 April 1928. 135 ZAO, PŘMO, box 1205, sig. 10/4, meeting of the Jewish popular union ‘Sion’ in Moravská Ostrava, on 5 January 1931. 136 ZAO, PŘMO, box 386, sig. 960, police report about the conference of the Jewish Party, 14 April 1935. 137 AMO, Nová registratura, box 117, election ticket, Czechoslovak Socialist Workers’ Party to the Senate, Moravská Ostrava. Večerník Práva lidu, supplement to no. 125, 29 May 1935. Židovské zprávy, 16 May 1935, 1. 138 Medina Ivrit, 17 April 1935, 7; 3 May 1935, 8; 10 May 1935, 6; 31 May 1935, 6. 139 Law 58/1935 Sb., 13 April 1935, http://ftp.aspi.cz/opispdf/1935/023-1935.pdf. Accessed 13 April 2015. 140 Crhová, 2007: 188f; Věstník, 21 May 1935, 8f.

Notes to Chapter 2

207

141 Crhová, 2007: 194–6. 142 ZAO, PŘMO, box 1195, sig. 10/94, public meeting of the Jewish Party in Moravská Ostrava, 28 February 1929, 500 people attending. 143 He was a candidate already in 1924. AMO, Nová registratura, box 114. Public notice by the city Moravská Ostrava, 11 November 1924. 144 In 1920, two representatives of the Jews (together with 31 Czechs and 9 Germans) were appointed among 42 members of the advisory board that administered the city until the first city elections in 1924 (Przybylová et al., 2013: 341). 145 AMO, Nová registratura, box 102. Frischer’s resignation from the town council, 9 April 1931; minutes of the first meeting of the town assembly, 5 April 1929. 146 Židovské zprávy, 11 October 1935, 3; AMO, Nová registratura, box 116. Public notice from the Presidium of the Moravská Ostrava town council, 31 October 1935; Selbstwehr, no. 42, 18 October 1935, 6. 147 MZA, B40, box 233, public meeting of the Jewish Party in Brno, 22 May 1935. 148 Židovské zprávy, 31 May 1935, 2. Selbstwehr, 31 May 1935, 2; 25 October 1935, 13; 18 October 1935, 6. ‘The Jews’ allegedly received 90 per cent of all Jewish votes in the city. Yet in spite of their hopes, ‘the Jews’ did not increase the number of their mandates. Salo Krämer (1899–1944), who later, during the war, became Chairman of the Jewish Community in Moravská Ostrava, remained the first reserve. AMO, AMMO, sig. II B 331; AMO, Nová registratura, box 116. Public notice by the Presidium of the Moravská Ostrava town council, 31 October 1935. 149 Przybylová et al., 2013, 344. The Jewish Party (or the ‘Jews’) received 1,685 votes in 1924, 2,141 in 1929 and 2,793 in 1935. 150 Židovské zprávy, 25 October 1935, 2; Rabinowicz, 1971: 262. 151 Borek, 2003: 103. 152 Židovské zprávy, 12 July 1935, 1f. 153 Ibid. 154 Selbstwehr, 24 April 1936, 1. 155 AKPR, D7784/36, memorandum for Beneš, signed by Frischer and Rufeisen, 22 April 1936. 156 AKPR, D10467/37, a draft speech by Frischer 23 August 1937; Selbstwehr, 27 August 1937, 7. 157 AKPR, D4903/36, undated summary of responses from the individual ministries. 158 Kuklík and Němeček, 2013. 159 Selbstwehr published an article with the bombastic title ‘Entscheidende Regierungserklärung zu den jüdischen Minderheitenforderungen’, Selbstwehr.15 March 1937, 1. 160 Frischer, ‘Der Weg unserer Politik’, Selbstwehr, 15 March 1937, 1f. 161 As late as July and August 1938, the Czechoslovak government discussed the demands of the Jewish minority. USHMMA, RG-48016M, reel 189, the Presidium of the Prime Minister’s Office to the Ministry of Education, 23 July 1938; Aide-­memoire for the Czechoslovak government, prepared by the Jewish Party (Zucker, Goldstein and Kugel), n.d. 162 Selbstwehr, 13 May 1938, 1. 163 Židovské zprávy, 10 June 1935, 5. 164 Crhová, 1999–2001. 165 Židovské zprávy, 28 February 1936, 3f; 1 January 1937, 3. 166 Židovské zprávy, 10 September 1937, 1; 29 October 1937, 2; 10 June 1938, 3. There was a noticeable increase in the membership in 1938.

208

Notes to Chapter 3

167 CZA, A320/645, Ullmann, Zum ersten Jahrestag nach dem Tode Ing. E. Frischers, 23 July 1955. Frischer, 1936: 3–5; Židovské zprávy, 27 November 1936, 3. 168 ZAO, PŘMO, box 1220, sig. 10/1043, Congress of the Jewish Party in Moravská Ostrava, 31 December 1934–1 January 1935. 169 Židovské zprávy, 12 July 1935, 1f; 5 February 1937, 3. 170 Židovské zprávy, 12 July 1935, 1f. 171 Selbstwehr, 15 July 1938, 1; see also a description of the 1937 Maccabi meeting (Lichtenstein, 2015: 37); Židovské zprávy, 19 May 1938, 3. 172 Stephen Barber’s autobiographical notes, n.d. I thank Anna Barber for a copy of her father’s manuscripts. 173 AKPR, D13300/38, Fischl for the Jewish Party to the President’s Office, 17 September 1938; Dagan, 1990: 348; CZA, A320/645, Ullmann, Zum ersten Jahrestag nach dem Tode Ing. E. Frischers, 23 July 1955. 174 USHMMA, RG-67.004M, A13/18, Goldstein to Wise, 17 August 1938. 175 Kieval, 2010: 119. AKPR, D3487/1924, CZU to President’s Office, 29 June 1924. 176 Author’s interview with Uri Meretz, 16 November 2005. 177 USC VHA, interview 26983, Y.B. 178 Löwy, 2013: 46. 179 Národní směr, 18 March 1938, 1; 15 April 1938, 3; and 29 April 1938, 3.

3  Munich and Occupation, 1938–9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20

Rataj, 1999; Gebhart and Kuklík, 2004. Čapková-Frankl, 2008: 324–6. USHMMA, RG-67.004M, A13/18, Barber to Shultz, 4 October 1938. Ibid. ZAO, PŘMO, box 470, situational reports for December 1938, January 1939, February 1939. Kárný, 1989; Bednařík, 2007: 38; Frankl, 2009. Nižňanský, 1999. Borek, 2003: 180–3. London, 2000: 144. YVA, 0.1/9-3, testimony by Vali [Wally] Zimet (recorded in 1958); Široký, 2007: 197–209. Rothkirchen, 2005: 78; Dagan, 1990: 347. Kárný, 1989: 174. Frankl, 2007: 47 (18,673 Jews); Rothkirchen, 2005: 78 (17,000 Jews). ‘Smlouva mezi Česko-Slovenskou republikou a Německou říší o otázkách státního občanství a opce’, 20 November 1938, in Sbírka zákonů a nařízení státu česko-­ slovenského; USHMMA, RG-67.004M, A13/18, note on Jewish Refugees in Czechoslovakia, 29 November 1938. USHMMA, RG-67.004M, A13/18, Margulies to Knopfmacher, 6 November 1938. Bondy, 2001: 120f. Čapková, 2012: 238; Faerber, 1949. AMO, AMMO, sig. II B 333 and sig. II B 331, minutes of the meetings of the Moravská Ostrava Town Assembly. Nenička, 2010: 294. Večer, 12 October 1938, 2. Kárný, 1989: 176.

Notes to Chapter 3 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

209

Čapková, 2012: 165–8. Kárný, 1989: 198–200. ZAO, PŘMO, box 470, situational report for January 1939. Lichtenstein, 2016: 318f. Spencer, 2005: 53–5, diary entries for 17 November 1938 and 23 November 1938. Ibid., 79–82. Benda 2012: 112–17; Nenička, 2010: 232f. Nenička, 2010: 293–5; Gracová, 1995: 73–87; Przybylová, 1995: 61–71. Weber, 2012: 42, Weber’s letter of 24 June 1936. Weber, 2012: 80–3, undated letter, late spring 1938; letter sent on 14 June 1938. USC Shoah Foundation, VHA, testimony by G. L., interview code 21149. ZAO, PŘMO, box 459, sig. 8940, Sokol, 17 October 1938. Nenička, 2010: 277–95; ZAO, PŘMO, box 459, sign. 8940, the Sokol regional organization in Moravská Ostrava, 17 October 1938. Sojčák, 2008, 18–24f and 41f. ZAO, PŘMO, box 459, sig. 8902, comments by the Directorate of Police in Moravská Ostrava on the letter they received from the Moravian Regional Authorities (Zemský uřád/Landesamt), Brno, on 21 November 1938. Elias, 1998: 33f. AMO, OÚMO, 1855–1941, box 287, Directorate of Police, Ostrava, to the Regional Office (Okresní úřad) in Ostrava, 7 November 1938; Kučerová to the Regional Office in Ostrava, 23 November 1938. Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 27 December 1938; ZAO, PŘMO, box 434, sig. 1/203, report 19 November 1938. Weber, 2012: 88–9, letter to Lilian, 1 December 1938. Ibid., 94, 5 January 1939. AMO, OÚMO, box 1, III/26. ZAO, PŘMO, box 459, response of the Moravian Regional Authorities (Zemský uřád/Landesamt), Brno, to the pro memoria submitted by the Jewish Community in Ostrava (the author of the pro memoria is not mentioned), 21 November 1938. ZAO, PŘMO, box 459, instructions by the Moravian Regional Authorities (Zemský uřád/Landesamt), Brno, 11 November 1938. Directive No. 14 of the Czecho-Slovak Government, from 27 January 1939. http://ftp. aspi.cz/opispdf/1939/009-1939.pdf. See also Directive No. 15 (on citizenship), from 27 January 1939. Ibid. Accessed 22 July 2015. In 1939, Hanuš continued studying at the Technical University in Prague. USHMMA, RG-67.004M, A13/18, Barber to Shultz, 17 March 1939. Viktor Fischl, Nepřestal jsem se ptát. June 1993. CZA, Z4/30388, Simmons (Home Office) to the Secretary, the Jewish Agency for Palestine, 4 May 1939. CZA, Z4/30388, the list of authorized names for British entry visas, undated. Bondy, 2001: 117f; ABS, 425-230-1, Seidemann to Frischer, 17 May 1943 (Goldstein already left in January 1939); Židovské zprávy, 24 February 1939, 2. März’s testimony at the Eichmann Trial. www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eichmann-­ adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-019-01.html. Accessed 22 July 2015. Fischl, Nepřestal jsem se ptát. June 1993. CZA, Z4/30388, Simmons (Home Office) to the Secretary, the Jewish Agency for Palestine, 4 May 1939.

210

Notes to Chapter 3

54 NA, SR–L, box 20. ‘Czechs are Fighting Back’, Frischer’s address to the AngloPalestinian Club, London, 6 May 1943. 55 Borák, 2010: 43 (Zehngut, 1952: 10). 56 USHMMA, RG-67.004M, A13/18, Barber to Schulz, 17 March 1939. 57 Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 2 April 1939. 58 Bondy, 2001: 125; MZA, B340, 100-265-3, Zweigenthal’s file. 59 Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 5 July 1939; information from David Zell. 60 USHMMA, RG-67.004M, A13/18, Barber to Shultz, 17 March 1939. 61 März’s testimony at the Eichmann Trial (www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eichmann-­ adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-019-01.html). Accessed 22 July 2015. 62 MZA, B340, 100-265-3, Zweigenthal’s file. 63 Kryl, 1997: 172. 64 ZAO, Správa věznice Krajského soudu v Moravské Ostravě, box 5, 1044/39. 65 On the changing gender roles, see Kaplan, 1999. 66 YVA, O.59/91, Frischer to Zajitschkova, 23 September 1948. 67 A. J. Fischer, ‘Moravská Ostrava. Memories of a Refugee’, Central European Observer, 16 May 1945, 147. 68 ZAO, Správa věznice Krajského soudu v Moravské Ostravě, box 5, 1044/39. 69 Otisk, 2004: 35. 70 MÚA AV ČR, EB-II, box 394, Nečas about the Jewish representation in the Czechoslovak State Council, 1 July 1941. 71 Kennan, 1968: 133. 72 Ibid. 73 Borák, 2010: 45–7. 74 AMO, Nová registratura, box 117, Ostrava Town Council to the Moravian Regional Authorities (Zemský úřad/Landesamt), Brno, 9 May 1939. 75 AMO, Nová registratura, box 117, Moravian Regional Authorities (Zemský úřad/ Landesamt), Brno, to Ostrava Town Council, 20 June 1939. 76 The law of 4 July 1939 about the position of Jews in public life. www2.holocaust.cz/ cz2/resources/documents/laws/narizeni_19390704. Accessed 22 July 2015. 77 Milotová, 2002: 63–94. 78 Bondy, 2001: 101. 79 Sherman, 1994: 112–36. 80 Przybylová, 2006: 143–60. Nenička and Frankl argue that the whole emigration project to San Domingo was in fact a clandestine attempt to emigrate to Palestine with the tacit approval of the Czechoslovak authorities. Nenička, 2010: 293. 81 London, 2000: 98. 82 AMO, OÚMO, Seznam cizích státních příslušníků navržených k vyhoštění, box 1, inv. č. 3, sig. III/26. 83 AMO, Notářství Moravská Ostrava I., Legalisační protokoly a notářské spisy, box 79, č. j. 10,164. 84 Edelheit, 1996: 89; Benda, 2012: 405–7. This is also the way the Löwys got to Palestine. Löwy, 2013: 44. 85 CZA, A320/477, Meretz, ‘Der Čechischer Transfer – Rettung in Not’. 86 Vobecká, 2013: 59–65. Bondy (2001: 141f) also writes that after Munich the Jews in the Czech Lands stopped following the generally accepted social norms, for example, that young people should not get married unless the groom could provide a living for his wife. 87 Čapková, 2012: 240.

Notes to Chapter 3 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95

96 97 98 99 100 101

102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112

113 114 115

211

Dagan, 1990: 353–4. Weber, 2012: 89. CZA, A320/477, Meretz, ‘Der Čechischer Transfer – Rettung in Not’. NA, ÚŘP – D–II, box 26. Edelheit, 1996: 214f. TNA, HO294/568, the Buchsbaum files. London, 2000: 145. Ibid., 142–68. We also need to acknowledge the efforts of philanthrophic organizations and individuals who helped with the organization of emigration from the Protectorate, as well as from Germany and Austria, such as the Quakers’ Germany Emergency Committee (later renamed the Friends Committee for Refugees and Aliens). The story of the Kindertransports organized from Prague by Nicholas Winton, Trevor Chadwick, Doreen Warriner, Bill Barazetti and Beatrice Wellington is already well known. See, for example, Chadwick, 2010. Čapková, 2012: 235–40. CZA, A320/477, Meretz, ‘Der Čechischer Transfer – Rettung in Not’. Author’s interview with Uri Meretz, 16 November 2005. London, 2000: 151; Rothkirchen, 2005: 162f. CZA, A320/38, Ullmann to Herrmann, 26 March 1940; Zucker, Kahn to Ullmann, 20 March 1940. CZA, A320/477, Meretz, ‘Der Čechischer Transfer – Rettung in Not’. The Lex Masaryk was passed by the Czechoslovak National Assembly on 6 March 1930, Law 22/1930Sb., ‘T.G. Masaryk rendered outstanding services to the State.’ http://ftp.aspi. cz/opispdf/1930/009-1930.pdf. Accessed 22 July 2015. Černý, 1997: 59; ZAO, PŘMO, box 471, sig. 11/8, Jews caught trying to cross the border to Poland, 17 April 1939. In addition, an unknown number of Jews left the Protectorate illegally, especially to Poland by way of Mährisch Ostrau. Milotová, 1997: 10–20. NA Prague, PŘ II–EO, cards for Hanuš Frischer and Arnošt Frischer. Przybylová, 1995: 67–9. Browning, 2004: 36–43. NA Prague, PŘ 1941-50, box 2387, F1846/5; NA, ÚŘP – D–II, box 26. Zimet’s testimony, Eichmann Trial (www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eichmann-­adolf/ transcripts/Sessions/Session-019-03.html). Accessed 22 July 2015. Ibid. On the Aryanization of insurance policies, see Jelínek, 2015. NA, ÚŘP – D–II, box 26. ZAO, Krajský soud Moravská Ostrava, boxes 73, 87 and 199. The documents state that the transfer of the company was approved by the Reich Protector’s Office only on 8 January 1940, almost two weeks after Frischer had left the Protectorate. A later document, signed by Frischer’s solicitor, states that the company had been sold for one crown. (The contract was signed in the presence of Alois Krumnikl, 8 February 1940.) See also: CZA, A320/374, Ullmann to Frischer, 19 February 1940. NA, ÚŘP – D–II, box 26. NA, SR–L, box 20. ‘Czechs are Fighting Back’, Frischer’s speech at the AngloPalestinian Club, London, 6 May 1943. NA Prague, PŘ II–EO, cards for Hanuš Frischer. CZA, A320/118, lists of student immigrants to Palestine as part of the Czech Transfer. Brada, 1971: 593f.; VHA, Fond 24, Statement by Hanuš (Jaakov) Frischer (May 1942).

212

Notes to Chapter 4

116 CZA, A320/118, list 14b of the Youth Aliyah as part of the Czech Transfer. 117 CZA, A320/117, list of granted certificates (Category C – Labour certificate for Frischer, and C/D – for Dependants for Heřmína). The immigrants received £200. For example, März received an A-I (Capitalist) certificate, which meant that he could transfer £1,000 to Palestine (A320/119). 118 NA Prague, PŘ II – EO, card for Arnošt Frischer. 119 Jüdische Nachrichtenblatt, 2 February 1940, 4. 120 YVA, O.59/91, correspondence with Bertl Zajitschkova. 121 JMP, ŽNO Praha za okupace, list of telephone numbers of the Jewish Council in Prague, 7 May 1943. 122 Meyer, 1953: 62. Meyer estimates that several thousand Jews escaped in the last months of 1938, and that 17,500 Jews emigrated between 1 January and 15 March 1939. 123 USHMMA, RG-48.016, reel 126, Government Councillor (vládní rada) Karel Herr to the Interior Ministry, 7 May 1940. 124 Milotová, 1997: 22; USHMMA, RG-48.016M, reel 126, Herr to the Presidium of the Interior Ministry, 7 January 1941; Ibid., monthly reports from Government Councilor Karel Herr. 125 Polák, 1995: 174–82. 126 Milotová, 1997: 23. 127 The Zentralstelle stopped issuing passports to Jewish applicants on 2 October 1941. USHMMA, RG-48.016, reel 126, Horní to the Interior Ministry, 13 October 1941. 128 CZA, A320/260, Zucker to Ullmann, 16 March 1941; Ullmann to Zucker, 9 April 1941.

4  The Politics of Exile, 1939–45 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

YVA, O.59/91, Frischer to Zajitschkova, 11 March 1945. Jewish Chronicle, 21 November 1941, 10. Jewish Chronicle, 28 November 1941, 11. Rothkirchen, 1998: 629–46; Bondy, 2001; Friedman, 1959: 214–20. Douglas, 2012. Láníček, 2013: 16–41. Schmidt-Hartmann, 1983: 297–311; Heumos, 1989. NYPL, Jan Papánek Papers, box 31, Česko-Slovenský boj. Ústřední list zahraničních Čechů a Slováků, Paris, no. 30, 18 November 1939, 3. CZA, C2/1973, Joint Committee of Jews from Czechoslovakia in England (Knopfmacher) to WJC Paris, 15 December 1939; Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 30 January 1940. CZA, A280/27, meeting of the National Jewish Council, 19 April 1942. CZA, A280/13, Zelmanovits to the Czechoslovak High Field Court in London, 13 March 1941. TNA, HO294/579. He landed in Dover on 13 August 1939. CZA, C2/2806, Zelmanovits’s notes, 24 October 1939; 26 October 1939; 28 November 1939; 29 November 1939. CZA, A280/5, meeting of the National Jewish Council, 22 November 1939. CZA, A280/14, Zelmanovits to Barber, 27 January 1940. Ibid.; Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 20 February 1941. CZA, A280/14, Zelmanovits to Barber, 13 January 1940.

Notes to Chapter 4

213

17 The hyphen was later removed and the organization was called the Federation of Czechoslovakian Jews. 18 LAC, MG 31, H 158, vol. 5, Yitzhak Rosenberg, ‘Benes and the Political Rights of the Jewish Minority During World War II’: 3. 19 TNA, FO371/24290, ‘Československé mezinárodní úspěchy a židovská otázka’, published by the Union of Orthodox Jews from Czechoslovakia [1940]. 20 Di Vokhntsaytung, 30 October 1942. 21 MÚA AV ČR, EB-II, box 364, minutes of the meeting with the Czech-Jewish Assimilationists, 18 April 1940. 22 NA, AHR, 1-46-6-14, the Association of Czech Jews, an analysis of antisemitism from the Assimilationists’ perspective, March 1942 (also in NA, MV-L, box 255, 2-63-2). 23 TNA, FO371/24290, Bruce Lockhart to the Foreign Secretary Halifax, 17 December 1940. 24 MÚA AV ČR, EB-II, box 394, a note by the Union of Orthodox Jews on the occasion of the inaugural session of the Czechoslovak State Council [December 1940]; Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 31 August 1940. 25 The Sunday Times, 1 September 1940. 26 Di Vokhntsaytung, 6 December 1940. 27 CZA, S26/1546, Zelmanovits to Frischer, 7 December 1940; enclosed, a translation of Hronek’s article from Čechoslovák, 14 September 1940. In 1946–7 Hronek published extensive memoirs in which he completely ignored Jewish topics and did not even mention the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Hronek, 1946, 1947. 28 Lichtenstein, 2012: 85, note 48. 29 NA, PMR-L, box 84, ‘K židovské otázce v Československu’, 6 October 1942. 30 AMZV, LA, box 469, ‘Poradní sbor a židé’, 20 September 1940; Kleiner to the MFA, 20 September 1940. 31 Kulka, 1984: 331–48; Stříbrný, 1998: 162–220. 32 AMZV, LA, box 469, Kleiner to the MFA, 20 September 1940. 33 LAC, MG 31, H 158, vol. 5, Rosenberg, ‘Benes and the Political Rights’: 6. 34 Di Vokhntsaytung, 6 December 1940; ibid., 14 March 1941. 35 USA, MS 241/4/3/1, Zelmanovits to Barou, 4 February 1941. 36 Láníček, 2013: 47–63. 37 Otáhalová and Červinková, 1966: 146 38 CZA, A280/53, Zelmanovits, ‘Report About the Last Negotiations’, 19 May 1941; ibid., ‘Report About My Negotiations with the Union of Orthodox Jews from Czechoslovakia (Agudas Yisroel)’, 4 June 1941. 39 TNA, FO371/24290, Lockhart to Halifax, 17 December 1940; MÚA AV ČR, EB-II, box 394, 12 December 1940; CZA, A280/4, meeting of the National Jewish Council, 31 December 1940. 40 CZA, C2/96, Zelmanovits to Barou, 15 February 1941. 41 Ibid. Emphasis in the original. 42 CZA, C2/96, interview with Beneš, 17 April 1941 (written by Noah Barou); memorandum on interview with Beneš, 22 July 1941. 43 Dagan, 1984: 461. 44 CZA, A280/53, report about the development of the negotiations with the Union of Orthodox Jews from Czechoslovakia and the decisions of the National Council of Jews in Czechoslovakia, 1 July 1941. 45 Ibid.; CZA, A280/4, meeting of the National Jewish Council, 29 June 1941. Frischer’s name was suggested by Fischl and Barber.

214

Notes to Chapter 4

46 CZA, A280/4, meeting of the National Jewish Council, 30 November 1941; A320/276, Zelmanovits to Ullmann, 28 November 1941; CZA, C2/96, Silverman to Beneš, 23 October 1941. 47 YVA, M.2/749, Schwarzbart’s diary, entries on 25 June 1941, 3 October 1941; CZA, C2/2806, meeting between Rudolf Braun and Zelmanovits, 5 November 1940. 48 MÚA AV ČR, EB-II, box 394, Nečas for Beneš, 1 July 1941. 49 MÚA AV ČR, EB-II, box 286, Smutný on Frischer’s telegram of 4 August 1941. 50 Ibid., Frischer’s telegram to Beneš, 24 November 1941. 51 AMZV, LA, box 500, survey of the Jewish press by Viktor Fischl, 15 December 1941. 52 Ibid. 53 Di Vokhntsaytung, 5 December 1941. English slightly amended. 54 Láníček, 2013: 42–75. 55 The Federation of the Czechoslovakian Jews were later recognized as representatives of the Czechoslovak Orthodox Jewish communities, and Springer was appointed as the Orthodox Jewish adviser to the Czechoslovak MSW. LAC, Rosenberg Papers, vol. 5, Rosenberg, ‘Benes and the Political Rights’: 18. 56 ABS, 425-229-2, Frischer’s speech at the WJC reception, 29 May 1942. 57 CZA, A280/4, meeting of the National Jewish Council, 30 November 1941. 58 ABS, 425-229-6, Frischer to Leonard Stein, 24 February 1943; ‘Jew in Czech State Council’, Jewish Chronicle, 21 November 1941, 10. 59 Letter to the author from Z. H. Weigl, 20 August 2006. 60 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 107, H101/6, Frischer to Tartakower, 6 July 1941. 61 YVA, O.59/91, Frischer to Zajitschkova, 23 November 1948. 62 ABS, 425-231-1, Frischer’s C.V., 25 September 1945. 63 VHA, Sbírka 24, Hanuš Frischer’s army file. 64 Author’s interview with Uri Meretz, 16 November 2005. 65 Kulka, 1992: 208–11. General Mézl-Gak to Minister Ingr, 2 November 1940. 66 Author’s interview with Uri Meretz, 16 November 2005. 67 Kulka, 1992: 209f. General Mézl-Gak to Minister Ingr, 2 November 1940. 68 VHA, evidenční karta, Hanuš Frischer; Sbírka 24, odvodní lístek, 18 May 1942. 69 Author’s interview with Jaakov Frischer, 14 November 2005. Meretz gave it as an example of the Frischers not being devoted Zionists. Author’s interview with Uri Meretz, Jerusalem, 16 November 2005. 70 Rothkirchen, 2005: 168. 71 NA, PMR-L, box 84, Ministry of National Defence to Ingr, 9 January 1942. 72 NA, MSP-L, box 58, Matters in relation to Palestine to be discussed in the Czechoslovak State Council, Tel Aviv, 14 December 1941. 73 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 107, H101/6, Frischer to Tartakower, 1 December 1941. 74 CZA, A280/14, Zelmanovits to Barber, 27 January 1940. 75 ABS, 425-231-1, Frischer’s C.V., 25 September 1945. 76 YVA, O.59/91, Frischer to Zajitschkova, undated [most likely in 1943–4]. 77 Author’s interview with Jaakov Frischer, 14 November 2005. 78 Láníček, 2013: 42–75 and 116–45. 79 AJA, WJC-NY, H97/11, Frischer to Tartakower, 19 October 1941. 80 Ibid. 81 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 106, H101/4, Mr. E. Frischer: Introductory remarks to the proposals to point ‘group rights’, 16 October 1943.

Notes to Chapter 4

215

82 AJA, WJC-NY, H97/11, Frischer to Tartakower, 19 October 1941. English slightly revised. 83 CZA, A280/28, Frischer to Kubowitzki, 21 June 1943. 84 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 106, H101/4, proposals by Mr. E. Frischer submitted verbally to point ‘group rights’, 16 October 1943. 85 CZA, A280/6, meeting of the National Jewish Council, Frischer’s comments, 13 March 1944. 86 AJA, WJC-NY, H97/11, Frischer to Tartakower, 19 October 1941. 87 Ibid. 88 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 107, H101/6, Frischer to Rezek, 15 July 1942. 89 Láníček, 2013: 123–6. 90 Rubin, 2012: 55–60; AJA, WJC Papers, C12/4, Robinson to WJC Executive Committee, 19 July 1943. 91 Rubin, 2012: 60. 92 ABS, 425-229-2, Frischer’s speech at the WJC reception, 29 May 1942. English slightly amended. 93 YVA, M.2/429, Provolání Ing. A.Frischera, člena Státní rady, československým Židům v Americe, 5 July 1943. 94 CZA, A280/28, meeting of the National Jewish Council, 29 March 1943. 95 ABS, 425-230-1, Frischer to HOC, 8 October 1943. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid., Rufeisen (HOC) to Frischer, 11 November 1943. English slightly revised. März also opposed Frischer’s activities, for he believed that that they could not be successful. CZA, A320/388, März to Ullmann, 22 October 1943. 98 Blatman, 1990: 237–71; Stola, 1995. 99 CZA, A280/26, celebration of the 25th Anniversary of Czechoslovakia’s Independence by the Anglo-Palestine Club and the National Council of Jews from Czechoslovakia, 10 November 1943. 100 YVA, M.2/429, Provolání Ing. A. Frischera, člena Státní rady, československým Židům v Americe, 5 July 1943. 101 ABS, 425-229-2, Frischer’s speech at the WJC reception, 29 May 1942. English slightly amended. 102 MÚA AV ČR, Klecanda Collection, sign. 63, Frischer’s speech in the State Council, 4 May 1942. 103 CZA, A280/9, plenary meeting of the National Jewish Council, 11 October 1942. 104 MÚA AV ČR, Frischer, Cesta do lepšího světa, MS, deposited in MÚA AV ČR, EB-II, box 286. 105 Ibid.; Frischer’s lecture ‘Democracy or Barbarism’, Czechoslovak Jewish Bulletin, 9 February 1943, 3f. 106 MÚA AV ČR, Frischer, Cesta do lepšího světa. 107 ABS, 425-229-2, Frischer’s comments in the State Council, 24 June 1942. 108 Sedlická, 2013: 39–68. 109 ABS, 425-229-3, meeting of the defence committee of the State Council, 23 November 1943. 110 ABS, 425-230-1, Frischer to HOC, 11 October 1943; Weltsch to Frischer, 23 November 1943. 111 YVA, M.2/429, Provolání Ing. A. Frischera, člena Státní rady, československým Židům v Americe, 5 July 1943. ABS, 425-229-2, Frischer’s statement in the defence committee of the State Council, 22 September 1942.

216

Notes to Chapter 5

112 CZA, A280/9, plenary meeting of the National Jewish Council, 11 October 1942. 113 MÚA AV ČR, EB-II, box 396, Frischer to Beneš, 17 May 1943, with the report attached (Restituce jako právní problém). YVA, M.2/772, Schwarzbart’s diary, 31 May 1943. 114 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 105, H100/17, Frischer to Perlzweig, 20 July 1944. 115 CZA, A280/28, Frischer to Kubowitzki, 21 June 1943. 116 LMA, Acc3121/E/03/510, Frischer to Brotman, 27 July 1942. 117 YVA, O.59/91, Frischer to Zajitschkova, undated letter (most likely February 1944). 118 YVA, M.2/429-91, Easterman and Barou to the members of the National Council, 26 September 1944; YVA, M.2/774, Schwarzbart’s diary, 29 January 1944 and 23 March 1944. 119 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 106, H101/4, Frischer to Tartakower, 11 May 1944. 120 CZA, C2/2682, meeting of the BS WJC Executive Committee, 9 August 1944. 121 LAC, Rosenberg Papers, vol. 5, Rosenberg, ‘Benes and the Political Rights’. For Zelmanovits’s side of the story, see CZA, A280/46, Zelmanovits to Perlzweig, 25 August 1944. 122 YVA, M.2/429-73, Frischer’s telegram to the WJC headquarters in New York on 17 August 1944; CZA, C2/2628. 123 Czechoslovakia and the Czechoslovak Jews: 32. 124 CZA, A280/28, meeting of the National Jewish Council, 2 January 1943. Schwarzbart noted in his diary: ‘Frischer would like to liquidate Zelmanovits’. YVA, M.2/771, diary entry, 4 January 1943. 125 ABS, 425-229-1, Frischer to the National Jewish Council, 29 June 1943. 126 CZA, A280/26, Zelmanovits to Frischer, 29 October 1943. 127 CZA, A280/5, meetings of the National Jewish Council, 17 April, 4 May and 9 May 1944. 128 CZA, A280/50, meeting of the National Jewish Council, 16 March 1945. 129 MÚA AV ČR, EB–II, box 157, file 1557, Arnošt Frischer, ‘Memorial Treatise’, 2 March 1944. 130 YVA, M.2/297. 131 Židovský bulletin, 21 June 1943. 132 Bulletin of the Czechoslovak Jewish Representative Committee, September 1942, 19; ABS, 425-229-2, Frischer’s unpublished statement on 30 August 1942. 133 AMZV, LA, box 511, Fried to Masaryk, received 29 November 1944. 134 Czechoslovakia and the Czechoslovak Jews: 22–6. 135 ABS, 425-229-4, Frischer to Anežka Hodinová, 22/23 October 1944. 136 ABS, 425-229-1, plenary session of the National Jewish Council, 4 April 1943.

5  Coping with the Catastrophe 1 CZA, A280/9, meeting of the National Jewish Council, 11 October 1942. 2 YVA, M.2/774, Schwarzbart’s diary, 25 June 1944. 3 YVA, M.2/767, Schwarzbart’s diary, 28 June 1942. English slightly amended. 4 Bauer, 1989. 5 Láníček, 2012: 73–5. 6 Rozett, 2004: 341f. 7 Bolchover, 1993; Sompolinsky, 1999; Heim, 2013. 8 Shatzkes, 2002.

Notes to Chapter 5 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

217

Stola, 1995; Blatman, 2003. Gutman and Krakowski, 1986: 58–60. Blatman, 1990. Cohen, 2000. Kárný, 1991; Rothkirchen, 2005: 98–135. Lipscher, 1992: 140. Láníček, 2013: 78f. New Yorské Listy, 2 May 1942; Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 29 April 1942. Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 5 November 1939; 9 November 1941; 10 February 1942; 3 May 1942. The whole run is available in USHMMA, RG.67.014M, reel 103, H98/5. AMZV, LA, box 339, Kraus (Czechoslovak Information Department) to J. M. Judd (British Ministry of Information), 12 October 1943. CZA, A280/9, meeting of the National Jewish Council, 11 October 1942. AMZV, LA, box 339, Judt to Kraus, 8 September 1943. Kryl, 1997. Ibid. The Times, 30 June 1942, 2. Frischer used the term ‘ghettoes’. I have amended it to ‘ghettos’ throughout the chapter, unless quoting titles of publications. Czechoslovak Jewish Bulletin, 23 July 1942, 3f. Michman, 2011: 107. Czechoslovak Jewish Bulletin, 23 July 1942, 3f. Ibid. Scott, 1994: 59f. Czechoslovak Jewish Bulletin, 7 July 1942, 2. NARA, RG 59, 740.00116 EW 1939/527, Biddle to the Department of State, 13 August 1942. USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 104, H99/1, Riegner to BS WJC, 19 March 1942. Láníček, 2008: 131f and 139f. APNP, Viktor Fischl Papers, Fischl’s diary, 25 June 1942. AMZV, LA-D, box 190, Aide Mémoire, July 1942. Ibid. AMZV, LA-D, box 190, MFA to the General Consulate in Jerusalem, 8 July 1942. APNP, Viktor Fischl Papers, Fischl’s diary, 6 July 1942. Lipscher, 1992: 158; Rothkirchen, 1967: 27–53. NARA, RG 59, 740.00116 EW 1939/536, Biddle to the State Department, 26 August 1942. Ibid., 1939/527, Biddle to the State Department, 13 August 1942. Di Vokhntsaytung, 27 March 1942. Ibid., 5 June 1942. AJJDCA, Geneva Office, 1935–44, box 542/303-305, ‘Slovak Atrocities against the Jews Condemned at Solemn Conference of Protest’. Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 17 June 1942, in NA, MSP-L, box 58. The Agudist delegation consisted of Springer and Rabbi A. I. Twersky. NA, MSP-L, box 58. MSW to the Interior Ministry. MÚA AV ČR, Klecanda Collection, Sign. 63, Frischer’s address at the WJC meeting, 29 May 1942. English slightly revised. Czechoslovak Jewish Bulletin, 23 July 1942, 3f.

218

Notes to Chapter 5

50 Springer also made a similar proposal to Biddle. NARA, RG 59, 740.00116 EW 1939/527, Biddle to the State Department, 13 August 1942 51 Velecká, 2000: 396f. 52 NA, MSP-L, box 58, Čejka to MFA, 12 May 1942; box 75, report about the relief parcels scheme, 24 August 1942. 53 AMZV, LA, box 515, Marína Paulíny and Gustav Kleinberg to MFA, 28 January 1942. 54 Ibid. Kárný, 1981: 23, doc. 9. 55 Zweig, 1998; Hindley, 2000; Favez, 1999. 56 AMZV, LA, box 515, Paulíny and Kleinberg to MFA, 28 January 1942. 57 Lojka, 1996: 89; CZA, A320/25, Frischer to Ullmann, 3 August 1942. 58 Czechoslovak Jewish Bulletin, 23 July 1942, 3f. 59 NA, MSP-L, box 75, Ullmann to Frischer, 10 June 1942. Relico (Relief Committee for the Warstricken Jewish Population) was a humanitarian organization founded by Abraham Silberschein in Switzerland in September 1939. 60 NA, MSP-L, box 75, Ullmann to Frischer, 10 June 1942. 61 AMZV, LA, box 514, ČPA to the Czechoslovak Consul in Jerusalem Novák, 22 February 1944. 62 AMZV, LA, box 511, notes about Frischer’s visit to MFA, 13 June 1942; ibid. MFA to the Czechoslovak Embassy to the Polish Government-­in-Exile, 24 June 1942. 63 NA, MSP-L, box 75, MFA to MSW, 23 May 1942; ibid., intervention by a member of the State Council, A. Frischer, 10 June 1942. 64 NA, MSP-L, box 75, MFA to Frischer, 8 July 1942; MFA to MSW, 21 July 1942. 65 AMZV, LA, box 511, MFA to MSW, 21 July 1942. They quoted from a report sent by Kopecký. 66 AMZV, LA, box 511, interministerial meeting, 31 August 1942. Yet, it is unclear when the Polish programme actually started. No parcels were sent from Lisbon until January 1943. See the documents in LMA, Board of Deputies Files, Acc3121/C/11/02/92 (3). I would like to thank Michael Fleming for guiding me to these files. 67 NA, MSP-L, box 75, MFA to Frischer, 8 July 1942. 68 LMA, Board of Deputies Files, Acc3121/E/03/510, note of interview: Frischer and Kobler with Leonard Stein, 26 June 1942. 69 TNA, FO371/32680, W9559/4555/48, Nichols to the Foreign Secretary, 2 July 1942. 70 Ibid., W10386/4555/48, Camps to Randall, 26 July 1942. 71 NARA, RG 59, 740.00116 EW 1939/536. Help for the ‘Ghettoes’, 17 August 1942 (signed by Frischer). Emphasis in original. A slightly different version of the memorandum (signed by both Frischer and Kobler, dated ‘August 1942’) is deposited in CZA, A280/38. 72 NARA, RG 59, 740.0016 EW 1939/527, Biddle to the US Department of State, 13 August 1942. 73 Kushner, 1994. 74 On the role of the ghettos in Nazi policies, see Michman, 2011. 75 NARA, RG 59, 740.00116 EW 1939/536. Help for the ‘Ghettoes’, 17 August 1942. 76 MÚA AV ČR, Klecanda Collection, Frischer’s statement in the State Council, 22 December 1942. 77 NARA, RG 59, 740.00116 EW 1939/536. Help for the ‘Ghettoes’, 17 August 1942. Emphasis in original. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. Emphasis in original.

Notes to Chapter 5

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80 YVA, M.2/767, Schwarzbart’s diary, 30 June 1942. 81 YVA, M.2/771, Schwarzbart‘s diary, 8 March 1943. English slightly revised. 82 On 1 July 1942, Frischer and Schwarzbart visited Rhys Davies MP, who in the House of Commons supported the activists’ plans to send relief parcels to the Jews in Europe. YVA, M.2/767, Schwarzbart’s diary, 1 July 1942. 83 CZA, A280/16, Frischer to Ullmann, 19 July 1942. English slightly amended. 84 I would like to thank Michael Fleming for emphasizing this connection to me. 85 Blatman, 1990: 250. 86 Czechoslovak Jewish Representative Committee Bulletin, November 1942: 2. 87 Ibid. 88 CZA, A320/626, Ullmann to März, 23 December 1941. Lilli informed Ullmann that her husband had died. CZA, A320/250, Frischer to Ullmann, 19 July 1942 [14.6.?]. 89 CZA, A320/276, Frischer to Ullmann, 16 June 1942 [received on 6 July 1942]. 90 YVA, O.59/91, Frischer to Zajitschkova, undated [most likely autumn 1942]. 91 Laqueur, 2012: 77. 92 USA, MS 238/2/14, Easterman to Masaryk, 2 September 1942; Easterman to Masaryk, 4 September 1942. 93 USA, MS 238/2/10, Easterman to Silverman, 28 September 1942. 94 Ibid., Easterman and Barou to Wise and Perlzweig, 30 September 1942. 95 USA, MS 238/2/13, Easterman to Beneš, 6 November 1942 and 13 November 1942; Rothkirchen, 2005: 179; Láníček, 2013: 95–7. 96 FDRPL, Sumner Welles Papers, box 86, Wise to Welles, 6 October 1942; Heim, 2013: 247f.; Fleming, 2014: 107 (Fleming quotes Perlzweig: ‘Nobody here is disposed to doubt that the information is at least substantially correct’). 97 AMZV, LA-D, box 189, Frischer to MFA, 15 October 1942. 98 Engel, 1987: 197–202; 1993: 15–41. 99 Engel, 1987: 198. 100 AMZV, LA, box 511, Easterman to Masaryk, 27 November 1942. 101 AČR, BBC 1939–1945, Masaryk on 9 December 1942; Ripka on 17 December 1942, and Slávik on 18 December 1942. See. AMZV, LA, box 500, Frischer to Masaryk, 19 December 1942. 102 CZA, A280/28, meeting of the National Jewish Council, 2 January 1943. 103 AMZV, LA-D, box 212, Ripka (MFA) to the President and the Presidium of the Council of Ministers, 10 December 1942. The Czechoslovak government did not deal with the subject during its regular sessions. Němeček et al., 2011: 768–824. 104 CZA, A280/28, meeting of the National Jewish Council, 2 January 1943. 105 Ibid., meeting of the National Jewish Council, 2 January 1943. 106 Ibid. 107 Bulletin of the Czechoslovak Jewish Representative Committee, February 1943, 2–4. David stated that 72,000 Czech and 76,000 Slovak Jews (a slight overestimate) had already been deported. Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 27 December 1942; Čechoslovák, 1 January 1943, 4. 108 Bulletin of the Czechoslovak Jewish Representative Committee, February 1943, 4. 109 Ibid. 110 Bulletin of the Czechoslovak Jewish Representative Committee, April 1943, 17. Frischer’s lecture ‘Democracy and Barbarism’, 9 January 1943. 111 Viktor Fischl, ‘The Jews and the Conscience of the World’, The Spirit of Czechoslovakia, 6 February 1943, 11.

220

Notes to Chapter 6

6  Help for the Jews 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30

CZA, A320/25, Frischer to Ullmann, 27 January 1945. Blodig, 1996: 214. For Rossel’s report, see ‘Zpráva’ (1996). Zweig, 1998: 849. Ibid., 830 and 838. Ibid., 837. Hindley, 2000: 77–102 (quote from 98). Cohen, 2000: 159–65. AMZV, LA, box 500, Frischer to the CRC, 24 September 1942. NA, MV-L, box 256, Bericht aus dem Protektorat, 20 September 1942 (Kopecký’s report, 17 August 1942). NA, MSP-L, box 75, Frischer to MSW, 28 December 1942. Kryl, 1997: 176. Kryl ascribes the opening of the connections between Theresienstadt and Switzerland to the ICRC inerventions with the Germans. Kárný, 1997. Kryl, 1997: 196. USHMMA, RG-68.045M, C3/267, Ullmann’s telegram [November 1942]; AMZV, LA-D, report by MFA, 24 November 1942 (Kopecký’s telegram, 23 November 1942); CZA A320/363, Zucker to Ullmann, 19 October 1942 and 15 January 1943; Ullmann to Zucker, 31 March 1943. Shatzkes, 2002: 197; LMA, Acc3121/C/11/12/91, Frischer to the Board of Deputies, 28 December 1942; Katzki (JDC) to Brotman, 2 July 1943. Němeček et al., 2011: 799, government meeting on 21 December 1942. NA, MSP-L, box 75, interministerial meeting, 31 December 1942. They also informed Frischer that the CRC had received ad hoc permission to transfer £600 to Kopecký in Geneva; Čtvrtník, 2009: 36. Hindley, 2000: 85. TNA, FO371/36653, W3315/49/48, Nichols to Foreign Office, 24 February 1943. AMZV, LA, box 515, MSW for MFA, 19 March 1943. NA, MSP-L, box 58, report about social assistance for Czechoslovak citizens outside Britain, March 1942–March 1943. ABS, 425-229-1, plenary session of the National Jewish Council, 4 April 1943. Ibid., MFA to MSW, 22 November 1942. They sent the help to Rivesaltes, Gurs, Noé, Nexon, Le Vernet, Brens and Les Milles. AMZV, LA, box 515, Čejka to MFA, 3 September 1943. Ibid., Kopecký to Kleinberg, 25 September 1943. NA, MSP-L, box 75, MFA to Frischer, 8 March 1943; ibid., 30 August 1943. Edelstein and Eppstein confirmed delivery of 2,280 kg of soup cubes, 2,410 tins of condensed milk and 1,120 kg of dried fruit. The MFA contributed £100. USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 106, H101/4, report by Frischer, 13 December 1943; NA, MSP-L, box 75, MZV to Frischer, 15 October 1943. Kopecký paid for half of the consignment. ‘The Agency’ (Jewish Agency?) covered the other half. The consignment contained items requested by the Theresienstadt inmates – namely, forty-­four boxes of powdered milk (Lactissa), four boxes of infant formula and five boxes of medical supplies. Ibid., Minister Bečko (MSW) to Frischer, 28 April 1943. Ibid., fundraising campaign by the CRA, October 1943.

Notes to Chapter 6

221

31 AMZV, LA, box 515, minutes of the second meeting of the Coordination Committee, 8 March 1943. 32 AMZV, LA, box 514, CJRC to Papánek, 12 March 1943; NA, MSP-L, Joint to CJRC, 21 May 1943. 33 NA, MSP-L, box 75, Frischer to MFA, 20 September 1943. 34 AMZV, LA, box 515, Frischer to MFA, 26 August 1943; Joint to CJRC, 24 September 1943; Frischer to Biddle, 8 October 1943; 35 Ibid., Ullmann to Frischer, 17 May 1943; Frischer to Ullmann, 18 June 1943; NA, MSP-L, box 75, MSW to MFA, 12 June 1943; Frischer to MSW, 29 July 1943. Frischer also asked that Čejka send parcels to the Jews who still lived in Prague. 36 AMZV, LA, box 515, Čejka to Kopecký, 2 December 1943. 37 This was also the case with the Auschwitz subcamps in Monowitz and Jawischowitz, which were listed among the places where Czechoslovak Jews were incarcerated. Čejka eventually sent parcels to both camps. AMZV, LA, box 515, Frischer to MSW, 7 July 1943. For recent research on the Allies and Auschwitz, see Fleming, 2014. 38 For correspondence between the Jews deported in May 1942 from Theresienstadt to the Lublin district with their relatives and friends in Prague, see Witte, 1996. 39 NA, MSP-L, box 58, MFA to Frischer, 1 July 1943. 40 Kárný, 1993. 41 Ibid.; Kryl, 1999. 42 NA, MSP-L, box 75, Frischer’s letter to Czechoslovak exile ministries, 29 October 1943. 43 Ibid., MFA to Frischer, 23 October 1943. (Kopecký’s message, 15 October 1943.) CZA, A320/226, Janowitz to Ullmann, 17 September 1943. 44 CZA, A320/226, Pergamenter to Ullmann, 17 September 1943. 45 NA, MSP-L, box 75, Frischer to MSW, 29 October 1943. 46 Ibid., Frischer to MFA, 14 December 1943; MSP-L, box 58, MFA (report from Ullmann) to Frischer, 16 November 1943. 47 NA, MSP-L, box 75, MFA to Frischer, 20 December 1943 (Kopecký’s telegram, 14 December 1943). 48 Kárný, 1993. 49 AMZV, LA, box 515. 50 AMZV, LA, box 514, Čejka to MFA, 22 October 1943; AMZV, LA, box 515, Organisation d’Assistance aux Familles Éprouvées [Čejka] to Weichert, 26 October 1943. 51 AMZV, LA, box 515, Weichert to Organisation d’Assistance aux Familles Éprouvées [Čejka], 1 January 1944. For Weichert, see Engel, 1999. 52 NA, MSP-L, box 75, Čejka to Frischer and exile ministries, 9 May 1943. 53 LMA, Acc3121/C/11/12/91, Frischer to Brodetsky, 21 August 1943; Camps to Brotman, 13 September 1943; Brotman to Stephany, 12 November 1943. 54 LMA, Acc3121/C/11/12/91, Barber to Salomon, 15 March 1943. 55 MÚA AV ČR, EB-L-93, box 264, Drtina’s notes (3329/43) on 17 December 1943. 56 AMZV, LA, box 512, MFA to Papánek, 12 June 1944. 57 AMZV, LA, box 515, Frischer to MFA, 11 January 1944. 58 AMZV, LA, box 514, minutes of the ČPA meeting, 7 February 1944; NA, MSP-L, box 75, MSW to MFA, 9 February 1944; AMZV, LA, box 515, MFA to Frischer, 10 February 1944. The Jewish Colonization Association donated £2,000 and United Jewish Appeal donated £1,000. 59 Shatzkes, 2002: 199.

222 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

Notes to Chapter 6 Kárný, 1988: 198. ABS, 425-229-6, Frischer to Brodetsky, 31 August 1943. AMZV, LA, box 514, notes of MFA, 27 April 1945. AMZV, LA, box 512, MFA to Hanák, 10 January 1944. CZA, A320/97; AMZV, LA, box 512, MFA to Hanák, 10 January 1944; box 515, MSW to MFA, 1 September 1943. AMZV, LA-D, box 515, Čejka to MFA, 2 February 1944; CZA, A320/226, confirmations from March/April 1944. It is not clear how Čejka reached the number. In the letter, Eppstein reported that between 1 November 1943 and 28 March 1944 they had received 6,194 ‘Postpakete und Paeckchen aus Lissabon’. In another letter, Eppstein confirmed the delivery of 1,875 parcels between 1 May and 18 September 1943. That makes 8,069 parcels in all – in contrast to the 7,294 noted by Čejka. Kárný concluded that we are simply unable to explain the difference. Kárný, 1988: 210, note 51. AMZV, LA, box 514, minutes of the CRA meeting, 18 August 1944. Kárný, 1988: 204. AMZV, LA, box 469, Frischer to MSW, 11 August 1944. AMZV, LA, box 512, MFA to Frischer, 30 August 1944; see also a copy of the letter sent by the Jewish Council in Theresienstadt to Joel Brand on 23 May 1944 (AJA, WJC Papers, H329/6). Kárný, 1988: 204. AMZV, LA, box 512, note by Consul Suchan, MFA, 7 July 1944, based on information from the British MEW; Čejka to MFA, 8 August 1944. USHMMA, RG-48.015M, reel 1, Wrighton (MEW) to CRA, 29 August 1944; MSW to Ministry of Finance, 31 August 1944; AMZV, LA, box 513, Ullmann’s report, 1 December 1944. AMZV, LA, box 513, Kučera to MFA, 9 December 1944. CZA, A320/25, Frischer to Ullmann, 17 February 1945. CZA, A320/420, Kohn to Ullmann, 23 August 1945. Blodig, 1996: 216f, note 64. Kárný, 1988. ABS, 425-230-7, Social Committee of Jews of Czechoslovakia to Frischer, 16 March 1945. CZA, A320/97. Blodig, 1996: 217, note 65. Beneš and Tošnerová, 2013: 113. Čtvrtník, 2009: 51f. Beneš and Tošnerová, 2013: 111. Murmelstein also wrote in his memoirs about parcels with sardines that reached the ghetto, but did not mention any numbers (Murmelstein, 2014). CZA, A320/331, Frischer’s telegram to Ullmann, 21 June 1945. AMZV, LA, box 469, Čejka to MFA, 18 March 1945; AMZV, LA, box 513, Čejka to MFA, 4 December 1944. CZA, A320/540, Ullmann, ‘Zum 9. Mai. Ein Gedenkblatt zur Befreiung Prags’. Wyman, 1984. Rubinstein, 1997. Braham, 1981: 1103. NARA, RG 59, 740.001116 EW 1939/536, Biddle to Department of State, 26 August 1942. Bulletin of the Czechoslovak Jewish Representative Committee, February 1943, 4.

Notes to Chapter 6 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133

223

Wasserstein, 1979: 179f. Láníček, 2013: 87–91. TNA, FO371/36653, W3315/49/48, Nichols to Foreign Office, 24 February 1943. NA, MSP-L, box 58, MFA to Frischer, 15 February 1943. It most likely originated in a report received from Ullmann. TNA, FO371/36657, W5344/49/48, FO (Henderson) to Nichols, 13 April 1943. NA, PMR-L, box 84, Zelmanovits to Šrámek, 5 April 1943. AMZV, LA, box 500, Frischer to Masaryk, 10 April 1943. Czechoslovak Jewish Bulletin, 7 April 1943, 2. Ibid., 1, Frischer’s address at the Anglo-Jewish Conference, 4 April 1943. NA, PMR-L, box 84, Ripka to the Presidium of the Council of Ministers, 17 April 1944; Presidium of the Council of Ministers to Zelmanovits, 20 April 1943. Wasserstein, 1979: 188–201. YVA, M.2/772, Schwarzbart’s diary, 19 May 1943. Wasserstein, 1979: 203–4. Czechoslovak Jewish Bulletin, 14 June 1943. Zygielbojm’s letter of farewell to the President of the Polish Government-­in-Exile, 11/12 May 1943, Valley, 2005: 224. YVA, M.2/772, Schwarzbart’s diary, 13 May 1943. Ibid., 18/19 May 1943. Židovský bulletin, 28 May 1943, 2. English slightly revised. YVA, M.2/772, Schwarzbart’s diary, 12 May 1943. AMZV, LA, box 515, Frischer to Ullmann, 18 June 1943. USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 106, H101/4, Frischer on the position of the Jews in Czechoslovakia, 13 December 1943. Ibid., report from Geneva, 16 November 1943. Ibid., Frischer to Kubowitzki, 5 January 1944; YVA, M.2/429, Ripka’s broadcast, 5 January 1944. Karel Werner, Večerní České slovo, 27 January 1944; quoted in Bulletin of the Czechoslovak Jewish Representative Committee, no. 11, April 1944, 12. AMZV, LA-D, box 190, Frischer to MFA, 31 January 1944. Ibid., MFA to Frischer, 14 January 1944. Ibid., Frischer to MFA, 20 January 1944. LMA, Acc3121/03/510, Slávik’s broadcast, 9 February 1944. AMZV, LA-D, box 190, MFA to Frischer, 2 February 1944. The delegation comprised Minister Ripka and Vladimír Slavík. Ibid., Ripka to Bishop Myers, 4 February 1944. Ibid., Archbishop Griffin to Ripka, 22 February 1944. Jelínek, 1992: 129f. Mlynárik, 2005: 242–4. Jelinek, 1974: 241. Gilbert, 1981: 327. Fleming, 2014: 213f. CZA, A280/5, meeting of the National Jewish Council, 12 June 1944. Frischer also received detailed reports from the Jewish members of the Polish National Council. USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 106, H101/4, Frischer to the WJC, 17 June 1944. Kárný, 1985: 15f. CZA, A280/16, XXVI plenary session of the State Council, 19 June 1944. USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 106, H101/4, Frischer to the WJC, 17 June 1944.

224

Notes to Chapter 6

134 Ibid., Kubowitzki to Pehle, 5 July 1944, asking the WRB to forward the message to Frischer. 135 Kárný, 1985: 23. 136 AMZV, LA, box 514, Frischer to MFA, 4 September 1944; USHMMA, RG67.014M, reel 106, H101/4, report received by the MFA on 22 June 1944. 137 AMZV, LA, box 514, MFA to Frischer, 9 October 1944. Ullmann had no information about the May transports. AMZV, LA, box 514, notes made by Ducháček(?) in early October 1944 on 73/dův/44, Kučera’s report, 20 September 1944. 138 JMP, Kárný Collection, Ullmann’s report, 29 December 1944. 139 AMZV, LA-D, box 190, Kopecký’s telegrams nos 322–5, sent on 26 June 1944. 140 Gilbert, 1981: 245f. Riegner also submitted the proposals to the WRB. AMZV, LA-D, box 190, Kopecký’s telegram no. 325, sent on 26 June 1944. 141 TNA, FO371/42809, WR218/3/48, Ripka to Nichols, 4 July 1944. In the end, no new warning was issued. 142 AČR, BBC, Ripka’s broadcast, 16 July 1944. 143 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 106, H101/4, Frischer to Easterman, 6 July 1944. 144 Ibid. 145 YVA, M2/429, Frischer to John M. Allison (American Embassy), 15 July 1944. Message for Kubowitzki. 146 Gilbert, 1981: 216f and 236f. 147 Breitman and Lichtman, 2013: 281. 148 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 106, H101/4, Pehle to Kubowitzki, 3 August 1944. 149 Ibid., Kubowitzki to Pehle, 8 August 1944. Pehle previously rejected as impractical the proposal for a paratrooper or partisan attack; ibid., reel 107, H101/6, Frischer to Kubowitzki, 15 September 1944. Also Frischer later dismissed the proposal as having ‘no value for the time being’. 150 Wyman, 1984: 296. 151 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 107, H101/6, Frischer to Kubowitzki, 15 September 1944; CZA, A320/25, Frischer to Ullmann, 12 January 1945. Frischer was informed that the US military was strongly opposed to such a mission and complained that no one had explained to him the ‘real reasons’ behind the decision. 152 AMZV, LA-D, box 190, Frischer to the MFA, 10 August 1944. 153 Ibid., Goldmann to Masaryk, 3 July 1944; Viktor Fischl’s comments on Goldmann’s letter, 12 July 1944; The Ministry expressed doubts about the feasibility of the operation. There is no evidence available that would suggest Beneš’s intervention with the Soviets. 154 Ibid., Masaryk to Goldmann, 17 July 1944. 155 AMZV, LA, box 514, notes made by Ducháček (?) in early October 1944 on 73/ dův/44, comments on Kučera’s report, 20 September 1944. 156 Breitman and Lichtman, 2013: 286. 157 Czechoslovak Jewish Bulletin, no. 2, 23 July 1942, 3f. 158 AMZV, LA-D, box 189, Frischer to Ripka, 14 June 1944. 159 On the death marches, see Blatman, 2011. 160 CZA, A280/16, Frischer to WJC, 19 January 1945; AMZV, LA-D, Frischer to Ripka, 22 January 1945; telegram from Solomon Adler-Rudel to Czechoslovak Embassy (Stockholm) for Alexandra Kolontai (Soviet Embassy), 22 January 1945. 161 AMZV, LA-D, box 190, Valkov to Ripka, 1 August 1944. 162 AMZV, LA, box 512, Frischer to MFA, 5 June 1943. Whilst around 160,000 Jews lived in the areas annexed by Hungary, only around 24,000 Jews remained dispersed across independent Slovakia.

Notes to Chapter 6

225

163 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 106, H101/4, Frischer’s report for the National Council of the BS WJC, 13 December 1943. 164 Some of the information was extracted from reports sent to London by Ullmann. NA, MSP-L, box 58, MFA to Frischer, 21 July 1943. Kopecký also sent Frischer impressions of the ghetto gathered by the German Red Cross. According to their report, 43,800 Jews lived there and the average age of the inmates was 60 years. JMP, Kárný Collection, MFA to Frischer, 29 July 1943. 165 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 106, H101/4, Frischer’s report for the National Council of the BS WJC, 13 December 1943. 166 CZA, A280/20, meeting of the National Jewish Council, 21 September 1943. 167 Sompolinsky, 1999: 127. 168 A. J. Fischer, ‘Theresienstadt – A German Alibi?’, Free Europe, 18 June 1943, 202. 169 ‘ “Musterghetto” Theresienstadt’, Aufbau, 27 August 1943, 1 and 15. 170 YVA, M.2/429, Frischer to the editor of Free Europe, 28 June 1943. 171 AMZV, LA, box 515, Frischer to MFA, 28 June 1943; MFA to Frischer, 23 July 1943. 172 AMZV, LA, box 514, report by MFA, 21 February 1944. 173 Ibid., Frischer to MFA, 17 March 1944; a report about Theresienstadt by Ullmann, undated; AMZV, LA, box 512, British Foreign Office to MFA, 12 February 1944. 174 AMZV, LA, box 514, Fischl to the Czechoslovak Information Service, New York, 22 March 1944. 175 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 106, H101/4, Frischer to Tartakower, 25 February 1944. 176 MÚA AV ČR, EB-II, box 394, Springer’s BBC broadcast, 10 September 1942. 177 YVA, M.2/429, Frischer to Schwarzbart, 29 November 1943. 178 CZA, A320/417, März to Ullmann, 7 April 1944. 179 Sompolinsky, 1999: 196–210. 180 CZA, C2/2680, Frischer to Barou, 23 March 1944. English slightly amended; USA, MS241/3/46, minutes of the BS WJC Executive meeting, 22 March 1944. 181 CZA, C2/2680, Frischer to Barou, 23 March 1944. 182 CZA A280/33, Zelmanovits to Frischer, 15 April 1944; A280/16, Zelmanovits to Šrámek, 19 April 1944. 183 YVA, M.2/429; CZA, C2/2860-2862. 184 Lipscher, 1992: 215. 185 Láníček, 2008: 129–35. 186 AMZV, LA, box 514, Kučera’s report on his talks with Adler-Rudel, 20 September 1944. 187 The tone of the reports, however, was different, with the Rossel report much more corresponding with the wishes of the Nazi propaganda. USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 107, H101/7, Hilel Storch to Kubowitzki, 10 September 1944 (the report of the Danish Red Cross is attached); ibid., Ullmann’s report about his meeting with Rossel, received by the WJC on 17 November 1944. 188 Kryl, 1999: 131. 189 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 107, H101/7, Frischer to the WJC, 16 August 1944. 190 Láníček, 2013: 90–4. 191 CZA, A320/25, Frischer to Ullmann, 12 January 1945. 192 Ibid. 193 CZA, A320/25, Frischer to Warren, 6 February 1945; Frischer to McClelland, 12 February 1945; Frischer to Ullmann, 20 February 1945. FDRPL, WRB Papers, box 69, McClelland to Frischer, 1 March 1945. In the letter to Ullmann, Frischer attached another list, with sixteen names. On the other hand, we know that at exactly

226

194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208

Notes to Chapter 7 the same time Frischer secured Palestinian immigration certificates for Lilli and Hanna Skutezky, as well as for Lilli’s brothers. Both Lilli’s brothers were murdered in Birkenau. ABS, B1-11, Frischer to Feuchtwanger, 15 January 1945. AMZV, LA, box 514, Frischer requesting MFA to send a telegram to Kopecký, 29 January 1945. Láníček, 2007: 68f. JMP, Kárný Collection, Ullmann’s report, 29 December 1944. Rosenberg’s reports in NA, MSP-L, box 58, MFA to Frischer, 19 February 1945; CZA, A320/25, Frischer to Ullmann, 27 January 1945. AMZV, LA, box 515, MSW to MFA, 1 September 1943. CZA, A320/276, Ullmann to Skutezky [Skutecky], 11 August 1942. See CZA, A320/97 and A320/363 for Skutezky’s correspondence with Ullmann in 1943–44; CZA A320/363, Ullmann to Zucker, 31 March 1943. Árijský boj, 26 August 1944, 5; 9 September 1944, 6. YVA, O.59/91, Frischer to Zajitschkova, 28 October 1944. Martin Wein, ‘Machinery of Compulsion – Prague Nationalism in Theory and Practice’, MS: 337. Kárný, 1991. YVA, M.2/773, Schwarzbart’s diary, 7 July 1943. English slightly amended. ABS, 425-229-1, plenary session of the National Jewish Council, 4 April 1943. YVA, M.2/774, Schwarzbart’s diary, 26 October 1944. English slightly amended. Blatman, 2003: 141–59. Věstník, 16 January 1948, 22.

7  Squaring the Circle: Diaspora Politics in Post-War Czechoslovakia 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

YVA, M.2/429. ABS, 425-231-7. Věstník, 1/VII, 1 September 1945, 4. Ibid., 4f. YVA, O.59/91, Frischer to Zajitschkova, 11 March 1945. ‘Plans for Czech Jews to Return Home’, European Jewish Observer, 30 March 1945, 1. YVA, O.59/91, Frischer to Zajitschkova, 15 July 1945. ABS, 425-230-8, Skutezky to Frischer, 18 May 1945. YVA, O.59/91, Frischer to Zajitschkova, 15 July 1945. ABS, 425-233-04, Zajitschkova to Frischer, 29 July 1945. Letter from Alena Mikovcová (the Brno Jewish Community), 22 March 2014; ABS, 425-232-2, Blochová to Frischer, 21 September 1945. Buchsbaum’s fate during the war remains unclear, but after the war he lived in Ostrava. ABS, 425-232-4, Jewish Council in Prague to the Soviet Embassy, 11 July 1945. Rufeisen fought in the ranks of the Czechoslovak brigade in the USSR. Sedlák, 2008; Hanková, 2006, 21–2; Bumová, 2008. Büchler estimated the number of Jews in post-­war Slovakia at 32,000; see Büchler, 2005: 257. Rothkirchen, 1998: 629–46; 1976: 56–90; Bondy, 2001. Věstník, 5 May 1946, 27. JMP, Erik Kolár Collection, ‘Od ŽRS k Ústavu pro oběti války a perzekuce. Příspěvek k likvidaci židovské otázky,’

Notes to Chapter 7

227

17 Věstník, 15 December 1945, 31; Kuklík et al., 2015: 169. They administered the real estate previously owned by Jewish Religious Communities, the assets of the Communities and organizations the Germans held on the accounts of the Czech Escomt Bank, and also the collections of the Prague Jewish Museum. 18 CZA, S5/751, Bericht des Feldrabbiner Dr. Rebenwurzel an einen Freund in Jerusalem, 31 May 1945. See also ABS, 425-231-1, Frischer to SVŽČ, 3 June 1945; YVA, O.59/91, Frischer to Zajitschkova, 15 July 1945. 19 ABS, 425-231-1, Frischer to SVŽČ, 3 June 1945. 20 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, Reel 107, H101/9, report by Barber on the situation of the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia, September 1945; Věstník, 1 September 1945, 2f. 21 Sedlák, 2006: 191–213. Frischer in November 1945 claimed that there were in fact 59 Jewish Communities in the Bohemian Lands and 105 in Slovakia. Věstník, 15 December 1945, 26. 22 Věstník, 1 September 1945, 2f. 23 Věstník, 15 December 1945, 31. 24 Věstník, 1 September 1945, 3. 25 Concerning the more complex situation in Poland, see Aleksiun, 2001: 227–42. 26 Soukupová, 2009: 72–3. 27 Hanková, 2006: 36–7. 28 Věstník, 1 October 1945, 11f. 29 Cichopek-Gajraj, 2014: 55; ABS, 425-231-5, Frischer to Perutz, 11 March 1946. 30 ABS, 425-232-5, Frischer to Rosenberg, 25 July 1945; USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 103, H98/3, note on conversation between Rosenberg and Easterman, 3 July 1945. 31 Věstník, 1 August 1946, 71; Věstník, 1 August 1956, 4. 32 Věstník, 28 October 1945, 23. 33 ABS, 425-231-5, Frischer to Perutz, 11 March 1946. 34 ABS. 425-231-7, Frischer to Goldmann, 30 January 1946; 425-231-5, Frischer to Perutz, 11 March 1946. 35 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, H99/19, Kubowitzki to Frischer, 23 May 1947. 36 ABS, 425-233-02, Frischer to Perutz, 4 November 1947; Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 30 January 1948. 37 Věstník, 14 November 1947, 326. 38 ABS, 425-231-1, Frischer to the SVŽČ, 3 June 1945; YVA, O.59/91, Frischer to Zajitschkova, 15 July 1945; Heumos, 1986: 296. 39 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 103, H98/3, note on conversation between Rosenberg and Easterman, 3 July 1945. 40 Věstník, 1 August 1946, 66. 41 ABS, 425-231-2, minutes of a meeting between Frischer and Trobe (Joint), 18 January 1946; ABS, 425-231-2, ‘Otázky, které je nutno projednat s ministrem Šoltészem’; The Jewish Council in Prague to the Ministry of Job Security and Social Welfare, 3 October 1945. 42 Věstník, 30 March 1946, 22. 43 ABS, 425-231-7, ‘Zodpovědění dotazníku World Jewish Congressu’. 44 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 107, H101/9, Barber’s report on Czechoslovakia, September 1945. 45 ABS, 425-231-5, Frischer to Perutz, 6 March 1946; 425-230-8, Ullmann to Frischer, 5 December 1945 and 28 December 1945. 46 They were also supporting transmigrants from Poland (1,979 in September and 1,180 in October 1946). Věstník, 15 December 1946, 139. 47 ABS, 425-232-2, Frischer’s speech on the occasion of the visit of the Joint delegation (Warburg and Bernstein) in Prague, 15 November 1946.

228 48 49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57

58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

Notes to Chapter 7 Věstník, 1 April 1947, 85. Gross, 2007; Engel, 1998: 43–85. Šišjaková, 2008: 410–19. ABS, 425-231-3, Wehle to Fierlinger, 1 October 1945 and 17 October 1945; Věstník, 15 December 1945, 26f. Douglas, 2012: 93–129. ABS, 425-232-5, Reich to Frischer, 12 June 1945. In Košice each of the national groups, including the Jews, received ID cards in different colours. ABS, 425-234-4, Ignác Weisberg to the National Committee in Prešov, 21 March 1945; 425-233-03, official complaint by Tibor Lengyel, 1 May 1945. ABS, 425-233-7, Rebenwurzel to Frischer, 8 July 1945. Vaculík, 1995. For the decrees, see Jech and Kaplan, 2002. ABS, 425-233-03, Albín and Karel Münzer to Frischer, 13 June 1946. Both brothers had fought in the Czechoslovak army in the west and had declared Czechoslovak nationality in the census, but the authorities in Pilsen kept postponing the decision on their restitution claim. Kuklík et al., 2015: 188f; Láníček, 2013: 154. Kuklík et al., 2015: 167. Sedlák, 2008: 85–7; ABS, 425-234-5, instructions of the Interior Ministry, 14 November 1945. Láníček, 2014b: 393–8; Gerlach, 2008. ABS, 425-232-2, a note by Wehle, 9 April 1946. AMO, ÚNV Ostrava, 8682/47. Frischerová applied in early June 1947 and received her certificate in late July 1947. ABS, 425-231-3, Frischer to Minister Drtina, 6 May 1946. Frischer was the preferred candidate. Heumos, 1986: 303; CZA, C2/2684, Barber to Frischer, 16 October 1945. ABS, 425-231-3, Frischer to Fierlinger, 24 September 1945. Ibid., Frischer’s notes about his audience with Masaryk, 11 March 1946. ABS, 425-233-07, Daily Digest of WJC Activities, 14 March 1946. Response from Beneš’s office to the protest submitted by the CJRC on 3 February 1946. Láníček, 2013: 119f. ABS, 425-230-8, Weis to Frischer, 28 October 1945; Weis to Frischer, 10 August 1945. ABS, 425-232-7, Weissenstein to Frischer, 1 March 1946. ABS, 425-233-2, Frischer to the MNV, 14 March 1946. Ibid., Weissenstein to Frischer, 8 March 1946. SOKA Jihlava, Trestní komise nalézací ONV Jihlava, case MD-316-III-4-277/46. On 30 December 1946, there were officially 1,876 ‘German’ Jews in Czechoslovakia. Staněk, 1991: 343; Čapková, 2013; Láníček, 2014b. Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 16 September 1946; ABS, B1-9, Frischer’s meeting with Smutný, 8 March 1946. Hájková, 2014a. YIVO Archives, RG 347.7.1, box 13, Landa to Gottschalk, 28 October 1946. Čapková, 2013: 358. The most detailed analysis is provided in Kateřina Čapková, ‘Between Expulsion and Rescue: The Transports for German-­speaking Jews of Czechoslovakia in 1946’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, forthcoming. Čapková believes that there most likely were cases of individual Jews deported to Germany. Other historians who describe the

Notes to Chapter 7

81 82 83

84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

93 94 95 96 97 98 99

100 101 102 103 104 105 106

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persecution of the German Jews in post-­war Czechoslovakia tend to provide copious detail about the predicament of survivors after the war. Yet these comprehensive narratives are concluded with the simple statement that some of the survivors were deported to Germany, unsupported by any example or reference. See Nepálová, 1999. Čapková, ‘Between Expulsion and Rescue’; ABS, 425-234-5, Rada, circular no. 37, 18 September 1946. Borák, 2007: 98–135 (here, 127f); The case of Irma Thiebergerová. ABS, 425-233-2, Frischer to Weis, 22 March 1946; 425-231-3, Frischer(?) to Nosek, 22 February 1946. Frischer, notes about his conversation with Masaryk, 27 April 1946; Frischer’s conversation with Masaryk, 11 March 1946; 425-231-2, Frischer’s meeting with Beneš, 7 May 1946 (written 8 May). ABS, 425-234-5, The Council, circular no. 37, 18 September 1946; circular no. 38, 20 September 1946. Ibid., Frischer to SVŽČ, 9 October 1946. Láníček, 2013: 171; Láníček, 2014b: 399f; Cichopek-Gajraj, 2014: 118f. Vaculík, 1995: 292–9. AfZ, C3/826, report about the Situation of the Jews from Carpatho-Ukraine, 28 March 1946; ABS, 425-231-5, Frischer to Perutz, 11 March 1946. ABS, 425-231-5, Frischer to Masaryk, 20 September 1946. Vaculík, 1995; LOC, Steinhardt Papers, box 50, Goldmann to Steinhardt, 29 April 1946 and 11 June 1946. ABS, 425-231-3, Frischer’s visit to Masaryk, 9 October 1946; ABS, 425-231-3, Frischer’s notes about his meeting with Masaryk, 11 March 1946. Wein unfairly accuses Frischer of ‘collaboration’ with the Czechoslovak authorities in their efforts to send the Ruthenian Jews to Germany. Martin Wein, Machinery of Compulsion: 396 (ms. in author’s possession). It is clear, however, that this was an attempt to save the Jews from repatriation to Ruthenia; see Jelinek, 1995: 289–93. ABS, 425-231-5, Frischer to Perutz, 16 October 1946. Kadlec, 2009: 21. Nevertheless, in Teplice, for example, 93 of the local at least 947 Ruthenian Jews still did not have their citizenship confirmed in late 1947. Jelinek, 2007: 334f. NA, AHR, 1-99-1, the Council to the Czechoslovak government, 16 July 1947; Kuklík et al., 2015: 186. Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 21 March 1947. Láníček, 2013: 153f. Věstník, 5 May 1946, 26; Láníček, 2014: 397; Gerlach, 2008. By February 1948, only 3,000 of 16,000 requests for the restitution of estates were decided in favour of claimants. At the same time, the Jewish Communities were able to receive 657 of 1,119 claimed pieces of real estate (synagogues, schools and cemeteries). Kuklík et al., 2015: 179 and 185. ABS, 425-231-2, Frischer’s meeting with Beneš, 1 October 1945; ABS, 425-231-3, Wehle to Fierlinger, 1 October and 17 October 1945. Věstník, 5 May 1946, 28f. ABS, 425-231-5, Frischer to Perutz, 20 March 1946 and 18 October 1945. 425-231-1, Eisner to Frischer, 7 January 1946. ABS, 425-231-5, Frischer to Perutz, 11 March 1946. ‘Maďarsko je zdrojem zpráv o špatném zacházení se židy v Československu’, Čechoslovák and Westske Noviny (Published in West, Texas), 16 November 1945. ABS, 425-231-2, the Council to the Ministry of Information, 14 November 1945. ABS, 425-232-6, memorandum submitted by the Council to the AACEP.

230

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107 CZA, Z5/1156, L. B. [?], report on the meeting between the AACEP delegation and Czech and Slovak community leaders. 108 ABS, 425-231-2, Frischer about his meeting with Beneš, 8 May 1946 (Fierlinger and Nosek declined to meet with them). 109 ABS, 425-234-4, report about the anti-Jewish riots in Slovakia, written by Frischer. 110 Ibid., Frischer to the Ústedný sväz židovských náboženských obcí na Slovensku, 8 October 1946. 111 AfZ, C3/652, Riegner to Kubowitzki, 13 March 1947. 112 Věstník, 6 November 1947, 314. 113 Ibid. 114 NA, AHR, 1-99-1, the Council to the Czechoslovak Government, 16 July 1947; YVA, O.59/91, Frischer to Zajitschkova, 21 June 1947. 115 Wehle, 1984: 525. 116 Věstník, 6 November 1947, 314f. 117 Kochavi, 2001. 118 www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%206273.pdf. Accessed 11 July 2015. 119 Engel, 1998; Gross, 2007. 120 Láníček, 2013. 121 JMP, oddělení vzpomínek, testimony no. 435, M. Z.; Cramsey, 2014; Bauer, 1970: 179–89. 122 ABS, 425-232-1, Hechalutz, ‘Chanukové mluvené noviny’, 29 November 1945. 123 Ibid. 124 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, reel 103, H98/3, note on Conversation between Rosenberg and Easterman, 3 July 1945. 125 Ibid. 126 ABS, 425-232-4, Frischer to Ullmann, 10 September 1945. 127 ABS, 425-231-5, Perutz to Frischer, 21 January 1946; ABS, 425-232-1, Ullmann to Frischer, 8 August 1945; Staněk, 1991: 165 (Jews were queuing in front of the American and British consulates in Brno). 128 Čapková, ‘Between Expulsion and Rescue’. Some of the German Jews continued to seek emigration possibilities even after the interior ministry issued the September 1946 directive that allowed them to stay in the country. 129 ABS, 425-232-6, memorandum submitted by the Council to the AACEP [n.d.]. 130 Ibid.; ABS, 425-230-8, Frischer to Ambassador Nichols, 27 November 1945. 131 Cichopek-Gajraj, 2014: 102f.; Láníček, 2012: 146–58. 132 ABS, 425-230-8, memorandum prepared by the Central Union of the Jewish Communities in Slovakia, 10 February 1946; see also Věstník, 30 March 1946, 21; Meyer et al., 1953: 145. 133 ABS, 425-230-8, memorandum submitted by the Council to the AACEP, February 1946. 134 Věstník, 15 August 1947, 229. According to Israeli statistics, 770 Czechoslovak Jews reached Palestine in 1946 and 2,064 in 1947; see Meyer et al., 1953: 146. 135 Staněk, 1991: 345. He suggests that another 2,620 Jews emigrated in 1948. 136 YVA, O.59/91, Frischer to Zajitschkova, 15 July 1945. 137 UHA, Winterstein Collection, W/II/3/C, Frischer to Winterstein, 1 October 1945; Leo Herrmann, ‘Verwandeltes Prag’, Aufbau, 1 February 1946, p. 23. 138 UHA, Winterstein Collection, W4/5, Winterstein about his trip to the European Conference of the WJC in London, August 1945. Winterstein persuaded Frischer to

Notes to Chapter 7

139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172

231

add the sentence that the nationalists were giving up this right only under the condition that the pre-­war declaration of Jewish nationality would be made tantamount to a declaration of Czechoslovak nationality. UHA, Winterstein Collection, W/II/3/C, Frischer to Nosek, 28 August 1945. Ibid., Frischer to Nosek, 25 September 1945. Ibid., Frischer to Winterstein, 1 October 1945. ABS, 425-232-1, letter by Frischer and Stein about the meeting with the former members of the Jewish Party, 22 August 1945; ABS, 425-233-02, Frischer to Prof. Vogel, 20 September 1945. Wein, ‘Machinery of Compulsion – Prague Nationalism in Theory and Practice’, MS: 395. JMP, oddělení vzpomínek, kazeta 059, M.S. ABS, 425-232-5, Rosenbaum to Frischer, 12 July 1945. Leo Herrmann, ‘Verwandeltes Prag’, Aufbau, 1 February 1946, 23. UHA, Winterstein Collection, W4/5, Winterstein about his trip to the European Conference of the WJC in London, August 1945. ABS, 425-233-4, Schwarzbart to Frischer, 13 April 1946. English slightly revised. Ibid., Frischer to Schwarzbart, 24 April 1946. English slightly revised. UHA, Winterstein Collection, W/II/3/C, Frischer to Nosek, 28 August 1945, a draft declaration attached to the letter. Sedlák, 2008: 92; ABS, 425-233-6, Frischer about the negotiations in the Jewish matters in December 1945, 15 December 1945. ABS, 425-231-3, Frischer’s notes about his meeting with Masaryk, 11 March 1946. Frischer stated that the new instructions did not satisfy the Council. They demanded that all Jewish nationalists were automatically considered either Czechs or Slovaks. Věstník, 14 November 1947, 327; Sedlák, 2008: 243. ABS, 425-233-6, Frischer about the negotiations in the Jewish matters in December 1945, 15 December 1945; 425-230-5, Council to HOC, 19 March 1946. Věstník, 15 December 1945, 26. Věstník, 5 May 1946, 32 Kulka, 1987; 1992. CZA, A280/28, board meeting of the National Jewish Council, 29 March 1943. JMP, ŽNO Ostrava, no. 4, Frischer about the audience with Beneš on 7 May 1946. Věstník, 30 January 1948, 46–8. Věstník, 1 September 1945, 6. Peschel, 2012: 209–28. In official documents we can find many variations of her name: Lilly/Lilli/Lili Skutezky, Lilly/Lilli/Lili Skutecky, etc. But after the war she used a Czech version of her surname, Skutezká/Skutecká. Nepálová, 1999: 318f. CZA, Z5/1156, L.B., about his conversation with Bartley Crum; Hájková, 2014b. Věstník, 28 October 1945, 18. Věstník, 1 May 1947, 118f. For a prime example, see Dudková et al., 2009. Věstník, 15 December 1945, 26f. Věstník, 15 August 1947, 229. See also Leo Herrmann, ‘Verwandeltes Prag’, Aufbau, 1 February 1946, 23. Ibid. Věstník, 6 November 1947, 314f. USHMMA, RG-68.059M, reel 61, C2/572, Frischer to Barber, 21 January 1946.

232

Notes to Chapter 8

173 USHMMA, RG-67.014M, H97/12, Sharp (the representative of the WJC in Czechoslovakia) to Kubowitzki, 9 July 1946. Sharp wrote that Jews in Slovakia were more vocal in their complaints against antisemitism and in their desire to leave the country as soon as possible. 174 Věstník, 1 March 1947, 57f.; ABS, B1-9, Frischer to General Zionists, Bratislava, 9 October 1946. 175 Věstník, 15 February 1947, 37f. 176 Láníček, 2013: 116–45. 177 Věstník, 5 September 1946, 82. 178 Věstník, 9 January 1948, 9f. 179 Věstník, 16 January 1948, 27. 180 Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 27 January 1948. 181 Wechsberg, 1946: 104f. 182 Věstník, 28 February 1946, 10f. 183 Věstník, 28 October 1945, 19; Věstník, 28 October 1946, 107. 184 Krejčová, 1999: 67. 185 Věstník, 5 May 1946, 28. 186 ABS, 425-233-2, statistics, 20 March 1946; 425-233-7, statistics 4 January 1946. 187 Przybylová et al., 2013: 503. 188 USHMMA, RG-68.045M, reel 126, C3/1111, Frischer to Ullmann, 22 July 1945. 189 ABS, 425-233-1, Hugo Bergmann to Frischer, 22 September 1946; Frischer to H. Bergmann, 15 October 1946. 190 ABS, 425-233-4, Frischer to Jan Tomšíček (Ostrava), 13 March 1946; Frischer’s certificate of national reliability, 22 November 1945. 191 ABS, 425-232-4, Frischer to Ullmann, 10 September 1945; CZA, A314/15, Frischer to März, 25 July 1946; YVA, O.59/91, Frischer to Zajitschkova, 21 June 1947. 192 ABS, 425-232-4, Zajitschkova to Frischer, 3 May 1946; USHMMA, RG-68.045M, reel 92, C3/652, Frischer to Nahum Goldmann, 20 January 1946. In September 1946, Skutezká applied for a passport to emigrate to the United States. The application was approved from the Czechoslovak side. We do not know why Frischer and Skutezká did not ultimately seize the opportunity, but perhaps they were not granted US visas (the application originally stated that Skutezká planned to visit her aunt in the United States, but the reason for the visit was changed to ‘emigration’). NA, PŘ, 1941-50, box 10356, passport application by Lilli Skutezká, September 1946. 193 ABS, 425-231-5, Frischer to Max Gottschalk (American Jewish Committee), 29 January 1946. 194 ABS, 425-233-2, Wehle to Frischer, 8 August 1946; Wehle to Frischer, 13 August 1946; Frischer to Wehle, 16 August 1946. When Frischer celebrated his sixtieth birthday, influential people, like David (the speaker of the parliament) and Drtina (the Justice Minister), sent congratulatory telegrams. Věstník, 1 August 1947, 220f. 195 Věstník, 1 July 1947, 187. 196 JMP, testimony no. 151, K. W. 197 Nepálová, 1999: 314–34; Soukupová, 2009: 58f and 80.

8  The Second Exile 1 2 3

Jewish Chronicle, 6 August 1954, 20. Heimann, 2011: 171–81. Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 8 March 1948.

Notes to Chapter 8

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4 USHMMA, RG-68.045M, C3/343, Interim Report on Czechoslovakia by Easterman, 19 March 1948. 5 USA, MS239/T2/25, Wehle to Barou, 7 March 1948; Věstník, 5 March 1948, 109, declaration of 1 March 1948. 6 USHMMA, RG-68.045M, C3/343, Interim Report on Czechoslovakia by Easterman, 19 March 1948. Knapp was born in Slovakia in 1910. He studied law at Prague, and graduated in 1936. In 1939, he fled to Palestine, where he lived in a kibbutz. He joined the Czechoslovak army that was formed in the Middle East. After his return to Czechoslovakia, he worked briefly in a mine, but in 1947 assumed a position in the Council. 7 Šimková later claimed that she had been selected for the position by Otto Fischl, a high-­ranking Communist official in the Finance Ministry. In 1952, Fischl was one of the defendants in the Slánský show trial. He was sentenced to death and executed. Munková, 2007: 29; Veselská, 2012: 154. 8 USA, MS239/T2/25, Wehle to Barou, 7 March 1948; Wehle, 1991–2: 176. 9 JMP, ŽNO Ostrava, box 1, minutes of the Council meeting, 1 March 1948. 10 USA, MS239/T2/25, Wehle to Barou, 7 March 1948. 11 USHMMA, RG-68.045M, C3/343, Interim Report on Czechoslovakia by Easterman, 19 March 1948. 12 Wehle, 1991–2: 177. 13 USHMMA, RG-68.045M, C3/343, Interim Report on Czechoslovakia by Easterman, 19 March 1948. 14 USA, MS239/T2/25, Wehle to Barou, 7 March 1948. 15 Wehle, 1991–2: 177. 16 Věstník, 12 March 1948, 118. 17 Ungar was born in south Moravia in 1894. He spent the Second World War in Britain and worked at University Hospital, London. 18 Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 4 April 1948; Věstník, 2 April 1948, 154. 19 Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 13 June 1948; Veselská, 2012: 136. 20 Věstník, 12 March 1948, 118. 21 Věstník, 18 March 1949, 121f. 22 Ibid. 23 Especially Štěpán Engel. See his ‘Nový vývoj a židovstvo’, Věstník, 26 March 1948, 141–3. 24 USHMMA, RG-68.045M, C3/343, Interim Report on Czechoslovakia by Easterman, 19 March 1948. 25 Ibid. 26 Meyer, 1953: 133; USHMMA, RG-68.059M, reel 159, C2/1622, Easterman to Clementis, 1 December 1948. 27 USHMMA, RG-68.059M, reel 159, C2/1622, Henry Levy (JDC) to Easterman, 16 December 1948. 28 Meyer, 1953: 96; Svobodová, 1994: 32f. 29 Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 8 March 1948. 30 Pavel Reiman, ‘Věrně za republikou pro jednotnou kandidátku’, Věstník, 21 May 1948, 241f. 31 Věstník, 23 April 1948, 193f. 32 Krammer, 1974. 33 Dufek et al., 1993: 24–5. 34 Gorodetsky, 2003: 4–20; Bulínová et al., 1993: 101–2. 35 Věstník, 19 November 1948, 517–18.

234

Notes to Chapter 8

36 USHMMA, RG-68.045M, C3/343, ‘Probleme der tschechoslowakischen Juden. Wiederaufbau oder Auswanderung’. The report was most likely prepared in early 1949. 37 Svobodová, 1994: 25f. 38 American Jewish Year Book, 51 (1950), 356–60; Meyer, 1953: 146. 39 Dufek et al., 1993: 26. 40 Meyer, 1953: 147. 41 Ibid., 149. By contrast, Joshua Shai, the director general of the Israeli Ministry of Information, predicted in late 1949 that the rest of the Jewish population of Czechoslovakia, together with that of Poland, would move to Israel in 1950; Daily News Bulletin (JTA), 20 December 1949. 42 Avigdor Dagan et al., ‘Czechoslovakia’, in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2007, Vol. 5: 359. 43 Meyer, 1953: 147–50. 44 Hanková, 2006: 69. 45 Heitlinger, 2006: 19; Meyer, 1953: 152; Hanková, 2006: 86 (about 20,000 Jews, including those who were not members of the religious community). 46 Věstník, 14 May 1948, 229; 28 May 1948, 254. 47 For the situation in the Soviet Union and the first purges of the Jewish Antifascist Committee during the autumn of 1948, see Gitelman, 2001: 149–54. 48 Věstník, 19 August 1949, 365. 49 Dufek et al., 1993: 84. 50 Dufek et al., 1993: 35–9. 51 Bulínová, 1993: 248–52, Kopecký’s speech at the meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, 6 December 1951, 52 Bulínová, 1993: 249. 53 Gottwald’s speech at the national conference of the Communist Party, 16 December 1952. Ibid., 274f. 54 On the discussion of antisemitic responses in Czech society, see McDermott, 2008: 840–65; Feinberg, 2013: 107–25. 55 For a nuanced analysis of the Communist policies towards the Jews in Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1989, see Labendz, 2014. 56 USHMMA, RG-68.045M, C3/343, Interim Report on Czechoslovakia by Easterman, 19 March 1948. 57 USHMMA, RG-68.045M, C3/1113, Wehle to Riegner, 20 March 1948. 58 USHMMA, RG-68.045M, C3/1100, Anni Liban to Riegner, 14 March 1948. 59 Ibid., Riegner to Anni Liban, 17 March 1948. 60 Ripka, 1950; Feierabend, 1996; USHMMA, RG-68.045M, C3/1100, Anni Liban to Riegner, 15 March 1948. Libáň wrote about one official who had paid 20,000 Czech crowns to a policeman, who then guided him over the border. 61 In a letter to Riegner, Wehle added Hanuš Rezek with family, Marek Gordon with family, and Adolf Beneš among those who should be helped to get out of Czechoslovakia. USHMMA, C3/1113, Wehle to Riegner, 20 March 1948. 62 USA, MS239/T2/25, Wehle to Barou, 7 March 1948. 63 USHMMA, RG-68.045M, C3/1113, Riegner to Wehle, 16 March 1948. 64 USHMMA, RG-68.059M, reel 159, C2/1622, the diary of Easterman’s stay in Prague, March 1948. 65 USHMMA, RG-68.045M, C3/343, Interim Report on Czechoslovakia by Easterman, 19 March 1948. 66 USHMMA, RG-68.059M, reel 159, C2/1622, Easterman to Schwarzbart, 8 April 1948. 67 Ibid., Easterman to Berl Locker, 31 March 1948.

Notes to Chapter 8

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68 Ibid., Frischer to Easterman (via Schonfeld), 20 April 1948; Easterman to Locker, 13 May 1948; Locker to Easterman, 14 May 1948. 69 NA, PŘ, 1941-50, box 10356, passport application, April 1948; MSW, decision about Skutezká, 7 April 1948. 70 Svobodová, 1994: 26. 71 Dufek et al., 1993: 31f. There were, however, possibilities of illegal transfers, especially from Slovakia, where there were numerous instances of bribes paid to border guards. See also USHMMA, RG-68.059M, reel 159, C2/1622, Easterman to Clementis, 1 December 1948. 72 Elias, 1998: 240. This observation is confirmed by USHMMA, RG-68.045M, C3/343, ‘Probleme der tschechoslowakischen Juden. Wiederaufbau oder Auswanderung’. The report was most likely prepared in early 1949. 73 AMO, ÚNV, referát XXIV., box 9, parcel 24. The final decision was reached by the United National Committee (Jednotný národní výbor) in Ostrava on 31 May 1951. 74 ABS, 425-208-1, Frischer’s request to the Joint to reimburse him for a train ticket from Prague to Paris, submitted 15 June 1948; NA, PŘ II Evidence obyvatelstva, Frischer’s card, Skutezká’s card (departure date 24 June 1948 – to Israel). 75 YVA, O.59/91, Frischer to Zajitschkova, 23 November 1948. 76 Author’s interview with Uri Meretz in Jerusalem, 16 November 2005. Meretz also suggested that Frischer did not move to Israel because of his first wife, Heřmína, who lived in Jerusalem. 77 TNA, HO294/588, case 9239. 78 TNA, HO334/344, naturalization of Arnošt Frischer, known as Ernest Frisher. 79 LAC, Barber Papers, Vol. 11, Josef Fraenkel, ‘Tschechische Juden trauern. Zum Tode von ing. Ernst Frischer’, Jüdische Rundschau, 24 September 1954. 80 AJJDCA, Geneva 45-54/1/1/3/ADM.390, Schwartz to D. L. Speiser (NY), 2 September 1950. 81 USHMMA, RG-68.059M, reel 159, C2/1622, Frischer to Barou, 11 October 1948; see also ibid, Easterman to Frischer, 14 October 1948. 82 USHMMA, RG-68.059M, reel 161, Frischer to Easterman, 26 November 1952. English slightly amended. 83 Ibid., Easterman to the Czechoslovak Embassy, 4 December 1952 (attached copy of the resolution, dated 3 December 1952). 84 LAC, Barber Papers, Vol. 11, Frischer to Saul Kagan, 22 July 1954. His application was supported by his old friend and colleague Barber; ibid., Frischer to Barber, 22 July 1954. 85 Ibid., memorial meeting for Ernest Frischer, 7 September 1954. 86 Jewish Chronicle, 6 August 1954, 20. 87 LAC, Barber Papers, Vol. 11, Josef Fraenkel, ‘Tschechische Juden trauern. Zum Tode von ing. Ernst Frischer’, Jüdische Rundschau, 24 September 1954. 88 ABS, 425-234-1, the Action Committee of the Council to the Central Action Committee of the National Front, 3 March 1948. Five Communists, two Social Democrats, two trade unionists, and one member of the board of the Prague Jewish Community sat on the committee. 89 Soukupová, 2012: 73–5; Labendz, 2014: 236–85. 90 Věstník, 12 March 1948, 117–19; 19 March 1948, 129f. 91 In particular, Karel Kreibich, a German Communist (a non-Jew) and Pavel Reimann (or Reiman, born Jewish) published in Věstník. 92 Věstník, 21 May 1948, 241f; 28 May 1948, 254; 4 June 1948, 269f.

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Notes to Epilogue

93 Věstník, 28 January 1949, 37. In fact antisemitic sentiments continued to exist in the society. For example, there were big anti-Jewish riots in the Slovak capital, Bratislava, in August 1948. 94 Věstník, 14 May 1948, 229; 21 May 1948, 241f. 95 Meyer, 1953: 149; Hájková, 2014b: 48–55. The situation in Slovakia is competently discussed by Cichopek-Gajraj, 2014. 96 USHMMA, RG-68.045M, C3/343, Interim Report on Czechoslovakia by Easterman, 19 March 1948. 97 Věstník, 12 March 1948, 117f. 98 Věstník, 19 August 1949, 365. 99 Věstník, 18 March 1949, 122. 100 Věstník, 18 March 1949, 121f. 101 P. Reimann, ‘Říjnová revoluce – nová cesta k řešení židovské otázky’, Věstník, 5 November 1948, 489. 102 Věstník, 19 August 1949, 366. 103 USHMMA, RG-68.045M, C3/343, Interim Report on Czechoslovakia by Easterman, 19 March 1948. 104 USA, MS239/T2/25, Wehle to Barou, 7 March 1948. 105 According to the Joint, the Council opposed the emigration efforts of the Jews (Svobodová, 1994: 26). 106 Brod, 1997: 182. Brod plausibly divides the post-­war Jewish community in Czechoslovakia into three groups: Zionists, Assimilationists and Activists (Communists). This division is, however, refuted by Soukupová, 2009; for the situation in Poland, see Auerbach, 2013. 107 Labendz, 2014: 237f. 108 ABS, 302-368-8, report about Hanuš Frischer, 9 October 1948 and 15 October 1948; NA, PŘ 1941-50, box 2387, F1846/5, Frischer’s passport application, end of June 1949. 109 She was a protege of Otto Šling, a Communist functionary in Brno. Kudílková was also purged in the early 1950s. In the late 1960s and 1970s, she lived in the remote town of Šumperk, and was active during the Prague Spring, before she was again purged in the period known as ‘Normalization’ following the defeat of the Prague Spring reform movement.

Epilogue: Who Was Frischer? 1 2 3 4

5 6

Author’s interview with Avigdor Dagan (Viktor Fischl), Jerusalem, 24 November 2005. The author’s personal communication with Suzy Hershman, 18 April 2015. Čapková, 2012: 169; Lichtenstein, 2016. Author’s personal communication with Suzy Hershman, 18 April 2015. Frischer’s stepdaughter, Hannah Pinkus (née Skutezky), remembers that after the war Frischer and her mother communicated in Czech at home, but once they settled in London they returned to communication in German. CZA, A320/645, Ullmann, Zum ersten Jahrestag nach dem Tode Ing. E. Frischers, 23 July 1955. LAC, Barber Papers, vol. 11, Frisher to Barber, 4 January 1973.

Selected Bibliography Primary sources Manuscripts Czech Republic Archiv bezpečnostních složek ministerstva vnitra České republiky (ABS), Prague Archival Collection 302; Archival Collection 425; Archival Collection B1. Archiv Českého rozhlasu, Prague (AČR) BBC 1939–1945 Archiv Kanceláře prezidenta republiky (AKPR), Prague 624/27; D2865/21; D5496/20; D11484/47; D17375/46; D13300/38; D10467/37; D3487/1924; D4903/36; D6772/25; D7784/36, 300073/49 Archiv města Brna (AMB) Fond B1-39, kartotéka domovského práva; Fond N 57, C.k.německá reálka v Brně, Jánská 22 Archiv města Ostravy (AMO), Ostrava Archiv města Moravská Ostrava (AMMO); ÚNV Ostrava; Fond notářství dr. Munk; Gymnázium Ostrava 1, Tř. Čsl. legií; Matiční gymnázium Ostrava, ul. dra Šmerala 25; Nová registratura (1729) 1912–1941 (1948); Okresní soud Moravská Ostrava; Okresní úřad Moravská Ostrava, 1855–1941 (OÚMO); Öffentliche Fachschule für Frauenberufe Archiv Ministerstva zahraničních věcí České republiky (AMZV), Prague Londýnský archiv (LA), 1939–1945; Londýnský archiv – Důvěrné (LA-D), 1939–1945 Archiv Památníku národního písemnictví (APNP), Prague Viktor Fischl/Avigdor Dagan Papers Archiv Židovského muzea v Praze (JMP) Miroslav Kárný Collection; ŽNO Ostrava; ŽNO Praha za okupace; Erik Kolár Collection Masarykův ústav a Archiv Akademie věd ČR (MÚA AV ČR), Prague Edvard Beneš Papers – London (EB-L); Vladimír Klecanda Collection (No. 38) Moravský Zemský archiv (MZA), Brno B340, Gestapo Brno; B34, Německá technika v Brně; B40, Zemský úřad Brno; B26, Policejní ředitelství Brno Národní archiv České republiky (NA), Prague Archiv Huberta Ripky (AHR); Československý Červený kříž – Londýn (ČsČK-L); Prokop Drtina; Emil Margulies; Ministerstvo sociální péče – Londýn (MSP-L); Ministerstvo vnitra – Londýn (MV-L); Policejní ředitelství 1941–50 (PŘ); Předsednictvo ministerské rady

238

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– Londýn (PMR-L); Státní rada – Londýn (SR-L); Úřad říšského protektora (ÚŘP); Zahraniční tiskový archiv (ZTA), Státní okresní archiv Jihlava (SOKA Jihlava) Trestní komise nalézací ONV Jihlava Vojenský historický archiv, Prague (VHA) Sbírka 24 Zemský archiv v Opavě (ZAO) Policejní ředitelství Moravská Ostrava (PŘMO); Krajský soud, Moravská Ostrava; Správa věznice Krajského soudu v Moravské Ostravě

Canada Library and Archives of Canada (LAC), Ottawa Stephen Barber Papers (MG 31 H 113); Imrich Rosenberg Collection (MG 31 H 158)

Israel Central Zionist Archives (CZA), Jerusalem Central Office of the Zionist Organization, London (Z4); Jewish Agency, New York (Z5); Paul Maerz Papers (A314); S26; Fritz Ullmann Papers (A320); World Jewish Congress – London Office (C2); World Jewish Congress – Geneva Office (C3); World Zionist Executive – Organizational Department (S5); Leon Zelmanovits (A280) University of Haifa Archives, Center for Historic Documentation, the Strochlitz Institute of Holocaust Studies (UHA) Vojtech Winterstein Collection Yad Vashem Archives (YVA), Jerusalem Ignacy Schwarzbart Papers (M.2); Testimonies (O.1); Collection of Testimonies and Documents about the Participation of Czechoslovakian Jewry in the War against Nazi-Germany (O.59)

Switzerland Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, Zurich (AfZ) World Jewish Congress, Geneva Office (C3, microfilm)

United Kingdom London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), London Board of Deputies Papers University of Southampton Archives (USA), Southampton Institute of Jewish Affairs Papers (MS 238, 239, 241) The National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA), Kew, London Foreign Office Papers (FO); Home Office (HO)

Selected Bibliography

239

United States of America American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati (AJA) World Jewish Congress Papers American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee Archives, New York (AJJDCA) AJJDC Papers Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY (FDRPL) Sumner Welles Papers; War Refugee Board Papers (WRB) Leo Baeck Institute, New York (LBI) Ernst Müller Papers Library of Congress, Rare Books and Manuscript Division (LOC) Laurence A. Steinhardt Papers National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (NARA) RG 59 – State Department Decimal Files New York Public Library Manuscript and Archives Division, New York (NYPL) Ján Papánek Papers United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives (USHMMA), Washington, DC Ministry of Finance, Prague (microfilm; RG-48.015M); National Archives, Prague (microfilm; RG-48.016M); Vojenský historický archiv – Prague (microfilm); World Jewish Congress – Geneva Office (microfilm; RG-68.045M); World Jewish Congress – London Office (microfilm; RG-68.059M); World Jewish Congress – New York Office (microfilm; RG-67.004M; RG-67.011M; RG-67.014M); World Jewish Congress – Paris Office (microfilm, RG-68.065M) University of Southern California, Shoah Visual History Archives (USC) YIVO Archives, New York American Jewish Committee, 347.7.1, Foreign Affairs

Published documents Bulínová, Marie et al. (eds) (1993), Československo a Izrael v letech 1945–1956. Dokumenty (Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR). Jech, Karel, and Karel Kaplan (eds) (2002), Dekrety prezidenta republiky 1940–1945. Dokumenty. Druhé vydání (Brno: Doplněk). Kennan, George F. (1968), From Prague after Munich: Diplomatic Papers 1938–1940 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Němeček, Jan, Ivan Šťovíček, Helena Nováčková, Jan Kuklík, and Jan Bílek (eds) (2011), Zápisy ze schůzí československé vlády v Londýně II. (1942) (Prague: Historický ústav AVČR – Masarykův ústav a archiv AVČR). Otáhalová, Libuše, and Milada Červinková (eds) (1966), Dokumenty z historie československé politiky 1939–1943, 2 vols. (Prague: Academia). Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons (cited as Hansard). ‘Smlouva mezi Česko-Slovenskou republikou a Německou říší o otázkách státního občanství a opce’, 20 November 1938, in Sbírka zákonů a nařízení státu česko-­ slovenského.

240

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Spencer, Hanna (2005), Hanna’s Diary, 1938–1941: Czechoslovakia to Canada (Montreal and Kingston, Ont.: McGill-Queen’s University Press). Weber, Ilse (2012), Kdy skončí naše utrpení: Dopisy (1933–1944) a básně z Terezína (Prague: Academia).

Newspapers and journals American Jewish Year Book, Árijský boj, Aufbau, Bulletin of the Czechoslovak Jewish Representative Committee, Canadian Jewish Chronicle, Central European Observer, Čechoslovák, Čechoslovák and Westske Noviny, Česko-Slovenský boj, Daily News Bulletin, European Jewish Observer, Free Europe, The Jewish Chronicle, Jüdische Nachrichtenblatt, Jüdische Volksstimme, Jüdisches Volksblatt, Jüdische Zeitung, Medina Ivrit, Národní směr, New Yorské listy, Rozvoj, Selbstwehr, The Spirit of Czechoslovakia, The Sunday Times, The Times, Večer, Věstník Židovské obce náboženské v Praze, Di Vokhntsaytung (The Jewish Weekly), Die Welt, Židovský bulletin/Czechoslovak Jewish Bulletin, Židovský socialista, Židovské zprávy

Secondary sources Adler, H[ans] G[ünter] (1960), Theresienstadt, 1941–1945: Das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft, Geschichte, Soziologie, Psychologie (Tübingen: Mohr). Aleksiun, Natalia (2001), ‘Where Was There a Future for Polish Jewry? Bundist and Zionist Polemics in Post-World War II Poland’, in Jack Jacobs (ed.), Jewish Politics in Eastern Europe: The Bund at 100 (New York: New York University Press), 227–42. Aschheim, Steven S. (1982), Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press). Auerbach, Karen (2013), The House at Ujazdowskie 16. Jewish Families in Warsaw after the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Bankier, David (ed.) (2005), The Jews are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to their Countries of Origin after WWII (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem). Bauer, Yehuda (1970), Flight and Rescue: BRICHAH (New York: Random House). ——— (1989), ‘When Did They Know?’, in Michael R. Marrus (ed.), The Nazi Holocaust: Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews. Vol. 8: Bystanders of the Holocaust (Toronto: Mecklermedia), 52–9. Bednařík, Petr (2007), ‘Antisemitismus v českém tisku v období druhé republiky’, in Židé v Čechách: Sborník příspěvků ze semináře konaného 24. a 25. října 2006 v Liberci (Prague: Židovské museum), 32–45. Benda, Jan (2012), Útěky a vyhánění z pohraničí českých zemí 1938–1939 (Prague: Karolinum). Beneš, František, and Patricia Tošnerová (2013), Pošta v ghettu Terezín (Prague: POFIS, electronic publication). Bergmann, Samuel Hugo (2007), ‘Berthold Feiwel’, in Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 6, 744. Blatman, Daniel (1990), ‘On a Mission against All Odds: Samuel Zygelbojm in London (April 1942–May 1943)’, in Yad Vashem Studies, vol. XX, 237–71. ——— (2003), For Our Freedom and Yours: The Jewish Labour Bund in Poland 1939–1949 (London: Vallentine Mitchell). ——— (2011), The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide (Cambridge, MA: Belknap).

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Blau, Bruno (1948), ‘Nationality Among Czechoslovak Jewry’, Historia Judaica, 10, 147–54. Blodig, Vojtěch (1996), ‘Poznámky ke zprávě Maurice Rossela’, Terezínské studie a dokumenty 1996, 207–23. Bolchover, Richard (1993), British Jewry and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Bondy, Ruth (2001), Jakob Edelstein (Prague: Sefer). Borák, Mečislav (2007), ‘Šanghaj a záchrana židů z Ostravska za druhé světové války’, in Ostrava. Příspěvky k dějinám a současnosti Ostravy a Ostravska, 23 (Ostrava: Tilia), 98–135. ——— (2010), The First Deportation of the European Jews: The Transports to Nisko nad Sanem: 1939–1940 (Opava: Slezská Universita v Opavě). Borek, David (2003), ‘Židovské strany v politickém systému Československa 1918–1938’, Moderní dějiny, 11, 65–201. Brada, Fini (1971), ‘Emigration to Palestine’, in The Jews of Czechoslovakia. Vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America), 589–98. Braham, Randolph L. (1981), The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary. Vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press). Breitman, Richard, and Allan J. Lichtman (2013), FDR and the Jews (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press). Brod, Petr (1997), ‘Židé v poválečném Československu’, in Václav Veber (ed.), Židé v novodobých dějinách: Soubor přednášek FF ÚK (Prague: Univerzita Karlova), 177–89. Browning, Christopher R. (2004), Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942 (Lincoln and Jerusalem: University of Nebraska Press and Yad Vashem). Brügel, Johann, Wolfgang (1973), ‘Die KPČ und die Judenfrage’, Osteuropa, 11, 874–80. ——— (2008), Češi a Němci. 1939–1946 (Prague: Academia). Büchler, Yehoshua R. (2005), ‘Reconstruction Efforts in Hostile Surroundings – Slovaks and the Jews after World War II’, in David Bankier (ed.), The Jews are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to their Countries of Origin after WWII (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem), 257–76. Bumová, Ivica (2007), ‘Protižidovské výtržnosti v Bratislave v historickom kontexte (August 1946)’, Pamäť Národa, 3, 14–29. ——— (2008), ‘The Jewish Community after 1945: Struggle for Civic and Social Rehabilitation’, in Holocaust as a Historical and Moral Problem of the Past and the Present: Collection of Studies from the Conference (Bratislava: Dokumentačné stredisko holokaustu), 253–78. Čapková, Kateřina (2005), ‘Czechs, Germans, Jews – Where is the Difference? The Complexity of National Identities of Bohemian Jews, 1918–1938’, Bohemia, 46:1, 7–14. ——— (2012), Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identity & the Jews of Bohemia, trans. from the Czech by Derek and Marzia Paton (New York: Berghahn Books). ——— (2013), ‘Germans or Jews? German-­speaking Jews in Poland and Czechoslovakia after World War II’, Jewish History Quarterly, 2:246, 348–62. Čapková, Kateřina, and Michal Frankl (2008), Nejisté útočiště: Československo a uprchlíci před nacismem 1933–1938 (Prague: Paseka). Černý, Bohumil (1997), ‘Emigrace Židů z Českých zemí v letech 1938–1941’, Terezínské studie a dokumenty 1997, 55–71. Chadwick, William (2010), The Rescue of the Prague Refugees 1938–39 (Leicester: Matador).

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Cichopek-Gajraj, Anna (2014), Beyond Violence: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–48 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Cohen, Raya (2000), ‘The Lost Honour of Bystanders? The Case of Jewish Emissaries in Switzerland’, The Journal of Holocaust Education, 9:2, 146–70. Cramsey, Sarah A. (2014), ‘ “Der wichtigste Ort in Europa”. Wie die “ethnische Revolution” und Tausende polnische Juden 1946 ins tschechoslowakische Náchod kamen’, Demographischer Wandel in Polen, Deutschland und Europa. Interdisciplinary Polish Studies, 2, 39–64. Crhová, Marie (1999–2001), ‘Jewish Politics in Central Europe: The Case of the Jewish Party in Interwar Czechoslovakia’, Jewish Studies at the Central European University 2. ——— (1999), ‘Sionistická volební politika na konci 20. Let’, in Paginae historiae 7: sborník Státního ústředního archivu v Praze (Prague: Státní ústřední archiv v Praze) 7, 166–88. Čtvrtník, Mikuláš (2009), ‘Balíčková pomoc Terezínu 1942–1944’, Paginae historiae: sborník Národního archivu, 17, 29–54. Czechoslovakia and the Czechoslovak Jews: Address delivered at the meeting of the Czechoslovak Jewish Representative Committee Affiliated with the WJC, Nov. 18, 1944 (New York: Czechoslovak Jewish Representative Committee, 1945). Dagan, Avigdor (1984), ‘The Czechoslovak Government-­in-Exile and the Jews’, in Avigdor Dagan (ed.), Jews of Czechoslovakia: Historical Studies and Surveys, vol. III (Philadelphia and New York: Jewish Publication Society of America), 449–95. ——— (1990) ‘ “München” aus jüdischer Sicht’, in München 1938: Das Ende des alten Europa (Essen: Reimar Hobbling), 345–55. Dagan, Avigdor et al. (2007), ‘Czechoslovakia’, in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd Edition, Volume 5 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference), 353–64. Douglas, Ray M. (2012), Orderly and Humane. The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War (New Haven: Yale University Press). Dudková, Veronika, Kristina Kaiserová and Václav Petrbok (eds) (2009), Na rozhraní kultur. Paul/Pavel Eisner (Ustí nad Labem: Univerzita Jana Evangelisty Purkyně). Dufek, Jiří, Karel Kaplan and Vladimír Šlosar (1993), Československo a Izrael v letech 1947–1953 (Brno: Doplněk). Edelheit, Abraham J. (1996), The Yishuv in the Shadow of the Holocaust: Zionist Politics and Rescue Aliya, 1933–1939 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press). Elias, Ruth (1998), Triumph of Hope: From Theresienstadt and Auschwitz to Israel (New York: John Wiley). Engel, David (1987), In the Shadow of Auschwitz: The Polish Government-­in-Exile and the Jews, 1939–1942 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press). ——— (1993), Facing a Holocaust: The Polish Government-­in-Exile and the Jews, 1943–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press). ——— (1998), ‘Patterns of Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1944–1946’, Yad Vashem Studies, 26, 43–85. ——— (1999), ‘Who Is a Collaborator?: The Trials of Michał Weichert’, in The Jews in Poland, vol. 2, ed. Sławomir Kapralski (Kraków: Judaica Foundation and the Center for Jewish Culture), 339–70. Faerber, Meir (1949), Dr. Emil Margulies: Ein Lebenskampf für Wahrheit und Recht (Tel Aviv: ‘ATASA’ Books). Favez, Jean Claude (1999), The Red Cross and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Feierabend, Ladislav Karel (1996), Politické vzpomínky III (Brno: Atlantis).

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Feinberg, Melissa (2013), ‘Fantastic Truths, Compelling Lies: Radio Free Europe and the Response to the Slánský Trial in Czechoslovakia’, Contemporary European History, 22:1, 107–25. Feiwel, Berthold, and Rudolf Stricker (1898), Zur Aufklärung über den Zionismus (Brünn: Zephirah). Fink, Carole (2004), Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1978–1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Fischl, Viktor (1993), Nepřestal jsem se ptát. Fleming, Michael (2014), Auschwitz, the Allies and Censorship of the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Frankl, Michal (2007), ‘Druhá republika a židovští uprchlíci’, in Miloš Pojar et al. (eds), Židovská menšina za druhé republiky (Prague: Jewish Museum), 45–56. ——— (2009), ‘Židé přes palubu: Konstrukce “židovské otázky“ za druhé republiky’, Dějiny a současnost. Kulturně historická revue, 31:3, 37–9. Fränkel, Josef (ed.) (1950), Robert Stricker (London: Claridge, Lewis & Jordan). Friedmann, Franz (1933), Einige Zahlen über die tschechoslovakischen Juden: Ein Beitrag zur Soziologie der Judenheit (Prague: Barissia). Friedman, Philip (1959), ‘Aspects of the Jewish Communal Crisis in the Period of the Nazi Regime in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia’, in Joseph L. Blau et al. (eds), Essays on Jewish Life and Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press), 199–230. Frinton, Ernst (1994), Memories. An Autobiography (Vancouver: Deckside Publishing). Frischer, Arnošt (1936), ‘Naša cesta’, in Frischer et al., K židovskej otázke na Slovensku (Bratislava: Židovská strana v ČSR). Frischer, Arnošt, Eugen Winterstein and Oskar Neumann (1936), K židovskej otázke na Slovensku (Bratislava: Židovská strana v ČSR). Gaisbauer, Adolf (1988), Davidstern und Doppeladler: Zionismus und jüdischer Nationalismus in Österreich 1882–1918 (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag). Gebhart, Jan, and Jan Kuklík (2004), Druhá republika 1938–1939: Svár demokracie a totality v politickém, společenském a kulturním životě (Prague: Paseka). Gerlach, David (2008), ‘Juden in den Grenzgebieten: Minderheitenpolitik in den Böhmischen Ländern nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg’, Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente 2008, 12–47. Gilbert, Martin (1981), Auschwitz and the Allies (London: Michael Joseph). Gitelman, Zvi (2001), A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Gold, Hugo (1929), Die Juden und Judengemeinden Mährens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Brno: Jüdischer Buch- und Kunstverlag). ——— (1974), Gedenkbuch der untergegangenen Judengemeinden Mährens (Tel Aviv: Olamehu). Gorodetsky, Gabriel (2003), ‘The Soviet Union’s Role in the Creation of the State of Israel’, Journal of Israeli History, 22:1, 4–20. Goshen, S[eev]. (1971), ‘Zionist Students’ Organizations’, in The Jews of Czechoslovakia. Vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America), 173–84. Gracová, Blažena (1995), ‘Židovské obyvatelstvo Ostravska v období druhé republiky’, in Sborník prací Filozofické fakulty Ostravské university, 153:3, 73–87. Gross, Jan T. (2007), Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation (New York: Random House). Gutman, Israel, and Shmuel Krakowski (1986), Unequal Victims: Poles and Jews during World War Two (New York: Holocaust Library).

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Haas, Theodor (1908), Die Juden in Mähren (Brünn: Jüdischer Buch und Kunstverlag). Hadler, Franz (2002), ‘ “Erträglicher Antisemitismus”? Jüdische Fragen und tschechoslowakische Antworten 1918/19’, Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, 1, 169–200. Hájková, Anna (2014a), ‘ “Murky Waters in London and Prague: The Jewish Politics of the Czechoslovak Government, 1938–1948” review of Jan Láníček, Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews: Beyond Idealisation and Condemnation’, Yad Vashem Studies, 42:1, 139–50. ——— (2014b), ‘Terezín and Back Again: Czech Jews and their Bonds of Belonging from Deportations to the Postwar’, Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, 28:1, 38–55. Hecht, Louise (2010), ‘Beer, Peter’, in YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Beer_Peter. Accessed 6 March 2016. Heim, Susanne (2013), ‘Widersprüchliche Loyalitäten. Die Reaktion Internationaler jüdischer Hilfsorganisationen auf die Situation der deutschen Juden’, in Andrea Löw et al., Alltag im Holocaust: Jüdisches Leben im Großdeutschen Reich 1941–1945 (München: Oldenbourg), 237–52. Heimann, Mary (2011), Czechoslovakia: The State that Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press). Heitlinger, Alena (2006), In the Shadows of the Holocaust and Communism. Czech and Slovak Jews Since 1945 (New Brunswick: Transaction Books). Heumos, Peter (1986), ‘Rückkehr ins Nichts: Leo Herrmanns Tagebuchaufzeichnungen über seine Reise nach Prag und die Lage der Juden in der Tschechoslowakei im Herbst 1945’, Bohemia, 27:2, 269–304. ——— (1989), Die Emigration aus der Tschechoslowakei nach Westeuropa und dem Nahen Osten 1938–1945 (Munich: Oldenburg Verlag). Himmelreich, Arnošt (1921–1922), ‘20 let židovského hnutí na Ostravsku a Těšínsku’, Kalendář česko-židovský, 41, 121–6. Hindley, Meredith (2000), ‘Constructing Allied Humanitarian Policy’, The Journal of Holocaust Education, 9:2, 77–102. Hirschler, Gertrude (1971), ‘The History of Agudath Israel in Slovakia (1918–1939)’, in The Jews of Czechoslovakia, Historical Studies and Surveys, vol. 2 (Philadelphia and New York: Jewish Publication Society of America), 155–72. Hlošek, J. (1925), Židé na Moravě (Brno: Nakl. České hospodářské společnosti pro mark. moravské). Janowsky, Oskar I. (1966), The Jews and Minority Rights (1898–1919) (New York: AMS Press. Reprint from 1933). Jelínek, Tomáš (2015), Pojišťovny ve službách hákového kříže. Prosazování německých zájmů v protektorátním pojišťovnictví, arizace pojistek a mezinárodní odškodňování (Prague: Karolinum). Jelinek, Yeshayahu A. (1974), ‘The Vatican, the Catholic Church, the Catholics, and the Persecution of the Jews during World War II: The Case of Slovakia’, in Bela Vago and George L. Mosse (eds), Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe, 1918–1945 (New York: John Wiley & Sons). ——— (1992), ‘Katolícka církev a Židia na Slovensku v obdobé jar 1942 – jar 1944’, in Dezider Tóth (ed.) Tragédia slovenských Židov: Materiály z medzinárodného sympózia, Bánská Bystrica, 25.–27. marca 1992 (Bánská Bystrica: Datei). ——— (1995), ‘ “Carpatho-Rus” Jewry: The Last Czechoslovakian Chapter, 1944–1949’, Shvut, 1–2:17–18, 265–95. ——— (2007) The Carpathian Diaspora. The Jews of Subcarpathian Rus’ and Mukachevo, 1848–1948 (New York: Columbia University Press).

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Index 8 March 1944 167 1848 revolution 1 A-1 categorization 57 Action Committees 176–8, 179, 184, 190, 192 Adath Yisroel Cemetery 189 agricultural collectivization 84 Agudists 71, 72, 76, 98, 147, see also Orthodox Jewish communities air raids 131–3 Aliyah (Palestinian immigration) 16–17, 22–3, 65, see also emigration; Palestine Allies Declaration of 106–10, 114 humanitarian interventions 101, 103, 104–6, 112–24 and the Jews 99 and the Shoah 102, 124–34 American Jewish organizations 73, 74, 75–6, 82, 87, 111, 113 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine 159–60, 163 Anglo-Jewish Conference 126 anti-Jewish laws 67, 74, 88, 93 anti-Jewish riots 5, 17, 151, 157, 159, 160 antisemitism in Communist Czechoslovakia 180, 182–3 post-­war 151–2, 153, 158–9, 160, 162, 171, 188, 190–1 pre-­war 3–7, 13, 17, 22, 27, 37, 47–9, 64, 72, 75, 84 anti-Zionism xiv, 17, 25, 182 appeasement 68 Arab revolt 77 Arabs 22 Árijský boj (The Aryan Struggle) 139, 202 n.41 arms dealing 181 Aryanization of property 56, 63, 88

assimilation Action Committees 177–8 Czech-Jewish assimilationist movement 27, 30, 32, 39, 48, 71–4, 124, 147–9, 162, 166–70, 173, 178–9, 192, 197 post-­war 82, 146, 147, 148 pre-­war 5, 28 Association of Czech Jews (Svaz Čechůžidů) 27, 32, 71, 73, 74, 169–70 Association of Jews from Czechoslovakia (Svaz Židů z Československa) 82–3 Aufbau 135 Auschwitz 93, 106, 117, 119, 123, 129–34, 137, 167, see also Birkenau Austria 17, 158 Auswärtiges Amt 125, 135 Auto-Emancipation, theory of 3 Avriel, Ehud 181 Baeck, Leo 122 Balfour Declaration 16, 169 Barber, Štěpán 43, 45–6, 55, 69, 70, 119, 167, 184, 188, 189 Barou, Noah 74, 108 BBC 91, 108, 128, 130, 131, 135 Beer, Emil 158, 177 Belgium 123 Belzek (Bełżec) 108 Beneš, Edvard Communist era 175 Frischer’s accountability to 87 meeting with Frischer 150–1 post-­war 143, 150–1, 158, 159, 160, 165, 166, 167, 169 pre-­war 40, 45 response to occupation of Hungary 136 during war 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 74–7, 79, 84, 107–8, 130, 133 Beneš, František 123 Beran, Rudolf 45 Bergmann, Hugo xii, 203 n.45

254

Index

Bermuda Conference 126–7 Beskid Mountains 19, 34, 51 Biddle, Anthony J. Drexel 96, 98, 104 bilingualism 2, 26, 30, 33 ‘bill of rights’ 80 bipartisan initiatives 98 Birkenau 116–18, 119–21, 123–4, 128–31, 133, 134, 167 ‘B-Jews’ 149–50 Bloch, Jindřich 144–5 Bloch, Wilma (née Frischer) 1, 106, 123, 140, 144, 199 n.16 Bloch(ová), Marianne 144–5, 193 blockades 99, 101, 112, 114, 116 Bloc of National Minorities 36 Blodig, Vojtěch 122 Bloom, Sol 137 B’nai Brith Lodge Moravia 6 Board of Deputies of British Jews 113, 119, 120, 136 bombings 131–3 Bondy, Julius 32 Bondy, Karel 166 Bondy, Ruth 210 n.86 border closures 48, 51, 57, 183–4 Bornstein, Bernard 50 Brada, Fini 202 n.34 Bratislava 128, 144, 148, 157, 159, 160, 179 Breitman, Richard 133 Brihah 161 Britain Bermuda Conference 126 Board of Deputies of British Jews 113, 119, 120, 136 emigration to (Frischer) 59, 60, 187–8 fundraising 116 humanitarian interventions 99–102, 113–14, 116, 125–7 responses to extermination of Jews 133 British Jewish organizations 73, 74, 75, 85, 113 British Labour Party 105 British Mandatory Power 161 British papers 52–3 British Red Cross 99 British Section of the WJC 75, 85, 86–7, 98–9, 103, 107, 127–8, 136, 189 Brno (Brünn) Czechoslovak Zionist Conference 20 Frischer at university 3, 4, 6, 9, 11, 12

Frischer family in xiv, 1–2 German Technical University 4, 6 National Committees 152 post-­war reconstruction 145–6 press agencies 43 schools 30, 32 Zionism 5–6, 8, 9 Brod, Max xii, 52, 58, 236 n.106 Brodetsky, Selig 120 Buchsbaum, Isaak 145 Buchsbaum, Liese Ruth, see Frischer, Liese Ruth Buchsbaum, Moritz 57–9 Bukovina 8, 9 Bundism 92 Bund Report 91, 95 Burzio, Guiseppe 97 Canadian Jewish Chronicle xiii, 195 capitalist’s certificates 57, 58–9 Čapková, Kateřina 228 n.80, 230 n.128 car ownership 19 Catholic Church 96–7, 128–9, 137 Cazalet, Victor 98 Čechoslovák 72 Čejka, František 99, 114–15, 117, 118, 119, 120–1, 122, 124 censorship 139 censuses 8–10, 15, 17, 24, 26, 48, 72, 89, 152–3, 171 Central Action Committee 179 Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung Prag) 60–1 Central Zionist Union (CZU) 20, 32, 52, 65 chalutzim 22 Chamberlain, Neville 45 Chanukah Spoken Newspaper 162 chauvinist nationalism 159, 178–9 children, evacuations of 125 children, focus of efforts on 125 Ciano, Galeazzo 60 Cicognani, Amleto Giovanni 129 citizenship rights 24–34, 152, 153–61, 164, 165–6 Claims Conference 189 Clementis, Vladimír 176, 184 Cohen, Albert 86 Cohen, Raya 112 Comité des Délégations Juives 70

Index Communism 36, 143, 158–9, 169, 175–94 compensation 63 concentration camps 98, 116, see also ghettos; internment camps; labour camps; transit camps Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany 189 Constitutional decrees 152, 153 Čop (Csap) 131 Cosmopolitanism 182 Council of Jewish Elders 67, 113, 118, 123, 146 Council of the Jewish Communities in Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia 147–50, 151–61, 163–73, 176, 183, 190, 192 Council of the National Jews from Czechoslovakia (Ústřední rada národních Židů z Československa), see National Jewish Council CRA, see Czechoslovak Relief Action crisis of youth 20–1 Čtvrtník, Mikuláš 123 Czech-German conflict 2, 26, 28, 30 Czech-Jewish assimilationist movement 27, 30, 32, 39, 48, 71–4, 124, 147–9, 162, 166–70 Czech language and citizenship/nationality 154–5, 166 and Frischer’s children 33 Frischer’s use of 28, 33, 43, 85, 187, 196 and ‘national reliability’ 167 post-­war 147 pre-­war 2, 29, 49 publications in 94, 105 refugees 47 in schools 30, 32 Czech national anthem (‘Kde domov můj’) 167 Czech National Fascist Community (Narodni obec fašistická – NOF), 39 Czechoslovak army and Frischer 84 Hanuš Frischer in 78, 192–3 Jews serving in 69, 78, 166–7 and nationality 152, 157, 158 Czechoslovak Constitution (1920) 17, 29 Czechoslovak independence (1918) 6, 9, 23 Czechoslovak Jewish Bulletin (Židovský bulletin) 88, 94, 105, 109

255

Czechoslovak Jewish Representative Committee (CJRC) 82 Czechoslovak Red Cross 99, 112, 115–16, 155 Czechoslovak Relief Action (Československá pomocná akce – CRA) 116–24 Czechoslovak Republic, formation of 15 Czechoslovak-Soviet Treaty 152, 157–8 Czechoslovak State Council 65, 68–77, 83–90, 97–8, 108–9, 130, 143, 155 Czechoslovak Zionist Conference 20 Czechoslovak Zionist Congresses 19 Czech Press Agency (ČTK) 160 Czech Refugee Trust Fund (CRTF) 59 Czech Transfer 60, 63, 65 Czernowitz 4, 11, 12 Częstochowa 138 CZU (Central Zionist Union) 20, 32, 52, 65 Daily Telegraph 95 Daladier, Eduard 45 David, Josef 109 Davies, Rhys 98 death marches 134 decrees, post-­war 154, 156 Delegation to the Liberated Territories 87 democracy 28, 37, 43, 46, 75, 99, 151, 157, 159 deportations during war 67, 93–8, 112–13, 117–18, 124–5, 128–31, 137, 138 post-­war 154, 156–7 pre-­war 48, 50–1, 61 Die Welt 4, 5, 8 ‘domestics scheme’ 49 dowry 57, 63 Dukla, battle of 166 Dziennik Polski (The Polish Daily) 130 Easterman, Alexander L. 86, 87, 107, 108, 162, 176, 179–80, 184–5, 188, 189, 192 economic crisis 40 Edelstein, Jacob 58, 59, 60, 67, 111, 113, 145, 171 Edict of Toleration 2 education 17, 21, 28, 29–34 Eichmann, Adolf 60–1, 62, 135, 137 Eichmann Trial 62

256

Index

Einsatzgruppen (Special Death Squads) 93, 96 Electoral Coalition of Polish and Jewish Parties 36 Elias, Ruth 50, 186 emancipation 1, 6, 9 emigration during war 77–8 Frischer 23, 52, 53–4, 56–65, 77, 183–9 to Palestine 56, 57, 58, 60, 63–4, 81, 163, 184–5 post-­war 161–3, 181–2, 183–9, 190–3 pre-­war 16–17, 21–2, 52–65 property restrictions 186 émigrés 51, 116 Engel, Štěpán 233 n.23 English language 85, 94, 106, 196 Enlightenment reforms 2 Entente governments 70 Eppstein, Paul 111, 121–2, 123 Eretz Israel 22, 77–8, 165 Erntefest (harvest festival) 119 escapees 129 ethnic nationalism 152, 153, 156, 164, 167 eugenics 128 European Zionist Conference 168 evacuations of children 125 Evian Conference 57 exchanges of prisoners 128, 137–8 executions in Communist era 183 exiled Jews and politics 67–90 Familiantengesetze 1 Federation of Czecho-Slovakian Jews 71 Federation of Czechoslovak Jews 124 Feierabend, Ladislav 114 Feiwel, Berthold 1, 5–6, 6–8 Fialla, Hieronymus 6 Fierlinger, Zdeněk 143, 154, 165 films 123 Final Solution 108, 112, 124 First World War 13, 15 Fischer, Alfred Joachim 135 Fischer, Josef 166 Fischl, Hanna 48–9 Fischl, Otto 233 n.7 Fischl, Stella 52–3 Fischl, Viktor 52–3, 76, 96, 97, 110, 195 food and medical aid 98–104, 112–24, see also humanitarian interventions

forced labour 116 Fraenkel, Josef 175 France 68, 69, 99, 101, 115, 122, 123, 205 n.112, see also Paris Francis Joseph I, Emperor 2, 13 Free Europe 135 French 33 Frieder, Armin 147 Frieder, Emanuel 147, 180 Friedmann, Desider 122 Friedmann, František 59, 118, 145, 161 Friends Committee for Refugees and Aliens 211 n.95 Frischer, Augustine (née Neumann) 1, 144 Frischer, Bedřiška/Friederike/Fritzi 32–3, 55, 63, 77, 78, 193, 205 n.111 Frischer, Ernst/Arnošt birth xi, 1 childhood and education 1–3 death and burial 189 declaration of Jewish identity 25 on education 29 emigration 23, 52, 53–4, 56–65, 77, 187–9 extra-­marital affair 64, 94, 106 imprisoned by Gestapo 53, 55, 76 in Jerusalem 63, 68 in London 76, 79–83, 92, 93, 100, 187–9 marriages 13, 188 memorial service 189 military service 13, 15, 18 in Moravská Ostrava 18–20, 29–44, 171–2 obituaries 175, 189, 195 in Palestine 77–9 pictures of 7, 23, 54, 151, 170 political positions 23–4, 33–44, 46, 48, 56, 65, 67–90, 133, 147–8, 150–73, 176–7, 183–5 in POW camp 15 practical Zionism 18–24, 37, 43, 84, 162 in Prague 61–2, 144–5, 146–7 professional life 12, 18–19, 171–2, 184, 186, 187, 188 return to Czechoslovakia 88, 143–4 social class 18–19 speeches 12, 28, 35, 88, 94, 98, 100, 106, 162, 169 at university 3, 4, 6, 9, 11, 12 use of Czech 28, 33, 43, 85, 187, 196

Index use of English 85, 106, 196 use of German 28, 33, 36, 85, 187, 196 use of Hebrew 77, 187 visit to the United States 88–9 Frischer, Friedrich (Veit) 1 Frischer, Hana 193 Frischer, Hans/Hanuš/Jaakov xii, 15, 32–3, 61–2, 63, 77, 78, 192–3 Frischer, Josephine 1, 2, 13–14 Frischer, Liese Ruth 15, 32–3, 57–9, 106, 185, 188, 193, 205 n.111 Frischer, Lilli, see Skutezky, Lilli Frischer, Wilma, see Bloch, Wilma (née Frischer) Frischer(ová), Hermine (Heřmína/Heřma) death of 188 emigration 62–3 left by Frischer 139 marriage 13 in Moravská Ostrava 19, 33 ‘national reliability’ 153–4 picture of 61 refusal to divorce 187 supporting husband 55, 139 Fuchs, František 148, 167, 169, 177, 178, 192 fundraising 22, 114, 116, 120, 140, 149 Fürth/Firt, Julius 73, 109 Galicia 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 26, 50, 93 Galuth 79, 161 Gegenwartsarbeit (‘present work’) 8, 81 General Zionists 21–2, 27 Geneva 94, 100, 115, 116, 121 Geneva Conventions 99 Germanization 16, 27, 157 German Jews 28, 39, 155–7, 228 n.75 German language during war 85 and Frischer’s children 33 post-­war 153, 154–5, 159, 166, 167, 196 pre-­war 2, 28, 29, 49 in schools 30, 32 town names 56 German minority in Czechoslovakia (post-­war) 152 German Red Cross 112, 118, 119, 134 German Technical University, Brünn 4, 6 Gestapo 53, 55, 70

257

ghettos 93, 95–6, 98–104, 112–24, 134–5, see also Theresienstadt/Terezín Goldmann, Nahum 133, 165 Goldstein, Angelo 37, 38–9, 43, 52, 58, 78, 145 Gollancz, Victor 140 Gottwald, Klement 175, 176, 182, 184 Griffin, Bernard 128–9 Haavara Agreement 60 Habsburg Jews 1, 13 Hácha, Emil 45, 52 Hachshara 21 Haganah (Jewish defence forces) 181 Haifa 63, 77 Hanák, Milan 121 Hashomer Hacair 22 Hasmonaea 4 Hassidic Jewish communities 16 Hatikvah 167 Hebrew education 40–1, 157 extra-­curricular classes 34 and Frischer 77, 187 in Palestine 77 pre-­war 7, 10, 17, 29 in schools 30, 32, 33 Hechalutz 22, 162, 163 ‘Heil Hitler’ 56 heirless property 153, 159, 160, 178 ‘Help for the “Ghettoes” ’ 102, 103–4 Henlein, Konrad 40, 42 Heřmanův Městec/Hermannstädtel 1 Hermann, Hugo 203 n.45 Herrmann, Leo 60, 71, 164 Hertz, Joseph 98 Herzl, Theodor 3–4, 6, 11, 169 Heydrich, Reinhard 93 Hickl, Max 4, 8 Himmler, Heinrich 117, 138, 140 Hindley, Meredith 112 Hirsch, Freddy 118 Hitachdut Olei Czechoslovakia (HOC) 71, 77–9, 82–3, 85 Hitler, Adolf 52–6, 95–6 Hobsbawn, Eric xiv HOC, see Hitachdut Olei Czechoslovakia Hodža, Milan 41 Holocaust, see Shoah Hotel Nordbahn 18, 50

258

Index

Hronek, see Langstein-Hronek, Jiří humanitarian interventions 98–104, 107, 111–41, 149, 178, 180 Hungarian Jews 51, 157 Hungarian language 32 Hungary 15, 35, 71, 80, 124, 129, 131, 136 Huss, Othmar 42 ICRC, see International Committee of the Red Cross Iglau/Jihlava 155 illegal immigrants 60 Imhof, Arnold 122 Imperial Council (Reichsrat) 9 Institute for Jewish Affairs 81 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) 99, 100, 111, 112, 122, 130 international Jewish agencies xi, 75, 165, 188, 196, see also specific agencies International Labour Organization 94 internment camps 95–6, 99–104, 101 irredentism 16, 32, 40, 89 Israel 181–3, 187, 190–1, 192, 195, see also Palestine Israel (name), compulsory use of 56 Italy 15, 20, 60 Ivria 4 Janowitz, Leo 118 Janšta, Karel 84 Jawischowitz 117 Jerusalem 63, 68, 153 Jewish Agency (Sochnut) 77, 78, 86, 94, 113, 181, 184, 185 Jewish Agency, London 52, 53 Jewish Chronicle, The 67 ‘Jewish church’ (‘Židovská cirkev’) 154 ‘Jewish Club’ 9 Jewish Codex 93 Jewish Community 27, 28, 33, 34, 55, 67, 176 Jewish Council (Ústredňa Židov) 128, 171, 179, see also Council of Jewish Elders; Council of the Jewish Communities in Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia Jewish National Council (JNC) 16–17, 20, 23, 30, 32, 70 Jewish National Fund 20 Jewish nationalism, versus Zionism 196 Jewish nationality 15, 24–34, 152–61, 164, 165–6, see also censuses

Jewish Party (Židovská strana/Jüdische Partei) 20, 23, 28, 34–44, 47, 65, 69, 72, 164 Jewish Question 7, 47, 60, 81, 108, 169, 190 Jewish reservation 93–4 Jewish schools 29–34 Jewish state in Palestine 169, 182, 191, 192 Jewish Students’ Lecture and Reading Society (Jüdisch-­akademische Lese- und Redehalle) 11 Jewish Youth Care 42 Jihlava/Iglau 155 Joint Aid Commission 100, 113, 115–21, 149, 159, 178, 180, 186, 187, 192 Joint Committee of Jews from Czechoslovakia 69 Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations 108–10, 114, 124–5 Jokl, Rudolf 56 Joseph II, Emperor 2 Jüddisch (Yiddish) 11, 12 Judeo-Bolshevism 17 Jüdisches Volksblatt 20 Jüdische Volksstimme 8, 9, 12–13 JUS – Jewish Aid Office (Jüdische Unterstützungstelle) 118–19 Kadimah (Forward) 3 Kadlec, Josef M. 78 Kafka, Emil 48, 59, 71 Kagan, Saul 189 Kahn, Franz 58, 59, 65, 94, 145 Kárný, Miroslav 122, 123 Karski, Jan 108 Kaufmann, Viktor 166 ‘Kde domov můj’ (Czech national anthem) 167 Kehilah 146 Kellner, Leon 11 Kennan, George F. 56 Keren Hayesod (The Foundation Fund) 60 Kestenberg-Gladstein, Ruth 200 n.64 kibbutzim 84 Kieval, Hillel 2 Kindertransports 211 n.95 Kisch, Egon Erwin 178 Kleiner, Kamil 73 Knapp, Alexander 176, 192 Knopfelmächer, Fritz 22 Kobler, Franz 101, 102–3

Index Kodiček, Milan 71 Kohn, Moci 122 Komárov 22 Kopecký, Jaromír 94, 99, 100, 101, 115, 116, 118, 120–2, 128–33 Kopecký, Václav 158, 176, 182, 184 Košice 144, 149 Krämer, Salo 61, 64, 145 Krasňanský, Oskar 148, 180, 187 Kreibich, Karel 76 Kristallnacht 51, 58 Krumnikl, Alois 57 Kubowitzki, Leon 131, 132, 133 Kudílková, Marianne (previously Bloch) 193 Kugel, Chaim 38, 52, 58, 78, 145 labour camps 83, 98, 116, 117, 118, 119, 130 La Guardia, Fiorello 137 Langstein-Hronek, Jiří 72–3 language 10, 12, 16, 27–8, 29, see also multilingualism; specific languages Latin America 57, 64, 114 League of Nations 94 Lederer, Julius 148, 178 legal system, maintaining 150–61, 163 Leitner, Kurt 71 Lemberg 11, 12, 13 lesser retribution decree 156 Lewy, Ludwig 9 lex judaica 85 Lex Masaryk 60 Libáň, Anni 183 Libáň, Jiří 183 Libanonia 4 liberalism 4–5, 8, 27, 46, 50, 99 liberation 88–9, 92, 138, 143 Lichtheim, Richard 94, 96, 113 Lichtman, Allan J. 133 life insurance policies 63 lingua franca 2 List of Unity 168–9 local government 38–9, 43, 56 Locker, Bert 187 Locker, Oliver 98 Łodź/Litzmannstadt 93, 138 London exiles in 69, 74–5 Frischer in 79–83, 93 Jewish Agency 52, 53

259

resistance movements 69–70 Löwy, Bedřich 22 loyalty, determining 153–5 Lublin 93, 119, 138 Lwów 108 Maccabi associations 4, 21, 70, 160 Magyarization 16, 157 Mahler, Willy 122 Mährisch Ostrau, see Moravská Ostrava Majdanek 118, 119, 128, 132 Mandate Palestine 77 Margulies, Emil 28, 34, 37, 47–8 März, Paul 22, 42, 43, 52, 53, 55, 58–60, 62, 65, 78, 145, 196, 215 n.97 Masaryk, Jan 60, 71, 87, 88, 107, 108, 126, 133, 158, 184 Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue 75, 76, 159, 169 mass murder 96, 102, 108, 124 Maxa, Prokop 98 McCloy, John J. 132 medicines, sending of 101, 115 memorial service 189 Mendelsohn, Ezra 202 n.14 Mézl, Ondřej/Andrej Gak 78 military action against the camps, calls for 131–3 military service Frischer 13, 15, 18 Fritzi Frischer 78 Hanuš Frischer 78, 192–3 Jews serving in army 69, 78, 166–7 and nationality 152, 157, 158 minority rights 39–41, 79–81, 88–9, 152, 162, 195 Minsk 93 Mischlinge (half-­breeds) 124 mixed marriages 73, 124, 128, 145, 146, 148, 156 monarchy, Jewish nationalists’ activities in 9–14 Monowitz 117, 221 n.37 Moravian Compromise 4, 10 Moravská Ostrava/Mährisch Ostrau emigrations from 22 facist anti­semitism in 49–50 Frischer in 18–20, 29–44, 171–2 Frischer’s intended return to 144, 171 Jewish community in the First Czechoslovak Republic 25–9

260

Index

and the Jewish Party 34, 37–8, 42 and Jewish Socialism 36 occupation 52, 53, 56 Ostrava Jewish Community 33 post-­war 171 refugees 26, 43, 49, 50, 51 schools 30, 32–3 synagogues 26, 56 town assembly 39 Zionism 8, 20 Mordowitz, Czeslaw 129 Müller, Ernst 4 multilingualism 2, 3, 196 Munich Agreement 45–65, 78, 195 Murmelstein, Benjamin 123, 222 n.84 Musy, Jean-Marie 138 Myers, Edward 96–7, 128 names, changing of 167 names, compulsory 56 Nassau, Rudolf 6 National Assembly 17–18, 35, 37, 38, 159, 160 National Committee for Rescue from Nazi Terror 140 National Committee for the Liquidation of the Council of Jewish Elders 146 National Committees 152, 153, 155, 157 National Front 143, 175, 190 National Fund 4 ‘national honour’ 156 nationalism 143, 152, 159, 164, 167–8, 171 nationalization policies 186 National Jewish Council 69–71, 72, 75–6, 81, 86, 87–8, 94, 126, 130 National Political Committee (Politische Reichskomission) 20 ‘national reliability’ 153–4, 155, 156, 166, 167, 171–2 National Solidarity (Národní souručenství) 74 nations, recognition of 10 nature and the outdoors, education in 21 Nazi occupation 52–6 Nazism 56, 59 Nazi vocabulary 93–4 Nečas, Jaromír 55, 75–6 Netherlands 134, 138 Neumann, Augustine, see Frischer, Augustine (née Neumann)

Neumann, Oskar 128, 147 New York 88–9 Nichols, Philip B. 101–2, 125 NOF (Czech National Fascist Community), 39 ‘Non-Aryan’ notation 152 Nosek, Václav 158, 164, 165, 175 numerus clausus 50 Nuremburg laws 56 obituaries 175, 189, 195 occupation 56–65 old people’s homes (Zentral-Altenheim) 113 olim 77, 78 Olomouc/Olmütz 8, 49, 152 Oranienburg 123 Orthodox Jewish communities 16, 17, 35, 71–4, 97–8, 124, 138, 147 Ossava 117 Ostrava, see Moravská Ostrava/Mährisch Ostrau Ostrava Jewish Community 33 Ostravice 34, 51 Palestine, see also Israel Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine 159–60, 163 Arab riots 22 emigration to 56, 57, 58, 60, 63–4, 81, 163, 184–5 evacuations of children 125 Jewish state in Palestine 169, 182, 191, 192 Palestine-­centric Zionism 20–1 Palestinian certificates 58, 60, 64, 125, 128, 137, 162, 202 n.34 partition plans 149, 169, 173 post-­war 161–2, 169 parcel scheme (aid) 98–104, 111–24, 140 Paris 69, 74–5, 158, 160, 183, 187 Paris Peace Conference (1919) 17, 29, 68 parliament, Jewish elections to 18, 34–9 Patent of Tolerance (Toleranzpatent) 2 peace conferences 17, 29, 68, 158 Peake, Osbert 127 Pehle, John 132 ‘People’s Democracy’ 175 Perlzweig, Maurice 129, 219 n.96 permanent residency rights (trvalý pobyt) 157–8

Index Petschek family 6 Pinkus, Hannah, see Skutezky, Hanna Pinsker, Leon 3 Pius XII, Pope 97, 129 Poale Zion 27, 35–6, 69 pogroms fears of (1918) 26 Kristallnacht 51, 58 pre-­war 3, 13, 17 Topoľčany 154, 159, 164 Pokora-Skála 18 Poland, see also Galicia aid parcels to 100 death camps 93 fate of Jews 96 ghettos 93 humanitarian interventions 100–1, 113–14, 118–19 post-­war reconstruction 140 pre-­war 25, 26, 36–7, 40–1, 50–1, 60, 80 Shoah 108 violence against Jews 161 Warsaw ghetto 91, 108, 112, 126, 127, 145 Polish Jewish Relief Committee 101 Polish minorities 36–7 Polish National Council 83, 91, 92, 97, 109 Pollertová, Anna 166 Polská Ostrava 32 Popper, Lilli (Lilli Skutezky/Frischer) 64, 94, 106, 121, 122, 123 Portugal 99, 101, 111, 113, 114, 121, 122, 123 postal services 113 Postdam Conference 152 POW camps 15 practical Zionism 18–24, 35, 37, 43, 84, 162, 195 Prague Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague 60–1 Council of Jewish Elders 67, 113, 118 deportations 117 Frischer in 61–2, 144–5 Jewish National Council (JNC) 16–17 Nazi occupation 52 new Jewish communities post-­war 146–7 remaining Jews in 128

261

schools 30 Zionism 179–80 Zionist headquarters move to 59 Prague Jewish Community 168–9 Prague Steering Committee 146–7 pre-­nuptial agreements 57 ‘present work’ (Gegenwartsarbeit) 8, 81 Presidential Decrees 154, 156, 186 Prešov 144 press agencies 43 press reports 95, 128, 130, 131, 135, 157, 160 Preuss, Alfred 63 prisoner exchanges 128, 137–8 prisoners of war 99–100, 103 Přívoz/Oderfurt 15, 18, 26 professions, banning from 47 propaganda 83, 95, 103, 112, 121, 122, 123, 134, 140 property appropriations 56, 61–2, 64, 88, 171, 186 Aryanization of property 56, 63, 88 heirless property 153, 159, 160, 178 restitution 143, 146, 147, 149, 150, 153, 155, 159, 178 Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia 52–6, 88, 93 Provident Society for Destitute Jewish Engineers 6 Provisional National Assembly 154 purge 176–80, 190 Quakers’ Germany Emergency Committee 211 n.95 Raczkiewicz, Władysław 83 radicalization 49, 63, 69, 73, 92, 94, 95, 145 Radical Zionists 34 radio broadcasts 130, 135–6 Rahm, Karl 111 railway lines 131–2 Rathbone, Eleanor 116, 127 reconnection with the land 21 Red Army 86, 132–3, 137, 138, 143, 180 Red Cross 99, 111, 112, 116, 123, 137, 138, 155 British Red Cross 99 Czechoslovak Red Cross 99, 112, 115–16, 155 German Red Cross 112, 118, 119, 134

262

Index

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) 99, 100, 111, 112, 122, 130 refugees 26, 43, 47–8, 49, 56–7, 99, 181 Reimann, Pavel 191 Reisz, Julius 37 Relico 112, 118 relief initiatives, see humanitarian interventions religious freedom 71 Religious-Zionists 21–2 repatriation laws 89, 156, 157–8 reprisals against Germans 99, 110 rescue initiatives 138, 140, see also prisoner exchanges resistance movements 68–9, 71–2, 91–8, 119, 129, 166 restitution, see property retribution 98, 110, 130, 156 revolutionary goals 20 Rezek/Rebenwurzel, Hanuš 146, 152 Riegner, Gerhard 94, 96, 107, 131, 183, 184 Riegner Telegram 107–8 right of domicile (domovské právo) 157–8 right-­wing Zionists 22 Ringelblum, Emanuel 91 riots, anti-Jewish 17, 151, 157, 159, 160 Ripka, Hubert 98, 108, 128, 131, 136 Robinson, Jacob 81 Roman Catholic Church 96–7, 128–9, 137 Romania 80 Rosenbaum, Anna 65 Rosenbaum, Karol 71, 165 Rosenberg, Imrich 70, 86–7, 147, 162 Rosenberg, Walter (Rudolf Vrba) 129 Rosenfeld, Max 10 Rosenzweig, Gerta 22 Rosenzweig, Schlomo 22 Rosenzweig, Valtr 22 Rosh Hashanah 105 Rosin, Arnošt 129 Rossell, Dr Maurice 111, 137 Rothschild family 13, 25 Rozenthal, Leo 180 Rozvoj 205 n.110 Rufeisen, Hermine, see Frischer(ová), Hermine (Heřmína/Heřma) Rufeisen, Josef 20, 22, 77, 78, 82–3, 145, 196 Rufeisen, Karoline 18, 50, 77 Rufeisen, Otto 145

Rufeisen, Samuel 18 Runciman, Lord Walter 42–3 Ruthenia, see Subcarpathian Ruthenia (Rus’) Sabath, Adolph 137 Sachsenhausen 130 sanatorium 34, 51 San Domingo 57 San Pellegrino POW camp 15 Sara, compulsory use of name 56 sardines, tinned 111, 114, 117, 121, 124 Schembeck, Hana, see Frischer, Hana Schmolka, Marie 53 Schonfeld, Solomon 185 schools 29–34, 157 Schulte, Eduard 107 Schwarz, Edmund 178 Schwartz, Joseph J. 113, 120, 188 Schwarzbart, Ignacy 83, 91, 92, 95–8, 102, 104, 127, 135, 140, 143, 165, 184, 188 Schwarzheide 148 Scotland 84 Selbstwehr 37 Shai, Joshua 234 n.41 Shanghai, emigration to 64 ‘shekel payers’ 8 Shoah Allies’ information campaign 109–10 disbelief over 107 first reports about 91, 92–8 humanitarian interventions 98–104, 107, 111–41, 149, 178, 180 Jewish responses to 91–106 lack of information about 107–8, 112, 116–18, 119–20, 121, 133 notion of Czech guilt 171 press reports 95 statistics 91 show trials 188–9 shtetls 13, 148 Sicher, Gustav 150 Siedlungsgebiet (reservation) 93 Sikorski government 92 Silberschein, Abraham 112 Silesia 4, 15, 25 Silverman, Sydney 75, 95 Šimková, Laura 176 Singer, Ludvík 37 Skutezky, Gustav 64

Index Skutezky, Hanna 64, 121, 122, 138, 144–5, 184, 185 Skutezky, Lilli (née Popper, later Frischer) affair with Frischer 64 continued contact with exiled Frischer 94, 106, 121, 122, 123, 138–9, 184 emigration 185, 187 marriage to Frischer 188, 197 name change to Skutezká 167 Theresienstadt 64, 138–9, 144–5 Slánský, Rudolf 182–3, 184, 188–9 Slávik, Juraj 88, 128 Slavík, Vladimír 96, 108 Šling, Otto 236 n.109 Slovakia annexation 71 anti-Jewish laws 88 antisemitism 151 autonomy 45 border with Czechoslovak Republic 15, 16 censuses 203 n.62 deportations 96–7, 98, 116, 128, 131 education 29 and the Jewish Party 35 legislature 38 occupation 136, 137 Orthodox Jewish communities 98 politics 42 post-­war 145, 163, 179 violence against Jews 157 Zionism 148, 180 Slovak National Uprising 137 ‘small but our own’ (malá, ale naše) 47 Social Democrats 37–8, 39 Socialism 35–6, 84, 143, 175, 176, 178–82, 184, 190, 192–3 Socialist Jewish parties 35–6 Socialist-Zionists 16, 21–2 social services for post-­war Jews 146–7, 149–50 Sokol (Falcon) 49 Sokolovo, battle of 166 Soviet Union 84, 132, 133, 134, 148, 152, 157, 158, 191 Springer, Meir Raphael 71, 98 Stahlecker, Walter 60 Stalinism 180, 182 Stanley, Oliver 125

263

State Council, Czechoslovak 65, 68–77, 83–90, 97–8, 108–9, 130, 143, 155 state of Israel 181–2, 190, 195 Steering Committee (Prague Jewish Community) 146–7 Stein, Karel 148, 176, 177, 178, 184 Stein, Leonard 101 Steiner, Hannah 53, 94, 122, 145 Steinhardt, Laurence 158 sterilizations 128 Sternbach, Vilém 39 St Germain-en-Laye Treaty 17 Strabogli, Lord 98 Stricker, Robert 1, 6–8, 79, 122 strikes 175, 176, 191 Strobach, Vít 206 n.126 student groups 3–4, 6, 11–12 Subcarpathian Ruthenia (Rus’) Auschwitz 137 autonomy 45 declarations of Jewish identity 25, 80 deportations 131 during war 124–5, 131 education 29, 40 expats in Czechoslovakia 148 occupation 136 Orthodox Jewish communities 98 politics 42, 84 post-­war 145, 152, 157–8 pre-­war 15, 16, 38 Sudeten German Party 40 Sudetenland 25, 32, 41, 43, 45, 47–8, 69, 88, 89, 157 suffrage 9 suicides 56, 127 Sweden 122, 137, 150 Switzerland arrival of rescued Jews 138 Basle 3–4 and humanitarian aid 94, 96, 99, 106, 112–16, 121, 122, 129, 137 post-­war relief 150 Swiss transit visas 184 synagogues, violence against 56 Szerer, Emanuel 83 Tchelet Lavan (Blau-Weiss) 22 Teltsch 1 Theresienstadt: Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet 123

264 Theresienstadt/Terezín 8 March 1944 167 deportations to 67, 128 and the Final Solution 112 Frischer’s post-­war visits to 146 humanitarian aid to 100, 104, 106, 112–24, 134–41 large concentration of Czech Jews in 137–8 liberation 138 Lilli Skutezky in 64, 138–9, 144–5 liquidation of 129, 130, 135, 138 Nazi propaganda about 134–41 pre-­war 47–8 Red Cross aid reaches 111 Theresienstadt Estate 149 Theresienstadt Family Camp 117–18, 129, 130, 167 as transit camp 93, 108 Wilma Bloch in 107 ‘The Way to a Better World’ (Frischer, 1942) 84 Times, The 95 Tiso, Jozef 47, 52, 93, 96–7, 98, 124, 129, 137 Tomaszów 117 Topoľčany 154, 159, 164 Tošnerová, Patricia 123 trade unionists 190 Transfer Agreement 60, 63 Transfer Committee 59, 65 ‘transfers’ (post-­war) 154–5, see also deportations transit camps 93, 108, 117, 137 Transnistria 125–6 Transylvania 131 Trawniki 117, 119 treatment of prisoners of war 99 Treblinka 117, 126, 133 Treuhänders 63 Treuhandstelle 64 Tribuna press agency 43 tuberculosis 150 Tuka, Vojtech 97 Turkey 114, 121, 122 typhus epidemic 146 Ullmann, Fritz 53, 55, 94, 100, 104, 106, 113–18, 121, 123, 129–31, 135, 137–9, 197

Index Ungar, Emil 178, 179 Unger, Joseph 10 Union of Jews from Czechoslovakia in France (Association des Juifs de Tchecoslovaquie en France) 69 Union of Orthodox Jews from Czechoslovakia 71 Unitas 4 United Jewish Parties 36 United Nations 149, 161, 169, 181 Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations 108–10, 114, 124–5 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) 156, 158, 193 United States American Jewish organizations 73, 74, 75–6, 82, 87, 111, 113 American-­occupied Germany and Austria 158 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine 159–60, 163 appeals for help from 137–8 emigration to 183 entry into Second World War 95 Frischer’s intention to go to 188 Frischer’s visit to 88–9 fundraising 114, 116 humanitarian interventions 126 immigration policies 161 post-­war 150, 158 responses to extermination of Jews 131–3 and Zionism 182 universities closure of 63 Frischer at 3, 4, 6, 9, 11, 12 recognition of Jewish nationality 11–12 and Zionism 4 utopianism 20 utraquisation 33 Varnsdorf 158 Varnsdorf Affair 160, 177 Vatican 96–7, 128–9, 137 Veesenmayer, Edmund 129 Veritas 4, 6, 8, 11 Věstník 151–2, 166, 167, 171, 172, 179, 190, 191 violence against Jews

Index anti-Jewish riots 5, 17, 151, 157, 159, 160 post-­war 157, 161, see also Shoah pre-­war 56, 62–3 Volk ideology 5, 8 von Neurath, Konstantin 52, 56 Vrba, Rudolf (Walter Rosenberg) 129 Vrba-Wetzler report 129–31, 133 Warren, George L. 138 Warsaw ghetto 67, 91, 108, 112, 126, 127, 145 Weber, Ilse 49, 51 Wechsberg, Joseph 26–7 Wehle, Kurt 147–8, 156, 157, 159, 161, 172–3, 176–7, 178, 179, 183, 184, 192, 196 Weichert, Michal 118–19 Weidmann, František 48, 59, 64, 122, 145, 171 Wein, Martin 229 n.92 Weiner, Armin 43 Weiner, Matěj 39 Weis, George/Georg 85, 154–5 Weissenstein, Richard 155–6, 166 Weizmann, Chaim 75 Weltsch, Felix 202 n.14 Wetzler, Alfred 129 Winterstein, Vojtech 147, 150, 164, 179–80, 187 Wise, Stephen 107 Witkowitz/Vítkovice 13, 25 WIZO, see Women’s International Zionist Organization Włodawa 117 Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO) 34 World Jewish Congress (WJC) British Section 75, 85, 86–7, 98–9, 103, 107, 127–8, 136, 189 during war 74–5, 81, 82, 85, 86–7, 95, 107, 108, 115–16, 129, 130 post-­war 148–9, 158, 160, 165, 183, 185, 188, 189 pre-­war 45 Rescue Department 131 World Zionist Organization 20 Yiddish 10, 11, 16, 17, 29 Youth Aliyah 63

265

youth organizations 22, 34, 42, see also student groups Zajitschkova, Bertl 85, 139, 144, 187 Zeisel, Rudolf 6 Zelmanovits, Lev 53, 69–70, 73, 74, 75, 77, 85, 87, 147–8, 175, 188, 189 Zentralstelle 60–3, 64 Zephirah 4, 6 Zimet, Wally 62 Zionism, see also Israel; Palestine banned in Czechoslovakia 180 and Communism 182 in the Czechoslovak First Republic 16, 17 formative years of 3–9 and Frischer 4, 187, 189, 195, 196 Frischer’s first contact with 3 General Zionists 21–2, 27 versus Jewish nationalism 196 and the monarchy 9–14 Poale Zion 27, 35–6, 69 post-­war 148, 155, 161–3, 165, 167–70, 177, 178, 179, 181 post-­war reconstruction 147 practical Zionism 18–24, 35, 37, 43, 84, 162, 195 Radical Zionists 34 Religious-Zionists 21–2 right-­wing Zionists 22 Slovakia 148, 180 Socialist-Zionists 16, 21–2 student groups 3–4, 6 and universities 4 WIZO (Women’s International Zionist Organization) 34 and the World Jewish Congress 148 World Zionist Organization 20 Zionist Executive 20 Zionist Organization 4, 8, 28, 124 Zionist Palestinian Office 62 Znojmo 28 Zucker, Otto 39, 42, 58, 59, 65, 67, 94, 113, 122, 139, 145 Zweig, Ronald W. 111, 112 Zweigenthal, Oskar 53, 55 Zygielbojm, Szmul 83, 92, 95, 97, 98, 105, 106, 127, 135