The Jew in Czech and Slovak Imagination, 1938-89: Antisemitism, the Holocaust, and Zionism 9004362444, 9789004362444

Citation preview

The Jew in Czech and Slovak Imagination, 1938–89

Brill’s Series in Jewish Studies Founding Editor David S. Katz (Tel-Aviv University) Edited by Joshua Holo (Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion)

volume 60

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bsjs

The Jew in Czech and Slovak Imagination, 1938–89 Antisemitism, the Holocaust, and Zionism By

Hana Kubátová Jan Láníček

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Aryanizers. A caricature from the magazine Kocúr, published in 1942. It was published anonymously. Digitalized by the University Library in Bratislava. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kubatova, Hana, 1980- author. | Lanicek, Jan, 1986- author. Title: The Jew in Czech and Slovak imagination, 1938-89 : Antisemitism, the Holocaust, and Zionism / by Hana Kubatova, Jan Lanicek. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: lccn 2017055926 (print) | lccn 2017056626 (ebook) | isbn 9789004362444 (E-book) | isbn 9789004362437 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: lcsh: Jews--Czechoslovakia--History--20th century. | Jews--Persecutions--Czechoslovakia--­ History--20th century. | Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Czechoslovakia. | Czechoslovakia--Ethnic relations. Classification: lcc ds135.c95 (ebook) | lcc ds135.c95 k83 2018 (print) | ddc 305.892/4043709045--dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017055926

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0926-2261 isbn 978-90-04-36243-7 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-36244-4 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 Objectives, Terminology and Approach 9 1 The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War 14 Czechs and Slovaks Picture Each Other 17 The ‘Jew’ and 1938 19 Film 23 ‘Kohn Greets Sara’: Radio Waves and the Image of the Jew 27 Metaphors and Allegories of the ‘Jew’ in the Press 39 2 The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion 60 Collaboration in the Protectorate and Slovakia 62 Methodology 79 The Regime in the Protectorate and in ‘Independent’ Slovakia 88 Robbery 93 The Breaking Point 99 Return of the Jews 113 3 The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder 123 Tales of Suffering 128 ‘We Know That You Are Not Guilty!’: Origins of the Postwar Myths 132 Heroes and Cowards 138 Collaboration and Guilt 150 Jews as Collaborators 153 4 When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’ 169 Czechoslovakia and Zionism until the Communist Takeover 172 Zionism as a Progressive Force? 183 The ‘Jew’ as a Zionist 192 Zionist Conspiracy with a ‘Human Face’ 212 Conclusion 238 Bibliography 243 Index 267

Acknowledgements This book is about encounters, real or imaginary. Similarly to the many women­ and men, whose life trajectories have crossed in this book and who often, consciously or otherwise, impacted each other’s lives, also the research behind this manuscript was interwoven with interactions with people. Many have supported our research over the last years, as our departmental chairs, scholars, archivists, librarians, or administrators at both Charles University in Prague and unsw Sydney. While there is no room to thank them all, we wish to acknowledge here how much we appreciate their words of encouragement, their constant care, and interest in our project. We also greatly appreciate all discussions – at times even quarrels – at workshops and conferences, with our friends and colleagues, that have inspired us, challenged us, pushed us further, and provided us with valuable feedback. Many scholars and institutions have influenced and enabled our work on this project. We were not only fortunate enough to present our preliminary results at academic events around the globe, but we also convened two workshops and conferences, both supported by external insitutions. In 2012, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum hosted our summer research workshop on Confronting the Holocaust in Postwar Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary. We are indebted to Krista Hegburg, an excellent scholar and a true friend, for encouraging us to put this workshop together and making it happen. It was thanks to this workshop that the authors of this monograph had the opportunity to meet for the first time and discuss the initial ideas that eventually developed into the now completed project. We have been fortunate enough that modern technology has allowed us to collaborate from the antipodean sides of the globe, in spite of the enormous time differences that complicated our communication. We got used to waking up to emails with a long list of tasks we had to address during the work day before we again passed the baton either to Prague or to Sydney. In May and June 2014, we convened a conference on Jews and Gentiles in East-Central Europe in the 20th Century in Prague, which was attended by scores of excellent scholars from all over the world. We are grateful for having been able to invite so many sharp minds, whose projects and methodological approaches tremendously influenced our work. Personal thanks are due to the many archivists and librarians who have assisted us with locating documents and other material, and who provided us with photocopies and scans of key documents. Among these, personal thanks should go to Monika Baďurová, Aleš Komárek, Vendula Hustáková, and

viii

Acknowledgements

Jitka Slabochová from the Masaryk Library of Social Sciences in Jinonice, Charles University, Vincent Slatt, Megan Lewis and Michlean Amir from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the staff of the yivo Archives, the Nation’s Memory Institute, the Security Services Archives, the National Film Archive, the Slovak National Archive, the Yad Vashem Archives, the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem, and many others. Thanks are due to the Czech Science Foundation for providing the funding for this project through its postdoctoral grant (13-15989P). Here we also wish to thank Eva Horníčková, the head of the Research Office at the Charles University’s Faculty of Social Sciences, who has taken much of the administrative burden from our shoulders, enabling us hence to focus on our work. Special thanks go to the editors at Brill, especially Meghan Connolly, for walking us through the whole publishing process, providing us with care and support in every step. Petr Brod read and marked almost every single page of the first version of our manuscript and we are profoundly grateful for his generosity and all support. Furthermore, Jacob A. Maze and Derek Paton read parts of the manuscript and edited it for clarity and flow. Last but not least, our gratitude goes to our respective families and friends for their patience, support, and love. Hana Kubátová and Jan Láníček September 2017

Introduction When Leo Kohút (Kohn) returned to Bratislava in the spring of 1945, having survived Sachsenhausen, Bergen-Belsen, and Horgau (a subcamp of Dachau), it was almost as if he could still feel the presence of war in his hometown. For Kohút, the furtive looks shot at him from behind drawn curtains signaled what some felt about the return of a handful of Jewish survivors to Slovakia: ‘See! The Germans have not kept their word … Rumors circulate in the city that ­apparently more Jews returned than had left.’1 Liberation left a bitter a­ ftertaste for Kohút and many others who survived the war after having been ousted as enemies from their social environment, and subsequently even from their countries. Whether it was a result of a fierce propaganda campaign (which, as the war was coming to its end, included wild stories about a revenge by the Jews), ­because part of majority society was indeed implicated in the Holocaust, or simply because they had sufficient reason to believe that their Jewish neighbors were already dead, former Gentile neighbors and friends no longer ­expected or wished the Jews to return. Besides desperately searching for any trace of their loved ones, survivors faced significant everyday difficulties almost immediately upon their coming home: finding a place to live, getting back at least some of their possessions, and, as we shall see, even retaining their Czechoslovak citizenship. In these and many other instances, Jewish survivors needed to rely on the assistance of the state, their Gentile neighbors, and, even more, often on the renewed Jewish community offices. Responses varied from place to place and also within different towns, villages, and even individual families. At times, neighbors who had been asked to safeguard goods for Jews before they were deported, now, after the war, could not recall having been asked to do so. Others readily returned everything they had and embraced their friends with affection and sympathy. As Livia Bitton-Jackson (née Elli Friedmann) returned to Šamorín, a town in south Slovakia that had been occupied by the Hungarians for much of the Second World War, she yearned for her father who had been murdered in Bergen-Belsen only two weeks before the liberation.2 One day, walking home from school, she noticed a man that resembled her beloved father. As she came 1 Leo Kohút, Tu bola kedysi ulica (Bratislava: Q 111, 2004), 175. 2 See also Hana Kubátová, “Návrat ‘domů’?,” in Návraty: poválečná rekonstrukce židovských ­komunit v zemích středovýchodní jihovýchodní a východní Evropy, ed. Kateřina Králová and Hana Kubátová (Praha: Karolinum, 2016), 24–42.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004362444_002

2

Introduction

closer to the male figure, Bitton-Jackson realized she was drawn not to the man himself, but to the short gray coat he was wearing. It took her a while to realize what it was that made her follow the complete stranger, but then it came to her: the man was wearing her father’s coat. Rather than pretending she must be mistaken, the man asked the young girl what had happened to her father. Learning about his death, the stranger agreed to return her father’s coat, and asked whether she recognized the hat he was wearing as well. Eventually, the man asked Bitton-Jackson to follow him home, promising to return the coat: A gate opens, and the stranger, now wearing another overcoat, emerges from the windy courtyard carrying Daddy’s coat and the grey fedora. ‘Here, slečna [young lady], take it. It’s yours.’ ‘I am not sure about the hat.’ ‘Take the hat. It’s my way of saying, forgive me. Forgive us, miss. For everything.’ I clutch the coat tightly and close my eyes. Daddy. Daddy.3 Also for others, the return to their previous hometowns constituted a mixture of hope, uncertainty, confusion and also disappointment. Ruth Huppert ­returned to Moravská Ostrava after several years she spent in Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and other smaller labor camps: Late that afternoon I arrived in my hometown. The train stopped in Přívoz, a short walk from Uncle Hugo’s house. The house was still standing, but everything in it and in the factory had been stolen. The bare walls seemed to mock me. It was getting dark, and I began to look for a place to spend the night. […] I became desperate, standing there in the market square and feeling like a complete stranger in my native town. […] After six years of exile and concentration camps, I didn’t know where I could find a place to stay for the night. I felt utterly hopeless and began to cry.4 Eventually a former midwife, who had helped Huppert’s mother when Ruth and her sister Edith had been born, put her up in her flat. This altruistic deed filled Ruth with hope, a feeling that was quickly quashed the following day, when she visited a former employee of her father’s company who had agreed to take Hupperts’ belongings, including jewelry, for safekeeping:

3 Livia Bitton-Jackson, My Bridges of Hope: Searching for Life and Love after Auschwitz (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 39. 4 Ruth Elias, Triumph of Hope: From Theresienstadt and Auschwitz to Israel (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999), 216.

Introduction

3

I was received coolly; it was obvious that Gustav and his family were disappointed that I had retuned. Where were the friendly smiles that used to welcome us to this house? We went into the living room, which was ­outfitted with my family’s furniture. And there, surrounded by our possessions, they plied me with lies, telling me that the Russians had taken most of our belongings. […] Gustav and his family didn’t understand what had happened to me, and how brokenhearted and crushed I felt when I arrived at their house.5 After receiving a cool welcome and seeing the houses that had belonged to her extended family now either occupied by strangers or looted and dilapidated, Huppert left Ostrava for Prague, and in 1949 she moved from Czechoslovakia to Israel. Recently, historians have persuasively suggested that the postwar predicament of the Jewish survivors upon their return to their hometowns and villages needs to be seen in conjunction with the political and s­ ocio-economic revolution that had taken place during the war and the first months after ­liberation.6 Testimonies such as these further complicate the depiction of May 1945 as a clear-cut milestone, closing one era while opening a new, qualitatively ­better one for the survivors.7 Czechoslovakia, like certainly many other countries in Nazi occupied and dominated Europe, had a complicated wartime history. The multinational country fell apart between September 1938, when the Munich Agreement sealed the fate of the democratic republic, and March 1939, when German troops occupied the western parts, Bohemia and Moravia, and Hungarians, ­after a short war, annexed the easternmost province of Subcarpathian Rus’. The rump Slovak territory declared ‘independence’ on March 14, 1939. On March 16, the day after the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia began, the German authorities unilaterally proclaimed the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, a state unit that remained in existence until May 9, 1945. The fate of the Jews developed differently in each territory, and so did the role of the local elites and majority societies in the Holocaust. 5 Ibid., 217f. 6 Anna Cichopek-Gajraj, Beyond Violence: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–48 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Jan Láníček, “Long Shadows of the Shoah: The Aftermath as an Integral Part of Holocaust Historiography,” History 102, no. 350 (2017): 271–86. 7 Petr Sedlák, “Svět přeživších Židů – prameny a jejich výklad,” Lidé města / Urban ­people 10, no.  3 (2008): 83–113; Jan Láníček, “After the Whirlwind: Jewish Absence in Postwar ­Czechoslovakia,” Journal of Contemporary History 52, no. 2 (2017): 278–96.

4

Introduction

In the Protectorate, Jews were subject to racial laws imported from the Third Reich. Initially at least, the Czechs contributed to the introduction of new anti-Jewish laws and regulations and tried to keep the initiative, but real power was in the hands of the German occupiers. In the Czech lands, Berlin was represented by the Reich Protector, directly appointed by and responsible to the Führer. ­Indeed, while formally allowing the country to be run by the Czech ­government and State President Emil Hácha, the Germans established a ­shadow administration in the Protectorate (Landräte and Oberandräte, both newly established ­regional authorities). The German army, security forces, and police units were present in the Protectorate from the very beginning. Although the Czech administration could in the first years claim a certain level of legitimacy and continuity with the pre-March 1939 government, the appointment of ss ­General Reinhard Heydrich as the Deputy Reich Protector in late September 1941 (­specifically with the aim of tightening the screws on the Czechs), and the subsequent imprisonment of General Alois Eliáš, the prime minister, removed any semblance of the declared autonomy. Conversely, in Slovakia it was the local politicians who were the main instigators of the anti-Jewish persecution. From early on, Slovak domestic politics was defined by a power struggle within the relatively small circle of Bratislava elites. Seeking the attention and approval of the Germans, the local administration introduced laws that were at times stricter than the 1935 Nuremberg Laws. The bond between the new state and the Third Reich was strong. Germans kept a close eye on the new regime, and ensured their dominance over the territory by insisting on a ‘protection treaty’ (under the terms of which the Slovaks agreed to follow Berlin in foreign policy and military and economic matters) and by appointing dozens of advisers (Berater) to key institutions in the country. Apart from a few breaches of trust (leading to the German-Slovak talks in Salzburg in July 1940 and a subsequent cabinet reshuffle), Berlin could count on the loyalty of the new state on the Danube, at least until the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising in late August 1944. With these structural differences in mind, anti-Jewish policies in both ­territories can usefully be divided into the following chronological stages: the initial stage, from March 1939 to August 1940 for Slovakia and September 1941 for the Protectorate; the period of radicalization from August 1940/September 1941 to mid-1943; and the downfall from early/mid-1943 until the liberation of Prague in May 1945. The initial period, from March 1939 until August 1940/September 1941, was marked by a gradual segregation of the Jews. New anti-Jewish laws and regulations were introduced in both territories. In the Protectorate, the regional ­authorities, both Czech and German, often issued anti-Jewish laws ­haphazardly,

Introduction

5

and the whole process was only gradually centralized in the course of 1941. The main feature of the German policies was the Aryanization of property, intertwined with the slow process of Germanization of the Bohemian lands.8 The first Reich Protector, Konstantin von Neurath, introduced the racial definition of the ‘Jew’ in the country on June 21, 1939. This decree (essentially on Jewish property) also initiated the subsequent process of Aryanization, as a predominantly German-led process, ending all the previous efforts of the Czech Protectorate government and economic elites to acquire Jewish property. In Slovakia, the looting of Jewish belongings and land was equally at the core of the anti-Jewish policies of the new state but fully in the hands of the Slovak authorities. The first definition of ‘Jew’ was introduced in Slovakia only a few weeks into its ‘independence,’ on April 18, 1939. Concurrently, the regime began to remove the alleged Jewish economic influence over the social and economic life of the country – first by limiting Jewish employment in certain professions, by expropriating Jewish property, and adopting the first so-called Aryanization law on April 25, 1940. Introduced as an opportunity for the ‘little people,’ this legislation enabled Jews to ‘transfer’ less than fifty percent of their ownership rights to Gentiles, and to keep the rest. (It also permitted transfers agreed on between Jews and non-Jews, especially neighbors or former ­co-workers, however difficult it is to speak of any ‘voluntary’ agreements under these circumstances.) For Slovakia, the radicalization period begins with the German-Slovak talks in late July 1940, and the subsequent introduction of Slovak National (or, as it was sometimes also called, Christian) Socialism. In line with this ideological turn, the reshuffled Slovak government initiated a series of new a­ nti-­Jewish laws, ­including a much harsher variation on the Aryanization law, issued on ­November 30, 1940. On September 9, 1941, the Slovak government a­ dopted the so-called Jewish Codex, a series of anti-Jewish laws (many of which were, however, ­already in effect). This law, modeled on the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, also introduced a racial definition of a ‘Jew.’ Labor camps were established in Nováky, Sereď and Vyhne on orders of the Slovak government, and at the beginning of 1942 Slovak officials reached an agreement with Nazi Germany to

8 To acknowledge the coexistence of Czechs, Germans and Jews in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, we use the term Bohemian lands until the expulsion of Germans in 1945 and reserve the term the ‘Czech lands’ for the period that followed the ethnic homogenization after the Second World War. See also Nancy Meriwether Wingfield, Flag Wars and Stone Saints: How the Bohemian Lands Became Czech (Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 2007), xvii.

6

Introduction

deport 20,000 young Slovak Jews to the Generalgouvernement of the German Reich (occupied Poland) for a fee of 500 Reichsmarks for each deportee. The appointment of Heydrich as the Deputy Reich Protector in late ­September 1941 began the radicalization of the German occupation policies in the Protectorate. The Jews were publicly branded with the Star of David ten days before Heydrich’s arrival, and the Germans soon started to deport Jews to the ghettos, first to Litzmannstadt (Łódź) and Minsk, and later almost exclusively to Theresienstadt. The main wave of deportations from the provinces and Prague ended in the spring and summer of 1943, respectively. After this date, only the so-called Mischlinge (people of mixed origin), people in mixed marriages, or those in hiding or living under assumed names remained in the Protectorate. Although the German authorities kept introducing new laws, further limiting the position of the remaining Jews in society, the main feature of this period was the deportations. With the end of the main deportation wave, the Jews mostly disappeared from cities of Bohemia and Moravia in early 1943. For most Czechs, there was no physical presence of Jews in their social environment: they did not meet Jews in the streets; they no longer had Jewish neighbors or friends. In early 1945, shortly before the liberation, the remaining groups of Jews, the ­Mischlinge and those in mixed marriages, were deported to Theresienstadt. Meanwhile in Slovakia, the beginning of the downfall is connected to the collapse of the fascist regime in Italy in the summer of 1943. For the Jews, the situation in Slovakia remained relatively stable after the main wave of deportations to occupied Poland stopped in ­October 1942 (eventually, almost 58,000 of the total of 89,000 Slovak Jews were deported). The situation again radicalized after the Wehrmacht suppressed the Slovak National Uprising in the autumn of 1944. The Einsatzgruppe H of the ­Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police) and the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service, sd) rounded up the remainder of the Slovak Jews, assisted by Slovak radicals. More than 12,000 ­Slovak Jews were deported in the second deportation wave, now under the control of the Germans. The fate of the last Jewish community of interwar Czechoslovakia, in Subcarpathian Rus’ was even more tragic. The community continued to survive even under the strict though not lethal Hungarian rule there until the spring of 1944, even though the Hungarian authorities had deported several thousand stateless Jews from Subcarpathian Rus’ to German-occupied Ukraine, where they were soon massacred in August 1941. The rest of the community shared the fate of the Hungarian Jews, who lived outside the capital, Budapest, and were sent to their death in Auschwitz during the lightning-fast d­ eportation operation in the spring of 1944, following the German occupation of Greater Hungary in March of that year. About 15,000 Jews returned to what was now

Introduction

7

­Soviet-­occupied and then annexed Subcarpathian Rus’ in the summer of 1945.9 Most of them, however, soon left again, and only about 2,000 Jews remained in the ­region by the late 1940s.10 More than 8,000 of the Subcarpathian Jews attempted to find a new home in restored Czechoslovakia, especially in Bohemia, though it took them several years before the Czech authorities approved their residence permits.11 The Shoah devastated the Jewish communities of the Bohemian lands and Slovakia. Of the 356,830 individuals who had declared themselves Jewish by religion in the 1930 census, more than 270,000 were murdered during the Second World War. The destruction was pervasive for Jews from across Czechoslovakia, and liberation did not necessarily put a stop to the suffering of the few who survived. While bringing an end to the armed conflict, liberation did not of course miraculously reverse things to where they had been prior to 1939. Nor did it do away with antisemitism or make people understand the grievances of those they considered ‘others’. Returning home, survivors often experienced hostility, which at times turned into violence (especially in Slovakia).12 They also had to convince the new government of their previous and current loyalty to Czechoslovakia and its people in order to retain their citizenship and avoid another deportation, this time as ‘Hungarians’ or ‘Germans.’ One needs to bear in mind that Jews were not necessarily understood as victims of a particularly great injustice in the immediate aftermath of the war. As explored further in the book, being a victim was largely reserved for the majority societies. The perpetrators were then the foreign invaders and national minorities that had been seen as collectively responsible for the committed wrongs. Whereas the decision about who falls into the category of the villain, that is, the ‘German’ and the ‘Hungarian,’ had been reached by the future victors in the midst of the war or earlier, defining this category was not without complications. Indeed, in Czechoslovakia as elsewhere, restoring peace went hand in 9

Raz Segal, Genocide in the Carpathians: War, Social Breakdown, and Mass Violence, 1­ 914–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017), 109. 10 Anya Quilitzsch, “Everyday Judaism on the Soviet Periphery: Life and Identity of Transcarpathian Jewry after World War ii” (Unpublished PhD thesis, Indiana University, Bloomington, 2016), 67f. 11 Kateřina Čapková, “Dilemmas of Minority Politics: Jewish Migrants in Postwar Czechoslovakia and Poland,” in Postwar Jewish Displacement and Rebirth: 1945–1967, ed. Françoise S. Ouzan and Manfred Gerstenfeld (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2014), 63–75; Jan Láníček, Arnošt Frischer and the Jewish Politics of Early 20th-Century Europe (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 156–57. 12 Hana Kubátová, “Teraz alebo nikdy: Povojnové protižidovské násilie a väčšinová spoločnosť na Slovensku,” Soudobé dějiny 3 (2016): 321–46.

8

Introduction

hand with a program of national homogenization. Learning a lesson from its collapse in 1938, postwar Czechoslovakia was to become a nation-state, excluding all those who were perceived as not being loyal to the country and its people. While postwar Czechoslovak elites quickly declared the return to the democratic ideals of the First Czechoslovak Republic, many of the democratically questionable decrees targeting Germans and Hungarians also affected Jewish survivors.13 Basing the fuzzy category of ‘loyalty to Czechoslovakia’ on the last prewar census, that of 1930, affected many Jews of the Bohemian lands and Slovakia (like Leo Kohút). Having survived state-legislated and sponsored racial persecution, Jews now had to provide evidence of their ‘good behavior’ and loyalty – national and social – before the war and during it. ‘What schools did you attend and what was the language of instruction?’ asked officials of the National Committees (národní/národné výbory), and demanded written proof of both. Brought up in an Orthodox Jewish family, Kohút quickly understood the irony: Often, the official who requested such a document had himself been brought up in a Hungarian or German-language environment, and knew well that the schools of the Orthodox religious community in Bratislava used German as the language of instruction until the 1930s.14 The re-emerging image of the ‘Jew’ as someone standing apart from the Czechs and Slovaks of majority society – whether because he or she was considered ethnically inferior, a ‘German,’ or ‘Hungarian’ (or even a Jew in the national sense), which in essence meant disloyalty to the nation-state, to give just a few examples of the anti-Jewish stereotypes we explore later – is at the core of this book. For majority societies, the Jews were a largely unpleasant reminder of the past, and their very presence challenged the newly established status quo. What most of the stories of return, including those of Kohút, Bitton-­Jackson, and Huppert, show is the missed opportunity for the majority societies to ­reflect on their role in the Shoah, and establish a more genuine account of the war in the immediate aftermath. Taking the aftermath as a point of departure – in order to explore the roots and dynamics of anti-Jewish tropes – is important because, until quite ­recently, the spring of 1945 was generally regarded as an almost unchallengeable ­turning point both in the Bohemian lands and in Slovakia. Most works 13

Jan Láníček, “The Postwar Czech-Jewish Leadership and the Issue of Jewish Emigration from Czechoslovakia (1945–1950),” in Postwar Jewish Displacement and Rebirth: 1945–1967, ed. Françoise S. Ouzan and Manfred Gerstenfeld (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2014), 80. 14 Kohút, Tu bola kedysi ulica, 176.

Introduction

9

on antisemitism in Slovakia focus on the roughly six months of prewar autonomy or on the wartime state, scrutinizing the role of the quasi-independent Tiso administration in the Shoah. ‘Year Zero,’ 1945, in this view, brought the long-awaited end to the collaborationist regime. On the other hand, if we are to judge by the historiography of the Bohemian lands, the difficulties that ­accompanied the Jews’ return after 1945, together with the rise of antisemitism during the brief period of less than six months after the Munich diktat, later called the Second R ­ epublic, would seem to be the exemption to the otherwise idyllic Czech-­Jewish marriage. Our book seeks to be a bridge between the two extreme views: it problematizes the role of the aftermath, or of any other well-established milestones in the formation and disappearance of anti-Jewish tropes for that matter, and presents the involvement of the majority societies in the construction and persistence of anti-Jewish stereotypes.

Objectives, Terminology and Approach

The overarching themes of The Jew in the Czech and Slovak Imagination: ­Popular and Public Anti-Jewish Stereotypes in the Bohemian Lands and Slovakia, 1938–89 are the discursive and visual images of the ‘Jew’ over the course of two nondemocratic regimes of twentieth-century Czechoslovakia. We scrutinize the nature of public and popular anti-Jewish tropes, and do so comparatively. By ‘image’ and ‘imagination’ we understand the assigning of character and other traits, real or imaginary, to individuals or groups of individuals, which are meant to be characteristic of the Jews (a term that was assigned different meanings during the period) as a whole. We trace the impact of these constructed images on the attitudes of the majority societies towards the Jews (however defined or perceived), as well as on Czech-Jewish and Slovak-Jewish relations, and politics in general. When researching and writing the book, we struggled with the question of which categories to use in order to avoid the exclusionary ethno-nationalist language of Czechs and Slovaks versus the Jews (and, for instance, ignoring those who the authorities categorized as Jews but who identified themselves as Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Hungarians, or members of any other nationality/ethnicity). We also spent considerable time discussing the danger of ­appropriating Nazi language when using fixed ethnic categories. How can we reference the populations while acknowledging and not obliterating all of the people involved? Amongst scholars working on modern Slovak history, a discussion has been taking place on whether to speak of the ‘Jews of Slovakia’ or ‘Slovak Jews,’ and

10

Introduction

to what extent one or the other term reduces or simplifies the reality.15 ­Going beyond this particular discussion, some scholars have suggested avoiding the term ‘Jew’ altogether or at least explicitly recognizing that it’s meaning is ‘both historically and geographically situated.’16 Accordingly, recognizing the ‘constructed category “Jew” (over both time and space) gives back the persons killed as “Jews” a freedom to choose their own identity.’17 These discussions get even more complicated when throwing the three increasingly criticized but largely unsurpassed Shoah categories of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders into the mix.18 Being aware of the problematic nature of such categories, we have used quotation marks in the chapter titles to stress that the subjects of our inquiry are indeed constructs rather than something inherent.19 Where appropriate, we have also highlighted our position by deliberately speaking of majority Czechs and Slovaks, to signify the inclusion of Jews in the realm of whatever constitutes the ‘Czech’ or ‘Slovak’ category of belonging, and the Czechoslovak (or Czech and Slovak) past. This important terminological debate to a large extent also reflects ­current historiography. With few exceptions, the Czech, Slovak, and Jewish past is treated separately in historical accounts. Books on the history of the political entities that existed in this territory through much of the twentieth century – interwar Czechoslovakia, post-Munich Czecho-Slovakia, the Protectorate ­Bohemia and Moravia, the wartime Slovak state, and postwar Czechoslovakia – often present an ethnic version of the past cleansed from all the ‘others’ (the Jews, but also the Germans, Hungarians, Roma, and the Ruthenians). The historiography of the Shoah might be one exception where the Jewish and nonJewish pasts intersect in scholarly accounts, history textbooks, belles-lettres, and movies. Yet very often this is done by presenting the histories of the ‘Jews’

15

16 17 18

19

See Eduard Nižňanský, Židovská komunita na Slovensku medzi československou parlamentnou demokraciou a slovenským štátom v stredoeurópskom kontexte (Prešov: Universum, 1999), 13; Rebekah Klein-Pejšová, Mapping Jewish Loyalties in Interwar Slovakia (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2015), 17. Tim J. Cole, “Constructing the ‘Jew,’ Writing the Holocaust: Hungary 1920–45,” Patterns of Prejudice 33, no. 3 (1999): 20. Ibid., 19. Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945 (New York, ny: Harper Perennial, 1993); Victoria Barnett, “Reflections on the Concept of ‘Bystander,’” in Looking at the Onlookers and Bystanders: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Causes and Consequences of Passivity, ed. Henrik Edgren (Stockholm: Forum för levande historia = Living history forum, 2012), 35–52; David Cesarani and Paul A. Levine, eds., “Introduction,” in Bystanders to the Holocaust: A Re-Evaluation (London: Routledge, 2014). See Cole, “Constructing the ‘Jew,’” 19–27.

Introduction

11

and ‘Czechs’ or ‘Jews’ and ‘Slovaks’ next to each other rather than by offering an integrated account. Perhaps at least the current research on Aryanization in wartime Slovakia has demonstrated that the ‘Slovak’ Second World War cannot be really separated from the ‘Jewish’ Holocaust.20 Nevertheless, it is still the short-lived Slovak National Uprising and the German razing of the Czech town of Lidice in June 1942, following the assassination of the Deputy Reich Protector Heydrich (often ignoring even the razing of the villages of Ležáky and Javoříčko), which constitute the pillars of the Czech and Slovak master narratives when it comes to the years from 1938 to 1945.21 The book identifies anti-Jewish prejudices and tropes in the course of ­almost fifty years, focusing on the post-Munich period and the Second World War, the postwar period of reconstruction (from mid-May 1945 to late ­February 48), as well as Communist rule, with its thaws and its returns to hardline rule (from early 1948 to late 1989).22 Focusing on semantic continuities and discursive fractures, we revisit the history of the non-democratic regimes of Nazi Germany, its Czech and Slovak collaborators, and the Czechoslovak Communist dictatorship, in an effort to explain the nature of anti-Jewish prejudices. 20

21

22

Ján Hlavinka, The Holocaust in Slovakia: The Story of the Jews of Medzilaborce District (Budmerice: Vydavatel’stvo Rak, 2011); Hana Kubátová, “Popular Responses to the Plunder of Jewish Property in Wartime Slovakia,” Jewish Studies at the ceu 7 (2013): 109–26; Tatjana Tönsmeyer, “Kollaboration als handlungsleitendes Motiv? Die slowakische Elite und das ns-Regime,” in Kooperation und Verbrechen: Formen der “Kollaboration” im östlichen Europa 1939–1945, ed. Christoph Dieckmann, Babette Quinkert, and Tatjana Tönsmeyer (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003), 25–54; Tatjana Tönsmeyer, “The Robbery of Jewish Property in Eastern European States Allied with Nazi Germany,” in Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict Over Jewish Property in Europe, ed. Martin Dean, Constantin Goschler, and Philipp Ther (Oxford; New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 81–96. Michal Frankl, “The Sheep of Lidice: The Holocaust and the Construction of Czech National History,” in Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe, ed. John-Paul Himka and Joanna B. Michlic (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013), 166–94; Miroslav Michela and Michal Kšiňan, “The Slovak National Uprising,” in Komunisti a povstania: ritualizácia pripomínania si protifašistických povstaní v strednej Európe (1945–1960) = Communists and Uprisings: Ritualization of Rememberance of the Anti-Nazi Uprisings in Central Europe (1945–1960), (Kraków: Towarzystwo Słowaków w Polsce, 2012), 36–66. For important contributions on Czechs, Slovaks and Jews prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, see for example, Martin Joachim Wein, History of the Jews in the Bohemian Lands (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 22–194; Martin Joachim Wein, A History of Czechs and Jews: A Slavic Jerusalem (New York, n.y.: Routledge, 2015), 19–103; Kateřina Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia (New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012); Michal Frankl and Miloslav Szabó, Budování státu bez antisemitismu? (Praha: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2016).

12

Introduction

In other words, we identify continuities and transformations in how the Jews were perceived, in order to consider majority-minority relations and find the main influences that shaped the attitudes of political elites, as well as ordinary people, towards those considered Jewish. We draw on archival materials of various provenance, including official ­(political) accounts of events, speeches, and situation reports. The sources provide a large and inclusive picture of the various public and popular images of the ‘Jew’ in the Protectorate, the Slovak state, and postwar and Communist Czechoslovakia – and the impact of anti-Jewish stereotypes on the fate of the Jews, historical consciousness, and what today constitutes the national memory of the once united country. When compared to the East, where the Shoah assumed the form of an ‘intimate violence,’ Jew-baiting developed differently in the countries of central Europe, including the Protectorate and Slovakia.23 While the actual mass murder of the Jews took place out of the public eye, the language and practice of exclusion offered multiple ways – both during the war and after – not only for complicity and collaboration, but also for passivity and indifference. The void created by the disappearance of most of the Jews and the inability of majority societies to face their own troubled past in the aftermath created an opportunity for the already present anti-Jewish tropes to be ideologically molded for decades to come. The book is chronologically divided into two large sections. The first part centers on the period 1938–48, the second on the postwar period, especially the situation during the Communist dictatorship of 1948–89. The three years of the immediate aftermath, 1945–48, bind the two large sections together. In total, the book comprises four chapters. Chapter 1 discusses the development of the image of the ‘Jew’ and its social functions in the public during the Second World War, looking at anti-Jewish stereotypes in the official outlets of both the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovak state. Besides carefully analyzing anti-Jewish tropes voiced in the official press, film and radio, the chapter includes the presentation of the ‘Jew’ (and its impact at home) in the main alternative wartime source of information, the Czechoslovak service of the bbc. We suggest that alternative discourses existed in totalitarian society even under Nazi rule, ­although their impact is hard to gauge. Chapter 2 examines the image of the ‘Jew’ in the heterogeneous and ­often-conflicting popular opinion of the majority societies in both countries. 23

Natalia Aleksiun, “Intimate Violence: Jewish Testimonies on Victims and Perpetrators in  Eastern Galicia,” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, no. 1–2 (2017): 17–33.

Introduction

13

­ istorians have already depicted the problematic restitution and retribution H after the war. We know about the problems the survivors encountered when they attempted to reclaim their basic civil rights (including citizenship rights) and get back their property in postwar Czechoslovakia. The roots of the postwar developments are still open to interpretation.24 While we take the impact of the wartime propaganda as a starting point, we also look for other wartime sources of the postwar Jewish predicament. We investigate the nature of these anti-Jewish tropes, their origins, and their implications for the Jewish communities during and after the war. Chapter 3 looks into the image of the ‘Jew’ in the master narratives of the Second World War, arguing that the efforts to construct a particular explanation of the war were already present in the immediate aftermath (and, crucially, even earlier). It is here that we also explore the link between constructing the ‘other’ and writing (or, sometimes, whitewashing) one’s own past. While the definition of ‘resistance’ widened to include not only soldiers but also partisans, the ‘Jew’ became not only a Zionist, but also a ‘fascist’ collaborator. The final chapter concludes our exploration by looking closely at the ­image of the Jew as a ‘Zionist,’ the most persistent anti-Jewish stereotype presented by Communist journalists and broadcasters, though the origins of the ­image again clearly predate the establishment of Communist rule in February 1948. In contrast to other studies that focus on the Communist abuse of the antiZionist tropes, most prominently during the campaign accompanying the ­infamous Slánský show trial in November 1952, we consider the development of the anti-Zionist imagination in the course of more than fifty years, from the wartime Czechoslovak democratic leadership in exile to the collapse of Communism in late 1989. So who were the ‘Jews’ in the Czech and the Slovak public and popular imagination? What was the nature of some of the most persistent anti-­Jewish stereotypes in the Bohemian lands and Slovakia from the collapse of the ­interwar Czechoslovak republic to the end of Communist rule? How did these anti-Jewish tropes develop with regard to the changing political reality, and how have they themselves shaped reality? These are some of the key questions we address here. 24 Ibid.

chapter 1

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War ‘The story of a dreamful village-girl who arrives from an unspoiled rural environment to a perverted atmosphere of a big city, where she also morally sinks, turns into a double-edged tale in Harlan’s hands,’ writes Ivan Benko in the ­January 6, 1943 issue of Národnie noviny.1 The movie that Benko referred to is the now largely forgotten but in Nazi Europe widely acclaimed The Golden City (Die Goldene Stadt, 1942), directed by Veit Harlan and starring Kristina Söderbaum as the naive farm girl Anna. Harlan placed the melodrama between two settings, symbolizing morality, honesty, and principles on one hand and deviance, corruption, and deception on the other. While Anna’s hometown near České Budějovice (Budweis) represented the former, she wanted nothing more from her life than to visit the golden city of Prague. In an early sequence of the film, Anna revealed her dreams of escaping to Prague in a conversation with the engineer Christian Leidwein (acted by Paul Klinger): And the people stand there on wide old bridges and look out, just like we are right now. And then the gold towers are reflected in the waves. Ah, I want to go to Prague so badly! – Why don’t you go then? – My father doesn’t want me to. He hates the city. He says the city poisoned his life, and he doesn’t want it to poison mine too. My father says: ‘where you are at home, there it is the best. And there you should stay!’.2 Throughout the movie, the beauty of Prague, underlined by the famous tunes from Bedřich Smetana’s symphonic poem Vltava, was put in contrast with the  plain negative portrayal of the Czechs. Hence, not wanting to give ­pretense for unrest, the movie was never officially released in the Protectorate.3 The Slovak film company Nástup, established in November 1939 in order to ‘guide the Slovak film industry on new ideological foundations,’ bought a 1 Veit Harlan, Die Goldene Stadt, 1942. 2 As quoted in Ján Kalina, Usmievavé Slovensko: Autobiografománia (Bratislava: Vydavateľstvo pt, 2003), 168. 3 If ever screened in the Protectorate, it was only to German nationals. Lukáš Kašpar, Český hraný film a filmaři za protektorátu: propaganda, kolaborace, rezistence (Praha: Libri, 2007), 94; Zdeněk Štábla, Data a fakta z dějin čs. kinematografie, 1896–1945 (Praha: Československý filmový ústav, 1990), 296.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004362444_003

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

15

copy of the movie in 1942.4 The portrayal of Czech society as morally corrupt found good reception in Slovakia, as it matched the image of an iniquitous country that Slovak propaganda was trying to build for decades.5 The G ­ olden City is certainly more light-hearted than the film Harlan is more known for, the prototypical antisemitic movie of all times, Jew Süss (Jud Süss, 1940). While representing a different genre, both movies revolve around blood contamination: in The Golden City, this threat is articulated by the Czech Toni, who ­impregnates Anna; in Jew Süss, it is the Jew Joseph Oppenheimer (Ferdinand Marian) who rapes ­Dorothea Sturmer. (Harlan’s wife, Kristina Söderbaum, played both ­female characters.) In many ways, these films end on the same note. In Jew Süss, ­Oppenheimer is sentenced to death and executed, while the Jews are expelled from the city of Württenberg. In the original script of The Golden City, Harlan lets Anna’s father die, heartbroken by his daughter’s life in Prague. After a private showing, however, Joseph Goebbels disapproved of the fact that the innocent and not the guilty die, prompting the director to change the storyline. At the end, it was Anna who drowned herself in a swamp, reenacting thereby her mother’s death.6 In both movies, death is presented as the only option to rid oneself of infection and purify the body. Throughout the war, film, radio, and press served the purpose of molding popular opinion in the Protectorate and Slovakia, both by turning the attention away from the front news as well as by connecting one’s own actions with larger sociopolitical events (for example, by making a case that the so-called solution of the Jewish question was a public necessity or by feeding into fear by disclosing those who in any way manifested dissenting views). Hence, by looking for internal and external enemies, that is those now labeled Bolsheviks, traitors, ‘dogs’ (the exile government in London), and the Jews, the propaganda of the Protectorate and wartime Slovakia also helped construct an image of the ‘new’ Czech and Slovak. Research on the anti-Jewish propaganda in the Protectorate and Slovakia has demonstrated the duality of the process, where attacks on the Jews went hand in hand with efforts to construct a homogenous society. On the basis of the existing scholarship, we can hence summarize the main objectives of the anti-Jewish propaganda in both territories as follows:

4 nfa, Nástup, f.n. 3. Annual Report for 1940. 5 See e.g. Ján Smrek, Poézia moja láska 2 (Bratislava: Slovenský spisovateľ, 1989), 90–91. 6 Frank Noack, Veit Harlan: The Life and Work of a Nazi Filmmaker (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2016), 199–200.

16

chapter 1

1.

Persuade the majority Czech and Slovak people that the solution of the Jewish question was in their interest; Convince the public that – in the Slovak case – there would also be material gains from the ‘disappearance’ of Jews from social and economic life. On the contrary, by presenting defamatory reports about the leaders of the Czech economic life, who were interested in acquiring the Jewish property, Nazi propaganda in the Protectorate fostered the exclusion of Czechs from the Aryanization campaign;7 Denounce those who transgressed anti-Jewish laws and regulations – both Jews and non-Jews, in the preparation for a complete segregation, and as a means to maintain fear in the society; Suppress voices that raised questions about whether what was happening to the Jews was unjust, inhumane and contrary to Christian doctrine, or to the national tradition; Fight against the presentation of the First Czechoslovak Republic as the symbol of Czech statehood, and against the Czechoslovak exiles and ­resistance in general, by presenting them as in the thrall to the Jews.

2.

3. 4. 5.

Overall, the propaganda also served as a tool for the radicalization of anti-­ Jewish policies, when journalists, broadcasters, and collaborationist politicians called for the introduction of new anti-Jewish laws, ghettoization of the Jews, and later also a final physical segregation of the Jews in the form of deportations. In a long run, the propaganda (initially perhaps inadvertently, unaware of the final aims still debated by the Nazi leadership) prepared the grounds for the extermination of the Jews.8 This chapter tracks the image of the ‘Jew’ as painted by the official propaganda as well as the British Broadcasting Company (bbc), as the key alternative source of information for both the Protectorate and Slovakia. At the core of this chapter are metaphors and allegories of the ‘Jew,’ as well as how these were further exploited to exclude Jews from the Czech and Slovak realm. We examine the images of the ‘Jew’ in film, radio, and press in order to reconstruct the public portrayal of the perceived ‘Jewish enemy.’ As explained above, the image of the ‘Jew’ cannot be examined separately from the image of the ‘Czech’ (in Slovakia) and the ‘Slovak’ (in the P ­ rotectorate). In Slovakia, anti-Jewish propaganda used the stereotypical ‘Czech’ to further separate the Slovak state from the joint past, the former Czechoslovak r­ epublic, 7 Jaroslava Milotová, “Die Protektoratspresse und die ‘Judenfrage,’” Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente, 1996, 153–83. 8 Ibid., 164f.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

17

as well as to fight against any of those who saw the country’s postwar future in alliance with the Czechs (especially following the suppression of the Slovak National Uprising in the autumn of 1944).

Czechs and Slovaks Picture Each Other

The Czechs played an important role in the Slovak imagination.9 This applied also vice versa, despite the disproportionately low representation of Slovaks in the Bohemian lands.10 Published recollections of Josef Jirásek, one of many Czech gymnasium (secondary grammar school) teachers in interwar ­Slovakia forced to leave in 1939 in connection with the ‘emancipation’ frenzy of the ­Slovak wartime leadership, shed light on how Czechs and Slovaks viewed each other. If the Czechs were presented as ‘occupiers,’ arriving to ‘plunder Slovakia’ throughout the existence of the first joint republic, Slovakia acquired a rather romantic place in Czech minds:11 I used to dream about Slovakia even in primary school. Our teacher taught us to sing: ‘look at the foot of Kriváň Mountain, what a wonderful world there is....’ When the sun shines on the mountains, it must be truly beautiful. How beautiful it must be at the foot of Kriváň!12 As Michal Frankl and Miloslav Szabó have shown, the place that Slovakia employed in Czech ‘colonial’ phantasies of the early 20th century had much to do with antisemitic imagination in the Czechoslovak republic. Slovakia became a place ‘connecting both forms of alleged Jewish disruptive action: economic and political (by spreading Bolshevism).’13 The authors demonstrate the interplay between antisemitism, the formation of Czechoslovakia as a nation state, and ‘the paternalistic approach towards an exotic, weak Slovakia supposedly threatened by Jews.’ They support this notion with examples from Venkov, a journal of the most influential party in interwar Czechoslovakia, the Republican 9 10

11 12 13

Milan Kučera and Zdeněk Pavlík, “Czech and Slovak Demography,” in The End of Czechoslovakia, ed. Jiří Musil (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000), 24. Whereas Czechs in Slovakia formed 2.5 and 3.7 percent of the total population (in 1921 and 1930 numbers), Slovaks formed less than 0.5 percent of the population in the western part of Czechoslovakia. Josef Jirásek, Slovensko na rozcestí, 1918–1938. (Brno: Tiskové a nakladatelské podniky ‘Zář,’ 1947), 157. Ibid., 12. Frankl and Szabó, Budování státu bez antisemitismu?, 303.

18

chapter 1

Party of Farmers and Peasants (Republikánská strana zemědělského a malorolnického lidu).14 In a spring 1919 issue, the dramatist and publicist ­Jaroslav Hilbert theorized on what he knew of Slovakia. While admitting that his knowledge was based only on bits and pieces of the folklore or on the i­mage of the Tatra Mountains, it was the ‘Jew’ who came to his mind when thinking of Slovakia: I was in some village near Smokovec when a carriage drove by carrying a portly Hungarian Jew and his wife. Local children were running behind them begging for money, and the Jew amused himself by letting the children run a long way before he finally pulled out some small coins and threw them behind him onto the dusty road, the way one throws feed to chickens.15 Fight against enemies of the Slovak people belonged to the aims of the Slovak People’s Party, established in 1918 by Father Andrej Hlinka. As one of its principal aims, the party professed to protect the country and its people against the Czechs. The religiously indifferent Czechs ‘came to take the language and faith of the Slovaks,’ was one of the main charges made against the joint republic and the Prague administration by Hlinka.16 Czechs living in Slovakia were turned into a political problem especially with the economic crisis of the early 1930s and the continuous policy of the Prague government to employ Czech nationals in Slovakia. Hlinka spun this into an electoral issue (by 1925, the ­party adopted the leader’s name, turning into Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party), requesting not only political self-determination but also the favoring of ­Slovaks and limiting the number of Czechs on the labor market.17 With the establishment of ‘independent’ Slovakia in March 1939, propaganda of the new regime continued to twist the ‘Czech question’ with similar verve as the ‘Jewish question.’ Both Czechs and Jews of Slovakia were termed disloyal and foreign to the country and its people, understood now along strict ethnic lines.18 A pronouncement of Alexander Mach, the leader of the paramilitary 14 15 16

17 18

Ibid., 160. Jaroslav Hilbert quoted in ibid., 161. Daniel Luther, “Česi v Bratislave 1919–1945: Adaptácia a marginalizácia,” S­ lovenský národopis 4 (2013): 371; Yeshayahu Jelinek, “Storm-Troopers in Slovakia: The Rodobrana and the Hlinka Guard,” Journal of Contemporary History 6, no. 3 (1971): 97–98. Luther, “Česi v Bratislave 1919–1945: Adaptácia a marginalizácia,” 371. Out of the 17,443 people claiming Czech nationality in the census of December 15, 1940, only 3,024 indicated to have Slovak citizenship. See Štatistické správy, 2, 1941, series A/1,

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

19

Hlinka Guard and the Propaganda Office (Úrad propagandy), in Rišňovce in January 1939, is often given as an example of very early and very radical antiJewish rhetoric. What the following excerpt also shows, however, is how the images of a ‘Jew’ and a ‘Czech’ mutually reinforced their separation from a ­reconstructed category of ‘Slovaks’: Another 2,700 Czechs left the Ministry of Transportation during the last few weeks. It is not done out of hatred of the Czechs but out of love for one’s own people. We wish the Czechs to be happy in their own home, but we want to be the masters here in Slovakia. […] They have put matters right everywhere with Jews who own gold, jewels, and money, and we too will do the same with the Jews. The strength of the Slovak land lies in work and whoever doesn’t work here will not eat here either. We shall take back what was stolen from those who stole it! This is the practical solution to the entire Jewish question.19 What is more, despite the declining numbers of Czechs in Slovakia – from 77,000 in 1938 to about 31,000 in 1943 – the role of the Czech question seemed to be escalating in Slovakia with time. Especially during and after the suppression of the Slovak National Uprising, the propaganda skillfully played with the language, speaking now of those behind the rebellion as ‘Czech-Bolshevik troops,’ ‘minions’ of the Czechoslovak republic, and ‘[a]nti-Christian Jews, mainly nonbelieving Czechs, atheist Bolsheviks and a few classic mammonseeking Slovaks.’20 The image of the ‘Czech’ thus played a prominent role in wartime Slovakia, in the effort to construct a new meaning of identifying as a Slovak. It was, however, the image of the ‘Jew,’ which became to dominate in both territories as the epitome of the main enemy and alien element already shortly after the disintegration of the First Czechoslovak Republic in 1938.

The ‘Jew’ and 1938

In the Protectorate and Slovakia, Jews were in public presented as a foreign element (and what constituted foreign included but was not limited to charges that they had different religious customs and traditions, spoke different ­languages,

19 20

no. 6, p. 1–2 quoted in Jan Rychlík, Češi a Slováci ve 20. století: spolupráce a konflikty 1914– 1992 (Praha: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů; Vyšehrad, 2012), 213. Slovák, January 8, 1939, 4. Gardista, October 11, 1944, 1; Gardista, September 10, 1944, 1; Slovák, November 22, 1944, 1.

20

chapter 1

and had character traits incompatible with values shared by the majority societies). The antisemitic campaign against them started already shortly after the Munich Agreement, at the time of the so-called Czecho-Slovak Second Republic (October 1, 1938–March 14, 1939). A constitutional law on the autonomy of Slovakia was adopted in Prague on November 22, 1938, turning the country into an asymmetrical federal state.21 Along with the central government and the joint National Assembly, Slovakia had now also an autonomous government (with Jozef Tiso becoming the first and only prime minister) and a separate legislative body, the Diet of the Slovak Land (Snem Slovenskej krajiny). The post-Munich governments soon began to curb civic liberties and institutionalized censorship. Scholars believe that these interventions of the central government made the following frontal attack on civic society and liberties by the Nazi authorities, after March 15, 1939, much easier.22 The Czech press was largely under state control already before the German troops crossed the borders of Bohemia and Moravia (the Central Censorship Committee at the ­Ministry of the Interior was created on September 26, 1938, days ahead of ­Munich). The increase in the numbers of antisemitic articles in the ­Czecho-Slovak press led the Committee already on October 13, 1938 to issue a directive no. 18 that prohibited the publication of articles that would incite ‘hatred, resentment, revenge or violence against the Jews.’23 The directive, however, was largely ignored, especially once anti-Jewish articles – motivated by ­socio-­economic and national sentiments – began to be published by the press associated with the Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants (the Agrarians). The press, including Venkov, and Večer (both eventually associated with the Party of National Unity [Strana národní jednoty], after its formation in ­November 1938), called for limitations on the Jews’ employment in certain professions, such as medical doctors and lawyers. Journalists also suggested that only the Jews who belonged to the ‘Czech culture’ should be allowed to stay in the country. The press prepared the ground for the introduction of the first anti-Jewish laws, which targeted Jewish refugees and recent migrants,24 21

22 23

24

Valerián Bystrický, “Slovakia from the Munich Conference to the Declaration of Independence,” in Slovakia in History, ed. Mikuláš Teich, Dušan Kováč, and Martin D. Brown (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 160. Milotová, “Die Protektoratspresse und die ‘Judenfrage,’” 159–62. Petr Bednařík, “Antisemitismus v českém tisku v období druhé republiky,” in Židé v Čechách: sborník příspěvků ze semináře konaného 24. a 25. října 2006 v Liberci, ed. Vlastimila Hamáčková, Monika Hanková, and Markéta Lhotová (Praha: Židovské muzeum v Praze ve spolupráci se Severočeským muzeem v Liberci, 2007), 36. Michal Frankl, “Prejudiced Asylum: Czechoslovak Refugee Policy, 1918–60,” Journal of Contemporary History 49, no. 3 (2014): 537–55.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

21

and ­introduced limitations on the Jews in civil service. Various professional associations also excluded Jews from their ranks, and the Jews were quickly removed from any prominent positions in cultural life (the most well-known is the case of a popular film actor and comedian Hugo Haas).25 The attack on the Jews was part of a larger political campaign that rejected the previous liberal democratic regime and the alleged role of the Jews in the political life and economy of interwar Czechoslovakia. In contrast, the Second Republic aligned their policies closer with Nazi Germany, though the radical plans for a complete exclusion of the Jews from Czech society were not executed, also because of foreign political considerations and the need to maintain economic relations with the Western countries, in particular the United States.26 Diplomatic and economic considerations played an equally important role for the newly appointed government of autonomous Slovakia. ­According to the First Vienna Award of November 2, 1938, adopted in a direct consequence of the Munich Agreement, Czecho-Slovakia was obliged to cede largely ­Magyar-populated territories of southern Slovakia and southern Subcarpathian Rus’ (the easternmost province of Czechoslovakia) to Hungary. This was a major diplomatic debacle for the Slovak leadership that only recently received the long-demanded autonomy. Despite Slovaks positioning themselves as an ally of the Germans and Italians, the agreement ridiculed the Slovak case. The First Vienna Award was not only a diplomatic but also an economic blow ­(Slovakia lost approximately 40% of its arable land). Propaganda blamed the central Czecho-Slovak government, and the Jews for the Award. The Jews were accused of siding with the Hungarians, and ­labeled ‘chameleons’ to highlight their alleged disloyalty to the Slovak people and the country.27 Other charges were added, including that the Jews used the border dispute to smuggle possessions out of Slovakia – pointing thereby to the Jewish asserted ‘disproportionate’ wealth.28

25 26 27 28

Petr Bednařík, Arizace české kinematografie (Praha: Karolinum, 2003), 10–1. For an analysis of the press see Bednařík, “Antisemitismus v českém tisku v období druhé republiky,” 32–45. Národnie noviny, October 20, 1938, 2. See also Klein-Pejšová, Mapping Jewish Loyalties in Interwar Slovakia. Michala Lônčíková, “Frekvencia antisemitskej propagandy v období 1938–1939 na Slovensku vo vybranej periodickej tlači,” in Antisemitizmus a propaganda, ed. Eduard Nižňanský and Michala Lônčíková (Bratislava: Stimul, 2014), 64.

22

chapter 1

Nevertheless, it was precisely the harsh anti-Hungarian rhetoric that fostered the ­Slovak antisemitic policy after Munich.29 Being termed unreliable and untrustworthy, the Jews were accused of plotting with the Hungarians against the Slovaks (in Chapter 3 we will see how this charge was picked up again in the aftermath of the Holocaust). In the midst of this antisemitic hysteria and with the indent to turn the attention from the fiasco the government faced, Tiso authorized a plan prepared by Jozef Faláth, who headed the provisional center for solving the Jewish question in Slovakia, and Adolf Eichmann to deport 7,500 Jews (mainly but not only without Czecho-Slovak citizenship) across the new Slovak-Hungarian border. In the end many anti-Jewish laws proposed during the period of Slovak autonomy were not adopted, but the November 1938 deportations manifested that there was no place for the Jews in the new order.30 While being vocal in their attacks on the Jews since the declaration of autonomy, the domestic Slovak press kept quiet about the deportations, probably not wanting to stir unwanted attention. However, efforts to keep the 1938 deportations under wraps failed, as the events were closely monitored by a number of foreign journals (ranging from the influential Nazi periodical Völkischer Beobachter, the New York Times, to the London-based Jewish Chronicle). So when Národnie noviny finally covered the topic in its January 1939 issue, they focused on debunking information spread by the foreign (especially ­Anglo-American) press, accusing thereby the Jews of spreading lies, holding the country and its future at ransom and even returning to the Slovak territory in larger numbers than those initially removed: … and when the Slovak government ordered the deportation of a handful of healthy Schwarzes, Weiszes, and Reiszes into now occupied territory, because that is where they belong, the entire world press, that is, the Jewish press in Brussels, Paris, and New York, clamoured for help. And they blackmailed us and made threats that they would cancel orders, that countries under Jewish influence would not buy anything from us, would not lend us a penny if we touched so much as a hair on the head of a single Jew, if we drove even one Jew out of the country. These ‘Heralds’ of 29

Rebekah Klein-Pejšová, “‘Abandon Your Role as Exponents of the Magyars’: Contested Jewish Loyalty in Interwar (Czecho)Slovakia,” ajs Review 33, no. 2 (2009): 341–62; KleinPejšová, Mapping Jewish Loyalties in Interwar Slovakia; James Mace Ward, “The 1938 First Vienna Award and the Holocaust in Slovakia,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 29, no. 1 (2015): 76–108. 30 Nižňanský, Židovská komunita na Slovensku medzi československou parlamentnou demokraciou a slovenským štátom v stredoeurópskom kontexte.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

23

course do not comment on the fact that the high and mighty gentlemen of the Jewish [izraelitský] Israelite religion – Schwarz, Weisz, and Reisz – returned to Slovakia the next day threefold: with their aunts, mothers-inlaw, parents, brothers, and so on, all of Israelite origin.31 Evidently, anti-Jewish propaganda gained momentum already before the ­German occupation of the rump Bohemia and Moravia, and the declaration of Slovak independence. However, it was only after March 1939, when the antiJewish message became to play a dominant role in all media outlets – film, radio broadcasts and press – in both territories. Film Liberating the country from Czech, Hungarian, and Jewish influence became a mantra for the regime of wartime Slovakia, and this ‘emancipation’ was to take place in film industry as well. While promising to place film on new ideological grounds, the Slovak film company Nástup achieved little beyond ousting Czech and Jewish officials from the Association of Cinematographers (Spolok kinematografov, the only permitted organization of Slovak filmmakers).32 Besides a number of short reportage and documentary clips on topics ranging from celebrations of the Slovak independence (Svorne napred, 1944) to artificial fibers (Umelé vlákna, 1943), no feature film was produced in Slovakia during the war.33 In comparison, 114 evening movies were produced in the Protectorate between 1939–45.34 What is more, the only Slovak full-length documentary movie completed by the spring of 1945 was Ivan Július Kovačevič’s Od Tatier po Azovské more (From the Tatras to the Sea of Azov, 1942), portraying the advancements of the Slovak army on the Eastern front in 1941–42, following the declaration of war against the Soviet Union. The documentary begins with an ideological declaration, claiming to ‘depict only a fraction of what the heroism of soldiers on the Eastern front brought to the Slovak nation. Let it be an expression of our unbreakable hope that through the sacrifices of our sons we deserve a fair share of the new Europe.’35 31 Národnie noviny, as quoted in ibid., 88. 32 Slovák, December 23, 1938, 3. 33 nfa, Nástup, f. 5. Annual Report for 1943. 34 Kašpar, Český hraný film a filmaři za protektorátu, 90. 35 Ivan J. Kovačevič, Od Tatier po Azovské more, 1942.

24

chapter 1

During the subsequent sixty minutes, the documentary presents the objectives of the country’s political representation to be in line with those of the army. In one sequence, the camera turns away from scenes around Kiev and focuses on President Jozef Tiso’s visit to the front. Soldiers are sitting closely by the radio receiver, listening carefully to information about the president’s journey. Kovačevič used the newscast as a shortcut to reproduce ideological claims, including that the role of the Slovak army was one of mere liberators and that Bolshevism represented a threat to Christianity.36 The diagonal of Bolshevism on one end and blasphemy on the other end – as we will see especially on the example of press – was wrapped in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. Bolshevism and blasphemy became so strongly connected to the Jews that they did not even need to be explained. As Slovak film production was virtually non-existent, cinemas in Slovakia were playing foreign, mostly German movies (The Golden City mentioned earlier was one of 125 predominantly German feature-films screened in S­ lovakia in 1942).37 These movies turned into an effective tool for spreading Nazi i­ deology, as the prototypical antisemitic movie Jew Süss demonstrates.38 The Slovak premiere of Jew Süss was accompanied by complimentary press coverage, highlighting its dramatic and ideological achievements. The movie, wrote Slovák, unveiled the ‘parasitic race’ in its entirety and remained gripping, with twists that keep the audience fixed to the screen. This was a prime example of a film ‘giving voice to political ideas.’39 Employees of the Central Economic Office (Ústredný hospodársky úrad), administering the Aryanization process in Slovakia, attended the premiere, and the press urged public and state institutions to make the viewing of the film mandatory for their staff as well.40 The importance of Jew Süss reached well beyond a historical depiction of antisemitic inspirations. Wolfgang Wolfram von Wolmar, leading a group called Press Group (Gruppe Presse) at the Cultural and Political Office of the Reich Protector’s Office, regulating media in the Protectorate, advised Czech journalists to not only comment on the movie itself but use it to dwell on broader ideological questions. This was an opportunity to present the ideological view of the new regime on the Jewish question. Hence the journalists 36 37 38 39 40

Václav Macek and Jelena Paštéková, Dejiny slovenskej kinematografie (Martin: Osveta, 1997), 82. Ibid., 85. Ivan Kamenec, Spoločnosť, politika, historiografia: pokrivené zrkadlo dejín slovenskej spoločnosti v dvadsiatom storočí (Bratislava: Historický ústav sav, 2009), 119. Slovák, November 30, 1940, 7. Gardista, December 13, 1940, 5.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

25

were asked to publish editorials that would review the artistic qualities of the film, but also educate the Czechs about the threat the Jews presented for the ‘Aryan’ population: This film, which stands out for its exceptional dramatic quality, makes it clear how Jews work, how they are able to sneak into a foreign nation in order to become masters of the fate not only of individuals but also of nations and princes. The film is full of ideas, which it may not deal with directly, but it presents an opportunity to compare the history of one’s own nation with the history of Jewry in Germany. It therefore provides very rewarding subject matter and material for judging the Jewish question.41 The German authorities in the Protectorate used the premiere for a political manifestation that also implicated the Czech political and cultural elites. Members of the Protectorate government attended the event and the celebratory athmosphere was brought about by the Czech philharmonic orchestra performing Beethoven. The actual response of the Czech (and Slovak) population is, however, unclear. The Nazi intelligence agencies on several occasions complained that cinemas in the Protectorate intentionally released the film at the same time as the Czech patriotic film Babička (Grandma). Sold-out screenings of the Czech film allegedly sharply contrasted with the lack of interest in the antisemitic film.42 On the other hand, authors of other reports suggested that, for example in Moravská Ostrava, Czechs attended the screenings in high numbers and cinemas had to add special screenings to accommodate the public interest.43 The Protectorate press – although we need to acknowledge the problematic nature of this source – praised the Czech population for their interest in the film, despite the efforts of the whispering propaganda that called for a boycott.44 In any case, the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London, the diplomatic representatives of the resistance movement, were concerned about the impact of the film on the Czech society. The official propaganda associated 41

42 43 44

Jakub Končelík, Barbara Köpplová, and Jitka Kryšpínová, Český tisk pod vládou Wolfganga Wolframa von Wolmara: stenografické zápisy Antonína Fingera z protektorátních tiskových porad 1939–1941 (Praha: Karolinum, 2003), 230. na, Praha, úřp, 114-304-1, sd daily situation report, December 20, 1940. na, Praha, úřp, 114-307-2, sd daily situation report, January 11, 1941. Helena Krejčová, “‘Jsem nevinen?’ Süss, Harlan, Čáp a jiní,” Iluminace. Časopis pro teorii, historii a estetiku filmu 5, no. 3 (1993): 77–80. Allegedly 50,000 people attended the film screening in Prague (the report did not differentiate between Czechs and Germans).

26

chapter 1

with the release of the film moved the exiles to issue a broadcast that warned Czechs against attending the screenings and used this opportunity to present the Germans as the main evil for the Czech people: The Prague wireless says that you yourselves know well how the Jews succeeded in tormenting and harming you, how many families they destroyed, how many marriages they broke up, how many of our girls they corrupted, how much despair they brought about. […] The Prague wireless, for instance, says that in the Castle of Prague Jews made the decisions just as they did in Stuttgart. Good – but this could be very well shown in some film which could be shown in all the cinemas of Prague. Such a film would show how Jews hung out a flag with the Jewish sevenpointed [sic!] star on the ancient Castle of the Kings of Bohemia, how they declared a Jewish Protectorate over the Czech State, how they trampled on the Czechs, how they destroyed Czech economic life, how they murdered Czech students and destroyed their schools…45 While the Germans used the film to attack the Jews, the exiles turned it into an attack against the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. All in all, film presented a textbook opportunity to paint ideological constructions, and make combinations otherwise difficult to visualize. Ideas the films were ‘loaded with’ were then to be taken up by the press and further twisted to fit the local context. Suprisingly, neither the Germans nor their local Czech collaborators attempted to use this medium to spread the antisemitic message in the following years. There were only two Czech films, Jan Cimbura (1940) and Velká přehrada (The Great Dam, 1942) which – in various degrees – employed antisemitic themes. Most significantly, František Čáp’s Jan Cimbura – based on a story from a Czech village by Jindřich Šimon Baar – includes a scene where women destroy the local inn, run by a Jew, because local villagers spend their money on alcohol. The Jew, as the epitome of exploitation and harmful influences, is then – penniless – forced to leave the village. The film was released at a time when the Germans began to prepare the deportations of the Jews from the Protectorate to the East. Scholars suggest, however, that the film itself – or, rather, the antisemitic sequence in the movie – did not receive any extensive treatment in the Czech newspapers, though the situation in Czech towns, with the upcoming deportations of the Jews, was soon to resemble the ­cinematograhic template.46 45 ačro, bbc 1939–1945, box 3, bbc broadcast, December 2, 1940. 46 Bednařík, Arizace české kinematografie, 99; Krejčová, “‘Jsem nevinen?’ Süss, Harlan, Čáp a jiní.”

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

27

Apart from these two Czech feature films, anti-Jewish topics did not play any prominent role in Czech movies. Similarly, Slovak reportages and documentary clips produced during the war focused almost exclusively on highlighting the advances – historical, technological, and military – of the new state. Hence, with respect to the cinematography in both countries, anti-Jewish tropes were largely an imported article. The situation was, however, d­ ifferent when it comes to public broadcasting.

‘Kohn Greets Sara’:47 Radio Waves and the Image of the Jew

Radio broadcasting was another outlet that formed the image of the ‘Jew’ in the Protectorate and (to a limited extent also) in Slovakia during the war. The number of radio receivers among people increased in the interwar period, ­becoming one of the main avenues how to get political messages to a broad section of the population. As political authorities in both territories wanted to ensure that the message reached also those who did not own radio sets or listen to particular broadcasts, excerpts of aired political speeches, but also political commentaries, were later published in the legal newspapers. In this way, propaganda offices made the speeches – originally aired via the radio – ­available to the public beyond the actual airtime.48 Radio waves became an important tool for spreading anti-Jewish lies, but they also allowed the Czechoslovak exiles in Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States to countenance the effects of the Nazi, Protectorate and Slovak propaganda. Significant differences between the two teritories need to be addressed before elaborating on the anti-Jewish propaganda on Czech and Slovak radio waves. It is estimated that there were over a million receivers for the population of approximately seven million in Bohemia and Moravia.49 Radio broadcasting reached an important part of the Protectorate population, especially when taking into account that listening to the radio was also a social occasion (and those without a receiver would frequent friends’ households to hear the latest news.) Radio remained an important means of communication in the 47

48

49

Peter Richard Pinard, Broadcast Policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia: Power Structures, Programming, Cooperation and Defiance at Czech Radio 1939–1945 (Frankfurt am Main; New York: Peter Lang, 2015). Michala Lônčíková, “Was the Antisemitic Propaganda a Catalyst for Tensions in the ­Slovak-Jewish Relations?,” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, no. 1–2 (2017): 76–98. Jakub Končelík, Pavel Večeřa, and Petr Orság, Dějiny českých médií 20. století (Praha: Portál, 2010), 111f. There were 1,024,507 receivers in the Protectorate.

28

chapter 1

Protectorate despite the fact that the number of listeners decreased during the war, especially in the case of the illegal broadcasting from abroad, because the authorities on several occasions confiscated radio sets in selected localities and the Germans used radio jamming devices to block the reception of foreign broadcasting.50 In Slovakia, however, there were only about a 100,000 receivers for approximately two and a half million people.51 What also needs to be taken into consideration is the fact that sizeable portions of the Slovak territory did not have access to electricity, let alone to radio transmitters.52 The situation slightly improved with the installation of a new transmission tower near Piešťany in 1942.53 All in all, however, when compared to the Protectorate, the Slovak ­Radio (Slovenský rozhlas) faced objective difficulties in molding popular opinion. Perhaps because radio recievers were such a rare commodity in Slovakia, they were also in high demand in the Aryanization process. Scholars suggest that the number of applicants for radio sets confiscated from politically unreliable elements, especially the Jews, speaks for the popularity of radio broadcasting. As was the case of other goods taken over from the Jews and promised to the majority Slovaks, governmental agencies such as the organizations of the Hlinka Guard and Hlinka Youth, along with schools and cultural institutions, were given a priority.54 Given the lack of available archival sources (when it comes to the political programs aired during the war, we often have access only to the titles and not their content), we can only hypothesize about many aspects of the wartime radio broadcasting in Slovakia. The structure of the program, as well as the evident focus on the comedy genre, speaks for the argument presented by Vladimír Daxler, namely that Slovakia was on the airwaves of the Slovak R ­ adio presented as ‘a peaceful country, as the proverbial unharmed island in the sea tossed by storms of war.’55 Certainly, listeners hungry for information were given plentiful information – but only on pre-selected issues, such as the regime’s successes, building of new factories and railways: ‘Celebrations, ­public 50

Ondřej Koutek, “Zahraniční odboj na vlnách bbc. Československé vysílání z Londýna 1939–1945” Paměť a dějiny 8, no. 1 (2014): 36f. 51 Oktáv Mikan, Rozhlasová ročenka za období od 1. ledna 1938 do 15. března 1939 (Praha: Český rozhlas, 1939), 38. 52 Kamenec, Spoločnosť, politika, historiografia, 80. 53 Vladimír Draxler, “Slovenský rozhlas 1938–1945,” Acta Universitatis Carolinae. Studia T ­ erritorialia, no. 1–2 (2013): 156. 54 Lônčíková, “Was the Antisemitic Propaganda a Catalyst for Tensions in the Slovak-Jewish Relations?,” 84. 55 Draxler, “Slovenský rozhlas 1938–1945,” 150.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

29

speeches, military parades and religious festivals occupied a steady spot on the broadcast. Various institutions created in connection with the establishment of the Slovak state tried to make their existence known, and officers took it for granted to use the radio for this.’56 Shifting public attention away from the conflict was an important propaganda aim, and Slovak Radio worked hard to achieve this, even at the cost of erasing almost all notions of the war from its repertoire. Again, in sharp contrast to the Protectorate, Slovak Radio did not take part in the anti-Jewish hysteria that we will see, for example, in the pages of the legal press. During the war, Slovak Radio employed people of Jewish origin, first openly (by seeking to obtain exemptions for them) and when this was no longer possible, by hiring them under false names. This was also the case of the man who opened this chapter – Ivan Benko, the author of the review of Harlan’s The Golden City – who was behind much of the cabaret plays and satirical sketches played on Slovak Radio. Ivan Benko, Peter Karvaš, Ján Robert Lipka, Jozef Repka and Ladislav Schwartz were all aliases of Ján Kalina, whom the wartime legislation had labelled a ‘Jew.’ Kalina, who at first used his real name even on Slovak Radio, elaborates on the position of his employer vis-à-vis the Jews and official antisemitism in one of his three autobiographical books. Here he recalls a meeting with Anton Prídavok, head of Slovak Radio in Prešov, in the fall of 1939: Doctor, if you wish to work with us in future, he informed me, you need to find a pseudonym. Local members of the Hlinka Guard are already pointing out that we have a non-Aryan writing for us. He pronounced the word ‘non-Aryan’ with embarrassment and a hint of irony.57 Prídavok provided Kalina with papers that presented him as ‘irreplaceable’ and exempted him from the 1942 deportations. Kalina was not the only Jew (a category he himself would probably not use) in and on Slovak Radio. Besides Richard Reimann (Rajman), director, or Ferenc Ungváry, the head of the Hungarian program, racial laws were bent also when it came to Emil Rusko, the director of Slovak Radio.58 While Slovak Radio focused on taking the minds of the public away from the war, official places in Bratislava feared the effect of one outlet that offered an unwanted perspective on the world conflict and Slovakia’s role in it – the bbc 56 Ibid. 57 Kalina, Usmievavé slovensko, 118. 58 Draxler, “Slovenský rozhlas 1938–1945,” 163.

30

chapter 1

broadcasts from London (and the Voice of America), organized by the leaders of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and aligned exile bodies, under the supervision of the British authorities. The Czechoslovak bbc broadcasting started in early September 1939. Slovak language was first heard on the bbc shortly thereafter, in early December 1939. It is impossible to give any definite conclusions about the numbers of Czechs or Slovaks who regularly listened to the London broadcasts, but historians usually suggest that a large number of Czechs turned their sets to the bbc waves. Following the temporary suspension of Soviet broadcasting in Czech language in early 1940, the bbc also became the prime source of alternative information for the Slovaks.59 The London radio, as it was often called, was definitely the more important alternative source of information, far more so than the relatively insignificant illegal press. Already in September 1939, the Germans in the Protectorate made listening to the foreign broadcasting illegal and punishable by prison terms, or even with the death penalty. Similar punishment applied to people who would spread reports they heard over the bbc (the so-called whispering propaganda). The Slovak authorities at first did not ban tuning into foreign broadcasting (this only changed in July 1942). However, a law on the protection of public order, adopted in December 1939, did threaten those who would spread information heard on ‘enemy’ airwaves by a fine of up to 10,000 Slovak Crowns or an imprisonment for up to six months. This law also allowed the punishment of those who had knowledge of others listening to broadcasts from London or Moscow but failed to report them to the authorities. While archival sources document denunciations made against neighbors and acquaintances for listening to foreign news, as well as fines given and radios confiscated in raids against the whispering propaganda, the ban was never rigorously enforced.60 During the war, Slovak and German intelligence services complained about people listening to the (especially) London broadcast, sometimes even in large numbers and in public places.61 Regardless of more serious threats, many Czechs listened to the bbc and the Protectorate authorities were aware 59 60

61

Ibid., 150. Jan Rychlík, “Perzekúcia odporcov režimu na Slovensku 1938–1945. (K problematike charakteru ľudáckeho režimu),” in Slovenská republika 1939–1945 očami mladých historikov iv. Zborník príspevkov z medzinárodnej vedeckej konferencie, Banská Bystrica 14–15. apríla 2005, ed. Michal Šmigeľ and Peter Mičko (Banská Bystrica: Katedra histórie fhv umb – Ústav vedy a výskumu umb v Banskej Bystrici, 2005), 126. Ondrej Podolec, “Ticho pred búrkou. (Sonda do nálad slovenskej spoločnosti na jar 1944),” in Slovenská republika 1939–1945 očami mladých historikov iii., ed. Martin Lacko (Trnava: Katedra histórie ff ucm, 2004), 23.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

31

of this  fact. For example, in January 1943, the exiles in London publicized a speech by the Protectorate Minister of Education and the National Enlightenment, Emanuel Moravec, as proof that ‘Czechoslovakia listens to the London broadcasts, in spite of the death penalty and the German and Quisling denials.’62 Hence, attempts were later made to block the bbc airwaves, by removing short-wave receivers from radio sets or by putting a seal on receivers, disallowing listeners to switch from the proscribed radio station. Similar steps were taken in Slovakia. To complicate the listening to London airwaves, radio sets of a broad category of ‘unreliable concessioners’ were sealed already in August-September 1939, disallowing them to tune up other station than the official ­Slovak (or, at times, German) broadcasting.63 On the other hand, the Jews, as the alleged main source of whispering propaganda, had to hand over their radio sets soon after the outbreak of the war (in September 1939 in the Protectorate and the following year in Slovakia).64 Hence people in the Protectorate and Slovakia had access to two diametrically different sources of radio broadcasting during the war – either directly or indirectly by word of mouth. Both the official propaganda and the bbc, in various degrees, addressed the Jewish question and attempted to impose their ideological view. Furthermore, Jewish topics became a part of the political and ideological struggle between the Czech activist journalists and collaborators on one side, and the Czechoslovak political elites in exile on the other. This conflict is largely absent in contacts between the exiles and the S­ lovak state. Whilst the exile government often criticized, in fact condemned, the ­Slovak political leadership for their anti-Jewish policies, there was little response from the Slovak side. This continued to be the case even latter during the war, when complains about people listening to foreign broadcast were rising sharply. On Minister Mach’s orders, Slovak Radio was to focus on ‘positive findings and not to comment on foreign broadcasts, although this will not always be possible to do, especially when the occasion arises to use their obvious lies for our benefit.’65 There were several, mostly obscure characters, who took over the antisemitic campaign in the Protectorate radio. Alois Kříž, an unsuccessful journalist and radio broadcaster, was one of the main symbols of the Czech c­ ollaboration 62 63 64 65

Daily News Bulletin (jta), January 19, 1943. Igor Baka, Politický systém a režim Slovenskej republiky v rokock 1939–1940 (Bratislava: ­Vojenský historický ústav, 2010), 160. Koutek, “Zahraniční odboj na vlnách bbc. Československé vysílání z Londýna 1939–1945,” 30–44. sna, mv, b. 706. f. 113, Enemy radio broadcasting – counteroperations.

32

chapter 1

during the war.66 Born in Hamburg in 1911 to Czech parents, Kříž lived in poor conditions in interwar Czechoslovakia. In the mid-1930s he started writing for Czech newspapers (initially for the sports section), including the fascist ­Vlajka (Banner). His peak came only in 1941, when Kříž was employed by Czech ­Radio. In 1944, Kříž became the Editor-in-Chief of broadcasting in Bohemia and Moravia.67 In the radio, Kříž worked on propaganda pieces that attacked Communism, but the most infamous program, which he coordinated, introduced a series of highly antisemitic broadcasts under the title Co víte o Židech a zednářích? (What do you know about the Jews and Freemasons?).68 It consisted of political commentaries – broadcast three times per week between October 1941 and April 1942 – penned by various activist journalists and overt collaborators, who worked for Vlajka or Arijský boj (Aryan Struggle). Kříž himself suggested that his aim was to educate the Czechs about the Jews, and their harmful influences.69 The series presented a complex image of the Jews in the Czech space: they were an alien and harmful element, a biological threat to the Czech nation, and economic exploiters of the Czech people. Authors supplemented racial views with out-of-context quotes from the Bible and Talmud, and thus constructed the image of the Jews as wirepullers behind the Allied powers.70 As Kříž was preparing the series, another Czech antisemitic journalist, ­Josef Opluštil, was launching a new program of supposedly humorous political sketches.71 This ‘bizarre innovation in Nazi broadcast propaganda to the Czechs,’ characterized as such by Richard Pinard, attacked – in an even more explicit manner than Kříž – the Jews and their contacts with the Czechoslovak exiles. The most infamous is the part when the Czech ‘King of Comedians,’ ­Vlasta Burian, apparently coerced by the Germans, impersonated the

66

67

68 69 70 71

Shortly after the outbreak of the Prague Uprising on May 5, 1945, Kříž was caught by an enraged mob and terribly beaten. He spent the rest of his life in prison, awaiting his trial and eventual execution in March 1947. For more on Kříž, his life and postwar trial see Lukáš Kopecký, “Případ rozhlasového novináře Aloise Kříže před Národním soudem” (Unpublished ma Thesis, Masaryk University, 2011). Parts of the commentaries were later published in Alois Kříž, Co víte o Židech? (Praha: Orbis, 1941). Peter Richard Pinard, “Alois Kříž und die Rundfunksendereihe ‘Was wissen Sie von den Juden und Freimaurern?,’” Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente, 2005, 205. Ibid., 205–32. He was approached by Lothar Scurla from the Radio department of the Cultural-political office of the Reich Protector’s office.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

33

­ zechoslovak foreign minister Jan Masaryk as a drunkard (in the sketch Stars C over ­Baltimore [Hvězdy nad Baltimorem]). On other occasions, Opluštil did not shy away from depicting the Jews as sexual predators and economic exploiters, themes that permeated the more vulgar pieces of the anti-Jewish propaganda in the Reich (such as Streicher’s Der Stürmer).72 Even in this case, we need to see the aim of this particular type of campaign in the effort to normalize the persecution of the Jews and their segregation at the time of the deportation, leading to their ‘social death’ in the Protectorate.73 One of the topics constantly raised by the antisemitic propaganda that could potentially have a degree of success was the presentation of the Czech political elite, now in exile, as politicians with close contacts to the Jews. In London, the exiles soon realized the difficulties of combating such accusations. In March 1941, after a series of articles in the Protectorate press, the Czechoslovak bbc prepared a rebuttal. Although we do not have a text of the broadcast, we know that it made an unfortunate impression among the Czechoslovak Jewish exiles in London, who subsequently complained to the minister of state, in charge of the exiles’ propaganda, Hubert Ripka.74 After reading the text of the broadcast, Ripka expressed his displeasure with the text to Josef Korbel, the head of the Czechoslovak broadcasting – again, unfortunately for us, without commenting on the specifics. The only certain point is that the broadcast resembeled an attempt to explain that the Czech exiles were not as Judaized as the Protectorate propaganda claimed. As Ripka commented, this was not the way to combat antisemitism. It seems, however, that the exiles failed to find an appropriate way to do so and apparently did not return to the subject for the rest of the war and rather focused on general statements condemning Nazi antisemitism as such. Furthermore, even when the bbc broadcasts condemned Czech antisemites, the exiles themselves often did not avoid perpetuating anti-Jewish sentiments. Famous is the broadcast by foreign minister Jan Masaryk, who directly alluded to the trope of Jews as previous Germanizers of the Bohemian lands.75 72

Pinard, “Alois Kříž Und Die Rundfunksendereihe ‘Was Wissen Sie von den Juden und ­Freimaurern?,’” 220–39. 73 The term social death was coined by Orlando Patterson. For an application in the German context see Marion A. Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). 74 amzv, la, 1939–45, box 511, Ripka to Zelmanovits, March 27, 1941; Drtina to Ripka, March 31, 1941. 75 AČRo, bbc 1939–1945, broadcast on September 29, 1943.

34

chapter 1

In December 1944, half a year before the end of the war, the bbc commented on a recent antisemitic speech by Kříž, calling him a ‘miserable creature’ and a ‘beast’ for continuing with his broadcasts even at the point when almost no Jews remained in the Protectorate.76 Then, however, the broadcaster – the writer Josef Kodíček, himself Jewish – made a problematic statement about the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia: The Jew – not only the one who could be accused of speaking German by these patriots in the German services who report to the Gestapo in humble German – but even the good Czech Jew, who lived among the Czech people in friendship and sincere co-operation, is now a white crow ­[almost absent] on the soil which has been his motherland for centuries.77 The image of the ‘Jew’ as a Germanizer – for obvious reasons rarely employed by the Protectorate activist and collaborating journalists and broadcasters – was kept alive also with the help of the Czech resistance movement.78 As already demonstrated, the Magyarizer argument was an important component of the anti-Jewish hysteria in Slovakia, in both the official propaganda as well as in the oppositional circles. On the other hand, the exiles evidently tried to fight the anti-Jewish propaganda, showing the moral depravity of the occupation regime in the Protectorate and of the Slovak government. In June 1942, when informing listeners about the first mass murders of the Jews in Eastern Europe (when the exiles received the so-called Bund Report stating that 700,000 Jews had already been killed), Kodíček appealed to his audience to see through Hitler’s antisemitism. The witch-hunt against the Jews was a test of the ‘moral balance and good sense of the Czech nation.’79 Whilst on several occasions Kodíček and other regular members of the Czechoslovak bbc staff raised the issue of antisemitism, the situation was more complex in the case of the main exile representatives, who often tried to avoid broadcasting reports about the fate of the Jews, evidently concerned about the possible effect of the propaganda in the Protectorate and Slovakia that presented them as suppoters of the Jewish cause.80 76 AČRo, bbc 1939–1945, broadcast on December 5, 1944. 77 Ibid. 78 Jan Láníček, Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews, 1938–48: Beyond Idealization and Condemnation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 21–31. 79 AČRo, bbc 1939–1945, broadcast on June 26, 1942. 80 Láníček, Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews, 1938–48, 31–5.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

35

There were, however, exceptions, which offer further insights into how the image of the ‘Jew’ figured prominently in the propaganda campaigns between the Protectorate and the political elite in London. On September 18, 1941, in the middle of the boycott of the Protectorate press and shortly after the Jews had been forced to wear the Star of David in public, the Czechoslovak exiles in London broadcast a speech that for the first time directly addressed the persecuted Jewish minority and asked the Czechs to support the Jews, now publicly segregated. It is noteworthy that although the exiles made further speeches during the war that dealt with the Nazi persecution of the Jews, none, in tone or sense of compassion, resembled this one. Minister Ripka addressed the people in the Protectorate as follows: So Hitler has forced the Jews in our country, too, always to appear in public with a special Jewish distinguishing mark by which they should be easily distinguished from the others. Thus it is to be made easier for the Nazi mob and the rabble of the Vlajka and of Tuka and Mach to hurl themselves on the wretched defenseless Jews whenever they wish. [...] [W]e wish to tell you, Czech and Slovak friends, that we believe you will do nothing for which you will have to be ashamed one day. We are convinced that you do not forget your honourable privilege in belonging to the nation of Masaryk. […] Thanks to the heroic struggle which Masaryk then carried on [during the Hilsner Affair], our intelligentsia and our people became possessed with disgust for anti-Semitism and cast out the degrading, uncultured, barbarous, biological racial teachings from their emotional background. This process of spiritual and moral regeneration contributed considerably to the Czechs’ individual and national consciousness: it was generally recognised that those members of the nation who were racially of Jewish origin could be just as good patriots and decent people or otherwise as could those belonging to any other racial origin. […] the yellow Star of David is a sign of honour which all decent people will respect.81 This speech was one of the most outspoken examples of the exiles publicly expressing their sympathies with the persecuted Jews, and remained such for over a year, until late 1942.82 On December 9, 1942, minister Masaryk told his 81 82

Hubert Ripka, We Think of You: A Message to the Jews of Czechoslovakia (London: Czechoslovak Maccabi, 1941). For more detail see: Jan Láníček, “Czechoslovakia and the Allied Declaration of 17 December 1942,” manuscript submitted to Yad Vashem Publishers.

36

chapter 1

l­isteners in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and in Slovakia about what he called ‘the latest phase of the so-called Jewish question.’ He talked about the horrific massacres being committed by the Germans (saying that it seemed millions of Jews would be slaughtered), rejected the propaganda spread by the Slovak government and journalists that the Jews were living peacefully in Eastern European ghettos, and warned Slovak collaborators against persecuting the Jews.83 Masaryk asked Czechs and Slovaks to ‘do everything in their power to make easier the life of their Jewish fellow-citizens,’ promising that those who collaborated with the Nazis, or who benefited from the theft of Jewish property, would be punished after the war with death.84 He concluded by saying that it was essential to stress that the information about the massacres of the Jews was not just a propaganda stunt, which revealed the exiles’ concerns that people in the Protectorate and Slovakia were not sufficiently informed about the Nazi racial policies.85 The broadcast was a part of an extensive information campaign by the ­Allied governments in December 1942 concerning the Nazi extermination of the Jews conducted. The campaign reached its peak on December 17, 1942, when the governments of the United Nations (eleven governments and the French National Committee) published a declaration that condemned ‘in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination’ of the Jews.86 Significantly, these were broadcasts not only by members of the bbc staff, but also by some of the principal representatives of the Czechoslovak ­government-in-exile, including minister Ripka and the interior minister, Juraj Slávik, who condemned the collaboration of the Slovak authorities with the Nazis.87 When we examine the responses among the Czech pro-Nazi collaborators in December 1942, the only broadcast that was commented on and to which they 83

This was a reference to Fritz Fiala, Bei den Juden im Osten, published in Grenzbote, ­ ovember 7, 8, and 10, 1942, in cza, C3/24. N 84 AČRo, bbc 1939–1945, box 50, Masaryk’s broadcast on December 9, 1942. 85 Ibid. 86 Hansard, December 17, 1942, vol. 385, col. 2083. Later, the governments of Australia, ­Canada, and New Zealand also associated themselves with the declaration: see Daily News Bulletin (jta), December 26, 1942, “Canadian Government Backs the Allied Declaration [on December 18, 1942]”; New York Times, December 19, 1942, 5, “New Zealand Backs Declaration.” The Sydney Morning Herald, December 18, 1942, 4, “Massacres of the Jews: Joint Declaration by Allies.” 87 hia, Juraj Slávik Papers, box 29, file 3, bbc Special Late Night Czechoslovak News. By Slávik and Ducháček, December 18, 1942.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

37

felt obliged to respond was the first one by Masaryk. It had aired at the very beginning of the extensive bbc campaign, and evidently the ­collaborationist authorities did not immediately realize the forthcoming extensive coverage. On December 11, 1942, immediately after Masaryk’s broadcast, Protectorate ­Minister Moravec attacked the content of his warning. In a speech entitled ‘the Jewish Offensive, the Reich Defense,’ Moravec returned to the oft-repeated tropes of the Nazi propaganda and attacked the Jews for initiating and waging the war against the Reich. Yet, he asserted, the Jews ought to be aware that half of the world’s Jewish population lived under the Nazi rule and were hostages in German hands. In fact, Moravec noted that the Jews in Washington, London, and Moscow were slowly realizing the impact that their anti-German campaign was having on the Jews in the Reich. Given this situation, he concluded, their helpers, in this case the Czechoslovak exiles, started to appeal to the Czech population to help the Jews, who were facing their ‘just punishment.’ As evident, Moravec did not suppress the information about the persecution of the Jews. He overtly acknowledged their segregation and deportation and presented it as a just punishment against them, or even as a part of the war between the Allies and the Third Reich. According to Moravec, the Nazi fight against the Jews was only one, although one of the most important, features of the global conflict for ‘the new world order,’ and the Czechs, whose only future lay within the Reich, were expected to join the Nazi racial crusade. ‘During the last days,’ Moravec noted, ‘we could hear Masaryk, Jr., speaking from London and he even threatened with death everybody who would not support the Jews.’88 Moravec clearly changed the meaning of Masaryk’s words and the appeals to the Czechs to support the Jews and help them in their unfortunate plight. During the war, the broadcasts by the exiles on Jewish issues were frequently utilized in the official Protectorate propaganda. Pro-Nazi collaborators portrayed the London-based exiles as supporters of the Jewish claim for the restitution of their alleged rule in the Bohemian lands. In Moravec’s speech this theme overshadowed, in fact substituted, the information about the fate of the Jews in Poland. Following Moravec, other Czech activist journalists and collaborators ­returned to Masaryk’s broadcast, but it became apparent that they did not know how to handle this sensitive subject. Also the Slovak authorities were in a difficult position when it came to commenting on the foreign broadcasts, especially when they contained information about the extermination of the Jews. When the Slovak Minister Mach advised Slovak Radio to avoid references to the London broadcasting to minimize its effect, Czech activist ­journalists 88

Emanuel Moravec, O český zítřek (Praha: Orbis, 1943).

38

chapter 1

felt obliged to comment on the broadcasts with the same intent. Often, however, journalists avoided any direct reference to the source of the rumors about the massacres of the Jews, and commented on its content indirectly. In December 1942, during the exiles’ information campaign about the Nazi extermination of the Jews, Arijský boj published an article under the title ‘The Jewish Mischling [half-breed] Masaryk, Jr., threatens from London.’ Referring to his aforementioned broadcast of December 9, 1942, the newspaper informed its readers that the exiles threatened with death everyone who would not support the Jews in the Protectorate.89 Other Protectorate newspapers, such as Český deník, did not even mention Masaryk’s name and only paraphrased Moravec’s speech.90 Two weeks later, the editors of a special Christmas issue of Arijský boj overtly reconfirmed their determination to contribute to the solution of the Jewish question in the Protectorate despite the threat of the gallows coming from London as well as the anonymous letters they were receiving from Beneš’s supporters (od Benešovců) in the Protectorate.91 They also asked other activist journalists, representing the principal Protectorate newspapers, to write short exposés on the Jewish question and most of them complied.92 The press decisively manifested its determination to continue to publish antiJewish propaganda, even at the point when most of the Jews had disappeared from Czech towns and the Allies were broadcasting reports about the massacres in the East. The exiles’ broadcasts of support for the Jews – though not a regular ­occurrence – were used by the Protectorate as propaganda to show the Beneš government’s estrangement from the Czech population, because, as presented, in the midst of a devastating war, they found time to support a minority, which in the past had sponged off the Czech people, and later ‘caused’ the war between the German Reich and the Allies. In early January 1944, minister Ripka appealed to Czech doctors not to take part in the mass sterilization of the remaining Jews, which was allegedly prepared at that time. In response, Karel Werner, one of the main activist journalists, claimed that the exiles, by supporting the Jews, manifested their complete lack of understanding of the feelings among ordinary Czechs: In the fifth year of the war, we, in Bohemia and Moravia, have other things to worry about than pitying and assisting the Jews: Ripka’s appeal shows 89 90 91 92

Arijský boj, December 19, 1942, 1–2. Český deník, December 12, 1942, 2; December 15, 1942, 1. Arijský boj, December 26, 1942, 3. Arijský boj, December 26, 1942, 1–3.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

39

how the émigrés have become estranged from us; otherwise, they would have selected a more suitable topic for their propaganda than wailing about the Jews. […] The Czech émigrés are permeated by the Jews. We have nothing in common with these people, except that they too speak Czech – though only when they need us and want to misuse us: otherwise, they do not talk Czech among themselves.93 Werner, who presented similar views on several occasions, suggested that the Czechs were concerned with their own future and did not want to allow the Jews, nor the exiles, to return back to Bohemia and Moravia. It was the image of the ‘Jews’ waiting in London to return to Czechoslovakia and reclaim their political and socio-economic positions that permeated the collaborationist discourse in the last years of the war. Possibly, these themes, as we shall discuss in Chapter 2, did influence the popular opinion in the Bohemian lands and Slovakia. Reports about the ‘Final Solution,’ if mentioned by Werner and others, were commented on with apparent disbelief: ‘Don’t believe me? See for yourself!’ (Kdo nevěří ať tam běží!)94 On other occasions, the press attempted to avoid any reports about the fate of the Jews in the East, though in late 1942 it did publish a reportage from the Lublin district by the German journalist F.O. Wrede, who described a peaceful life of the Jews in the Generalgouvernement, at the time, when most of the Jews in the district had already been murdered in the gas chambers.95 The press indeed became the main medium that systematically spread anti-Jewish propaganda.

Metaphors and Allegories of the ‘Jew’ in the Press

Protectorate and Slovak periodicals were filled with anti-Jewish assaults that could be categorized along various (religious, national, social or racial) lines. Often one attack supplanted another, presenting Jews as guilty of multiple 93 94

95

Bulletin of the Czechoslovak Jewish Representative Committee, no. 11, April 1944, 12. This was Werner’s response to the reports about the resolution adopted by the Czechoslovak State Council on June 19, 1944, condemning the liquidation of the Theresienstadt Family Camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau (on March 8, 1944, 3,702 Jews, originally from Theresienstadt, were gassed in Birkenau). Werner also mentioned reports about mass murders of the Jews in Ruthenia. Quote from Lidové noviny, July 27, 1944, reprinted (in German) in cza, C3/29. Zdenka Neumannová, “Protižidovská propaganda,” in Šest let okupace Prahy (Praha: Osvětový odbor hlavního města Prahy, 1946), 111–16.

40

chapter 1

even if contradictory crimes. The stereotypical ‘Jew’ in the pages of Czech and Slovak wartime press was one that had enslaved the majority societies for decades, had enriched himself at the expense of those around, was an agent of the Hungarians or the Beneš clique in London, and was ready to take revenge if Nazi Germany lost the war. When we piece the puzzles of the anti-Jewish baiting together, we see the ‘Jew’ standing apart from – if not in opposition to – the carefully constructed ethnic categories of ‘Czechs’ and ‘Slovaks.’ The ‘Jew’ was portrayed as something (rather than someone) of malicious character, a foreigner and an alien to the majority Czech and Slovak societies. The Jews of Slovakia were accused of both being Magyarizers and of Polish origin, arriving through the Tatra Mountains and brining nothing but destruction: Look at this poverty, this devastation caused by Jewry during its reign over our countryside. […] Everything is in the hands of the foreigner who, with his sidelocks and caftan, entered the areas around the village of Hábovka [in the western Tatras near the Polish border] or the River Jelešňa [on the Slovak-Polish border] only ten years ago.96 The Jews’ alleged alienation from the majority societies was further supported by references to them colonizing the land and enriching themselves at the expense of the locals, but more than anything else, being foreigners: ‘Jews came here; they were and remain only tolerated foreigners.’97 The effort the Slovak and Protectorate press devoted to establishing a social divide between the majority societies and the Jews, their fascination with the alleged Jewish malicious character, and the devastating effect the Jews supposedly had on the majority societies can be read also as a way to influence the popular mood and opinion towards the Jews, a question we further examine in the following chapter. In both the Protectorate and Slovakia, the regimes had a monopoly on the press. On the state level of Slovakia, this concerned predominantly political periodicals, including Slovák, Gardista, Slovenská pravda, Slovenská politika, Slovenská sloboda, and Ľudové noviny of the Propaganda Office. The autonomous government rapidly liquidated political pluralism in the country in the fall of 1938, dissolving political parties and their press organs: out of the 389 periodicals published in 1938, 238 had ceased to exist by the time ‘independent’ Slovakia was established in March 1939.98 Unlike in the Czech case, most of 96 97 98

Slovenská politika, August 20, 1941, 1. Gardista, April 9, 1942, 3. Michal Fedor, Bibliografia periodík na Slovensku v rokoch 1939–1944 (Martin: Matica slovenská, 1969), 21.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

41

the political periodicals published in wartime Slovakia were either founded in the 1930s or, as was the case of Slovák, had strong ties to the country’s authoritarian leadership. Founded in 1870, Národnie noviny was the only major Slovak periodical that continued to exist while preserving its semi-oppositional character.99 In the Protectorate, the situation was different. Here we can differentiate between two main types of printed media: (1) mainstream newspapers, with a long tradition before 1939, when they belonged to the cornerstones of Czech cultural and literary tradition, and of the liberal-democratic system; during the war they soon came under a strict control of the Nazi agencies and the editorial positions were taken over by activist journalists (Lidové noviny, Venkov, Večer, and České slovo); (2) newspapers published by active and systemic collaborators, or members of various fascist and antisemitic groups, who extended their activities after the German invasion, and became the main disseminators of the anti-Jewish propaganda, even if they largely remained marginal groups during the whole war (Vlajka, Arijský boj, or Nástup Červenobílých). Several bizarre journals and newspapers emerged in 1939, but they soon ceased to exist, also because of the journalists’ very poor skills. It also took some time before the Czech fascist groups, until then stridently anti-German (and attacking the Jews for their contacts with German culture) articulated their views in the changed situation after the March 1939 invasion. The first group of newspapers often radicalized their anti-Jewish propaganda after being prompted by the Nazi authorities (though they also showed a lot of invention independently). The latter group from the very beginning published some of the most outrageous anti-Jewish articles, in the tradition of Streicher’s Der Stürmer. While the campaigns against the Jews were launched in the Protectorate and wartime Slovak press almost simultaneously, the language of exclusion ­applied to the Jews varied at times, reflecting the different socio-economic profiles and historical experiences of both countries. Hence, journals in Slovakia often applied what could be called the traditional anti-Judaism of medieval times, making references to the ‘wicked’ book of the Talmud for instance. The press repeatedly claimed that the Jews were ‘infected’ by their spiteful books, preaching hatred towards the Gentiles.100 Consequently, measures taken against the Jews were presented as being adopted to correct the wrongs the Jews had previously committed against Christian Slovaks. This was an argument pushed forward by the press, especially 99 Ibid., 236. 100 See Eduard Nižňanský and Michala Lônčíková, eds., Antisemitizmus a propaganda (Bratislava: Stimul, 2014).

42

chapter 1

as the Tiso regime enforced the first anti-Jewish laws, curbing religious and economic rights. Probably with the intent to give these arguments more credit, Slovak propaganda frequently turned to religious authorities. In an interview with the priest Rudolf Mikuš, published on the front page of Slovák, we can hence read the following: The Jew, saturated with the learning of the Talmud, is dangerous. Today’s Jew is not the Jew of the Old Testament; he is infected by the Talmud. The Talmud is a summary of doctrines dangerous for Christian society. ­According to the Talmud, a Gentile is not a human being, but is something like an animal without any rights. And since non-Jews do not have rights in the eyes of the Talmudic Jew, the Talmudic Jew is a danger to Christian society. And this danger must be removed.101 Refuting claims purportedly spread by ‘Jewish-Freemasonry propaganda,’ namely that the various policies aimed against the Jews were not in accordance with Christian doctrine, was one of the primary tasks of the press in predominantly Catholic Slovakia.102 President and Father Jozef Tiso, enjoying a strong position in the society given his both secular and sacral role, addressed this issue on several occasions. In an often-quoted sequence from 1942, Tiso also offered a new understanding of the ‘love thy neighbor’ command: People ask if what we do is Christian. Is it human? Isn’t it robbery? But I ask: Is it Christian if the Slovak nation wants to rid itself of its eternal enemy, the Jew? Love of self is a commandment of God, and this love of self commands me to remove from myself everything that damages me or that threatens my life. And no one needs to be convinced, I think, that the Jewish element threatens the life of the Slovaks. […] We have evidence […] that 5 per cent of the Jews had 38 per cent of the national income! […] It would have looked even worse if we hadn’t pulled ourselves together in time, if we hadn’t purged ourselves of them. And we did so according to the divine commandment: Slovak, rid yourself of the vermin.103 Such refutation of the claims that the treatment of the Jews was unjust continued throughout the existence of the wartime Slovak state. To facilitate the 101 Slovák, February 10, 1939, 1. 102 Ibid. 103 Gardista, August 18, 1.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

43

‘elimination of the Jewish influence in the social and economic life of the country,’ as the Tiso regime nicknamed its various Aryanization policies carried out with a new force after German-Slovak talks of July 1940 and the introduction of the Slovak National Socialism (including the radicalization of anti-Jewish policies), the press further expanded on the alleged disruptive behavior of the Jews: One of the most pressing Slovak problems is the Jewish problem. […] The professions, which require university education, are already largely in the hands of the Jews. Trade and industry are in the hands of the Jews, and many other sectors are so influenced by Jewry that our small nation, in the interest of its own existence, simply cannot tolerate this, nor will it.104 The village became a symbol of the Jewish disruptive influence on the ­God-fearing Christian population. This propaganda built on a long history of anti-Jewish sentiments that stressed the role of Jews as economic and moral exploiters of hard-working Slovak people: The appearance of a Slovak village: a church, a priory, a school – and, right next to them, a Jewish pub! That’s how it is! Our poor people toil and work during the week, and on Sundays go to church to give thanks to God for the previous six happy days, and after the service a Jew with a long beard is already waiting in the doorway to pour alcohol and put the people’s hard-earned money into his pockets.105 What we can see even from the excerpts presented here is not only how the press vocalized the perceived disruptive influence of the Jews on the majority society but also how the propaganda made claims that measures taken against them were in the public interest. Well until the spring of 1942, when the first Jews of Slovakia were deported, the wartime Slovak press pushed forward a link between the regime’s policy towards the Jews on one hand and the social standing of the ‘ordinary’ Slovaks on the other. Hence, when Slovák informed its readership about the government’s intent to implement an Aryanization law in early 1940 (the first so-called Aryanization law adopted in April of that year), the periodical made sure to define the term ‘Aryanization’ in a way that appealed to the wider public:

104 Slovák, December 6, 1938, 2. 105 Gardista, April 1, 1939, 5.

44

chapter 1

One of today’s most relevant problems, in which the public has long shown great interest, is the Jewish problem, or, better said, Aryanization, a modern concept, which we understand as activities intended to limit the disproportionate number of Jews in the economy and gradually to transfer economic roles into Christian hands.106 According to this line of argumentation, the ‘solution to the Jewish question’ was not only a necessity but also an opportunity. Measures taken against the Jews, however drastic, were presented both as targeting the Jews (and their perceived disproportionate influence in the country’s social and economic life) and benefiting the majority Slovaks (by arguing that Jewish alleged wealth will be ‘transferred’ to the Christian Slovaks). The press became obsessed with Aryanization, requesting radical measures to be taken against the Jews and inviting the majority society to take part in the looting. Here, as in the Protectorate, the press was not only informing of measures taken against the Jews, but calling for the introduction of new laws and regulations as well. Article headings, such as ‘Jobs for 38,000 Slovaks’ or ‘Slovaks take over Jewish belongings,’ aimed to involve the majority population in the so-called solving of the Jewish question, and tie the population closer to the regime.107 Aryanization, understood here as the sum of various anti-Jewish laws that deprived the Slovak Jewish community of virtually all their economic rights, tied the regime and the majority population together. Later, as it became clear that Nazi Germany would indeed lose the war, Slovak press again took up the issue, warning the public that the Jews would take revenge against their Christian countrymen upon their return.108 The fear of the Jews’ return (and hence revenge) was further nurtured by the link the press made between Jews and Czechs (and the exile government in London) discussed earlier. With the war coming to an end, the press also pushed to the forefront the story of a BenešJewish clique, trying to make a case that the restoration of Czechoslovakia would not be in the interest of those involved in the widespread looting of Jewish properties. In an article entitled ‘Not a step without Jews’ the periodical Slovák claimed that Masaryk, the exile foreign minister, conditioned his return upon the return of the Jews.109 Stoking fascination with the alleged malicious character of the Jews in Slovakia, along with undisguised lust for Jewish property and inflamed hysteria 106 107 108 109

Slovák, January 21, 1. Gardista, January 27, 1940, 20; Slovák, March 27, 1940, 4. Gardista, Christmas 1944, 1. Slovák, January 2, 1945, 3.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

45

about the Jews taking revenge, was how the propaganda of the wartime state contributed to the segregation of the Jews and prepared the ground for the Jewish predicament after the war. By denouncing those who disobeyed the various anti-Jewish laws, especially by continuing to employ Jews or do business with them, the press maintained fear in society, fostering the divide between the majority population and the Jews.110 In the Protectorate, as well as in Slovakia, illustrations, metaphors and allegories enabled the press to take their Jew-baiting a step further, and make connections and assumptions that otherwise would be hard to describe. This is especially true for the racially determined charges made against the Jews. Hence, caricatures in Arijský boj depicted Jews as snakes or spiders, pointing to the alleged greediness and unctuousness of the ‘Jewish race’ as a whole. Jews were linked to toads (‘sitting on the living spring of Czech business’), dogs (barking in the ‘London broadcast’) and snakes (‘sucking at the body of the nation’).111 Ľudové noviny (People’s Newspaper), aiming at peoples’ lowest instincts, often combined distasteful photographs with sensational headlines in large fonts. Graphic pictures of tortured bodies, severed heads and limbs, depicting the work of ‘Judeo-Bolsheviks,’ were paired with proclamations such as: ‘The fight of the Slovak nation against Jewry is eternal! The Jew has been the biggest enemy of every Slovak, no matter whether wealthy or poor. Jews have always supported regimes in Slovakia, which enslaved Slovaks! Let us remember that!’112 Portraying Jews as Bolsheviks (and Bolshevism as a political system opposing Christianity) increased with the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The situation in the Soviet Union was drawn in graphic contours, making allegations that ‘[o]ne thing is clear: Judeo-Bolsheviks murder defenseless people in the interest of their tyranny.’113 On March 29, 1942, four days after Slovakia deported its first Jews, Ľudové noviny, printed in a wall poster format, published two illustrations – symbolizing the past and future of the ‘Jewish question.’ While a ‘Jew’ sitting restfully in his comfy chair, sipping Champagne and smoking a cigar, represented the past, the future depicted a ‘Jew’ holding a spade and a shovel. What is important to note is that the physical ­appearance

110 Slovák, October 17, 1939, 4. 111 Anna Matějková, “Antisemitské stereotypy a časopis Arijský boj” (Unpublished Bc ­Thesis, Charles University, 2015), 40; Jana Jedličková, “Zobrazování Židů v Protektorátních Časopisech Arijský Boj, Přítomnost, Roj” (Unpublished ma Thesis, Masaryk University, 2008). 112 Ľudové noviny, January 17, 1943. 113 Slovenská politika, July 23, 1941, 1.

46

chapter 1

of the ‘Jews’ did not change: ‘they’ still had their oversized noses and o­ vergrown eyebrows. What mattered was that they finally ‘received what they deserved.’ A slogan printed over the whole issue confirmed: ‘There is only one way for a happy Slovakia: Slovakia without Jews!’114 Columns in the official Protectorate press were also filled with radical and outrageous attacks against the Jews. Journalists kept calling for the radicalization of the Jewish persecution and later for their segregation and deportation. Furthermore, compared also to the role of the Slovak collaborators, the role of Czech fascists in the Protectorate is often underestimated in historiography. Unlike the Tiso regime, they are considered a fringe group of gutter activists or outright collaborators with no real support among the Czechs. (As we will see in Chapter 3, whereas scholars are largely in agreement about the collaborationist character of the Tiso regime, when it comes to the popular perception, the majority ­society is often cleared from any wrongdoing). However, Benjamin Frommer has recently offered a new view on collaboration. In his analysis of the retribution trials, Frommer has pointed to the important role the Czech antisemitic press (Arijský boj in particular) played in the isolation of the Jews during the first years of the occupation. Apart from bizarre antisemitic ramblings, Arijský boj published special columns entitled Reflektor (Reflector) and Kukátko (Peephole), which relayed anonymous denunciations of the Jews who did not observe the anti-Jewish restrictions, or ‘Aryans’ who kept maintaining contacts with the Jews. Vlajka (a weekly published by the Czech fascist group with the identical name) had its own variation of the column; for example, under the title ‘Jew-lovers parade’ (Židomilství defiluje).115 The retribution trials of Václav Píša and Rudolf Novák – both working for the Arijský boj – that took place in 1947 proved that the journalists kept receiving a large number of anonymous denunciations from all corners of the Protectorate and published them in the paper. It is noteworthy that the Czech police forces always investigated these denunciations, and thus the press actively contributed to the segregation of the Jews in the Protectorate. The investigations, even if not always leading to the punishment of the denounced Jews or Czechs (it has been suggested that only some police officers insisted on punishment, and others submitted reports that they could not confirm the allegations), created an atmosphere of fear and helped sever relations between both groups. Many who had maintained relations with Jews were unwilling to risk their jobs and

114 Ľudové noviny, March 29, 1942. 115 For example, Vlajka, April 24, 1940.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

47

public humiliation, when interrogated by the Czech ­authorities, or when they read (or could hear) that their names had appeared in the press.116 Another example of these activities was the public pillories, created by fascist groups in Czech towns, where they published the names of local non-Jews who maintained contacts with Jews. In Hradec Králové, members of Vlajka created a public exhibition with photos of Jews talking to ‘Aryans.’117 Denouncing those who transgressed anti-Jewish laws and regulations, be they Jews or non-Jews, was an important topic also for the Slovak press. Multiple issues of Kocúr, a humorist weekly, from 1941 pointed to the Jews being protected by different exemptions and influential friends, thus successfully escaping the various laws ‘solving the Jewish question’ in Slovakia. One such picture paints a ‘Jew’ and a ‘Slovak’ walking hand in hand in a street covered with antisemitic posters and slogans; the catchphrase beneath the picture saying, ‘It is not as hot as it seems...’118 Frommer concludes that the efforts of the Arijský boj, and we can add that of other fascist groups, such as Vlajka, made the denunciations of Jews and their Czech friends easier for ordinary Czechs. They did not have to directly contact the feared Nazi authorities, a step that many were not willing to take. Instead, they could make anonymous denunciations to the Czech press that later made the decision to relay the denunciation to the public, without incriminating the informers.119 The practice inspired even Wolfram von Wolmar, head of Protector’s Press Group, who in late October 1941, at the time of the radicalization of the antiJewish policies, asked journalists from the mainstream legal press to include a special column (called Pillory, Pranýř), where they would inform the public about contact between Aryans and Jews.120 In the following weeks, the activist journalists appealed to the Czech population to actively contribute to the solution of the Jewish question and inform about transgressions against the 116 Benjamin Frommer, “Verfolgung durch die Presse: Wie Prager Büroberater und die tschechische Polizei die Juden des Protektorats Böhmen und Mähren isolieren halfen,’” in Leben und Sterben im Schatten der Deportation: Der Alltag der jüdischen Bevölkerung im Großdeutschen Reich 1941–1945, ed. Doris L. Bergen, Andrea Löw, and Anna Hájková (München: Oldenbourg, 2013), 137–50. 117 Jiří Münzer, Dospívání nad propastí: deník Jiřího Münzera (Praha: Radioservis, 2002), 92 (October 5, 1941). 118 Kocúr, November 1, 1941, 1. 119 Benjamin Frommer, National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 120 Končelík, Köpplová, and Kryšpínová, Český tisk pod vládou Wolfganga Wolframa von W ­ olmara, 457.

48

chapter 1

anti-Jewish regulations.121 Although scholars suggest that this initiative ended in complete failure,122 other newspapers continued to publish the column in the following years. This practice became also popular at the local level, where newspapers published letters – allegedly sent by readers – in which they demanded the introduction of new anti-Jewish laws and the eviction of the Jews from the towns and villages.123 The role of the Protectorate antisemitic press was not limited to the publication of individual anonymous denunciations. Another question, which would require careful analysis, is the contribution of the journalists to the introduction of new anti-Jewish regulations at the local level. Helena Petrův has used the term ‘the Jewish map’ (Židovská mapa) to characterize the shrinking space allocated to the Jews in Czech towns and villages in the pre-deportation ­period. The Jews were banned from parks, forests, bathhouses, pools, cinemas, restaurants, certain streets and other public places. There were even early ­cases of what some scholars characterize as ghettoization.124 Antisemitic press, such as Vlajka, continued to publish articles demanding new local regulations that would limit the access of the Jews to particular places.125 For example, for over a year, antisemitic groups, first the Národní arijská kulturní jednota (National Aryan Cultural Union) and later the Vlajka newspaper, appealed to the Prague Police Directorate and then indirectly to the public, to ban the Jews from Divoká Šárka (a nature reserve) and Krč Forest in Prague. The Police Directorate initially suggested that it was impractical to ban Jews from places with public lines of communication (that it would lead to too many unclear cases) and also that some of the estates were in private hands, which complicated the introduction of a general ban. Yet the publication of an article in Vlajka, entitled ‘Jews sprawl in Šárka’ (Židé se roztahují v Šárce), led to further investigations and the Prague Police President Rudolf Charvát, on July 17, 1941, issued a directive that banned Jews 121 Helena Krejčová and Anna Hyndráková, “Postoj Čechů k židům. Z politického zpravodajství okupační správy a protektorátního tisku v letech 1939–1941,” Soudobé dějiny 2, no. 4 (1995): 592. 122 Ibid., 593f. 123 Blažena Gracová, “‘Židovská otázka’ na stránkách ostravského Českého slova v letech 1939–1942,” Časopis Matice moravské 114, no. 2 (1995): 339–52. 124 Helena Petrův, Zákonné bezpráví: Židé v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava (Praha: Auditorium, 2011), 206; Wolf Gruner, Die Judenverfolgung im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren. Lokale Initiativen, zentrale Entscheidungen, jüdische Antworten 1939–1945 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2016). 125 “Za trvalý mír a požehnané radostného života arijské Evropy (ukázky z antisemitských projevů českých autorů 1939–1944,” Revolver Revue, no. 50 (November 2002): 307. See also Vlajka, May 26, 1940.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

49

from forests in Prague, both those owned by the city and in private hands.126 This was another example of how antisemitic press, even if ignored by most of Czech society, could directly contribute to the segregation of the Jews in the Protectorate. Future research should establish to what degree they were successful in the introduction of new restrictions that further harassed the Jews in their daily lives. In order to elucidate to what extent Czech or Slovak newspapers constructed the image of the ‘Jew’ autonomously or whether the journalists ‘simply’ followed the German pattern, we need to address both local censorship and German influences. Initially, in an irony of history, the new Slovak government, when censoring dissenting views, had to rely on Czecho-Slovak laws adopted as a reaction to the Munich crisis.127 Eventually, however, the Slovak regime established a wide net of different controlling and self-controlling mechanisms, including the law of November 26, 1940 on crimes against the state. This law proved to be especially important in liquidating any possible remnants of freedom of speech.128 In its fifty paragraphs, the law criminalized any criticism of the president, the republic and its regime in ‘radio, press or circulated in writing, at gatherings or in front of a crowd.’129 However, hunger for information, multiplied by a limited access to the news, gave rise to whispering propaganda. Within a month into the existence of the wartime state, the Ministry of Justice (Ministerstvo pravosúdia) issued a memorandum with instructions on the fight against whispering propaganda. The presidium of the government hence informed all its subordinate ministries and the Hlinka Guard as follows: Whispering propaganda can only be suppressed if those who do it fear prosecution. We must therefore make sure that a number of them are caught in each district. [...] That is why this ministry, or the people in charge, should adopt measures to the effect that every civil servant or Guard member is required by his immediate superior to inform the nearest police station or gendarmerie about those from whom he hears an alarming or disturbing rumour.130 126 na, Praha, mv-nr, file E-3443, “Zákaz vstupu židům do lesů Velké Prahy.” 127 Katarína Zavacká, “Tlač, cenzúra a propaganda na Slovensku od 6. októbra 1938 do konca vojny,” Česko-slovenská historická ročenka, 2007, 240. 128 Ibid., 244–45. 129 “Zákon č. 320 zo dňa 26. novembra 1940 o trestných činoch proti štátu,” Slovenský zákonník, 1940. 130 As quoted in Zavacká, “Tlač, cenzúra a propaganda na Slovensku od 6. októbra 1938 do konca vojny,” 246–47.

50

chapter 1

The press equally attacked the whispering propaganda, urging everyone to denounce those spreading rumors and speculations: It is cowardice. This is how today we classify all the mischievousness and all those tall stories that even Slovaks pay attention to. […] We want everyone who is honest and who considers these reports to be seditious activities to notify the security services of anyone who is a national coward, who thinks it necessary to lay horrifying reports at the door of peaceful people, hoping, I reckon, thus to break the proverbial discipline and readiness of the nation here at home. Slovaks must finally wake up to pride and objective judgement.131 The attack on the whispering propaganda was in Slovakia and the Protectorate connected with the efforts to increase and justify the segregation of the Jews. It was the Jews who were identified as the main source of the whispering propaganda, as well as those who – by spreading false information about the war events – led many astray and supported resistance activities.132 During the war, the Slovak press was directed by the Propaganda Office and the Central Censorship Commission (Ústredná cenzúrna komisia) established in September 1943. What is more, the control over media was also ensured by direct, as well as indirect, German involvement. Germans seemed primarily interested in ‘navigating’ the public propaganda in Slovakia and their Berater. Eduard Fraunfeld arrived in Slovakia even before German-Slovak S­ alzburg talks in the summer of 1940. (In September 1940, Fraunfeld was replaced by Anton Endrös). Both Fraunfeld and Endrös ­exerted their influence over the Slovak press. In his postwar trial, Tido J. Gašpar, the chairman of the Press department of the Presidium of the Slovak government, acknowledged that he had received an order from the Germans ‘to write a piece against the Jews for the press or the radio, which I have declined to do.’133 To some extent, German censorship was also carried out through the Slovak Press Agency. With regard to foreign news, both Slovak and Czech journalists were – at least officially – dependent on information from the Deutsches Nachrichten Büro. In the Protectorate, the control over media followed the dual structure of the Protectorate state administration. The Department of Press of the Council 131 Slovenská politika, July 23, 1941, 2. 132 Nástup, časopis mladej slovenskej generácie, July 15, 1940, 7; Gardista, April 5, 1941, 1; Gardista, March 11, 1942, 4. 133 ushmm, rg 57.005, f. 1565, Trial records of Tido J. Gašpar.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

51

of Ministers (Tiskový odbor Předsednictva ministerské rady), lying within the Czech state administration, was subordinate to the already mentioned Press Group established at the Reich Protector’s Office. The Press Group exerted control over Czech media on three levels. First, they censored the Central Office of Press Supervision (Ústředí tiskové dozorčí služby); second, they instructed censors, who worked directly in newspapers, by issuing so-called Instructions for Editors-in-Chief (Informace pro šéfredaktory), including instructions what topics are to be covered and which are to be avoided; and third, they organized press conferences or ‘consultation’ meetings, chaired by Wolfram von Wolmar.134 The purpose of the meetings with Wolfram von Wolmar was to identify areas that the German authorities considered essential for the German war aims and quiet developments in the territories behind the front. With regards to the ‘Final solution,’ the press was to ensure a smooth execution of the Nazi plans, starting with the gradual segregation of the Jews and their elimination from economic and social life in the Protectorate, and later to ensure unhindered deportation of the Jews from the territories. Wolfram von Wolmar had access to the daily situational reports about the moods in the population, prepared by the sd. This access allowed him to respond to the current sentiments in the society – or to the Nazi perception thereof – and instruct the press to write about topics that the Nazi authorities needed to address at that particular time.135 Apart from the journalists, under the close surveillance of the German occupation apparatus, we also must emphasize that there was a group of Czech political collaborators, led by Moravec, who had relative freedom to publish their views on the current political situation without the need to follow any orders. Also Moravec often employed the image of a Jew as a threat for the Czechs in Nazi Europe.136 The Germans tried to combat what they perceived as Czechs’ public sympathies and support for the Jews. In the eyes of the German officials, the role of the press was, by and large, to enlighten the Czechs and persuade them that supporting the Jews was not in their interest.137 Wolfram Von Wolmar lamented that the Czech people still did not fully comprehend this sensitive problem. 134 Jakub Končelík, Jan Cebe, and Barbara Köpplová, “Press Regulation Between 1939 and 1945: Analysis of Protectorate Press Meetings,” Media Studies 2, no. 4 (2007): 446–47. 135 Milotová, “Die Protektoratspresse und die ‘Judenfrage,’” 156f. 136 Moravec, O český zítřek. 137 Jan Gebhart and Barbara Köpplová, eds., Řízení legálního českého tisku v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava, cd-rom (Praha: Karolinum, 2010). See for example meetings on January 26, 1940, October 18, 1940, October 25, 1940, November 15, 1940.

52

chapter 1

There was a lot of compassion towards the Jews in the Protectorate, but the Czechs ought to be aware, he threatened, that the future position of the Czech nation was contingent on their attitude towards the Jews.138 They ought to be aware that there was no space in new Europe for people who were ‘fraternizing’ with the Jews. The task of the press, therefore, was to mold the Czech public opinion in the way that any subsequent legislation limiting the position of the Jews in the society was not to be perceived as an imposition from the authorities, but rather as an expression of the will of the people and as a public necessity.139 The press was assigned the task of persuading Czechs that the solution to the Jewish question was not only in the German interest, but that in this manner the whole world was getting rid of a tangible danger and would eventually become a safer place.140 Yet even the activist journalists initially, according to Wolfram von Wolmar, manifested a lack of understanding of the ‘Jewish question.’ In late 1940, one newspaper published a New Year greetings to a group of Jews. When attacked by Wolfram von Wolmar, they argued that no law had been introduced that would prohibit people from publishing felicitations to the Jews. Wolfram von Wolmar rebuffed the statements by saying that such laws did not exist even in the Reich, but nobody would even think about publishing greetings to the Jews there: It is very sad if a nation is not aware that being in contact with Jews is fundamentally in opposition to national honour. If the nation is unaware of this, it is high time for the Czech press to take up the matter and in a principled way concern itself with the Jewish problem.141 On another occasion, Wolfram von Wolmar edified the journalists about the racial treatment of the Jewish question, because the Jewish religious question was not of any interest to the German authorities. He also reprimanded the journalists for dwelling too much on historical examples of anti-Jewish policies instead of focusing on the actual Nazi ideological views.142 Last, in ­October 1941, Wolfram von Wolmar suggested to the journalists that it was wrong to 138 Ibid. Press meeting on October 18, 1940. 139 Ibid. Press meeting on October 25, 1940. A very similar conclusion was reached already one year after the war by Neumannová, “Protižidovská propaganda,” 111. 140 Gebhart and Köpplová, Řízení legálního českého tisku v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava. Press meeting on October 31, 1940. 141 Ibid. Press meeting on February 14, 1941. 142 Ibid. Press meeting on February 28, 1941 and November 22, 1940.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

53

write that the Germans hated the Jews, because that was not how the question was standing: it was not a matter of hate, but a necessity. It was not a German but a world problem.143 For the Czech activist journalists, the period of 1939–41 still constituted the formative years in their treatment of the Jewish question to the satisfaction of the German authorities. However, the role of the press was constantly growing, especially because the Germans kept expressing dissatisfaction with the perceived sympathies of the Czech population with the persecuted Jews. In October 1940, Venkov informed its readers as follows: At a time when we are first and foremost emphasizing the cardinal importance of the ideas of the Reich for the Czechs as the first non-German component of the Greater German Reich, we cannot sit on the fence when it comes to phenomena that hamper this desired re-education. This includes the consequences of contacts, although limited, of parts of Czech society with individuals of the Jewish race, which has had a negative impact on the mentality of our people and their opinions.144 In late January and in February 1941, Wolfram von Wolmar made four major statements on the role of the Czech press in the anti-Jewish crusade, documenting the increased importance he ascribed to the press in the effort to ­create a divide between Czechs and Jews. He blamed the Czech press, and their so-far inadequate treatment of the Jewish question, for the persisting Czechs’ contracts with the Jews.145 Similar warnings were broadcast on German Radio in the Protectorate.146 According to Wolfram von Wolmar, the Jews were a global threat, and articles about the Jewish question became even more important than other current topics of daily politics.147

143 Ibid. Press meeting on October 17, 1941. 144 Pavel Večeřa, “Židé a antisemitismus na stránkách vybraných českých deníků v letech 1939–1945,” in Média a realita: sborník prací Katedry mediálních studií a žurnalistiky (Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2003), 108. Quotes from Venkov, October, 10, 1940. 145 Gebhart and Köpplová, Řízení legálního českého tisku v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava. Press meeting on February 14, 1941. 146 Wolf Gruner, “The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,” in The Greater German Reich and the Jews: Nazi Persecution Policies in the Annexed Territories 1935–1945, ed. Wolf Gruner and Jörg Osterloh (New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015), 99–135. 147 Gebhart and Köpplová, Řízení legálního českého tisku v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava. Press meeting on January 31, 1941.

54

chapter 1

The historian Milotová suggests that the offensive, which started in early 1941, was intentionally triggered by the Nazi occupation authorities with the aim of accelerating the segregation of the Jews. The press evidently became a tool for the radicalization of the anti-Jewish policies in the Protectorate, and, already in March 1941, the journalists called for the branding of the Jews with a special sign (later introduced in the Reich, including the Protectorate, in ­September 1941). The German insistence on the escalation in the propaganda then further increased between August and October 1941.148 On October 3, 1941, Wolfram von Wolmar asked the journalists to insist on the deportation of all Jews from Czech and Moravian towns (the deportations commenced on October 16, 1941, when the first 1,000 Prague Jews were deported to the Łódź ghetto).149 The activist journalists soon executed all the instructions and directives issued by Wolfram von Wolmar, and the Press Group.150 Karel Werner, one of the leading activist journalists, even published a report about the Warsaw ghetto, which he depicted as the model way to solve the ­Jewish question in the Protectorate.151 In the perception of the occupation authorities, the Protectorate was in early September 1941 on the verge of an open revolt against German rule. Strikes and walkouts from workplaces occurred, and at the instigations of the bbc broadcasts from London, Czechs on several occasions manifested their unity against the German occupiers. Public manifestations of resistance tended to confirm the Nazi ideological persuasion (or at least the notions they spread in public) that the Czech exiles and the Jews were inciting the Czech population against the Germans. In September 1941, the London exiles demonstrated their influence over the people in the Protectorate with the help of the organized boycott of the Protectorate press, which was accused of working on behalf of the German occupier and spreading Nazi propaganda. The boycott was ­extremely successful, and the daily sale of the major 148 On August 29, 1941, Wolfram von Wolmar allowed the press to publish articles demanding the public marking of the Jews. Končelík, Köpplová, and Kryšpínová, Český tisk pod vládou Wolfganga Wolframa von Wolmara, 394. 149 Milotová, “Die Protektoratspresse und die ‘Judenfrage,’” 169f; Končelík, Köpplová, and Kryšpínová, Český tisk pod vládou Wolfganga Wolframa von Wolmara, 435. Press meeting, October 3, 1941. 150 Gebhart and Köpplová, Řízení legálního českého tisku v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava. The authors in the references linked particular articles, published during the war, to individual directives given by Wolfram von Wolmar. 151 Neumannová, “Protižidovská propaganda,” 113.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

55

­ rotectorate newspapers decreased in the week of September 14–21, 1941 by P 50–70 percent.152 Concurrently, the Protectorate authorities were further disquieted by the events that accompanied the compulsory branding of the Jews in the Protectorate with the Star of David, ordered on September 1, 1941 (made compulsory on September 18). The public humiliation of the Jews led to the major acts of defiance on their behalf displayed by the Czech population throughout the whole war. Nazi agencies complained that the Czechs were demonstratively greeting branded Jews in the streets and offering compassion to the persecuted minority. It seemed as if the Nazis were losing the propaganda fight with the exile government in London. In one chocolate factory in Moravia, the employees came to work several days before the introduction of the law with Jewish stars attached to their clothes. Wolfram von Wolmar furiously asserted that this event brought such a shameful disgrace on the Czech nation that the press should not even mention it.153 In response, the Nazis decided to increase the threats, and the newspapers were asked to emphasize to the public that any Czech seen fraternizing with the Jews would be treated as a non-Aryan, with all the limitations imposed on the daily life (no food, cigarette or clothes coupons, prohibition to visit public places, and branding with the Star of David). This warning was to be spread with all possible means. Similarly, Wolfram von Wolmar returned to the broadcast by Ripka, mentioned earlier, ‘who in one of the broadcasts from London considered it ­necessary to call the Jews his brothers.’154 Wolfram von Wolmar advised the journalists to use the broadcasts in the daily press and provided them quotes from Ripka’s speech. All expressions of sympathy with the Jews were to be sharply condemned. Furthermore, and more dangerously for the exiles, the German authorities perceived the expressions of sympathies with the Jews in the Protectorate as being caused by the instigation of the London-based exiles. Any subsequent punishment of the Czechs, either for boycotting the Protectorate press or for sympathizing with the Jews, could be blamed on the exiles, who were ruled by the Jews.

152 Jan Kuklík and Jan Gebhart, Velké dějiny zemí koruny české 15b. 1938–1945 (Praha: Paseka, 2007), 34–35. 153 Gebhart and Köpplová, Řízení legálního českého tisku v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava. Press meeting on September 19, 1941. 154 Ibid.

56

chapter 1

Hence, also the subsequent crackdown by Heydrich was portrayed as being unavoidable because of the exiles and the Jew-inspired acts of defiance. On February 4, 1942, Heydrich in his speech to the Nazi officials in the Protectorate returned to the difficult situation on the German side in September 1941. In his opinion, the exile government had clearly had contacts with the resistance circles in the Protectorate and the people were blindly following orders from London, for example, as Heydrich highlighted, in the response to the German decrees concerning the Jews.155 Only his arrival in Prague and the suppression of all resistance activities, the introduction of the martial law and the execution of Czech patriots and leaders of the resistance saved the situation in the last possible minute. Thus, as presented by Heydrich, his arrival and the terror against the Czechs was triggered by the extensive collaboration of the Protectorate population with the exiles (a topic, as we will see in the next chapter, that was picked up also in the situational reports). In late September and early October that year, the activist press was ordered to start an extensive propaganda campaign to prepare the ground for the removal of the Jews from Czech cities and towns. The anti-Jewish propaganda in the Czech press reached its peak.156 On September 29, 1941, Heydrich even ordered that every Czech openly expressing a friendly attitude towards the Jews be taken into protective custody (Schutzhaft) and also appealed to the Czech press to play an active role in the segregation of the Jews.157 The occupation authorities did not see the Czechs only as a group that supported the Jews to manifest their resistance to the Nazis. There was still, at the time of the deportation, a lack of understanding for the Jewish question as a racial question, and a lot of compassion with the Jews: A year or two ago Jews lived in comfortable flats and now they are being deported with fifty kilograms of luggage somewhere to the east. Such things [compassion] can give the broad masses of the Czech nation a bad certificate concerning race. I ask you therefore to discuss these matters on this occasion and openly to state the following: the Jewish question cannot be solved with great leniency; it is up to the Jews themselves and

155 Miroslav Kárný, Jaroslava Milotová, and Margita Kárná, eds., Protektorátní politika Reinharda Heydricha (Praha: teps, 1991), 314f. Document 61, February 4, 1942. 156 Milotová, “Die Protektoratspresse und die ‘Judenfrage,’” 156. See also Gebhart and ­Köpplová, Řízení legálního tisku. Press meetings on September 12 and 19, 1941. 157 Ibid., 170–73; Krejčová and Hyndráková, “Postoj Čechů k židům. Z politického zpravodajství okupační správy a protektorátního tisku v letech 1939–1941,” 589.

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

57

to people abroad who feel friendship towards us. Compassion is not appropriate here.158 In September 1941, Wolfram von Wolmar praised the Protectorate press for their role in the radicalization of the anti-Jewish policies. He specifically suggested that it was the press campaign that led to the introduction of the compulsory Star of David in Bohemia and Moravia at exactly the same time as in the rest of the Greater Reich. Wolfram von Wolmar perhaps intentionally exaggerated the role of the press, because the insistence on the introduction of a special mark for the Jews was voiced throughout the summer by German authorities in the Protectorate, at the central and local level, and the State Secretary in the Protectorate, Karl Hermann Frank, lobbied for the new measure with Berlin already in July 1941.159 However, in Wolfram von Wolmar’s view, the Czech press finally began to play its expected role as the mouthpiece of the antisemitic movement in the Protectorate. The Jewish themes figured less prominently in the press meetings after ­October 1941, and instead of focusing on the segregation of the Jews, the press employed the chimeric image of the international Jew, a wirepuller behind Roosevelt and the plutocratic American governments,160 as well as the Communist regime in the Soviet Union.161 Wolfram von Wolmar and his successor occasionally continued to mobilize the journalists and appealed to them not to ease off on the anti-Jewish propaganda and systematically continue in their attacks.162 The revelations of the crimes at Katyń, in the spring of 1943, offered the main opportunity to present the danger of Judeo-Bolshevism for Europe, and Wolfram von Wolmar added: ‘It is fundamental to emphasise the Jewish origin of this horrific crime.’163 He also advised the journalist to link the events to the notion that the international Jewry was the main guilty part for the outbreak of the war. Concurrently, the Katyń propaganda campaign also proved the increasing Nazi concerns about the war developments. Shortly after the defeat at 158 Gebhart and Köpplová, Řízení legálního českého tisku v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava. Press meeting on October 24, 1941. 159 Gruner, “The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.” 160 Gebhart and Köpplová, Řízení legálního českého tisku v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava. Press meetings on October 8, 1942, November 19, 1942, December 17, 1942. 161 Večeřa, “Židé a antisemitismus na stránkách vybraných českých deníků v letech 1939– 1945,” 103–20. 162 Gebhart and Köpplová, Řízení legálního českého tisku v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava. Press meetings on May 22, 1942 and May 13, 1943. 163 Ibid. Press meeting on April 16, 1943.

58

chapter 1

S­ talingrad, the German war effort moved to a defensive stage, and the Nazis attempted to mobilize the people in the Protectorate against the threat of ­Bolshevism. In the Prague city center, they installed public exhibitions in shop displays, where passersby stopped and looked through a large Star of David – painted on the glass – at a collection of photos documenting the excavations at Katyń. The large inscription on the glass informed the spectators that ‘This would await even us [To by čekalo i nás].’164 Hand in hand with the antisemitic attacks against the Allies went the systematic presentation of the Czechoslovak exile government as a group of renegade politicians under the rule of the Jews, who had sponged off the people in the interwar Republic and had no real interest in the well being of ‘Aryan Czechs.’165 It is very complicated to establish whether the propaganda had any success among Czech or Slovak people. Historians tend to downplay the effectiveness of the anti-Jewish broadcasts (and also writing in the press) that were in the hands of marginal and generally deplorable characters. Pinard, for example, repeatedly dismisses the effects, arguing that such laughable constructs could not find any audience among Czechs. On the other hand, he also quotes from an sd report from December 29, 1943, in which the author suggests that the political sketches ‘dealing with social issues were apparently popular among workers, while in “socially lower classes anti-Jewish sketches are also well received, particularly then, whenever harm comes to the Jew” [emphasized in the original].’166 Neumannová suggests that the attempt to present the Jews as in control of the interwar republic, the symbol of Czech nationhood, and in charge of the exile government, the only hope the Czechs had for the re-establishment of their independence, could not be successful, and presented two major mistakes by the Nazis in their fight to win over the Czech popular opinion.167 Also Pynsent and Brabec argue that the ‘primitive’ propaganda of the Nazi racial type could have no impact on the Czech people, though especially Pynsent would not exonerate the Czech population: ‘The activist version [of ­antisemitism] did not

164 Fotobanka čtk. https://multimedia.ctk.cz/?setSite=foto-detail-pagein&documentId=20 86317&idx=1&select-continue=1. 165 Gebhart and Köpplová, Řízení legálního českého tisku v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava. Press meetings, February 5, 1943, February 18, 1943, March 11, 1943, October 14, 1943, March 30, 1944. 166 Pinard, Broadcast Policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, 292., quoted from sd situation report, December 29, 1943. 167 Neumannová, “Protižidovská propaganda.”

The Public Image of the ‘Jew’ during the War

59

put down deep roots, simply because it reeked Germanness, not because the antisemitic emotions and self-justification were unacceptable.’168 In contrast, Krejčová is not so dismissive and concludes that the systematic propaganda could have contributed to the passivity of the Czech population at the time of the deportations after October 1941.169 Michala Lônčíková recently reached a similar conclusion, suggesting that the propaganda in fact impacted popular opinion vis-à-vis the Jews in wartime Slovakia by both dehumanizing the victims and reporting on deportations as if the were a ‘nothing out of the ordinary event.’170 Based on an in-depth reading of propaganda articles published at the time of the 1942 deportations of Slovakian Jews, Eduard Nižňanský also claims that it was both the authority of those in power (especially Tiso) and the widespread propaganda that allowed majority Slovaks not only to go on with their lives as the trains were leaving, but also participate in the persecution of Jews.171 We should not dismiss the effect of the systematic propaganda campaigns on popular responses to the Jews during the war. We pick up on this issue in the following chapter, where we bring further insights into the short-term and long-term effects of the official propaganda and German policies on the population in Nazi-dominated Europe, especially the Czech and Slovak majority societies. We focus here on the image of the ‘Jew’ in popular opinion, as captured by the situational reports of various agencies. This angle enables us to further analyse the continuities and transformations of the attitudes towards the Jews in the Protectorate and Slovakia. 168 Robert B. Pynsent, “Conclusory Essay: Activists, Jews, The Little Czech Man, and Germans,” Central Europe 5, no. 2 (2013): 253, 259, 325; Jiří Brabec, “Antisemitská literatura v době nacistické okupace,” Revolver Revue, no. 50 (2002): 275–301. 169 Krejčová, “‘Jsem nevinen?’ Süss, Harlan, Čáp a jiní.” 170 Lônčíková, “Was the Antisemitic Propaganda a Catalyst for Tensions in the Slovak-Jewish Relations?,” 16. 171 Eduard Nižňanský, “Antisemitská propaganda a deportácie na Slovensku v roku 1942,” in Antisemitizmus a propaganda, ed. Eduard Nižňanský and Michala Lônčíková (Bratislava: Stimul, 2014), 150.

chapter 2

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion In the eyes of the German officials in the Protectorate and their local counterparts in ‘independent’ Slovakia, the role of propaganda was to enlighten majority societies, to propagate the new ideology (including the Nazi view on the Jewish question) and to educate people on the true spirit of the new order. There was no space in the new Europe for people who were ‘fraternizing’ with Jews, whose removal was the only way to secure the biological survival of the ‘Aryans.’ The main aim of the propaganda was to prepare the way for a smooth segregation of Jews and their later deportation.1 The Jewish question was also presented as an opportunity for the majority society – a chance for a better life that, ironically, coincided with the denial of a future for others.2 If the task of the press, radio and film was to mold public opinion in a way that limiting the position of the Jews in the society was perceived as an expression of the will of the people and a public necessity, to what extent was it successful?3 What was the place of the ‘Jew’ in the popular opinion of majority Czechs and Slovaks during the Second World War? Aware of the scope of these questions, in addition to the fragility of examining popular opinion under nondemocratic regimes in general, we have a threefold aim. First, we aim to show the heterogeneity of responses to the Nazi, Czech and Slovak persecution of the Jews. The years under scrutiny form a dynamic period shaped by international as well as domestic events, which often exacerbated the situation in the socities involved. ‘Objective’ factors (such as e­ ducation or socio-economic status) and ‘subjective’ factors (including character, upbringing and religion) influenced the reactions to and perceptions of the ­so-called solution to the Jewish question in Europe. While stressing the multiplicity of responses to the plight of the Jews might seem to be stating the obvious, historical surveys on the Holocaust in either Slovakia or the Protectorate are yet to take this factor into account. Rather than attempting to cover all the curves and bends in a popular opinion, which would exceed the breadth of this chapter, we limit our inquiry to a 1 Lônčíková, “Was the Antisemitic Propaganda a Catalyst for Tensions in the Slovak-Jewish Relations?” 2 Gebhart and Köpplová, Řízení legálního českého tisku v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava. Press meeting on October 31, 1940. 3 Ibid. Press meeting on October 25, 1940.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004362444_004

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

61

handful of themes that are necessary for comprehending public responses to the persecution of the Jews. Hence, second, in order to disentangle the web of factors that molded the moods and attitudes towards the persecution of Jews, we consider recorded responses of the majority societies towards: (1) the regime and its character, (2) the appropriation of Jewish property, (3) the deportation of Jews to ghettos and concentration camps and (4) the anticipated return of the survivors after the war. Clearly, differences existed concering the effects of the war, the form and character of the regime, and the persecution of the Jews in the Protectorate and in Slovakia. What is more, disparities in wartime experience had an influence on the postwar reception of a handful of survivors. The end of the war incited feelings of joy and relief, yet it was equally common to witness fear and anger along with a bad conscience and uneasiness that the Jews may challenge the socio-economic statuses established during the war. Hence, we also need to consider the specificities of politics and life in both countries. This is the reason why, while aiming for a comparative work, we pay unequitable attention to the four above-mentioned factors in examining the two case studies, which includes diversified sources at times. For instance, taking into account the Czechs’ self-painted image of being the most democratic nation in the region is necessary if one wishes to understand why Czech society has had no comprehensive debate on the wartime experience of Jews in the Bohemian lands. This sharply contrasts with neighboring Poland and, to an extent, Slovakia. Conversely, as we shall demonstrate, the link between the looting of Jewish property, popular opinion and loyalty to the regime was much stronger in wartime Slovakia. Third, by expanding the scrutinized period to include the war’s immediate aftermath, this chapter concentrates both on the continuities and the transformations in terms of how the image of the ‘Jew’ in the Protectorate and Slovakia impacted the postwar fate of Jews. While the prewar borders of Czechoslovakia were restored in spring 1945 – albeit ceding Subcarpathian Rus’ to the ­Soviet Union in June 1945 – the country as people had known it vanished. ­Pieter L­ agrou characterizes postwar Europe as a grim place, ‘disrupted by demographic, social and political turmoil, stricken by physical destruction, haunted by recollections of violence and killing.’4 The Holocaust played out differently in Central and in Eastern Europe since the slaughter of the Jews took on a more intimate ‘form of ­communal 4 Pieter Lagrou, “Return to a Vanished World. European Societies and the Remnants of Their Jewish Communities, 1945–1947,” in The Jews Are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to Their Countries of Origin after wwii, ed. David Bankier (New York; Jerusalem: Berghahn Books–Yad Vashem, 2005), 1.

62

chapter 2

massacres’ in the latter.5 In former-Czechoslovakia, like many countries ­ across Central Europe, a dominant portion of the actual killing sites were geographically and psychologically removed from the immediate vicinity of the local population, with the exception of places of mass murder committed during the Slovak N ­ ational Uprising and, later, the death transports and marches. The slaughter of the Jews and Roma did not typically occur in front of friends, ­family or neighbors, nor in places people called home. While the genocide in the territory of today’s Poland, Ukraine or Belorussia became ‘an integral, almost “normal” feature of daily life during the war,’ it took the form of disenfranchisement, segregation, deportation, forced labor camps and ghettoization in the countries of Central Europe.6 In the Protectorate and Slovakia, local gendarmes and paramilitary troops participated in the deportations while the majority society remained largely indifferent to the fate of the Jews. The gravity of the war, the dynamics of the conflict, and the opportunities the looting of Jewish belongings presented to the majority societies disallowed absence from some type of participation in the Holocaust. Everybody played a role, even if it was a minor one, in what unfolded in Czecho-Slovakia after 1938. It is from this relative distance to the places of genocide – from seemingly safe and prosperous Central Europe with functioning state structures, however problematic these terms are – that we look at the responses to the persecution of the Jews in Czech and Slovak societies.

Collaboration in the Protectorate and Slovakia

In recent years, academic researchers of the Holocaust have presented analytical studies on virtually all aspects of life under Nazi Germany, including the role propaganda had in societies as well as the moods and attitudes of majority societies in general and vis-à-vis the so-called Jewish question in particular. In the Czech lands, especially the works of Miroslav Kárný and Livia Rothkirchen have laid the foundations for the next generation of scholars. Though generally focusing on German occupation policies, the history of the Theresienstadt ghetto and the fate of the Jews in the East, Kárný also urged scholars to tackle the unresolved question of local collaboration in the Protectorate. As he found in his research, such questions were often stirred by the works of publicists, 5 Omer Bartov, “Wartime Lies and Other Testimonies: Jewish-Christian Relations in Buczacz, 1939–1944,” East European Politics & Societies 25, no. 3 (2011): 491. 6 Ibid., 492.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

63

rather than historians, who ‘like to bring up sensitive topics from the past in order to confront them with the woeful (in the views of the authors) moral state of today’s society.’7 The rather guarded and hesitant Czech debate on collaboration tends to confirm Kárný’s observations. Concurrently, while the examination of local involvement in the Holocaust may seem to have progressed in Slovakia, it remains overtly focused on the role of political elites in the Holocaust, especially that of the President-Priest Jozef Tiso. Hence, the incomplete debate on local collaboration in both countries has taken place especially on the pages of liberal papers and journals. In November 2014, historians Anna Hájková and Martin Šmok made a foray into this issue with their commentary on the highest Czech state honors granted to Nicholas Winton, a recognized rescuer of Jewish children. In the process, Hájková and Šmok reprimanded the Czechs’ involvement in the Holocaust. They criticized the majority society because – as far as they perceived – it immersed itself in fairytales, thus avoiding the tough questions about the country’s past. With the help of many at the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, the British humanitarian Nicholas Winton and his colleagues organized a rescue operation that brought 669 children, mostly Jewish, from Czechoslovakia to Britain shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. As a result and unlike many of their parents and relatives back in the Protectorate, the children survived. While Winton kept what happened in Prague private for much of his life, films produced by the Slovak director Matej Mináč helped turn Winton into a symbol of beneficence, a saint in the midst of Nazi evil, in Czech public discourse. The exceptional role assigned to Winton in the Czech story of the Holocaust was further fostered when he received the Order of the White Lion, the highest Czech state honor, from the Czech President Miloš Zeman in 2014. Yet, if Winton represented bravery and courage, Hájková and Šmok continued, what about the denunciators? What became of the Czech informers who made life so miserable for the Jews in the last three years before their deportation that many of them actually felt relieved upon arriving in Theresienstadt? What happened to the Czech gendarmes in Theresienstadt who demanded exorbitant rates for occasionally smuggling letters out of the ghetto and even considered themselves noble souls? And what about the Czech women and the Czech men in mixed marriages who willingly agreed to divorce 7 Miroslav Kárný, “Vztah české společnosti k Židům v době nacistické okupace,” Československá historická ročenka 2001 (2001): 79.

64

chapter 2

(­ sometimes putting pressure on their Jewish partners) in order to save their properties, jobs, and social standing?8 Both Slovakia and the Czech Republic are still waiting for a complex debate on collaboration during the Holocaust, including the role state bureaucracy, police forces and ‘ordinary’ people played in the slaughter of Jews. The problem with outcries such as these is that they obscure the role of ‘ordinary’ Czechs and Slovaks in the Jewish and Roma genocide. When the authors conflated the public commemoration of a British rescuer and his colleagues with attempts to reshape the discussion on Czech collaboration in the Holocaust, they confused rather than elucidated the problem. The discussion simply has simply gone in the wrong direction. In fact, the need to look for ‘the Holocaust with a happy end,’ a highly problematic phrase coined by the authors,9 outside of Czech society symbolizes a lack of any mentionable local examples. When it comes to popular responses to the persecution of Jews, courage and betrayal, assistance and denunciation, or bravery and fear, were often present at the same time. In the lives of individuals, seemingly contradictory responses went often hand in hand, complicating what we might think of being a clear line between profiteering and collaboration on one hand, and help and rescue on the other. It is this diversity of responses that problematizes each and every investigation into popular opinion but which nevertheless needs to be acknowledged and addressed. We also need to stress that there was no silence about the Holocaust and antisemitism in either immediate postwar or communist Czechoslovakia. The notion of a Czech and Slovak contribution to the persecution of the Jews had already surfaced within surviving communities shortly after the liberation. For instance, when Rabbi Richard Feder from Kolín published his memoirs from the war in 1947, he indicated numerous times that Czechs denounced Jews who had transgressed official regulations: 8 Anna Hájková and Martin Šmok, “Česká pohádka o Wintonovi aneb holokaust s happy endem,” http://idnes.cz/, November 9, 2014, http://zpravy.idnes.cz/nicholas-winton-glosa-anna -hajkova-martin-smok-flj-/domaci.aspx?c=A141106_101441_domaci_aha. 9 The debate about the Kindertransports has been led in Britain in the last decades. Although the commemoration of the Kindertransports is an integral part of the Holocaust memory in Britain, historians have for a long time acknowledged the problematic nature of the whole rescue scheme that separated families and condemned most of the parents to death in Nazi ghettos and extermination camps. See e.g. Wolfgang Benz, Claudia Curio, and Andrea ­Hammel, eds., “Special Issue: Kindertransporte 1938/39 – Rescue and Integration,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 23, no. 1 (2005).

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

65

How many more cases of denouncing could I give? It was a shameful phenomenon. Out of envy, malicious glee, and stupidity, people denounced others, without thinking about the fact that it defamed the entire Czech nation. Too bad we do not know the names of these ‘genial’ fellow citizens. They emerged in all strata of the population, even the upper classes, even those at the very top. My motto, ‘Never say you know people,’ proved right.10 These denunciations did not cease at the time of the deportations to Theresienstadt: Unfortunately, the malice of wicked, envious neighbours did not diminish even when they saw us, completely impoverished, leaving the place where we had worked for years. They did not see how alone we felt, how many nights we wept, how hard it was to say goodbye to our home. But they did rush to the Gestapo to inform them that Dr. M. had money hidden in a hollow walking stick, that A. had money in the lining of her clothes, that Kr. had sewn it into his shoes, and so forth. On the basis of those numerous denunciations, severe interrogations followed, and the ‘serious offenders’ were tortured. I declare our contempt for these denouncers. Shame on them!11 Local antisemitism, collaboration and profiteering such as this, including the problematic nature of broad categories such as ‘perpetrators’ or ‘rescuers,’ was to become the topic of movies and novels. In March 1948, Alfred Radok, who was a Czech theatre and film director as well as a half-Jewish survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, wrote his comments on the draft of a film screenplay entitled Cesta (Journey), prepared by another Holocaust survivor, Erik Kolár. Radok agreed to pursue the film project, and this eventually developed into Daleká cesta (The Distant Journey), one of the first Holocaust films made after the war. The film depicts the story of a mixed couple, an ‘Aryan’ Toník and Jewish Hana, during the war in Prague and in the Theresienstadt ghetto. One of the main issues Radok intended to address was Czech antisemitism. He asserted that anti-Jewish laws were adopted by Hitler and the Czechs. As Radok noted, there had been a lot of ‘manure’ in the Bohemian lands that gave birth to the seeds of racial hatred. Stressing his accusatory tone against the Czechs, Radok concluded that if there had been 10 11

Richard Feder, Židovská tragedie: dějství poslední (Kolín: Lusk, 1947), 26f. Ibid., 35f.

66

chapter 2

no Germans in the Bohemian lands during the war, the situation would not have differed. In other words, it would still have led to anti-Jewish laws and the segregation of Jews.12 The final version of the film portrays the rise of domestic antisemitism after Munich. Yet overall, the film promoted the idea of excellent relations between Czechs and Jews during the occupation. Radok’s intention to depict strong local antisemitism was rejected by either the Czech Communist authorities or the directors of the State Film. Some scholars also suggest the possibility that Radok gradually realized he went too far.13 In any case, Radok’s and Feder’s comments point to a more complex perception of the situation in the Protectorate than has so far been presented by the available historiography, and this shows that there were efforts, largely from the survivor community, to start a discussion about Czech involvement in the persecution of the Jews by the late-1940s. Even though the retribution trials after the war introduced the issue of the denunciation and the persecution of Jews, the events followed strict judicial proceedings and predominantly remained confined to the responsibilities and culpabilities of individuals.14 Radok’s film, as well as the retribution trials, need to be considered missed opportunities since they might have led to the first postwar reckoning with a difficult past. Though never triggering a Historikerstreit or broad public debate, there have similarly been scholarly inquiries into local collaboration and popular opinion in Slovakia. The Smolenice conference, organized by the Historical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (Historický ústav Slovenskej akadémie vied) in early-June 1964, laid the grounds for some short-lived scholarly research into popular opinion during the Second World War. The political thaw and the

12

Jan Láníček and Stuart Liebman, “A Closer Look at Alfred Radok’s Film Distant Journey,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies : An International Journal 30, no. 1 (2016): 53–80. 13 Jiří Cieslar, “Daleká cesta Alfréda Radoka,” in Alfréd Radok mezi filmem a divadlem, ed. Eva Stehlíková (Praha: Akademie múzických umění–Národní filmový archiv, 2007), 14f. 14 Frommer, National Cleansing; Mečislav Borák, ed., Retribuce v čsr a národní podoby antisemitismu: židovská problematika a antisemitismus ve spisech mimořádných lidových soudů a trestních komisí onv v letech 1945–1948 : sborník příspěvků (Praha, Opava: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny Akademie věd České republiky–Slezský ústav Slezského zemského muzea, 2002); Mečislav Borák, Poválečná justice a národní podoby antisemitismu: postih provinění vůči Židům před soudy a komisemi onv v českých zemích v letech 1945–1948 a v některých zemích střední Evropy  : sborník přispěvků (Praha; Opava: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny Akademie věd České republiky–Slezský ústav Slezského zemského muzea, 2002).

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

67

r­ etraction of the campaign against the ostensible bourgeois nationalists, meant that the conference participants voiced a far less dogmatic assessment of the Slovak wartime resistance than they had previously done, including the Slovak National Uprising. The atmosphere significantly wavered from the established postwar notion of a nation opposing a thin layer of committed c­ ollaborators and traitors during the war.15 Taking place around the 20th anniversary of the Uprising, the conference played a vital role in diversifying the reading of the rebellion. The importance of the event was further fostered through the appearance of Alexander Dubček, who became the first secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in January 1968 and was also the embodiment of the liberalization process during the Prague Spring. Gustáv Husák (1913–91) and Ladislav Novomeský additionally addressed the participants of the conference and challenged the official interpretation of the rebellion. Both were active in the Slovak National Uprising and had been sentenced to long prison terms during the Stalinist trials of the 1950s. With the symposium revolving around the wartime resistance, many of the speakers either touched upon or directly discussed public opinion in connection to the struggle of the Slovak population against the ‘fascists,’ meaning the leaders of the independent Slovak state.16 Husák’s words at the conference, along with his published account a year earlier, signaled a shift in Slovak historiography whereby the national question stood alongside the otherwise central topics of social class and economic constraints: We are cleansing the Slovak National Uprising, and all of us – the Party, the historians and the political writers – are giving it its genuine, true face. But the Uprising is no abstract concept. It was carried out by real people, thousands of Communists, hundreds of thousands of anti-­ fascists. ­Another thing that should be recalled, I believe, is that very many questions concerning the participants of the Uprising and the struggle for liberation have yet to be answered.17 15 16 17

Shari J. Cohen, Politics Without a Past: The Absence of History in Postcommunist Nationalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 94. Jozef Jablonický, Glosy o historiografii snp: zneužívanie a falšovanie dejín snp (Bratislava: nvk International, 1994), 51–53. Gustav Husák, “K niektorým otázkam Slovenského národného povstania,” in Slovenské národné povstanie roku 1944: sborník príspevkov z národnooslobodzovacieho boja, 1938– 1945, ed. Ľudovít Holotík and Miroslav Kropilák (Bratislava: Vydavateľstvo Slovenskej akadémie vied, 1965), 664.

68

chapter 2

Perhaps encouraged by Husák’s opening words, speakers at the symposioum dared to raise topics so far overlooked by scholars. For instance, while focusing on the political regime in Slovakia between 1939–45, historian Ľubomír Lipták pointed to a number of unresolved questions in historiography: the character and changes within the regime throughout the six years, the effect of ideology on society and the issue of popular opinion during the Second World War in general. In many respects, Lipták’s paper was a pioneering work of scholarship. He used a large variety of primary sources, including situation reports and trial documents. Lipták was also one of the first historians to clearly identify the links between the character of the wartime Slovak regime and the relevant social mood and attitude.18 Taking situation reports that suggested the regime was already losing popular support between 1942–43 as a point of departure, Lipták searched for the factors molding public opinion towards the regime in Slovakia during the war. Despite the originality of the theme and approach, he confirmed the simplified notion that the ‘clerofascist’ regime did not enjoy any substantial popular support.19 While Lipták failed to see Slovak society’s heterogeneity, Bohuslav Graca’s paper took on the role of the Communist Party in the preparations for the Uprising and then outlined the ways in which he examined the depth of ideological indoctrination across different regions.20 Graca’s methodology was heavily based on the comparison of election results across Slovakian towns and cities in 1938 and 1946, an approach that Jan Tesař called ‘primitive.’ Tesař nevertheless praised the author’s focus on historical disparities, finding it inspirational for the study of Nazi policies in the Protectorate.21 In a relatively short window of time from the mid- to late-1960s, a number of new themes and approaches appeared also in Czech historiography. Many of them were crucial for a better understanding of the popular moods in the Protectorate.22 Tomáš Pasák’s articles focused on the Protectorate press 18

19 20 21 22

Ľubomír Lipták, “Politický režim na Slovensku v rokoch 1939–1945,” in Slovenské národné povstanie roku 1944; sborník príspevkov z národnooslobodzovacieho boja, 1938–1945., ed. Ľudovít Holotík and Miroslav Kropilák (Bratislava: Vydavateľstvo Slovenskej akadémie vied, 1965), 20–49. Ibid., 22. Lipták, “Politický režim na Slovensku v rokoch 1939–1945.” Jan Tesař, “K otázce pracovních postupů při historickém studiu veřejného mínění v době okupace,” Historie a vojenství, no. 6 (1966): 1093–94. Stanislav Kokoška, “Odboj, kolaborace, přizpůsobení … Několik poznámek k výzkumu české protektorátní společnosti,” Soudobé dějiny 17, no. 1–2 (2010): 9–30.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

69

and Czech fascist groups.23 Karel Lagus and Josef Polák, former prisoners of Theresienstandt, analyzed sources of antisemitism.24 Tesař published research articles on the collaboration of Czech elites and particularly important methodological papers on how to analyze popular opinion during the Nazi occupation. Though with limitations, Tesař also touched upon Czech responses to the persecution of the Jews through these contributions. Paying special attention to sources that included artistic and literary representations of the Holocaust, Tesař warned of what he called ahistoricism. He suggested that speaking of antisemitism in Czech society during the occupation was more complicated than it seemed: [I]t would be utterly false and would contradict an extraordinarily valuable characteristic of the Czech resistance at home, in comparison with those in most other countries – namely, the considerable isolation of antisemitic elements, which is confirmed by all information about public opinion in Czech society. Works of fiction on this topic – whether consciously or not – are belated reactions not to the Nazi period but to the mistakes of the 1950s, the consequences of which have persisted as an existing reality, for example, in certain antisemitic aspects of the opinions of the backward strata of society.25 Even while reinforcing the narrative of overpoweringly positive Czech-Jewish relations throughout the war, Tesař went on to challenge a number of other topics. In 1968, he addressed the key concept of collaboration. What Tesař found problematic was that, though the term was widely used, its application varied. As a result, it not only put together actors with different motivation but also individuals who actually stood in opposition to each other: The substance and scope of a key concept of Second World War historiography – namely, collaboration – remain unexplained. Some apply the term only to the helpers of the Nazis in the occupied countries; others 23

24 25

Tomáš Pasák, “Problematika protektorátního tisku a formování tzv. skupiny aktivistických novinářů na počátku okupace,” Příspěvky k dějinám ksč 11, no. 5 (1967): 52–80; Tomáš Pasák, “Vývoj Vlajky v období okupace,” Historie a vojenství 10, no. 5 (1966): 846–95. Karel Lagus and Josef Polák, Město za mřížemi (Praha: Naše vojsko, 1964). Tesař, “K otázce pracovních postupů při historickém studiu veřejného mínění v době ­okupace,” 1116.

70

chapter 2

extend it to this or that political force in the societies of the subjugated countries.26 When addressing the issue of collaboration, Tesař had his eyes set on those with political power rather than petty traitors and denunciators, whom he referred to as all-willing ‘desperados.’27 Tesař separated ‘desperados’ from ‘collaborators,’ dividing the latter into two groups, ‘ideological Nazis’ and the Czech Protectorate leadership. The latter cooperated with the Nazis while ‘following more-or-less oppositional or decelerating aims,’ at least for the first two years.28 Tesař’s arguments include his insistence on using the terms háchovci and háchovština, which provoked a heated scholarly discussion. This term was introduced in 1942 by exile groups as a Czech variation of quislings and became a derogatory term for the Protectorate government of President Emil Hácha. His most outspoken opponent was probably Pasák, who disagreed with what he thought was an overgeneralization and pointed to the evolution of the relations between the Protectorate government and the Nazi regime.29 ­Interestingly, Tesař’s and Pasák’s arguments on how to define collaboration continue to influence Czech historiography of the Protectorate, as the works of Detlef Brandes illustrate. Brandes distinguishes three types of collaboration in the Protectorate based on the actor’s motivation: (1) ideological collaboration, where the prime incentive was the acceptance of Nazi ideas; (2) activism, with its actors anticipating the victory of Nazi Germany; and (3) collaboration as the lesser evil (this was in fact not often presented as collaboration30), done to prevent something worse from happening.31 While Brandes understood ‘collaboration’ as a broad term, Kárný applied it almost exclusively to the Czech Protectorate’s political representatives and economic elites who, as he believed, provided legitimacy for the occupation: 26

Jan Tesař, “‘Záchrana národa’ a kolaborace,” Dějiny a současnost 10, no. 5 (1968): 5; Jan Tesař, Traktát o “záchraně národa”: texty z let 1967–1969 o začátku německé okupace (Praha: Triáda, 2006), 291. 27 Tesař, Traktát o “záchraně národa,” 292; Kokoška, “Odboj, kolaborace, přizpůsobení … Několik poznámek k výzkumu české protektorátní společnosti,” 19. 28 Tesař, Traktát o “záchraně národa,” 293. 29 Tomáš Pasák, “Generál Eliáš a problémy kolaborace,” Dějiny a současnost 10, no. 6 (1968): 33–37. 30 František Bauer, “České noviny za války,” in Šest let okupace Prahy (Praha: Osvětový odbor hlavního města Prahy, 1946), 71–80. 31 Detlef Brandes, Die Tschechen unter deutschem Protektorat (München: R. Oldenbourg, 1969); Detlef Brandes, Češi pod německým protektorátem: okupační politika, kolaborace a odboj 1939–1945 (Praha: Prostor, 2000), 476.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

71

Crossing over to the side of the felonious enemy is in the true sense of the word no longer collaboration, but treason. This is the case of Emanuel Moravec and others who have not only collaborated with the occupation administration, but who were a direct part of this German power structure.32 Paradoxically, while the term has been widely debated and disputed, it only partially found its way into Czech historical writings. As Stanislav Kokoška tells us, the term ‘collaboration’ has been used scarcely and applied only to a limited number of actors: the fascist groups, activist journalists and the Czech Protectorate leadership between 1942–5. Arguing that the prime motivation of accommodating the Nazis in the Protectorate was defensive rather than ideological, more neutral terms were introduced to characterize the approach and the politics of the Protectorate government, including ‘deceleration’ (retardace) or ‘opportunism’ (oportunismus).33 Kokoška disagrees with the application of ‘collaboration’ for Czech society, finding the concept morally loaded and thus analytically problematic. However, Jaroslav Kučera and Volker Zimmermann have argued otherwise.34 More recently, they both criticized Czech historiography for being overly focused on resistance and painting a rather ambiguous picture of Czech society under German occupation: [T]he topic of voluntary and involuntary collaboration – or whatever term is used – should, in all its forms and with all its related questions, become the subject of intense debate in the future. Together with the depiction that we so far have of resistance behaviour, a more three-­ dimensional picture of Czech society under German occupation could thus be presented.35

32

Miroslav Kárný, “Die Rolle der Kollaboration in der deutschen Okkupationspolitik im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren,” in Okkupation und Kollaboration (1938–1945): Beiträge zu Konzepten und Praxis der Kollaboration in der deutschen Okkupationspolitik, ed. Werner Röhr (Berlin; Heidelberg: Hüthig Verlagsgemeinschaft, 1994), 155. 33 Dušan Tomášek and Robert Kvaček, Causa Emil Hácha (Praha: Themis, 1995), 96; Kokoška, “Odboj, kolaborace, přizpůsobení … Několik poznámek k výzkumu české protektorátní společnosti,” 22. 34 Stanislav Kokoška, Praha v květnu 1945: historie jednoho povstání (Praha: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2005), 27. 35 Jaroslav Kučera and Volker Zimmermann, “Ke stavu českého výzkumu nacistické okupační vlády v Čechách a na Moravě. Několik úvah u příležitosti vydání jedné standardní publikace,” Soudobé dějiny xvi, no. 1 (2009): 129.

72

chapter 2

In this respect, it is noteworthy that the Czech debate on ‘collaboration’ and its conception or definition has scarcely included a reference to the Czechs’ contribution to the Holocaust. Another problem is that the term could hardly characterize the whole scale of responses – from outright collaboration to passivity and indifference towards the fate of Jews – that we can identify during the war. These responses have largely remained at the margins of historical research regarding the Protectorate and Slovakia. The difficulty with ‘collaboration,’ however, is not only that it is a morally loaded concept but also that it has acquired different connotations over time. Historically, Czech postwar retribution courts came with multiple definitions of collaboration, which thus failed to agree on a clear classification of the offense.36 Hence, the only explicit legal definition of ‘collaboration’ and ‘collaborators’ within Czechoslovak law is to be found in statute no. 33/1945 of the Slovak National Council on the punishment of fascist criminals, occupants, traitors and collaborators in addition to the establishment of people’s justice. This decree introduced four categories of criminality into Slovak retribution. What distinguished ‘domestic traitors’ from ‘collaborators’ and ‘petty criminals of the fascist regime’ was the type of crime they committed. Whereas a ‘domestic traitor’ was typically a Czechoslovak citizen and former government official who helped the German and Hungarian ‘fascists,’ a ‘petty criminal’ committed similar crimes at the local level. ‘Collaborators’ were those who assisted ‘fascist occupiers’ or ‘domestic traitors,’ but it did not stop here. It went on to include others: [Those] who ordered, organized, or zealously carried out the persecution of democratic and anti-fascist individuals and organizations for their political activities, who caused undue damage to another person because of that person’s racial, national, religious, or political affiliation or antifascist beliefs, or who ordered or zealously carried out the deportation of Slovaks to foreign countries, prison camps, or to do forced labour for the German war machine.37 However vague this legal definition of ‘collaboration’ was, the Slovaks, unlike the Czechs, could not completely deny their country’s participation in the ­Holocaust. Instead, the responsibility for crimes committed between 1938–45 had been shifted very early on to either those in power during the 36 Frommer, National Cleansing, 8, 52. 37 “33/1945 Zb. snr o potrestaní fašistických zločincov, okupantov, zradcov,” accessed July 1, 2017, http://www.noveaspi.sk/products/lawText/1/11701/1/2.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

73

war – e­ specially the radical wing of the state-party around Vojtech Tuka and Mach – or those located at the fringes of society, which typically included members of the Hlinka Guard. The actions and attitudes of individuals in either of these two groups were treated as completely detached from the main society (see Chapter 3 on the contribution of the wartime bbc broadcasts to this narrative). As a result, in the very first account of the fate of Jews in Slovakia compiled in the late-1940s by the Jewish Documentation Action (Dokumentačná akcia) in Bratislava, its authors, who may have already been restricted by Communist censorship, did not challenge this narrative: In Slovakia the sad outcome of the war is extraordinarily instructive. The tragedy of the Slovak Jews occurred in a state that called itself Christian, declaring to the world that it was guided by the principles of love for one’s neighbour, that it respected God’s commandments, and believed in the equality of human beings before the Creator.38 Yet, if Slovak leadership had failed both God’s commandments and their ­Jewish brothers, this did not inculpate Slovaks in general: The Slovak people are not responsible for the actions of their government, nor are they to be blamed that Jewish loot lured a number of the members of this nation to commit shameful acts. It would be wrong to conclude that Slovakia was more poisoned by antisemitism than any other European country was. The Slovak people, deprived of being able to manage their own affairs, could not express their will. They often had to conceal their courageous attitude to the Jews in order not to come into an open conflict with the authorities, the police, and the Hlinka Guard.39 The limited application of the term ‘collaboration’ was partly caused by the clash of two national narratives presented within a relatively short interval. The first notion was articulated by the wartime representatives and supported by the official historiography of the period.40 This interpretation was quickly abandoned after 1945, at least in Slovakia though it continued to live among 38

Bedrich Steiner and Štefan Engel, eds., Tragédia slovenských židov: fotografie a dokumenty (Bratislava: Dokumentačná akcia pri úsžno, 1949). 39 Ibid. 40 František Hrušovský, Slovenské dejiny (Turčiansky sv. Martin: Matica slovenská, 1939), 379–447.

74

chapter 2

Slovak exiles in the West. It asserted that the establishment of the Slovak state on March 14, 1939 was a culmination of a long struggle for self-determination, the product of the will of the people. The ‘basic premise of the ludak [denoting members of the hsľs] narrative, [that party was] a representative of the nation and [that] the Slovak state [was] a result of the nation’s wishes, was in direct conflict with the legitimization needs of the Communist regime.’ It was fundamental for the postwar Marxist historiography to prove the alleged falsity of this premise.41 The issue here was not simply that a new narrative was replacing the old one. During the Communist period, the ludak exile historiography kept undermining the Marxist narrative and, because of its almost exclusive access to foreign sources, distorted the Slovak reckoning with its own difficult past in the following decades, which has continued up to present day. While scholars disagree on how to conceptualize the actions of the wartime Protectorate or Slovak leadership, they rarely challenge the existing narratives of the majority societies’ attitude towards Jews. Most historical books on the Protectorate assume that Germans did not find many Czechs who would actively collaborate in the Holocaust, a notion already being promoted by Pasák in the 1960s. The Czech fascist movement was weak before the war and remained a heterogeneous conglomerate of obscure groupings even after the occupation. Furthermore, some of the main ideological leaders of the movement, radical Czech nationalists like General Radola Gajda, rejected any close cooperation with the Germans.42 Some of the other Czech radicals attempted to stir anti-Jewish violence in Czech towns shortly after the occupation and, in cooperation with local Germans, set synagogues ablaze in several Moravian cities. They attacked Jews in the streets of Czech cities and towns, pulled them out of cafeterias and beat them. There were also attempts to incite pogroms, for example in Příbram.43 However, Czech fascists never received any recognition from Czech society, and the Germans were aware of the limited – or almost non-existent – appeal these groups had among Czechs.44 What is more, scholars of Czech history tend to adhere to this democratic narrative of Czech-Jewish history and stress what they perceive as the liberal 41 42 43 44

Adam Hudek, Najpolitickejšia veda: slovenská historiografia v rokoch 1948–1968 (Bratislava: Historický ústav Slovenskej akadémie vied, 2010), 205. Ivo Pejčoch, Fašismus v českých zemích: fašistické a nacionálněsocialistické strany a hnutí v Čechách a na Moravě 1922–1945 (Praha: Academia, 2011), 120. Ibid., 159–68. Tomáš Pasák, “Český antisemitismus na počátku okupace,” Věda a život, March 1969, 147–51.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

75

nature of Czech nationalism and nation building, which was able to include Jews among the ranks of the Czech nation.45 Other researchers tend to present a social divide. They emphasize the collaboration of the Czech economic elites and the Protectorate government in the initial stages of the final solution as well as their efforts to take part in the Aryanization of Jewish property. In contrast, they defend the track record of Czech society and reject any thesis questioning the willingness of ‘ordinary’ Czechs to support the Jews during the first years of the war. Kárný is the main representative of this camp. He, for example, rejected claims that the number of Jews who illegally survived in the Protectorate was comparatively lower than in neighboring territories.46 The still predominantly positive narrative sharply contradicts with the tenor of research analyzing the history of the Second Republic and its aftermath. During its brief existence, post-Munich Czecho-Slovakia witnessed the rise of antisemitic sentiments across all sectors of society. What is more, although Jewish survivors in Bohemia and ­Moravia did not experience cases of physical violence after 1945, they in fact encountered numerous obstacles on the way to physical and material restitution and rehabilitation. In the Czech case, the period of the occupation is presented as a diversion in an otherwise linear development between 1938 and 1948. Scholars of Slovak history, with some important exceptions, tend to view the Jews as an object of wrongdoing of a handful of ‘domestic traitors.’47 The Holocaust is treated as a largely top-down phenomenon, the responsibility of Slovak fascist organizations and groups that had no, or very limited, social appeal.48 They do not ignore the discussion of problems in Slovak-Jewish relations, but the alleged Hungarian orientation of many Jews and their perceived middle-class character are often used to explain, or even excuse, anti-Jewish sentiments among the majority society. The relation of the majority society to the plight of the Jews is thus presented as one of on-lookers who might have taken advantage of the widespread looting of Jewish belongings, but 45

46 47

48

Jan Gebhart, “Někteří z mnohých. K činnosti Josefa Fischera, Karla Bondyho a Miloše Otto Bondyho v českém odboji za druhé světové války,” in Postavení a osudy židovského obyvatelstva v Čechách a na Moravě v letech 1939–1945: sborník studií eds. Helena Krejčová and Jana Svobodová (Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny av čr – Maxdorf, 1998), 145–61. Miroslav Kárný, “Konečné řešení”: genocida českých Židů v německé protektorátní politice (Praha: Academia, 1991). Eduard Nižňanský, Holokaust na Slovensku 7. Vzťah slovenskej majority a židovskej minority (náčrt problému) (Bratislava: Nadácia Milana Šimečku – Katedra všeobecných dejín ff uk, 2005), 1–2. Peter Sokolovič, Hlinkova garda 1938–1945 (Bratislava: Ústav pamäti národa, 2009), 101–17.

76

chapter 2

who were otherwise completely powerless witnesses to the course of actions. ­Eduard Nižňanský summarized the discussion on the Holocaust in Slovak historiography as follows: Most authors analyse the history by looking at three main groups: victims (Jews); murderers (across the broader spectrum of the hsľs ruling elite); and the silent majority. In terms of assigning responsibility for events, authors tend to see the majority Slovak population as a kind of background element, for example, as a difficult-to-describe silent majority.49 It was primarily academic research in the Slovak appropriation of Jewish property that presented scholars with more pressing concerns regarding the involvement of majority society in the Holocaust.50 Popular interest in officially sanctioned and religiously authorized robberies was so widespread that some authors speak of the Slovakization, rather than Aryanization, of Jewish property in this largely Roman Catholic country.51 Despite mounting evidence, however, scholars, including Nižnanský, have continued to speak of a ‘silent majority’ in Slovakia: The passivity of the majority was not, therefore, only a consequence of manipulation of the population through propaganda and doses of terror aimed at helpers of Jews who found themselves in Ilava [camp] in 1942 and facing capital punishment in 1944. The regime of the wartime Slovak Republic simply engaged a significant portion of the majority in crimes against the Jewish community by offering them benefits, from educational opportunities in place of Jews, to quickly disappearing ­Jewish ­competition in the economic sphere for Aryanizers and ­liquidators, to 49 50

51

Eduard Nižňanský, “On Relations between the Slovak Majority and Jewish Minority during World War ii,” Yad Vashem Studies 42, no. 2 (2014): 47–48. Eduard Nižňanský and Ján Hlavinka, eds., Arizácie (Bratislava: Stimul, 2010); Eduard Nižňanský and Ján Hlavinka, eds., Arizácie v regiónoch Slovenska (Bratislava: Stimul, 2010); Veronika Slneková, “Arizácie židovských podnikov v Trnave ako súčasť tzv. riešenia židovskej otázky v rokoch 1938–1945,” Studia Historica Nitriensia 9 (2001): 168–202; Ľudovít Hallon, “Arizácia na Slovensku 1939–1945,” Acta Oeconomica Pragensia 2007, no. 7 (2007): 148–60; Ján Hlavinka, “Arizácia židovských podnikov v Šarišsko-zemplínskej župe 1939– 1945” (Unpublished PhD Thesis, Comenius University in Bratislava, 2013); Andrea James, “Zmeny v postavení židovskej komunity v okrese Topoľčany počas obdobia Slovenského štátu,” Česko-slovenská historická ročenka 2001 (2001): 123–33. Martin Dean, Robbing the Jews: The Confiscation of Jewish Property in the Holocaust, 1933–1945 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 318; Tönsmeyer, “The ­Robbery of Jewish Property in Eastern European States Allied with Nazi Germany.”

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

77

opportunities for economic benefit at post-deportation auctions for ­ordinary people. The result of this policy was a ‘silent majority,’ a passive ­majority population.52 Nevertheless, some scholars have pointed to the need for a detailed analysis of the attidues of both Slovaks and Czechs towards Jews during the war. Hana Kubátová, for instance, has drawn attention to the multiplicity of responses to Jews during the war in Slovakia.53 Monika Vrzgulová’s ethnographic work have also raised awareness of the ambivalently anticipated return of Jews in 1945 as well as the diverse ways in which Slovak ‘bystanders’ remember and narrate their role in the persecution of the Jews.54 Eva Hahn emphasized that Czechs need to move beyond their victimization and resistance narratives of wartime experiences.55 In some of her others works, the author went even further: Even if militant forms of antisemitism never flourished in Czech public life on quite the scale they did in some neighboring countries, much evidence points to the existence of an albeit not malignant but a certainly unreflective anti-Semitism in Czech society. It is a form of anti-Semitism which – while it cannot be accused of overtly aggressive attitudes or deeds – does not allow Jews in the final instance to live as equals among equals. The uncritical adoption and continued influence of traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes prevents the population from coming to grips either with its own history or with the complex history of Bohemia.56 52 53 54

55

56

Nižňanský, “On Relations between the Slovak Majority and Jewish Minority during World War ii,” 88. Hana Kubátová, Nepokradeš! Nálady a postoje slovenské společnosti k židovské otázce, 1938– 1945 (Praha: Academia, 2013). Monika Vrzgulová, “Návrat domov? (Biografické naratívy žien, ktoré prežili holokaust),” in Židovská komunita po roku 1945, ed. Peter Salner (Bratislava: Ústav etnológie sav, 2006), 9–30; Monika Vrzgulová, “Osudy židov v spomienkach ich nežidovských susedov. Antisemitizmus – ľahostahnosť – konformizmus?,” in Podoby antisemitismu v Čechách a na Slovensku ve 20. a 21. století, ed. Monika Vrzgulová and Hana Kubátová (Praha: Karolinum, 2016); Monika Vrzgulová, “Memories of the Holocaust: Slovak Bystanders,” Holocaust Studies 23, no. 1–2 (2017): 99–111. Eva Hahn, “Verdrängung und Verharmlosung. Das Ende der jüdischen Bevölkerungsgruppe in den böhmischen Ländern nach ausgewählten tschechischen und sudetendeutschen Publikationen,” in Der Weg in die Katastrophe: 1938–1947: deutsch-tschechoslowakische Beziehungen, ed. Detlef Brandes and Václav Kural (Essen: Klartext, 1994), 135–51. Eva Schmidt-Hartmann, “The Enlightenment That Failed: Antisemitism in Czech Political Culture,” Patterns of Prejudice 27, no. 2 (1993): 119f.

78

chapter 2

Hahn also highlighted the problematic responses of the Czech population in the immediate postwar period. In her account, Czechs did not oppose the state-sponsored harassment of Jewish survivors and the unwillingness to return property to its rightful owners or heirs. Moreover, the postwar developments only served to overshadow the Czechs’ wartime attitude towards Jews: ‘The absence of critical thought about the Holocaust and Czech attitudes to the deportations of Jews during the German occupation prevents any understanding of the moral aspects of the tragic end of German-Czech and not just Czech-Jewish-coexistence in Bohemia.’57 Michal Frankl has also recently pointed to the deficiencies of Czech historiography, claiming that ‘the genocide of Czech Jews is explained solely as committed by the Germans […] The dominant belief is that the Czechs did not participate in the Holocaust and that therefore they are not to be responsible.’58 Despite these calls, few historians have taken the heterogeneity of responses to the Nazi persecution of the Jews among Czechs into account. One exception is Helena Krejčová, who suggests that we can observe a whole range of attitudes from the majority Czechs. There were those who tried to make the lives of Jews even more miserable by, for example, denouncing them to the authorities. They were led by antisemitic prejudices, greed or efforts to i­mprove their social standing by transitioning to better jobs. This is an important observation because – as already proved in the historiography of the Holocaust – ­antisemitism was not a self-explanatory factor that led individuals to denounce their neighbors or even friends. Other circumstantial factors need to be considered as well: anger, emotional triggers after a brief quarrel or jealousy, to name a few. Yet, Krejčová goes on to argue that there was another part of society that, due to indifference or lack of empathy, simply ignored the fate of the Jews. The last group, on the opposite end of the spectrum, was those who decided to help the Jews by providing them with prohibited items or, later on, risked their lives helping Jews avoid deportations and offering them places to hide.59 The Slovak and Czech scholarly debates on the wartime past, including contributions from foreign academics, move in circles, though there have been major attempts to contradict the established paradigms. Helena Petrův and 57 58 59

Ibid., 127f. Frankl, “The Sheep of Lidice: The Holocaust and the Construction of Czech National ­History,” 182 and 185. Helena Krejčová, “Specifické předpoklady antisemitismu a protižidovské aktivity v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava,” in Emancipácía Židov – antizemitizmus – prenasledovanie v Nemecku, Rakúsko-Uhorsku, v českých zemiach a na Slovensku, ed. Stanislav Biman, Jörg Konrad Hoensch, and Ľubomír Lipták (Bratislava: Veda, 1999), 152f.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

79

Wolf Gruner, for instance, have recently depicted the complex developments of the anti-Jewish legislation in the Protectorate. In doing so, they clearly emphasize the participation of Czech authorities, bureaucracy and security forces in segregating Czech Jews. Benjamin Frommer, who stresses the activity of Czech police forces in enforcing anti-Jewish regulations in the Protectorate, confirms these observations.60 On the Slovak side, Nižňanský and Ján Hlavinka have demonstrated not only that the Aryanization aroused general interest socially but also that the theft of the Jewish property additionally contributed to the social dynamics of the Holocaust, eventually leading to the deportation of the pauperized Jews.61 As mentioned, Vrzgulová’s pivotal oral-history research on the Slovak ‘bystanders’ has problematized the notion of society as one of passive on-lookers. Nevertheless, despite this mounting research, the notions of a harmonious Czech-Jewish wartime relations and the powerlessness of ­Slovak on-lookers seem to remain intact.62 Methodology Capturing thoughts and attitudes of a society is difficult, and it can seem almost impossible in a nondemocratic setting. How can we disentangle what people knew and thought of both domestic and international events if the regime, which controlled almost every piece of information coming from within the territory of the state, significantly distorted the transfer of knowledge through propaganda and censorship? Perhaps an even more difficult question arises when attempting to look into the minds and actions of ‘ordinary’ people living in truly extraordinary times: how can we speak of ‘public opinion’ in an environment that prohibited, even penalized, independent thinking? In the context of these questions, the term ‘public opinion’ sounds like an oxymoron; indeed, there was very little space for opinion in the public. 60 Petrův, Zákonné bezpráví; Gruner, Die Judenverfolgung im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren. Lokale Initiativen, zentrale Entscheidungen, jüdische Antworten 1939–1945; Frommer, “Verfolgung durch die Presse: Wie Prager Büroberater und die tschechische Polizei die Juden des Protektorats Böhmen und Mähren isolieren halfen.’” 61 Nižňanský and Hlavinka, Arizácie; Nižňanský and Hlavinka, Arizácie v regiónoch Slovenska; Hlavinka, The Holocaust in Slovakia; Nižňanský, “On Relations between the Slovak Majority and Jewish Minority during World War ii.” 62 Monika Vrzgulová, “Židovsko-nežidovské vzťahy v životných príbehoch spojených s holokaustom,” in Reflexie holokaustu, ed. Monika Vrzgulová and Peter Salner (Bratislava: Dokumentačné stred. holokaustu, 2010), 113–40; Vrzgulová, “Memories of the Holocaust.”

80

chapter 2

Even when placing the terminology issues aside for a while, we need to dispel doubts about the viability of analyzing popular moods under totalitarian or authoritarian rule. In spite of the evident obstacles faced by researchers of ‘popular opinion’ in totalitarian states, many have argued that available sources, even if originating from the nondemocratic regimes, allow us to reach persuasive conclusions about the diversity of sentiments within society.63 ­Furthermore, while being largely top-down regimes with a centralized rule of law, the measures Nazi Germany (within the Reich itself but also in the Protectorate) and ‘independent’ Slovakia took to monitor sentiments in society prove that even non-democratic regimes rely on some support and legitimacy from below, whether coerced or not. They also need to monitor the situation among the population to capture any possible sources of dissent or to be able to respond with carefully planned programs that would preclude any rise of social discontent. In terms of methodology, this chapter relies on the important research done since the 1970s on German society during the Nazi dictatorship. This also applies to the terminology we use. Marlis Steinert and Ian Kershaw, who together with Martin Broszat laid the foundations of research into consensus and coercion under the Third Reich, have argued against the term ‘public opinion,’ claiming that ‘it seems more appropriate to speak of “popular opinion” to embrace the unquantifiable, often generalised, diffuse and uncoordinated, but still genuine and widespread, views of ordinary citizens.’64 By speaking of ‘popular opinion’ in the Protectorate and the Slovak wartime state, we also wish to stress that what we are able to observe are the manifestations of opinions in the public space, often coded in ideological language and, even more significantly, not necessarily in line with sentiments voiced in the safety of a private space. In this respect, Steinert has further argued against the concept of ‘public opinion,’ suggesting that it makes sense only as part of established scientific survey research methods; these were unavailable during the period under examination. Steiner instead proposes using the dual concept of ‘moods and attitudes’ as it combines responses that were quick, emotional and maybe even irrational with more thought-out opinions ‘determined by character, education, and experience.’65 While standing largely outside of the main focus of scholars, there have been several academic attempts to assess the sentiments within Czech and 63 64 65

Paul Corner, “Introduction,” in Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes: Fascism, Nazism, Communism, ed. Paul Corner (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 1–15. Ian Kershaw, Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution, 2008, 120. Marlis G. Steinert, Hitler’s War and the Germans: Public Mood and Attitude during the ­Second World War (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1977), 5.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

81

Slovak majority societies during the war. In their research on Czech attitudes towards the Jews, Krejčová and Hyndráková mostly utilized the monthly and annual situation reports prepared by the Prague Office of the Sicherheitsdienst des rfss (sd). The named historians’ assessment is predominantly positive.66 The Prague Office of the sd ceased preparing monthly reports in August 1941, focusing instead purely on daily reports, and the study omitted the period after August/September 1941 when the deportations from the Protectorate to the ghettos took place. This was first to Łódź and Minsk and later almost exclusively to Theresienstadt. They also did not analyze the sentiments in Czech society during the last years of the war, when the anticipated return of the Jews and the restitution of their property previously stolen by the Germans was looming. Likewise, Kárný ended his analysis of the Czechs’ attitudes towards the Jews in late-1941. This was a time when the deportation trains from the Protectorate began to roll eastwards. He concludes his positive appraisal of the Czechs’ attitude towards the Jews as follows: ‘[The Germans] did not break this bond of solidarity. A bond that later was also able to leap over the actual walls of the real ghetto in Theresienstadt. Though it was powerless to prevent the deportations “to the East” to the extermination camps.’67 In Slovakia, as mentioned, Lipták was one of the very first scholars who attempted to tackle the larger question of public moods and attitudes during the war. He focused on the issue of loyalty to the regime, treating the majority society as a unified h ­ omogeneous group. Lipták also largely ignored popular responses to official antisemitism, even if he was to address the issue in some of his later contributions.68 After 1989, it was primarily ethnographers and sociologists who challenged the historiographical focus on the handful of elites. Both Salner and Vrzgulová relied on the testimonies of survivors in addition to collecting interviews of their own. Since 2011, as part of the Slovakian Witnesses Documentation Project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Nathan Beyrak and Vrzgulová have conducted more than sixty interviews with Slovak ‘bystanders’ during the Holocaust, bringing this previously marginalized category to light.69 In her research on majority Slovak responses to Jews, Kubátová utilized the situ66 67 68 69

Krejčová and Hyndráková, “Postoj Čechů k židům. Z politického zpravodajství okupační správy a protektorátního tisku v letech 1939–1941,’” 594f. Miroslav Kárný, “Czech Society and the ‘Final Solution,’” in Nazi Europe and the Final Solution, ed. David Bankier and Israel Gutman (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009), 323f. Ľubomír Lipták, Slovensko v 20. storočí (Bratislava: Kalligram, 2000), 215–18. Nathan Beyrak and Monika Vrzgulová, “Oral History Interviews of the Slovak ­Witnesses Documentation Project” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2011), http:// collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn50682.

82

chapter 2

ation reports of district offices throughout Slovakia. While covering the period between 1938–45, including both the 1942 and 1944 deportations, her analysis ends with the liberation. This omits the transformations – and ­continuities – of responses towards the Jews in the war’s aftermath.70 Conversely, works that scrutinize anti-Jewish violence in postwar Slovakia often begin with the ­gradual collapse of the state in the fall of 1944, leaving out the question of continuity and transformation of anti-Jewish sentiments before and during the war itself.71 Existing research on popular coercion and consensus during the Second World War has relied on situation reports from both German and local provenances, press orders and the testimonies of survivors in combination with other then-contemporaries of the events. Compared to current inquiries into popular opinion, we obviously have no scientific opinion surveys available for either the Protectorate or wartime Slovakia. The first allegedly scientific opinion polls were conducted only after the liberation in August 1946 by the Czechoslovak Institute of Public Opinion. Two years later in September 1948, the Institute of Public Opinion Research in Bratislava conducted a similar research initiative in Slovakia. While both surveys directly asked about prejudices within society, and thus enquired about the negative feelings and perceptions of minority groups, they did not offer any deeper analysis of the prevailing sentiments. What is more, they raise serious methodological concerns. The usefulness of both surveys for understanding popular opinion in wartime or postwar Czechoslovakia is therefore limited. The Czech survey specifically raised the issue of religious intolerance and not of prejudices against national and ethnic groups: ‘Do you distrust adherents of any specific religious denominations?’ According to the results, 15.9% of people distrusted the ­Jewish religious minority, in comparison with the 7.4% distrusting of Catholics, the 1.3% of Protestants and the 8.2% of atheists. 67.2% of Czech respondents, a predominant majority, expressed no prejudices against any particular religious denomination. The percentage of Czechs distrustful of Jews was slightly higher in the demographics of young adults (18–29 years of age; 20.2%), self-employed professionals (20.3%) and workers (16.6%). The percentage was lower in the

70 Kubátová, Nepokradeš! 71 Cichopek-Gajraj, Beyond Violence; Jana Šišjaková, “‘Prípad Topoľčany’ – Protižidovský pogrom (nielen) z pohľadu dobových dokumentov,” Acta historica Neosoliensia: ročenka ­Katedry histórie Fakulty humanitných vied Univerzity Mateja Bela v Banskej Bystrici 10 (2007): 232–40; Ivica Bumová, “Protižidovské výtržnosti v Bratislave v historickom ­kontexte ­(august 1946),” Pamäť národa 3, no. 3 (2007): 14–29.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

83

demographics of the middle-class (14.5%), the upper-middle-class (13.1%) and peasants (11.9%).72 The 1948 Slovak survey also included questions already suggesting strong negative social feelings towards the Jews, such as, ‘In your opinion, what is the cause of the hostility towards the Jews in our country?’ Regardless of gender, age or social group, respondents seemed to agree on the survey’s first pre-­ selected answer: ‘Because they only do dirty business and enjoy a comfortable life without doing any productive work.’ While the survey included a number of questions on other domestic issues, respondents were also asked to elaborate on how their relations to Jews had evolved in the last decade: ‘Answer honestly, were you against the Jews during the Slovak state, yes or no, – and are you against the Jews now, yes or no?’ Again, the percentage of Slovaks having negative feelings towards Jews in the past was roughly the same among men (35%) and women (35%). Numbers were slightly higher among young adults (18–29 years of age; 36%), clerks (40%) and Greek Catholics (39%). Fundamentally, if we compare all the categories, more respondents claimed to have negative feelings towards the Jews after the war. 56% of all the respondents answered that they have more negative feelings towards the Jews ‘now.’ This number was even higher among young adults (58%), white-collar workers (63%) and selfemployed professionals (68%). If only 29% of respondents claiming to belong to one of the evangelical churches declared that they had been ‘against the Jews’ during the war, 58% (an increase of 100%) of them openly declared to having a negative attitude towards the minority after the war.73 Understanding the apparent rise in anti-Jewish feelings in postwar Slovakia is not easy. Investigating public opinion research after the Communist takeover, Michal Barnovský suggested that one explanation lies in another question asked: ‘Some claim that today’s regime treats Jews favorably, is that correct?’ 61% of respondents agreed with this assessment, testifying to the perceived preferential treatment of Jews in postwar Czechoslovakia. When asked who specifically gives preference to the Jews, most respondents selected one of the initial three options presented to them: the country’s political representatives, Jews themselves (as they occupy the highest social positions) or the regime in general. Another additional 7% blamed the Communist Party of Slovakia and its members.74 These responses suggest, more than anything else, a continuity 72 73 74

Peter Meyer, The Jews in the Soviet Satellites (Syracuse, n.y.: Syracuse University Press, 1953), 98. sna, PŠk, b. 89, f. 151–300. Public opinion survey, September 23, 1948. Michal Barnovský, “Slovenská spoločnosť v zrkadle výskumov verejnej mienky v rokoch 1948–1949,” Historický časopis 52, no. 3 (2004): 482–84.

84

chapter 2

of anti-Jewish stereotypes in which Jews were seen as having control over public affairs, having access to resources that should be reserved for the majority society and being all-around well-off while avoiding ‘real’ productive (that is, manual) labour. They also speak of a possible connection in the minds of Slovak people of the Jews and the new Communist regime. While we need to take such surveys with a grain of salt, they do suggest the importance of studying popular opinion longitudinally. The fact that this detailed survey with questions pertaining explicitly to anti-Jewish sentiments was conducted only in Slovakia likewise confirms the lack of any public engagement in the Czech part of the country, including from the ruling elites in Prague. On top of this, Josef Guttmann had a more detailed story to tell. He was a prominent prewar Communist expelled from the Party in 1933. After the war, he lived in the United States publishing under the name Peter Meyer. He concluded that the anti-Jewish sentiments were more prevalent than the 1946 Czech survey suggested: People sometimes do not like to admit their anti-Semitic prejudices even to themselves; even less were they inclined to admit them to a semiofficial institutions in a country, where such prejudices were officially discouraged and described as a weapon of fascism and counterrevolution.75 With this in mind, we need to understand that these surveys were conducted at a time when the extent of the Jewish catastrophe was already revealed to the public, and survivors in Czechoslovakia were also publishing the first books, memoirs and factual studies about what we now call the Holocaust.76 The ­ Slovak survey was carried out following a number of anti-Jewish riots; some of them were to the extent of mass pogroms, with the September 1945 Topoľčany pogrom and the Bratislava riots in August 1946 even raising international attention.77 In this atmosphere, people could potentially be less willing to admit their prejudices in the public space. 75 Meyer, The Jews in the Soviet Satellites, 98. 76 Ota Kraus and Erich Kulka, Továrna na smrt (Praha: Čin, 1946); Anna Auředníčková, Tři léta v Terezíně (Praha: Hynek, 1945); Feder, Židovská tragedie: dějství poslední; Manca Švalbová, Vyhasnuté Oči. (Requiem) (Bratislava: Pravda, 1948); Steiner and Engel, Tragédia slovenských židov; Jozef Lánik, Oswiecim, hrobka štyroch miliónov l’udí. Krátka história a život v oswiecimskom pekle v rokoch 1942–1945 (Bratislava: Povereníctvo snr pre informácie, 1946); Dominik Tatarka, Farská republika (Martin: Matica slovenská, 1948). 77 Kubátová, “Teraz alebo nikdy: Povojnové protižidovské násilie a väčšinová spoločnosť na Slovensku.”

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

85

Despite these methodological obstacles, we use the following parts to identify developments that can help us understand certain trends in the attitudes of these majority societies towards the Jews during the war. There are two main sets of primary sources we use: the situation reports of German origin (Sicherheitsdienst, sd) and reports prepared by local institutions (official institutions in Slovakia and Czech resistance groups). In order to provide a more plastic picture, we supplement our findings with information gathered from propaganda channels (analyzed in the previous chapter), the press and testimonies of contemporaries. Each of these sources is problematic in its nature and cannot be considered all-encompassing. This particularly concerns the situation reports. In the Protectorate, the German occupation authorities were in the service of a totalitarian regime obsessed with its antisemitic agenda of physically removing Jews from the Central European space. The German agencies in the Protectorate established a comprehensive network of informers who reported their perceptions of the social moods and attitudes to local branches of the sd (Dienststelle). The local branch then summarized the reports and submitted a more comprehensive study to the sd central in Prague (sd-Leitabschnitt Prag).78 We do not know who the main local informers of the sd offices were, though we can hypothesise that they belonged to those among the Czechs and Germans who supported the German regime in the Protectorate. The opinions, for example, rarely offer insights into the sentiments of opposition or resistance circles. Ian Kershaw notes that in the Reich, the authors of the reports often relied on party members and Nazi sympathizers.79 Given the authorship of the reports, this could hardly be considered a reliable source. Finally, the sd central in Prague prepared a report for the whole territory of the Protectorate that was shared with leading German official in Prague and Berlin. Thus, there were several stages where the content of the report could be manipulated. Because the original regional reports are often not available to researchers, we have to rely only on the final versions prepared in Prague.80 The same applies to the reports compiled for and by the State Security Headquarters (Ústredňa štátnej bezpečnosti, úšb). Written by individuals of various backgrounds, its authors had their own reasons to distort what they 78 79 80

Dalibor Krčmář, “Mimořádné zpravodajství protektorátního sd o reakcích obyvatel na události z 27. a 28. září 1941,” Terezínské listy: sborník Památníků Terezín, no. 20 (2012): 18. Ian Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich, Bavaria 1933–1945 (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press – Oxford University Press, 1983), 361. Krčmář, “Mimořádné zpravodajství protektorátního sd o reakcích obyvatel na události z 27. a 28. září 1941,” 18.

86

chapter 2

reported to higher-ups. Hence, reports often contradicted each other based on which agency (as well as who specifically) was responsible for their content. Comparing reports across different regions and agencies is one way to go, but this is not always possible. Besides, it is reasonable to expect that the moods and attitudes towards the same problem could differ in various regions across Slovakia – as well as the Protectorate – based on local factors, demography and other related variables. The information presented in situation reports, therefore, cannot be taken at face value. We can expect that the sd manipulated the content, especially in cases where they wanted to provide persuasive reasons for the radicalization of the anti-Czech and anti-Jewish policies or wanted to prove the necessity of their assignment in the relatively peaceful Protectorate, which was not the case in the Eastern territories, where they could be transferred.81 They often exaggerated the frequency of contacts between Jews, the perceived source of dissent and whispering propaganda, and Czechs as a way to persuade the higher German administration about the need to speed up the segregation of Jews in the Protectorate. For instance, they emphasized the need to introduce the compulsory Star of David for those considered Jewish. These attempts were later directed at initiating deportations from Czech and Moravian towns to the ghettos and camps. They even presented ‘evidence’ for the need to speed up the process and include the so far protected categories (for example, M ­ ischlinge and those in mixed marriages). Yet, we can concurrently argue that these surveys were prepared only for internal use and accept that they might present the situation as it was perceived so that adequate measures might be taken. Even totalitarian regimes, if we can use this term for the Protectorate and Slovakia during the war, need to be able to gain reliable insights into the situation among the people. For example, Wolfram von Wolmar used the situation reports when preparing for his conferences with Protectorate journalists. Other authors have found that systematic work with the sd situation reports can indicate certain trends in societies under Nazi rule, although extreme caution must be taken when working with these sources, and cross-checking the data against other available source material is essential.82 Situation reports written by institutions at various levels in Slovakia are not without their share of problems. The most comprehensive set of reports on moods and attitudes in wartime Slovakia are the monthly accounts compiled 81 82

Krejčová and Hyndráková, “Postoj Čechů k židům. Z politického zpravodajství okupační správy a protektorátního tisku v letech 1939–1941,” 579. Corner, “Introduction.”

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

87

by the various districts and local offices for the úšb, a state agency modeled on the Gestapo. Monthly and, after the suppression of the 1944 Uprising, bimonthly situation reports cannot be read as the actual views of the general public. Far more often, they present the actual or likely views of their authors: people closely linked to the ruling elites in the Slovak state. Authors responsible for compiling reports on a number of domestic issues, including the J­ ewish question in general and the ‘economic perspective’ (Aryanization), relied on information gathered from informers and denunciators. District officials, ‘professionals’ (paid informers) and officials of the úšb including its in-house detectives had good reasons to manipulate the content of the reports. What also needs to be taken into consideration here is the relatively small number of inhouse detectives working for the úšb. In 1941, at the peak of the regime’s hunt for real or alleged enemies, the úšb had only 123 employees, almost a third of whom worked in administration.83 For state officials, it was often in their best interest to report favorably on the moods and attitudes in the neighborhoods under their jurisdiction. Informers did not always fall along ideological lines and were often motivated by pragmatic incentives, especially when, as we shall see, the regime promoted the idea of getting ‘something’ in return for loyalty. Taking these methodological dilemmas into account, the fact remains that we have more-or-less all the daily, monthly and annual reports available for the territory of the Protectorate, and that in Slovakia we can compare surveys from various districts and regions. This makes situation reports an indispensable source for anyone who wants to analyze popular opinion in both territories. Moreover, reports sent from the Protectorate and Slovakia to the representatives of the Czechoslovak resistance abroad by underground resistance groups in both territories have their limitations. These reports can hardly be seen as expressing public opinion as a whole, even though the underground groups attempted to claim social representation in its entirety. The reports reveal the sentiments of a small group of resistance fighters pursuing their own policies and trying to influence exiles. The first political messages about Jews had already reached the representatives of the exile movement in France and Britain shortly after the German invasion. Concerning their content, home resistance reports presented the views of Nazi policies against the Jews from the underground cells. They also, and perhaps more frequently, outlined the social views on Jews as a minority in Czech and Slovak societies as well as on the postwar solution to the minorities’ problems, which would limit the ‘excessive 83

Matej Medvecký, Spravodajské eso Slovenského štátu: Kauza Imrich Sucký (Bratislava: Ústav pamäti národa, 2007), 28.

88

chapter 2

­influence’ the Jews had held before the war. The main part of the Czech underground was destroyed by the autumn of 1941, and all radio communications with exiles in London were cut between 1942 and 1944, which was when the main wave of deportations from the Protectorate to the ghettos and camps occurred. From then on, only accidental refugees from the Protectorate or those allowed to travel to neutral countries (businessmen) could bring information of the situation to the exiles. The situation slightly improved during the last year of the war. In contrast, the contact with Slovakia was maintained moreor-less throughout the war. In any case, by carefully working with situation reports and complementing this with other sources, one can reveal certain developments in the attitudes of the Czech and Slovak societies towards the Jewish minority. This approach allows us to reach conclusions about several crucial issues, including the attitude of both majority societies toward the appropriation of Jewish property, deportations and the eventual return of the Jews after the war. Furthermore, we can reach preliminary conclusions about the sources of the subsequent predicament for Jews in liberated Czechoslovakia after 1945, as characterized in the introduction. We simply cannot explain the situation during the aftermath without considering the popular moods and attitudes during the war.

The Regime in the Protectorate and in ‘Independent’ Slovakia

Popular moods and attitudes towards the Jews formed an important component of the relations between the state and its people in Nazi-occupied and -dominated Europe. In Slovakia, the attitude vis-à-vis the Jewish question divided the political scene between the ‘moderate’ and ‘radical’ wings of the party, and shaped the ties between the regime and society. It is thus essential to study popular responses towards the Jews collaterally with attitudes towards regime’s general policies. In other words, responses towards the persecution of the Jews, or towards Jews as a minority group in the territory, cannot be studied in isolation from broader domestic and international events. This is because the policies towards the Jews were always interconnected with other policies of the Nazi and Slovak governments. Throughout the war, both regimes intentionally made the Jewish question into a political one, thereby coercively pressuring societies into carefully choose where they stood on this issue. Antisemitism formed an inherent part of Nazi ideology, making the ‘Jew’ into a transcendental symbol of evil. At the same time, it framed Jews as a ‘real threat’ endangering society and the interests of the people living in the newly constructed Nazi Europe. While Nazi ideology only had a limited success in

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

89

both societies for multiple reasons, indigenous antisemitism along with the ­socio-economic opportunities it offered to majority societies amplified the interconnectivity between the regime, its policies in general and the Jewish question in particular. This was especially true in Slovakia, but the opportunism extended to the Protectorate in the long run as well. The acceptance of the regime, or rather the level of popular loyalty towards the regime, varied in the two territories. Loyalty was to influence both wartime events as well as any postwar reflection on the war. The fundamental difference between the two territories is that while the Protectorate was formally governed by a Czech cabinet, the real power was in the hands of Konstantin von Neurath as the Reich Protector, directly answerable to the Führer, and ­Secretary of State (Státní tajemník) Karl Hermann Frank, a prominent leader of the Sudeten Germans. The German occupation regime also established a shadow administration in the Protectorate consisting of Landräte and Oberandräte. In line with this, the German army, security forces and police units were present in the Protectorate from the very beginning. As a consequence, the Protectorate was not perceived as a legitimate political entity by society at large. It is doubtful that any significant social segment considered the Protectorate government as a genuine representative of Czech people, especially from the autumn of 1941 onward. The Slovak political leadership, on the contrary, could rely on popular support well into 1943. Even though some level of opposition that was critical of certain governmental policies was present, the government’s leadership enjoyed popular backing for much of its existence. As works on conformity and obedience have suggested, societies tend to perceive an authority as legitimate for two reasons: ideological, which is when they are seen as representing their ethnic-cultural identity, and pragmatic, which is when they are seen as meeting the needs and interests of the society.84 The Slovak state, unlike the Protectorate, could at least try to appeal to both of these sources of legitimacy. With this is mind, there are several points we need to emphasize concerning the German occupation regime in the Protectorate, the ‘independent’ wartime Slovak state and the persecution of the Jews in both territories:

84

Herbert C. Kelman and Lee V. Hamilton, Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 116; Herbert C. Kelman, “Reflections on Social and Psychological Processes of Legitimization and Delegitimization,” in The Psychology of Legitimacy: Emerging Perspectives on Ideology, Justice, and Intergroup Relations, ed. John T. Jost and Brenda Major (Cambridge: Cambridge ­University Press, 2001).

90

chapter 2

1.

The legitimacy of the Protectorate and the wartime Slovak state differed, as did the level of political autonomy in both territories during the war. However, pre-Munich Czechoslovakia was considered the only real democracy in the region and an enlightened country in its attitudes towards the Jews. The First Czechoslovak Republic, especially the western part of the country, rose to be a symbol of democracy, tolerance and high values (a symbol that was further accentuated after the war, and continues to have a firm place in the Czech self-perception even today). While both the Czech and German administrations introduced the first anti-Jewish laws and regulations in the Protectorate, the German authorities centralized the so far uncoordinated process in 1941 and, from ­October 1941, became the sole driving force behind the persecution of the Jews, which progressed towards the Final Solution. In contrast, Slovakia was more than a German ‘satellite.’85 In many respects including the Jewish question, the Slovak government kept its autonomy and actively pursued the persecution of the Jews without any direct involvement from Nazi Germany. Until the German invasion in late-August 1944, the Slovak leadership took the initiative on the anti-Jewish policies, the radicalization of which was a product of an internal fight over power in the government between the ‘radical’ and the ‘conservative’ wings of the People’s party. The character of Jewish persecution in the Protectorate resembled the Nazi policies in Germany and Western Europe. It mostly consisted of the introduction of anti-Jewish legislation, a gradual segregation and deportations to the ghettos from the autumn of 1941 (apart from the first trialand-error deportations to the Lublin reservation in October 1939). There were no bloodbaths and was no public violence against the Jews. Their persecution had a diametrically different character to persecution in the East. This general assessment largely applies also to Slovakia, although the first interim camps for Jews were already established in November 1938, shortly after Slovakia received autonomy. This was a consequence of the southern regions being annexed by Hungary after the First Vienna Award. Later on, Jewish persecution in Slovakia predominantly took the form of economic discrimination, with other accompanying measures like the establishment of labor camps and the 1942 deportations. The direct persecution and mass murder of Jews in Slovakia was then renewed during the regular and irregular fighting that accompanied

2.

3.

85

Tönsmeyer, “The Robbery of Jewish Property in Eastern European States Allied with Nazi Germany.”

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

91

the ­Wehrmacht-led ­suppression of the Slovak National Uprising. The ­Holocaust, as we now know and imagine it, entered the Bohemian lands only in the winter of 1945 when the death trains were passing through Czech territory from Auschwitz to Mauthausen and other camps. It enflared again in the spring of 1945 when the death marches crisscrossed the western Bohemian territory. From the contemporaneous Czech perspective, the only major cases of mass murder in the Bohemian lands themselves were the Lidice and Ležáky massacres of ethnic Czechs in June and July 1942 as well as the regular executions of Czech patriots and others who transgressed ­German laws (including Jews). These executions took place in prisons across the Protectorate and were overtly reported by the Nazi authorities in the form of public posters listing the names of those recently executed. 4. The Slovak government implicated a large portion of society in the ­Holocaust through the multi-layered process of robbery – that is, the appropriation of Jewish property and personal belongings. Local gendarmes, members of the paramilitary Hlinka Guard and Freiwillige Schutzstaffel carried out the concentration of Jews in the locally established labor and concentration camps in addition to the 1942 deportations. In contrast, there was no extensive direct collaboration of the Czech population in the Holocaust. The major group of perpetrators or active collaborators could be found among the Protectorate activist journalists or some of the members of the Protectorate gendarmerie unit that served in the Theresienstadt ghetto between November 1941 and May 1945. The contribution of the Czech police and bureaucracy to the segregation and execution of Jewish deportations also needs to be acknowledged. 5. Comparatively, there was a very low number of Jewish survivors in the Protectorate. Even more important, the number of Jews who survived in hiding or living under a false identity was probably well under 400.86 Even the number of the Righteous Among the Nations, Gentiles recognized by 86

The postwar statistics prepared by the Council of Jewish Religious Communities gives the number of 424 ‘Underground survivors and others.’ Meyer, 67. One statistics estimate that by 30 September 1944, there were 844 Jews in the Protectorate who were in custody, or their whereabouts were unknown, see yva, 0.7CZ/99, a statistical report prepared on September 18, 1945. Chad Carl Bryant, Prague in Black: Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 151. Bryant notes, with reference to H.G. Adler that only 424 Jews survived in hiding in the Protectorate. Adler’s estimates were sharply criticized by Miroslav Kárný, who argued that the number had to be higher and Adler’s estimates had been influenced by his anti-Czech bias, see: Kárný, Konečné řešení, 113 and 149, footnote 156.

92

chapter 2

Yad Vashem for the help they gave to persecuted Jews, is very small: 115 Czech Righteous as of 2016 in comparison with 5,516 in the Netherlands, 1,707 in Belgium or 587 in Germany.87 We are aware of the problematic nature of these numbers, and it is clear that they cannot be taken as the only yardstick to measure the responses of the Gentile population to the persecution of the Jews in certain territories. The problematic nature of this category88 becomes even more visible when comparing the Czech Righteous with those from Slovakia, where 558 individuals were granted the award – one of the highest number per capita. It is indeed methodologically flawed to compare the numbers in a territory under direct ­German rule for over six years with Slovakia, which experienced only direct German occupation very briefly at the time of internal chaos and turmoil accompanying the Slovak National Uprising. It is noteworthy, however, that a large part of the 115 Czech Righteous were people who lived in the Ukraine (Volhynia) during the war, a fact that needs be taken into account when analyzing the situation in the Protectorate. Another significant part of the Czech Righteous were individuals who helped the Jews in the last days and weeks of the war during the so-called death marches.89 We do not want to downplay the significance of their help to the destitute Jewish prisoners, and it is important to document every story where individuals risked their lives to save Jews. Nevertheless, it means that if we consider only the recognized individuals in the Protectorate who provided Jews with hideouts or forged papers when the Third Reich stood at the peak of its power (1941–43), we reach a disturbingly low number. The question is how far this low number of Jewish survivors and those who helped them could be ascribed to the public perception and peoples’ attitudes towards the Jews. Or instead, were there other circumstantial factors that played a more important role like the nature and length of the occupation, the radicalization of the Nazi regime at crucial moments, the severity of punishment for any help offered to the Jews, the demography of the Jews or the fact that the Jews were first deported to Theresienstadt, still in the Protectorate, and only later to the East?

87

88

89

“Names and Numbers of Righteous Among the Nations – per Country & Ethnic Origin, as of January 1, 2017,” accessed August 3, 2017, http://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/ statistics. For a recent discussion on the criteria set by the Yad Vashem for the award, see Istvan Pal Adam, Budapest Building Managers and the Holocaust in Hungary (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 113–18. Kárný, “Vztah české společnosti k Židům v době nacistické okupace,” 79–87.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

93

Robbery There is a long history of antisemitism in both the Bohemian lands and Slovakia. Besides the traditional Christian sources of antisemitism, or anti-Judaism, economic and social tensions can be documented throughout the centuries. In Bohemia and Moravia, a special variety of antisemitism developed in the 19th century, resulting from the perceived Jewish cultural and linguistic identification with Germans.90 From the late-18th century, the Jews by-and-large acculturated into the German national stream. The slow transformation into a community affiliated with the Czech linguistic and cultural stream started only in the second half of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Jews also utilized opportunities offered by post-Emancipation social mobility and began to play an important role in the economic life of the country. The prejudices against the Jews as economically prominent Germanizers survived the fall of the Habsburg Empire, but they were not strongly articulated during the interwar period when Czechs dominated the newly founded republic. The collapse of the republic in 1938 caused the revival of nationalism, leading to strong antisemitic campaigns in the press and calls for the introduction of anti-Jewish legislation that would limit the social position of Jews. It also revisited the citizenship of non-Czech Jews, including those who settled in the country after 1918 (or 1910).91 Similarly, the perceived Jewish alliance with Budapest was at the core of the historically documented tensions between Jews and Slovaks of Felvidék or ­Upper Hungary, later Slovakia. As in the Bohemian lands, Jews took full ­advantage of the Emancipation, and soon dominated the middle-class in what became the Slovak territory. Utilizing what scholars have called an ‘assimilation contract’ offered by the Budapest elites – the full assimilation into the Magyar nation in return for protection against political antisemitism – many Jews of Slovakia acquired Hungarian language, adopted Hungarian-sounding names and some indeed perceived themselves as Hungarians of Jewish origin.92 90

91

92

Michal Frankl, “Emancipace od židů”: český antisemitismus na konci 19. století (Praha; Litomyšl: Paseka, 2007); Jan Rataj, O autoritativní národní stát: ideologické proměny české politiky v druhé republice 1938–1939 (Praha: Karolinum, 1997), 47. Michal Frankl, “Židé přes palubu: Konstrukce ‘židovské otázky’ za druhé republiky,” Dějiny a současnost 31, no. 3 (2009): 37–39; Michal Frankl, “Druhá republika a židovští uprchlíci,” in Miloš Pojar et al. (eds.), Židovská menšina za druhé republiky (Prague: Jewish Museum, 2007), 45–56; Jan Láníček, Arnošt Frischer and the Jewish Politics of Early 20thCentury Europe (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 45–66. Viktor Karády, “Identity Strategies Under Duress Before and After the Shoah,” in The Holocaust in Hungary: Fifty Years Later, ed. Randolph L. Braham and Attila Pók (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 147–78.

94

chapter 2

In the eyes of the rising Slovak intelligentsia of the late-19th and ­early-20th centuries, the Jewish identification with Hungarian culture and language disqualified them from forming the Slovak nation. The typical charges brought against Jews rested on the claim that many continued to prefer the Hungarian over the Slovakian language. Moreover, it was argued that Jews had a disproportionate role in the social and economic life of the country. Both charges were, at least partly, correct: as Rebekah Klein-Pejšová has recently pointed out, Jews in Slovakia, as elsewhere in the Hungarian Kingdom, accepted the Hungarian policy of Magyarization.93 The so-called assimilation contract, as Victor Karády termed the unwritten agreement between the liberal Hungarian nobility and the Jewish middle class, served both the Jews and the Hungarian rulers.94 While protecting them from state-sponsored antisemitism that paralysed Vienna with its first antisemitic mayor Karl Lueger, the state used Jews to modernize its economy.95 The social mobility Jews of Slovakia experienced, however, strengthened anti-Jewish feelings that had already been present within the majority society: Although Jews benefited economically, culturally, and socially from it, Magyarization suppressed the political and intellectual development of other peoples and heightened tensions between them and the Jewish population. It acted to raise their national consciousness. Magyarization gave national contours to entrenched medieval religious anti-Jewish sentiment combined with more recent economic and social antisemitism.96 These anti-Jewish sentiments were stirred up by Munich and the establishment of the Slovak autonomy in October 1938. Anticipating a strengthening of majority society’s social position, the rising Hlinka’s Slovak Peoples’ Party questioned the Jews’ loyalty to the ‘Slovak cause,’ however vaguely that was defined. By combining religious and economic antisemitism, a narrative emerged by which the majority Slovaks needed to take back what was previously stolen from them by the Jews. Hence, the popularity of the Slovak state rested on the promise that the new leadership would ‘reclaim’ ill-gotten Jewish gains for the benefit of Christian Slovaks. But how did the majority population respond to the economically motivated anti-Jewish measures enforced by the Slovak government? When 93 Klein-Pejšová, Mapping Jewish Loyalties in Interwar Slovakia, 7. 94 Karády, “Identity Strategies Under Duress Before and After the Shoah.” 95 Klein-Pejšová, Mapping Jewish Loyalties in Interwar Slovakia, 7. 96 Ibid., 10.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

95

analyzing the various situation reports written by either Slovak or German ­intelligence agencies, widespread expectations with respect to the Aryanization process catch the eye. Even after the fiasco of the first 1940 Aryanization law, monthly reports from towns across Slovakia almost unanimously noted ‘a lot of interest in aryanizing Jewish businesses.’97 For many applicants, Aryanization was a form of enrichment and provided a chance for the majority ­society to climb up the social ladder without any former experience or qualifications.98 For Slovak Jews, the result was fatal: it created a mass of impoverished Jews, now completely dependent on the state which, eventually in early-1942, proceeded to solve this ‘problem’ by expelling them beyond its borders – to a­ lmost imminent death in concentration and extermination camps in occupied Poland. The ‘hunger’ for Aryanization, recorded in úšb reports, contradicts the conceptualization of the Slovak majority society as silent and passive. There was an important difference between profiteering through the multitudinous o­ ptions the Slovak state offered to the majority society and the actual participation in killings that occurred further north and east of the Slovak borders. Yet, by offering Jewish businesses, land and even personal belongings (including furniture, radios, tablecloths, coats and nightgowns), the regime secured and fortified its social ties as well as its political power over society. The historian Martin Dean has shown this in his comparative work on anti-Jewish economic discrimination in Western and Eastern Europe: [The participation of locals] as beneficiaries from Jewish property spread complicity and therefore also acceptance of German-inspired [or in this case, Slovak-inspired] measures against the Jews. In this way, economic motives contributed to the mobilization of European populations in support of radical antisemitic policies.99 Indeed, economic motives influenced the attitude of the Slovak population towards the regime, its policies, as well as their Jewish neighbors during the war. It also completely changed the socio-economic status quo in the country, regardless of the political elites currently in power. By accentuating the theme of the Jews’ return, the propaganda from 1943 onwards repeatedly 97

sna, 209-761-8, SNA-209-761-1, sna, 209-773-1, sna, 209-748-2, Situational reports from Prešov, Prievidza, Trnava and Banská Bystrica, 1939-40. 98 Slneková, “Arizácie židovských podnikov v Trnave ako súčasť tzv. riešenia židovskej otázky v rokoch 1938–1945”; Hallon, “Arizácia na Slovensku 1939–1945”; Ivan Kamenec, Po stopách tragédie (Bratislava: Archa, 1991), 11–112. 99 Dean, Robbing the Jews, 395.

96

chapter 2

r­ eminded the majority society of their complicity in the multilayered process of Aryanization. Beyond the ‘transfers’ of Jewish businesses to non-Jews, or the more widespread occurrence of auctioning off Jewish belongings, this further included newly achieved socio-economic progress. By the removal of the Jews from the social and economic life of the country – and Czechs for that matter, though with significantly less serious implications – ethnic Slovaks were able to fill their positions, which often corresponded with social ascension. At the core of Slovak-Jewish tensions was the instigated fear that Jews would return as witnesses, ready to seek retribution for their previous persecution, and attempt to reclaim their property, personal belongings and social positions. This sentiment spread not only towards the end of the war but in the postwar era as well. What should be taken into consideration is that it was often the smallest things that represented the thin line between help and complicity: a hat or a coat bought at an auction, or pieces of furniture Jews left with their Gentile neighbors. The unwillingness of some to return these goods to their rightful owners after the war, moreover, points to a concentrated effort to cement a new status quo that the survivors challenged with their return.100 The reports of foreign, especially German, agencies further attest to the theory that there was popular support for the economic measures taken against Jews. Reports from the sd office in Bratislava repeated the charges made in ­Slovak propaganda against the interwar Czechoslovak Presidents, Masaryk (1850–1937) and Beneš (1884–1948). This material blamed them for allowing Jews to take over ‘98% of businesses, 100% of the industry and 75% of large estates’ in Slovakia during the previous twenty years of the First Czechoslovak Republic.101 According to another report, ‘The percentage of Jews in the Slovak economy is similar to all East and South Europe, extremely big and decisive.’102 Bratislava and Berlin were in agreement about the ‘unhealthy role’ of Jews in the Slovak economy and the need to correct these historical wrongs, even if they ultimately had different ideas about how to distribute former Jewish belongings. While the competition over Jewish property was fierce, the main beneficiaries of the Aryanization process in Slovakia were, at the end of the day, ethnic Slovaks and not Germans. According to the information presented by the ­radical newspaper Gardista in April 1943, out of the roughly 1,800 owners of aryanized businesses up until then, 1,550 had a recommendation from the Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party; the remaining 120 had one from the Deutsche 100 Livia Bitton-Jackson, Mosty nádeje (Bratislava: Artforum, 2011), 27–31. 101 nara, T-175, reel 552, 9392/56, Die Judentum in der Slowakei. 102 nara, T-174, reel 552, 9392/63, Die Judenfrage in der slowakischen Wirtschaft.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

97

Partei.103 German reports took notice of this with anger, pointing to the fact that the Slovaks would not let go, even in cases where they lacked the experience and funds to run the business.104 Those who enriched themselves in the Aryanization process came mostly from local organizations of the Hlinka Guards and of the People’s Party. The most cynical form of ‘redistributing’ ­Jewish property was, however, the widespread looting of Jewish belongings from houses and apartments, which had come to be abandoned after their owners were deported.105 On the contrary, German authorities in the Protectorate did not try to entice ‘ordinary’ Czechs into persecuting Jews with offerings of stolen Jewish property, at least not to any extensive degree. In spite of the Czechs’ efforts to initiate the Aryanization in early-1939, the Germans soon took over and were almost exclusively represented among the Aryanizers. Only a very small part of Czech society benefited from the process in the end. Comprehensive research by D ­ rahomír Jančík confirms that less than 9% of the Aryanizers were ethnic Czechs, and even then they aryanized only small to medium size properties and only in the territories not inhabited by the German minority.106 This fact, which makes the Czech case study an exception in the region, needs to be perceived in conjunction with Nazi plans to Germanize the Bohemian territories, mostly since these were considered part of the German Lebensraum. The ­situation in Slovakia differed tremendously. The Slovaks initiated purposefully interested, ‘ordinary’ Slovaks and, as has been shown, even fought with ­Germans over their share of the Jewish belongings. On the other hand, it is clear that parts of Czech society attempted to gain access to Jewish property. We also should not ignore the fact that the friends or neighbors of Jews in the Czech region often became custodians of the movable property and personal belongings at the time of the deportations.107 Likewise, Nazi agencies noticed efforts to transfer Jewish property into Czech 103 Gardista, April 17, 1943. 104 nara, T-174, reel 552, 9392/63, Die Judenfrage in der slowakischen Wirtschaft. 105 Ivica Bumová, “Obraz židov v dobovej tlači v rokoch 1945–1948: denníky Čas a Pravda,” in Podoby antisemitismu v Čechách a na Slovensku ve 20. a 21. století, ed. Monika Vrzgulová and Hana Kubátová (Praha: Karolinum, 2016), 187–90. 106 Drahomír Jančík, “Společenské a politické aspekty ‘arizačního’ procesu v českých zemích v letech 1938–1945,” June 18, 2012, http://www.mzv.cz/jnp/cz/o_ministerstvu/verejne _souteze_a_dotace/vedecke_projekty/vybrane_projekty/o_ministerstvu-verejne_souteze _a_dotace-vedecke_projekty-vybrane_projekty-arizace_v_ceskych_zemich.html. 107 na, 114-308-2, sd situational report, January 28, 1942. On the Czechs’ efforts see: Jan Kuklík et al., Jak odškodnit holocaust?: problematika vyvlastnění židovského majetku, jeho restituce a odškodnění (Praha: Karolinum, 2015), 83–85, 96.

98

chapter 2

hands, especially during the ‘wild phase’ of the Aryanization immediately after the German invasion in March 1939.108 Although the motivation to preclude the confiscation of property by Germans was evident, we also need to see its correspondence with nationalist sentiments after Munich, which was when Czechs saw an opportunity to ‘Czechise’ the property previously owned by the Jews. Later, there were also Czechs – for example the population removed from ­Terezín – who received compensation in the form of Jewish flats.109 Despite these efforts, the Germans soon made it clear that they would be the main beneficiaries of the Aryanization process, regardless of all the protests from the Czech population and economic circles. Reports prepared by the sd Prague Office clearly prove the outrage towards Reich Protector’s ­Decree on Jewish property, issued on June 21, 1939. Now, every company with a Jew, racially defined, on the board could be ‘Aryanized.’ The Aryanization, institutionalised by the decree, was perceived by Czech society as, firstly, a way to Germanize the Protectorate.110 Even after that, there were attempts from the Czechs to get access to confiscated property, yet the whole redistribution process was now in the hands of Nazi authorities.111 The sd also noted alleged voices coming from the Jewish parts of the Protectorate that welcomed the Aryanization’s transfer of Jewish property to German hands. The Jews purportedly believed that it would be much easier to reclaim their property after the Germans’ defeat than if Czechs became the main Aryanizers.112 Although it is impossible to ascertain whether or how far such sentiments really emerged among Jews, it is noteworthy that, as early as 1940, there were voices predicting the difficulty in postwar restitution if non-Germans profited from the Aryanization. Lastly, we need to move beyond a very narrow understanding of the term ‘Aryanization’ in the sense of the material confiscation of Jewish property. As shown for Slovakia earlier, the removal of Jews from public and economic life also allowed a social progression to the population at large, along with other economic benefits like the removal of business competitors. Czech professional organizations, such as lawyers and medical doctors, had already dismissed

108 na, úřp, 114-9-22, Annual situational report, sd Prague, 1939. 109 Detlef Brandes, Germanizovat a vysídlit: nacistická národnostní politika v českých zemích, 2015, 286–90. 110 na, úřp, 114-315-4, sd situational report, June 23 and 24, 1939. 111 Brandes, Germanizovat a vysídlit.; na, úřp, 114-311-2, sd situational report, February 20, 1940; Kuklík et al., Jak odškodnit holocaust?, 86, 114f. 112 na, úřp, 114-315-6, sd situational report, March 1, 1940.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

99

Jews from their ranks before the German invasion.113 In these cases, the number of Czechs who benefited from the whole Aryanization process had to be much higher than those directly managing confiscated property. The lust for socioeconomic improvement among Czechs clearly needs to be acknowledged.

The Breaking Point

Situation reports from the Banská Bystrica district, right in the middle of Slovakia, were usually lengthy and detailed. They often included hints of criticism, showing that, in all probability, not everything in the new republic was perfect. Having a sizeable protestant minority, many reports included references to religious tensions with the Catholic population in the district. As early as June 1941, popular anti-war sentiments were manifesting themselves. The authors of these reports criticized the people by and large for always believing what they had heard, however negative the information may be. The district official paid particular attention to the course of the 1942 deportations, including the social implications the physical removal of Jews was having. While in 1940, the authors portrayed society as eagerly awaiting the ­Aryanization process, the tone of the reports changed with the start of the deportations in March 1942. In February 1942, before the deportations began, a report from Banská Bystrica claimed somewhat paradoxically that though the public was ‘eager to get rid of the Jews, they perceive the current situation with some concern.’114 In October 1942, as the main wave of deportations was coming to an end, district officials from Banská Bystrica and elsewhere informed the úšb that the public was ‘speaking only little about the Jews.’115 It was as if silence replaced the previously observed eagerness to take a share of the loot. Indeed, with the progress of the deportations over 1942, the Jewish themes disappeared from situational reports on Slovakia. The deportations seemed to cause a breaking point in Slovak-Jewish relations. Yet, did they really? When comparing the reactions to the Aryanization process with responses to other anti-Jewish measures and laws, it seems that discontent with the discrimination of Jews was possible. For example, reports prepared by district authorities on the public’s responses to the Slovak Jewish Codex in September 1941 informed the State Security Headquarters that a segment of society still circumvented anti-Jewish laws. Moreover, while one part of society ‘demands 113 Kuklík et al., Jak odškodnit holocaust?, 93. 114 sna, 209-752-8. Situational reports. 115 sna, 209-748-4. Situational reports.

100

chapter 2

to continue strictly against the Jews, the other part shows signs of sympathy’ with the Jews.116 Later, we can read between the lines that the first wave of deportations aroused compassion, sympathy and worries for Jewish inhabitants in the majority population of Slovakia. The district official of the Eastern Slovak town Sabinov suggested that, in response to the deportations, the ­Jewish question ceased to exist in his district. Although he wrote that while the deportations were mostly met with ‘joy and approval of the Slovak and Christian population,’ some people, and he stressed it was ‘only a few people,’ were sympathetic to the Jews.117 Moreover, a number of district officials reported that shop and business owners increasingly asked for a permission to employ a Jew in the first months of 1942 – a permission that could postpone their deportation to occupied ­Poland.118 Yet, neither the úšb nor the sd reports on Slovakia accused the majority society of ‘fraternizing’ with Jews before 1942 (though the rhetoric did change significantly as the war progressed), as we read from intelligence reports on the situation in the Protectorate. On numerous occasions, the Slovak authorities even asked the public not to take measures against the Jews into their own hands. The 1942 deportations seemed to change the narrative, and for the first time reports presented sympathy and compassion in the majority society towards the Jews. Conversely, sd situation reports presented solidarity between majority Czechs and Jews in the Protectorate, which was even growing, according to these reports, with the gradual introduction of new anti-Jewish laws and the segregation of the Jews from non-Jews. The sd complained that Czechs were helping Jews avoid the restrictions, providing them with prohibited items (while often for large amounts of money) and were not reporting them if they broke the anti-Jewish laws.119 Czechs were allegedly boycotting German regulations and kept announcing that people who would join the ­German persecution of the Jews, or profited from the theft of Jewish property, were traitors of the Czech nation. More than anything, these sentiments point to a diversity of opinions among the Czech population if we simultaneously consider the documented efforts of Czechs to participate in the Aryanization.120

116 sna, 209-763-7, 209-748-3. Situational reports. 117 sna, 209-769-8. Situational reports. 118 Ibid. 119 Krejčová and Hyndráková, “Postoj Čechů k židům. Z politického zpravodajství okupační správy a protektorátního tisku v letech 1939–1941.” 120 na, úřp, 114-311-2, sd situational report, February 20, 1940.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

101

Meanwhile, Nazi agencies suggested, on several occasions, that attitudes towards the Jews were socio-economically conditioned. While workers and poorer portions of Czech society welcomed restrictions against Jews, even calling for an intensification in their persecution at times, the bourgeoisie and members of the intelligentsia continued to support the Jews and resented the German (but often Czech) policies against the minority.121 One of the leitmotifs that emerged between 1939 and 1943 were reports about Czechs expressing public compassion with the Jews at the time of the deportations. Already in ­October 1939, during the Protectorate’s first deportations from Moravská ­Ostrava to Nisko in the Lublin district (to the so-called ‘Jewish reservation’), Czech people allegedly gathered near the railway station and expressed ­sympathies with the Jews.122 In April 1940, when several hundred deportees returned from Nisko, they were publicly welcomed back to Ostrava by Czechs.123 Reports confirm similar public demonstrations during the deportations in mid-1942 and early-1943.124 During the first years of the occupation, these pro-Jewish sympathies seem to be further confirmed by other sources, such as reports that reached the Czechoslovak exile resistance movement in Paris and London: ‘Despite the official pressure the Czech nation remains untouched by antisemitism in its broadest general segments.’ As the authors of the report suggested, only minor fascist groupings like Vlajka or [Národní] Arijská kulturní jednota joined the Nazi policies, but their activities had been rejected by Czech society.125 Some contemporary observers however concluded that for Czechs, support for the Jews functioned first of all as an expression of anti-German sentiments, a way to demonstrate resistance against the occupier. Although the post-1938 Second Republic witnessed the rise of antisemitism after the German invasion, any continuation of antisemitism was largely perceived as sympathizing with the enemy.126 Kurt Ziemke, a representative of the German foreign ministry in the staff of the Reich Protector, concluded his comments concerning the Czechs’ attitude toward the Jews as follows: 121 na, úřp, 114-303-3, sd situational report, September 26, 1939; 114-302-6, July 10, 1941; ­August 4, 1941. 122 na, úřp, 114-303-2, sd situational report, October 18, 1939. 123 na, úřp, 114-313-2, sd situational report, April 17, 1940. 124 na, úřp, 114-308-5, sd situational report, August 27, 1942; 114-314-4, sd situational report, January 23, 1943. 125 Library of Congress, Ján Papánek Papers, box 4, report on the Jewish question in the ­Protectorate, prepared in late 1939. 126 Láníček, Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews, 1938–48, 16–21; Kárný, “Czech Society and the ‘Final Solution,’” 309–24.

102

chapter 2

Our enemy is his friend. And the Czechs see the way we proceed against the Jews as an omen of how we will deal with them at some later date. […] [Thus that is] why Czechs up to now have, for their own reasons, rejected coming to grips with the Jewish question.127 sd reports suggested that support for the Jews, at least in the first years of the occupation, served as a way to convey anti-German sentiments. The occupation regime was drawing Jews and Czechs closer.128 Yet, reports prepared by the Czech underground tend to argue that although Czechs rejected the Nazi racial policies, they have not necessarily accepted Jews as part of the struggle for national liberation against the Germans. They helped the Jews whenever possible. Yet, at the same time, Czechs expressed resentment against Jews who spoke German, a theme largely ignored by the Protectorate propaganda for obvious reasons, or against Jews who held higher positions in prewar society.129 Czechs allegedly expressed amazement at the amount of Jewish property in Bohemia and Moravia that was revealed during the Aryanization. In May 1942, one member of the Czech underground movement, who had escaped to Switzerland, argued that limitations on the Jews’ economic and social position were desirable; after the war, they were not expected to work as lawyers, doctors or politicians, and thus they ought to take manual jobs instead.130 As mentioned previously, the sentiments among the Czech population that casted Jews as Germanizers, even though not articulated by the official propaganda, persisted and, in fact, survived the war.131 An example of this vox populi is the wartime diary of the Catholic Dean František Wonka in Manětín, situated in western Bohemia. During the war, Wonka repeatedly noted his feelings against the Jews as Germanizers.132 In any case, as our discussion of the press in Chapter 1 has illustrated, the Nazi authorities were not satisfied with Czech attitudes towards the Jews. Some authors even believe that by the summer of 1941, the Germans were seriously perturbed by the continuous contacts of the majority society with the 127 Ziemke quoted in Kárný, “Czech Society and the ‘Final Solution,’” 323. 128 na, úřp, 114-9-22, Annual situational report for 1939, sd Prague. 129 Láníček, Czechs, Slovaks, and the Jews, 16–41. 130 tna, FO371/30837. Report sent by Lockhart to Ambassador Nichols on June 30, 1942. See also cua, Jaromir Smutny Papers, box 12, report written May 5, 1942. 131 The sd noted the Czech resentment against the Jews, as Germanizers, already at the ­beginning of the occupation. na, úřp, 114-302-4, sd situational report, May 16, 1939. 132 František Wonka and Pavel Suk, Doba zkoušek a naděje: deník děkana Františka Wonky z let 1938–1945 (Manětín: Machart, 2010), 138, 152, 188, 391, 404.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

103

Jews.133 Still, we need to take into account that the Nazi authorities often exaggerated the role of Jews in the resistance and in spreading the whispering propaganda. Broadcasts from London asked Czechs to help the Jews shortly after the introduction of the compulsory Star of David. Purportedly, there were public manifestations of support for the Jews, with reported cases of Czechs attaching paper stars or yellow flowers to their clothes in public.134 These developments, together with other resistance activities like the boycott of the Protectorate press, contributed to Hitler’s decision to dismiss the supposedly weak and lenient von Neurath. Heydrich, one of the Nazi radicals, was then appointed as the Deputy Reich Protector.135 Heydrich arrived in Prague on the morning of September 27, 1941. He immediately let the Czech Prime Minister Alois Eliáš be arrested and sentenced to death, though he was only executed in June 1942. Heydrich ­introduced martial law to the Protectorate and ordered the executions of incarcerated Czech patriots as well as members of the resistance. Overall, 489 people were executed during the martial law between September 28, 1941 and January 20, 1942. Another 1,673 people were sent to concentration camps and approximately 4–6,000 incarcerated.136 Shortly after his arrival, Heydrich announced Hitler’s decision to enter a new phase of the solution to the Jewish question in the Reich. After dispossession and segregation, the Jews now faced deportation to Eastern Europe. While preparing for the deportations, Heydrich decided to break any perceived Czechs ties with the Jews. The sd reports contributed to the perceived need to segregate the Jews by presenting the latter as the main source of Flüsterpropaganda (whispering propaganda) and thus as one of the main sources of rebellious Czech acts in the preceding weeks.137 According to some authors, the friendly attitude that Czechs exhibited towards persecuted Jews continued throughout 1941.138 In response, Heydrich ordered that any Czech openly expressing a 133 Krejčová and Hyndráková, “Postoj Čechů k židům. Z politického zpravodajství okupační správy a protektorátního tisku v letech 1939–1941.” 134 na, úřp, 114-302-5, sd situational report September 20, 1941, September 22, 1941, September 25, 1941, September 27, 1941. 135 Kuklík and Gebhart, Velké dějiny zemí koruny české 15b. 1938–1945, 36. 136 Ibid., 55. 137 na, úřp, 114-302-6, sd situational report, August 4, 1941 114-302-5, sd situational report, August 28, 1941. 138 Moses Moskowitz, “The Jewish Situation in the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia,” Jewish Social Studies 4, no. 1 (1942): 18, footnote 5.

104

chapter 2

friendly attitude with Jews was to be put in preventive custody (Schutzhaft) on September 29, 1941.139 sd reports from various regions in the Protectorate claimed that after Heydrich’s crackdown Czechs repeatedly expressed resentment against the ­government-in-exile as well as the Jews for leading them astray from their safe position in London.140 Future historians will have to elucidate how far the resentment against the exiles and the Nazi propaganda stories concerning the Jewish influence over these exiles, at this particular point in the war, impacted the Jewish position in the Protectorate during the following months. From the perspective of the Protectorate Jewry, the time between September 1941 and late-1942 represented the period of heightened persecution and deportations. The cases of overt sympathies with the Jews, such as those expressed by Czechs in September 1941, appear to have vanished until the very end of the war. Likewise, organized acts of resistance like the boycott of the activist press were never repeated. Brandes quotes from a report prepared by the sd in midOctober 1941 that had already noted attempts by Czechs to avoid social contact with Jews.141 In early November 1941, regional authorities reported that the frequency of encounters between the Jews and Czechs was decreasing, though they still documented cases of ‘friendly greetings’ between both groups. Thus, only a complete physical separation of both groups and the incarceration of the Jews in isolated territories could, in their opinion, solve the problem of their constant contact. It was believed that this would curb negative influence the Jews had on Czechs.142 In order to manifest their determination to separate both groups, the Gestapo imprisoned several Czechs who kept maintaining contacts with the Jews.143 Ian Kershaw asserts that the Nazi regime’s terrorizing methods in the Reich led to the withdrawal and ultimate passivity of ordinary Germans. The 139 Milotová, “Die Protektoratspresse und die ‘Judenfrage,’” 164, 170–3. 140 Krčmář, “Mimořádné zpravodajství protektorátního sd o reakcích obyvatel na události z 27. a 28. září 1941,” 27–28; na, úřp, 114-306-4, sd situational report, October 30, 1941; na, 110-5-29, Situational Report from Kladno (211/41), October 3, 1941; Situational Report by the Prague sd-Dienstelle, 226/41, October 6, 1941. 141 Brandes, Germanizovat a vysídlit, 288. 142 Report by the Czech gendarmerie from Dvůr Králové, November 1, 1941. Reprinted in Miroslav Kárný, Dokumentace o nacistické protižidovské perzekuci a jejím ohlasu v tzv. Protektorátu ( jaro 1939-jaro 1942), manuscript deposited in the Jewish Museum in Prague. 143 Situational report by the Czech gendarmerie regional headquarters in Mělník, December 27, 1941. Reprinted in Miroslav Kárný, Dokumentace o nacistické protižidovské perzekuci a jejím ohlasu v tzv. Protektorátu ( jaro 1939-jaro 1942), manuscript deposited in the Jewish Museum in Prague.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

105

­ opulation at large became indifferent to the plight of the Jews.144 Thus, the p key issue, which we are unable to address at this stage, is how far this scenario was repeated in other regions. Under Heydrich’s rule of terror, Czechs withdrew from the public space, in line with Heydrich’s and, before him, Karl Hermann Frank’s policy of depoliticization, Entpolitisierung. The Czechs became concerned with their own fate, as concluded by Ziemke in the previously quoted document. Already by October 1941, stories were circulating throughout the Protectorate that the deportation of the Jews was only an initial stage of the program to remove all considered racially inferior or politically unreliable from the Protectorate. After Germany’s victory in the war, Czechs were to be deported to Russia.145 Such rumors kept appearing throughout the entirety of the war, increasing after the beginning of the Jewish deportations to the East. The famous Czech historian, Jan Slavík, noted in his diary on February 15, 1942, ‘The treatment of the Jews reveals Hitler’s plans for us.’146 At one point, even K.H. Frank, the Secretary of State in the Protectorate, appealed to the Nazi authorities not to discuss such plans in public because they harmed the relatively stable situation in the Protectorate as well as the industrial production that was fundamental for German war machinery.147 We need to emphasize that the time of the deportations was crucial for the decision made by Jews on whether to try to ‘submerge,’ thereby avoiding the transports, or to follow the deportation order. There were definitely several issues at play, including the willingness of the Jews to risk the uncertainty of life in hiding. At the same time, an offer had to come from the ‘Aryan,’ non-Jewish side. These observations tend to confirm the hypothesis by Krejčová that the brutality of the Heydrich regime, as well as the terror unleashed after his assassination in late-May 1942, broke the Czech willingness to support Jews.148 Alongside these events was the major wave of deportations from the Czech towns to Theresienstadt and further to the East. Rothkirchen concludes, ‘[T]he sad fact remains, that during the height of the Jewish deportation there was a 144 Ian Kershaw, “Consensus, Coercion and Popular Opinion in the Third Reich: Some Reflections,” in Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes: Fascism, Nazism, Communism, ed. Paul Corner (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 33–46. 145 na, úřp, 114-306-4, sd situational reports for October 30, 1941 and for November 3, 1941. 146 na, 109-5-29; na, úřp, 114-306-4, sd situational reports, November 3, 1941, November 12, 1941; Jan Slavík, Válečný deník historika (Praha: Academia, 2008), 212f. 147 Brandes, Germanizovat a vysídlit, 46. 148 Krejčová, “Specifické předpoklady antisemitismu a protižidovské aktivity v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava,” 153.

106

chapter 2

tacit acceptance of the disappearance of Jews from the country.’149 Yet, rather than acceptance, the documents point to a passivity caused by the Nazi terror at this particular time. This could just as well have been a lack of concern for the fate of the Jews caused by the fears of the punishment Czechs themselves faced under the Nazis. Jaroslav Kraus, a survivor of Theresienstadt, AuschwitzBirkenau and other camps, later recollected that his Czech co-workers, who until then had behaved decently toward him, changed their attitude after the assassination of Heydrich. They blamed Beneš and the Jews for the terror unleashed by the Germans in the Protectorate.150 But how much did the Czechs (and Slovaks) actually know about the fate of the Jews in the East? In Germany, the main sources of the information included soldiers on leave, who informed their relatives and friends about what they witnessed behind the Eastern front. There were also leaflets dropped by the Allied planes over Germany and the Allied broadcasting.151 The situation in the Protectorate and Slovakia differed slightly. In the Protectorate, the bbc broadcasts were the main source of information about the fate of the Jews. In Slovakia, we also need to consider the eyewitness accounts of Slovak soldiers who had served in the East. These, however, could not bring any evidence about the fate of the Jews in Polish ghettos or the main extermination camps.152 It is noteworthy that this was a very similar situation to the case of Nazi Germany, where the public was adequately informed about the massacres of the Jews behind the Eastern front, but the specificities of the Jews’ fate in Auschwitz, not to mention the completely isolated camps of the Operation Reinhard (Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka), were largely unknown among ordinary Germans.153 If we focus on Allied broadcasting, we know, for example, that on the bbc on December 9, 1942, the exile minister Jan Masaryk suggested that ‘millions of Jews would be slaughtered.’ It is almost impossible, nevertheless, to ascertain how far these reports, containing incomprehensible numbers, were 149 Livia Rothkirchen, “Czech Attitudes towards the Jews during the Nazi Regime,” in The Nazi Holocaust; Public Opinion and Relations to the Jews in Nazi Europe, Vol. 5: Public Opinion and Relations to the Jews in Nazi Europe (Westport: Meckler, 1989), 447. 150 yva, O.93/9835, vha usc testimony of Jaroslav Kraus. 151 Peter Longerich, Davon haben wir nichts gewusst!: die Deutschen und die Judenverfolgung 1933–1945 (Munchen: Siedler, 2006), 222–47, 253–62. 152 tna, fo 371/30838, Situation in Slovakia. This report, received by the British legation in Zurich, contained intelligence about the massacres of the Jews in the East, as they were reported by two Slovak army officers, who had suffered a mental breakdown. 153 Lawrence D. Stokes, “The German People and the Destruction of the European Jews,” in The Nazi Holocaust; Public Opinion and Relations to the Jews in Nazi Europe, Vol. 5: Public Opinion and Relations to the Jews in Nazi Europe (Westport: Meckler, 1989), 61–85.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

107

­internalized by ‘ordinary’ people, nor how far the reports about the distant suffering of the Jews were overshadowed by the Nazi violence at home, such as in Lidice and Ležáky. Scholars have given convincing arguments that the Slovak political leaders also had reasonable information that the deported Jews were being murdered by the summer of 1942. According to the postwar affidavit of Dieter Wislićeny, the German adviser on the Jewish question in Slovakia, when asked by a handful of government members who wished to send a commission to investigate the fate of the deported Slovak Jews, Adolf Eichmann declined by saying that this was not possible as the Jews were no longer alive.154 We also know that President Tiso had already acquired knowledge of the Nazi brutality in the fall of 1941 while on a visit to Hitler’s field headquarters in East Prussia.155 One of the stops on the tour was Zhitomir, which became a Slovak garrison headquarters. Later, in early-1942, Slovak soldiers in Zhitomir witnessed the execution of Ukrainian Jews first-hand, and reports of the mass killings reached the president shortly thereafter.156 It is unclear whether and to what extent Slovak soldiers in the East informed their friends and family members about the fate of the Jews. Yet, based on how much effort Slovak journals put into repudiating the rumors that the Jews were being mistreated in their ‘new homeland,’ it seems fair to assume that there was a general social understanding that the deported Jews are actually no longer alive some time around summer 1942. In early October 1942, when the first wave of deportations from Slovakia was about to conclude, the journal Gardista reprinted an article from Náš boj, a radical bi-monthly supported by the Germans. It was assuredly not the only article attempting to refute rumors about the murder of Jews to appear in the Slovak press, but it nicely illustrates the arguments and rhetoric on this topic employed by the Slovak regime: When the Jews began to be taken out of Slovakia, there was much clamouring, weeping, and compassion. The minds of many Slovaks are even now haunted by the picture of the horrific treatment of the Jews in their new homeland. […] The deported Jews today no longer present a political danger, and are thus treated humanely. They are now simply a labour force and it is in the general interest of this labour force to live 154 sa, ľs Bratislava, Dieter Wisliceny, TK-XV-347/48. 155 Katarína Hradská, “Jozef Tiso v Hitlerovom hlavnom stane a na Ukrajine roku 1941 vo svetle nemeckých dokumentov,” Historický časopis 51, no. 4 (2003): 685–94. 156 James Mace Ward, Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013), 227. tna, FO371/30838, Situation in Slovakia.

108

chapter 2

in conditions that ensure the highest productivity. If there is something that puzzles us about the Jewish homeland it is the fact that one would not find an Aryan who so brutally abused the Jews as much as a Jew there mistreats another Jew. Jews have their rabbis, doctors, police, and bureaucracy; baptized Jews even have their own priest. All of them together thus help the victory of National Socialism in the New Europe. While this is a bitter reality for them, they have learned to love order and precision, and, according to testimonies, many of them have never felt as healthy as they do in their new home.157 Many district officials in Slovakia identified foreign broadcasting as a source behind these ‘unfounded rumors.’ With an increasing number of the Axis defeats signaling that Nazi Germany would very possibly lose the war, the State Security Headquarters in Bratislava received a report from a commissionaire in Sabinov, in the eastern corner of the country, faulting the ‘hostile English radio’ for stirring up moods in a society already seriously impacted by the war news: From generally known information, it is reasonable to conclude that even in the households of reliable Slovaks more people now listen to London and Moscow than to Slovak radio, and that many people even believe what these hostile foreign broadcasts are reporting.158 Foreign broadcasts indeed constituted a significant source of information on the extermination of the Jews for both Slovaks and Czechs. This claim is supported by sd reports. In March 1942, the Czechoslovak bbc service informed its audience that the Germans established the Theresienstadt ghetto as a place of concentration for ‘90,000 Protectorate Jews.’159 By mid-1942, Jews in the countryside knew that the Theresienstadt ghetto was not a final destination but that the Jews were deported further to the East.160 Later, at the end of June and the beginning of July 1942, the German counterintelligence unit in the Protectorate intercepted 157 Gardista, October 4, 1942, 5. 158 sna, 209-769-9. 159 Miroslav Kárný, “Theresienstädter Dokumente (Teil i.),” Judaica Bohemiae xvii (1981). Doc. 12, broadcast March 3, 1942. 160 Jarka Vítámvásová, “Kolaborace jako způsob přežití. Židovský zpravodaj Gestapa z Třebíče a jeho zprávy z let 1942–1945,” in České, slovenské a československé dějiny 20. století. Sborník z mezinárodní konference mladých vědeckých pracovníků. Univerzita Hradec Králové, 7.-8. března 2007 (Ústí na Orlicí: Oftis, 2007), 353.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

109

the bbc broadcasts relaying the content of the so-called Bund report, stating that 700,000 Jews had been murdered in Eastern Europe since the beginning of the German-Soviet war.161 Gestapo files reveal that these broadcasts found listeners among the population in the Protectorate, as they did in Slovakia.162 Rumors about the German policies against the Jews returned to the Protectorate, at least according to the sd, in January 1943, shortly after the Allied governments initiated a major campaign in mid-December 1942 aimed at informing people in occupied Europe about the extermination campaign via the bbc.163 In January 1943, after the un Declaration (that triggered the campaign) that condemned the Nazi crimes (adopted in London, Moscow and Washington on December 17, 1942), the reports prepared by the Protectorate sd office dealt extensively with the hostile attitude of Czechs toward the Germans and suggested that these sentiments increased in light of the recent German military defeats. One of the features of the increasingly hostile attitude was the Czechs’ renewed support for the remaining Jews. This was partly stoked by concerns that after the fall of Germany, the returning Jews would want revenge. Therefore, the sd concluded that Czechs supplied the Jews with food and greeted them with extreme courteousy in the streets. More significantly, the sd reported on the deportations of the Jews as follows: ‘The allegedly taken actions [against the Jews] are sharply condemned by [Czechs].’164 Another report, prepared two weeks later, was more concrete: The rumours that have simultaneously been put into circulation in great numbers about the allegedly most cruel treatment of the Jews by the ­Germans – that they are allegedly being systematically murdered by poison gas, inoculation with infectious agents, and so forth – have awakened the compassion of the Czechs and have also resulted in the spread of stronger anti-German sentiment amongst members of the population.165 This was the first time during the war that the Prague sd office expressly ­mentioned that ‘rumors’ concerning the mass extermination of the Jews were 161 Kárný, “Theresienstädter Dokumente (Teil i.).” Doc. 27, 29. See the Czechoslovak bbc broadcast on 26 June 1942 in Jan Láníček, “The Czechoslovak Service of the bbc and the Jews during World War ii,’” Yad Vashem Studies 38, no. 2 (2010): 135. 162 Vítámvásová, “Kolaborace jako způsob přežití. Židovský zpravodaj Gestapa z Třebíče a jeho zprávy z let 1942–1945,” 254. 163 On the campaign see: Jan Láníček, “Czechoslovakia and the Allied Declaration of December 17, 1942,” forthcoming. 164 na, úřp, 114-314-4, sd situational report, January 9, 1943. 165 na, úřp, 114-314-4, sd situational report, January 23, 1943.

110

chapter 2

circulating in the Protectorate. The timing of the report suggests that the Allied broadcasts in mid-December 1942 were the source. The available documents do not mention how far the reports spread among the Czech population, nor whether they were believed and contextualized as revelatory in regards to the Nazi policies towards a wholesale extermination campaign against Jews. Yet, the degree of ‘knowledge’ in the Protectorate is questioned by the content of sd reports from June and July 1944, after the bbc, broadcasting from London, disseminated information about the gassing of almost 4,000 Czech Jews deported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz-Birkenau (the Theresienstadt Family Camp). On July 11, 1944, the sd reported: Recently, moreover, numerous rumours about the fate of the Jews imprisoned in Theresienstadt have spread in almost all parts of Bohemia and Moravia. While many Czechs have rejected these rumours, apparently taken from enemy radio, that these Jews had been killed by the Germans, one is inclined, particularly in anti-German circles, to give credence to these stories.166 More specifically, the reports noted that Czechs in various regions of Bohemia and Moravia (Oberlandrat Brno, Hradec Králové, Pilsen) have spread the report that between 3,000 and 5,000 Jews were recently transported from Theresienstadt to Germany and the ­Generalgouvernement [occupied Poland], where they were killed by gas in concentration camps.167 However, the sd only noted responses to individual pieces of information broadcast by the Czechoslovak radio from London. Furthermore, the broadcasts were often misinterpreted, proving a lack of understanding about the events in Theresienstadt and in occupied Poland. The reports from provinces, as well as from Prague, thus noted the situation in the following manner: News spread, for example, in Pardubice, that the Wehrmacht had tested a new weapon on the Jews in the concentration camps, whereby 4,000 Jews from Theresienstadt lost their lives. In Kladno, it is claimed that a new gas was tested on 5,000 Jews transported from Theresienstadt to the Reich, all of whom allegedly died after their return to Theresienstadt. According to 166 na, úřp, 114-301-6, sd situational report, July 11, 1944. 167 na, úřp, 114-301-6, sd situational report, June 23, 1944.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

111

rumours from Prague, the Jews transported to Poland did not reach their destination, but were disposed of beforehand.168 We do not know whether these reports, at least in these versions, were being circulated among the Czechs, nor if they were later misinterpreted by the informants of the sd or the sd officials preparing the final version of the situation report. Nevertheless, they point to the lack of a detailed understanding of Nazi policies against the Jews. Quite typical for rumors spread by word of mouth, the content of the broadcasts eventually got altered, and several versions developed within the ­population. It is also noteworthy that the bbc broadcasts served as an almost exclusive source of information about the events in the East. Nevertheless, more research is needed to establish whether these broadcasts were accepted by the listening Czechs and Slovaks as a true representation of the Nazi policies. If not, were they then taken as part of the propaganda campaign against Nazi Germany and local collaborators? Lastly, it needs to be emphasized that although the bbc broadcasted the information about Jewish persecution on several occasions, there was no systematic approach to the subject. This can in turn be taken as one of the reasons for the Czechs’ hypothesised lack of comprehension regarding the fate of the Jews. Seemingly, people in Europe simply could not comprehend the broadcasts about the murders of thousands or millions, let alone the wholesale extermination. From this, we can speculate that the Czechs’ attitude towards the minority could not be influenced by their detailed knowledge of the genocide. In contrast with the period of 1939–41, the number of instances of the sd mentioning Czech attitudes towards Jews significantly decreased after the beginning of the deportations in October 1941. It was only in July and August 1942, already after the assassination of Heydrich, that the Prague sd prepared two longer reports calling yet again for the acceleration of the deportation process. According to their comments, the Czechs were still maintaining relations with Jews and providing them with prohibited items. The authors identified the Jews as the main source of whispering propaganda. Yet, the first significant changes in the reports’ content seem to appear when compared to the pre-1942 surveys. In particular, the report noticed popular complaints that, despite the shortages of fruit and vegetables, shopkeepers in Prague still preferred to sell these to Jews: ‘For this reason, there is a growing desire to finally remove the Jews from the cityscape of Prague.’169 A month later, another report continued in 168 na, úřp, 114-301-6, sd situational report, July 11, 1944. 169 na, úřp, 114-303-5, sd situational report, July 23, 1942.

112

chapter 2

the same tone, adding that by then even the Czechs occasionally expressed their indignation against the Jews. Some Czechs accused the Jews of not observing anti-Jewish regulations and visiting public places like swimming pools or restaurants while not wearing the Star of David. The report concluded that Czechs condemned the ‘arrogant and presumptuous’ behavior of the Jews (freches und anmassendes Verhalten der Juden).170 Despite these complaints and even claims by Czechs that the situation of Jews in the Protectorate had recently improved, the report concluded that Czechs continued to behave friendly towards Jews. This was an attitude that still gave them an opportunity to convey anti-German sentiments. These proJewish sentiments were often expressed during the deportations of the Jews from Czech cities: ‘As a farewell, larger and smaller groups of Czechs gather to express their compassion and cheer the Jews “goodbye.” It is not uncommon for Czechs to burst into tears when the trains leave.’171 Even in this case, however, the sd did not see the Czechs’ sympathies with the Jews as an expression of altruistic sentiments. A group of Czechs in Kolín allegedly commented that the Jews would soon come back to the Bohemian cities, and they would remember the expressions of sympathies by the Czechs, who would then benefit from these manifestations of friendship.172 It is noteworthy that from 1941 to 1942, a time of major German victories in the East, the sd kept stressing the Czechs’ persuasion that the Germans would eventually lose the war.173 Similar to before, the content of these reports presents historians with an almost unsolvable quandary. Local Nazi agencies often systematically appealed to higher authorities in order to radicalize the anti-Jewish policies in the Protectorate.174 Like-minded references to Czech-Jewish relations (for example, Czechs sympathies with deported Jews) served as a pretext for the immediate deportation of any remaining Jews.175 The Jews always served as scapegoats for the Nazi authorities to use when they were trying to suppress anti-Nazi whispering propaganda or any sign of anti-German resistance. Yet, there are Jewish survivors who have recollected scenes of the Czech p ­ opulation 170 na, úřp, 114-308-5, sd situational report, August 27, 1942. 171 Ibid. 172 Ibid. 173 na, úřp, 114-302-5, sd situational report, September 22, 1941. 174 Wolf Gruner and Jörg Osterloh, eds., “The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,” in The Greater German Reich and the Jews: Nazi Persecution Policies in the Annexed Territories 1935–1945 (New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015), 115–17. 175 na, úřp, 114-314-5, sd situational report, January 23, 1943.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

113

a­ ccompanying them to the station during the deportations and expressing pity for the condemned minority, although the individual experiences of survivors inevitably differed. A young boy at the time, Michal Kraus was deported with his family from the North-Eastern Bohemian town of Náchod in mid-December 1942. After the war, he remembered that early morning when the 250 Jews from Náchod were boarding the train. Tens of non-Jews gathered around the station to say farewell to the deportees.176 When dealing with similar cases, we need to consider the high degree of integration among the Czech Jews as well as the high number of interfaith marriages in Bohemia and Moravia (though Jews in mixed marriages were deported only in early 1945). It is most likely a coincidence that this event took place at the peak of the bbc broadcasting campaign before and after the adoption of the un Declaration condemning the Nazi extermination of the Jews. Nevertheless, this anecdote offers insights, even if from just one individual, into the circumstances surrounding the deportations of Jews from the Bohemian countryside in late-1942.

Return of the Jews

The threat of international Jewry and the Jewish return after the war became the main theme of the anti-Jewish propaganda in both territories during the final years of the war. In Slovakia, this threat was additionally accentuated with the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising, which was dismissed as a revolt of Jewish and Czech (that is, non-Slovak) elements. The emergence of this abstract, mythical and chimeric threat of international Jewry was linked to specific events throughout the war, especially after the German defeat at Stalingrad. The Jews were thus presented as the main representatives of the Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union and its security forces (nkvd). The propaganda presented the brutally murdered Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Ukrainians and people in Bessarabia as a memento of what would have happened if the Bolsheviks had come to rule in Central Europe, thereby having allowed the Jews to return.177 In support of the hysteria, a Stürmer-like newspaper published by the Propaganda Office in a wall newspaper entitled Ľudové noviny was displayed in public places across Slovakian towns and villages. They provided n ­ umerous 176 Michal Kraus, Deník 1942–45 (Náchod: Kvartus, 2012), 17. 177 Gebhart and Köpplová, Řízení legálního českého tisku v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava. Press meeting on February 26, 1943.

114

chapter 2

articles on the threat of the Jews’ return, with gruesome photographs of head-less bodies and other decomposing body parts.178 In early-1943, this theme gained supplementary prominence after the German army revealed the mass graves of Polish army officers murdered by the nkvd near Katyń in the spring of 1940.179 The murder of the Polish officers was to be presented as a Jewish crime and linked to the threat Jews presented for Central ­Europe. The Jews were also identified as the main political force behind the ‘plutocratic’ Western Allies (in particular the United States) as well as the minor Allied powers, which included the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London.180 When we check the available sources that claim to depict the sentiments within Czech and Slovak society in the last years of the war, we can ­document a noticeable change in their portrayal of local attitudes towards the Jews. ­Between the suppression of the Slovak National Uprising and the liberation during the last few months of the war, scholarship on Slovakia stresses, for the first time, the heterogeneity of attitudes towards the Jews in general. This diversification was supposed to be twofold: it encompassed the help provided to the Jews in hiding, as well as the renewed efforts to take over the last remaining personal properties and belongings left behind after the second deportation wave that followed the German invasion. Ivan Kamenec explains that if ‘one can ever speak about large-scale help offered by Slovaks to their persecuted Jewish fellow citizens, it is precisely in this dramatic period.’181 The limited research on Jewish rescue in wartime Slovakia also suggests that the imminent end of the war (and with that, the anticipated fall of the Tiso regime) accelared acts of help and assistance in the majority society.182 As these conclusions rest on the research based primarily on the problematic category of Righteous, they yet need to be corroborated by other sources. Likewise, in the last two years of the war, sd and Gestapo reports presented a complex picture of Czech attitudes regarding Jews. On several occasions, the Gestapo reported the assistance offered by ordinary Czechs to Jews trying

178 Ľudové noviny, January 17, 1943. 179 Gardista, May 11, 1943, 1; Slovák, May 21, 1943, 1. 180 Gebhart and Köpplová, Řízení legálního českého tisku v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava. Press meeting on April 16, 1943 and May 13, 1943. 181 Kamenec, Po stopách tragédie, 274. 182 Nina Paulovičová, “Rescue of Jews in the Slovak State (1939–1945)” (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Alberta, Department of History and Classics, 2012), http://hdl.handle .net/10402/era.25987.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

115

to avoid deportation by providing them with either hiding places or forged documents.183 The sd reports, however, presented a diametrically different attitudinal image. Czechs were maintaining their anti-German sentiments and closely following the war situation, hoping for a speedy defeat of the Wehrmacht. Still, they expressed concerns that the Jews would return with the victorious Allied armies. Less than two years before the war’s terminal point in late-1943, the sd suggested that an increasing number of Czechs appreciated that the Germans removed the Jews and hoped that the Jews would not return. The sd also recorded cases of Czechs who were afraid to buy furniture left behind by the deportees because the Jews would be coming back ‘in three months’ and would claim their property back. Those who had not previously been able to buy Jewish belongings now felt relieved, and those who did buy it were concerned about what was going to happen to them when the Jews returned.184 Slovak records also touch upon the issue of Jewish property and its transfer at the end of the war, which offers a somewhat different perspective than the sd records. Applications for Aryanization submitted in 1944 and 1945 suggest that some treated the imminent collapse of the state as their last chance to enrich themselves on behalf of the deported Jews.185 Individuals continued approaching Slovak authorities with their petitions, in particular the Minister of the Interior Alexander Mach, who was a representative of the radical wing within the state-party. There were also anonymous denunciatory letters often asking for specific belongings of Jews well into the last months of the war.186 On the other hand, district officials across Slovakia observed a depoliticization of public life, manifested by people avoiding party and Hlinka Guard meetings.187 Around the same time, the Protectorate sd noticed the Czechs’ irritation with the content of bbc broadcasts by exiles when dealing with the Jews. On September 29, 1943, minister Masaryk broadcast support for the Jews on the occasion of the Jewish New Year. Czechs allegedly condemned Masaryk because ‘his always illogical drunk speeches were only a disgrace to the Czech people.’188 The sd continued as follows: 183 na, 110-5-31, Gestapo, Prague, report for May 1943 (June 3, 1943), June 1943 (July 5, 1943), September 1943 (October 5, 1943), November 1943 (prepared December 1, 1943). 184 na, úřp, 114-307-3, sd situational report, November 16, 1943. 185 sna, ppo – vii, box 92A, f. 321-R-1193/50. Schick Zigmud, transfer of property. 186 Hana Kubátová, “Accusing and Demanding: Denunciations in Wartime Slovakia” (manuscript submitted to Lessons & Legacies, ed. Alexandra Garbarini and Paul Jaskot). 187 sna, 209-761-6. Situational reports. 188 na, úřp, 114-307-5, sd situational report, October 7, 1943.

116

chapter 2

It was the members of the lower social strata of the Czech population who were particularly angered by ‘Masaryk’s brazenness.’ One could not, it was repeatedly said, understand that the Czecho-Slovak Government in London had always accepted the Jews, even when it must have known that the majority of Czechs rejected and despised the Jews. Workers in Budweis (České Budějovice) declared that they could no longer imagine a time would come when the Jews in this area would once again play a role like the one they had before. Škoda workers in Pilsen [added:] The émigrés must obviously be completely indifferent to the fact that the overwhelming majority of the Czech population, even former Czech Marxists, are absolutely antisemitic.189 Also, a report sent to London by Czech underground cells condemned the otherwise popular minister for his stance on Jews.190 Even those among Czechs who defended Masaryk tried to present his speech as a strategic decision to court the support of the mighty international Jewry for the exiles’ case as well as the reestablishment of Czechoslovakia; this was a notion previously mentioned in the bbc broadcasts, for example, by the exile minister of justice ­Jaroslav Stránský.191 The Jews were allegedly only ‘the means for the purpose’ (ein Mittel zum Zweck) of achieving the exiles’ and the Czech political programs.192 Similarly, Czechs condemned the bbc broadcasts in support of Hungarian Jews shortly after the occupation of the country by Germany on March 19, 1944. According to the sd, the Czechs commented that London ‘lamented’ over the Jews, but did not care about the fate of ordinary Hungarians.193 The Czechs resented the prominence, which was in fact very rare, given to the Nazi persecution of the Jews. In their opinion, it seemed to overshadow the immense suffering of other civilian groups under the Germans, and it was therefore characterized as a lack of concern for the fate of non-Jews. It was only because of the changing military and political situation, in combination with the looming German defeat, that the sd office suggested some Czechs maintained friendly contacts with the remaining Jews. The hope was that they would gain some political advantages after the return of the Jews.194 189 na, úřp, 114-307-5, sd situational report, October 7, 1943. 190 Láníček, Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews, 1938–48, 33. 191 AČRo, bbc 1939–1945, box 19, broadcast by Jaroslav Stránský, March 6, 1943. 192 na, úřp, 114-307-5, sd situational report, October 7, 1943. 193 na, úřp, 114-301-1, sd situational report, March 31, 1944. 194 na, úřp, 114-301-6, sd situational report, July 11, 1944. Similarly, na, úřp, 114-308-5, sd situational report, August 27, 1942.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

117

The Czech attitude towards Jews was purportedly cold-hearted. The report prepared on November 16, 1943 made these sentiments clear: In the conversations about this, it has again and again been expressed that a large part of the Czech population speaks out against the Jews, emphasizing the removal of the Jews from the local area as the only advantage the Germans had brought the Czechs. At the thought that the Jews would return after the Allied victory in the war, and secure at least their former property and possibly even greater influence, people gladly placate themselves with the assertion that many Jews will certainly no longer be willing to return to Europe, where the mood against them will remain agitated and incited even after the war. People therefore often cherish the hope that at least for the foreseeable future, even after the elimination of German influence in Europe, the Jewish danger will disappear for the Czech people.195 The reports did not claim that the Czechs would suddenly start to support the German side of the war; in fact, it was rather to the opposite. They just did not wish the Jews to return. These observations by the Nazi security agencies seem to be confirmed by the reports sent to London by the Czech home resistance groups in the second half of the war. A report received via Ankara in 1943 stated that antisemitism was the only part of the Nazi program that would probably be assimilated by the Czechs. Jews in postwar Czechoslovakia were to stop profiting from the work of Czechs. Any attempt to return property to Jews would be met with harsh opposition.196 Other sources of information reported that there was a concern among the Czechs, and the Slovaks to a degree, of Jews returning with the exile government and regaining their social positions. There was a cogent feeling that a large number of Jews survived the war in the safety of exile while the Czechs suffered under the occupation. This was accompanied with an explicit fear that the Jews would return with Beneš to re-establish their prominent position in Czechoslovakia.197 Several times, the sd noted the calls from Protectorate 195 na, úřp, 114-307-3, sd situational report, November 16, 1943. 196 Pasák, “Český antisemitismus na počátku okupace,” 151. Hanák (Consul in Ankara) to London, August 10, 1943, see Rothkirchen, “Czech Attitudes towards the Jews during the Nazi Regime,” 444. 197 Libuše Otáhalová and Milada Červinková, Dokumenty z historie československé politiky, 1939–1943; vztahy, mezinárodní diplomacie k politice československé emigrace na západě. (Praha: Academia, 1966), 721. Doc. 518, Hanák (Consul in Ankara) to London, August 10, 1943; Jitka Vondrová, Češi a sudetoněmecká otázka, 1939–1945: dokumenty (Praha: Ústav mezinárodních vztahů, 1994), 285–86. Doc. 140; vha, 37-91-7, Report by engineer Bartoň

118

chapter 2

Germans, and even Czechs, after a consequential treatment of the Jews; this would lead to the deportation of the Mischlinge, who although facing persecution could still live in Bohemian and Moravian towns.198 It would be too far-reaching to claim that the sentiments in the Czech and Slovak society towards the Jews reflected the aims of the propaganda during the last two years of the war. Yet, several different types of sources tend to confirm a Czech concern with the postwar return of the Jews. In their eyes, it would lead to the complete reversal of their previous segregation and of the Aryanization. Though engaging the ‘ordinary’ Slovaks in the so-called Jewish question, individuals actually gaining from the multilayered Aryanization ­process were those with family connections and political ties to the regime (typically members of the hsľs and hg).199 Not being able to get their hands on lucrative businesses reserved for those with political influence, many ‘ordinary’ Slovaks implicated themselves by participating in the auctions for ­personal belongings following the deportations.200 Hence, the Jews were not only seen as uncomfortable witnesses of the widespread collaboration; as has been said, they were viewed to be threatening the newly gained socio-economic positions of many. The reluctance of the postwar administration in Bratislava to adopt a restitution law underlines the general unwillingness to return stolen p ­ roperty to Jews. It further reflects the anxiety of the political leadership in that an enforced restitution could alienate the Slovak population. Contributing to this was a relatively large group of resistance fighters who made claims on any available assets in the country after the war, mostly consisting of former Jewish property.201 In contrast to the majority of Slovaks, the Nazi final solution program offered Czechs almost no immediate economic benefits. The number of Czechs, who directly profited from the theft of the Jewish property was negligible, though we also need to consider people who bought assets for reduced p ­ rices from the Jews, who emigrated after Munich, or who agreed to take Jews’ belongings for safekeeping.202 On the whole, the relatively small number of Jews who had lived in the Bohemian lands did not make any large number of Czechs ­directly

198 199 200 201

202

(Škoda works in Sweden), June 15, 1944; vha, 37-91-7, Report by Kučera (Czech Embassy in Stockholm) for the Ministry of National Defence, April 17, 1944. na, úřp, 114-307-5, sd situational report, November 25, 1943. Hlavinka, “Arizácia židovských podnikov v Šarišsko-zemplínskej župe 1939–1945.” Bumová, “Obraz židov v dobovej tlači v rokoch 1945–1948: denníky Čas a Pravda,” 187–90. Katarína Zavacká, “Slovenská národná rada v rokoch 1944–1948,” in Vývoj práva v Československu v letech 1945–1989, ed. Ladislav Soukup and Karel Malý (Praha: Karolinum, 2004), 606–34. Kuklík et al., Jak odškodnit holocaust?, 71–81.

119

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

interested in the Jews’ disappearance, at least not from the economic and socio-economic point of view. The previous social standing and jobs of Jews, nevertheless, were now predominantly occupied by Czechs, and the G ­ erman defeat in the war also promised economic benefits in the form of Jewish property for other parts of Czech society. The fact that the Germans were to lose stolen property (with the total size highly exaggerated by the propaganda) did not necessarily mean that it would be returned to the Jews. The socio-economic revolution that started in 1938 would end with the Czechs dominating all economic spheres in the Bohemian lands. The proclamations by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile that all transfers of property executed under duress were invalid had already been made in December 1941. In spite of this, the documentation of the postwar process of restitution proved that Czechs and Slovaks were not willing to relinquish ownership of their newly acquired property. Another reason for the changing moods and sentiments can be sought in the virtual absence of the Jews from the territory after 1943. This led to the transformation of the image of individual Jews (friends, colleagues, and neighbors) to the abstract figure of a ‘Jew.’ This contrasts with 1942/43, when the Czech sentiments toward the Jews were to a large extent influenced by the social (and often family) ties between both groups. This was a ‘Jew’ who was coming back and would demand the ­restitution of the pre-1938 situation. As many Czechs and Slovaks perceived the ­prewar era, the Jews were overrepresented in the social and economic life of the c­ ountry. The fact that the population in either Bohemia and Moravia or S­ lovakia was not able to comprehend the extent of the Holocaust further helped to create the image of Jews returning to postwar Czechoslovakia. It exacerbated the fear of Jews reclaiming all their property and previous social status. It also created the feeling that the Jewish community had been much larger than in reality. There was a feeling that the anticipated return of the Jews would challenge the social and economic standing of the Czech population, already tried by the six years of the war and German occupation.

...

There are several conclusions that we can make about the ‘popular opinion’ toward the Jewish population in the wartime Protectorate and Slovakia, as well as in postwar Czechoslovakia. Sources confirm that the occupation in March 1939 reversed the moods and sentiments within Czech society. While in the Second Republic Czechs often articulated anti-Jewish sentiments, any public manifestation of antisemitism suddenly became linked to support for the G ­ erman occupiers. In contrast, courteous behavior toward the Jews, e­ xpressions of

120

chapter 2

sympathies and small deeds to make the life of the Jews a bit easier served as a substitute for Czech active resistance against the occupier. That being said, there was also a significant part of Czech society that attempted to take part in the Aryanization process, which also illuminates a typically unseen perspective on the otherwise predominantly positive portrayal of the Czechs’ attitude towards the minority. Nevertheless, the Germans considered the redistribution of the spoils among the German population as a first step in the effort to establish economic dominance in the Protectorate. This strategy prevented Czechs, at least in any large numbers, from taking over Jewish assets. Alongside public expressions of support, the feeling among Czechs was that the social and economic position of the Jews needed to be readjusted after the war. Yet, as long as the Germans kept conquering the European continent, any discussion about the postwar order seemed superfluous. Heydrich’s terror regime successfully broke the Czechs’ willingness to support the Jewish population in any tangible way at the point when the Germans began the deportations of the Jews to the ghettos. For the most part, Czechs did not actively help with the deportations, though the sd suggested that there were parts of Czech society that supported the removal of the Jews. This is, however, only a provisional conclusion to be further explored by other historians. The almost negligible help the Czechs offered to the Jews trying to avoid deportations needs to be ascribed to the atmosphere of terror that ruled in the Protectorate after September 1941. This is especially true during the so-called Heydrichiáda, the period following the assassination of Heydrich by Czech and Slovak paratroopers sent from Britain. The lack of help received by the Jews cannot be ascribed to the Czechs’ support for the final solution. On the contrary, it seems that there was a lack of any detailed knowledge about the fate of the Jews, at least until ‘rumors’ about the massacres began to circulate in the Protectorate in late-1942. Fundamentally, the Jews were sent to Theresienstadt, which was still in the Protectorate, and only later to the East; this is another factor that might explain the relatively low number of Jews who attempted to avoid deportation. The responses to the bbc broadcasts on the liquidation of the Family Camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau implies that the listeners still took it as a single operation and not as part of a systematic campaign in the form of a genocide. At the point when the ‘rumors’ reached the Protectorate, a majority of the Jews already disappeared from Czech and Moravian towns. It is only hypothetical, and thus not a task for historians, to ask the question of whether an earlier and more decisive information campaign by the Czechoslovak exiles from London could have changed the fate of the Jews.

The ‘Jew’ in the Popular Opinion

121

The situation reports offer new elements in the mosaic of public moods and attitudes towards the Jews, and these further contribute to our understanding of the sources of postwar developments in Czechoslovakia. On the other hand, these reports clearly do not offer a complete image of Czech society’s attitudes. For example, the dominant feelings that the Jews were part of the ­German culture, and resentments against the Jews for using the German language, were only rarely mentioned in the reports prepared by the Nazi agencies (and only in the first months of the war). On the other hand, they frequently appear in the reports sent to London by the Czech underground. The developments after 1945 when the German-speaking Jews experienced problems with their citizenship and restitution claims prove that such sentiments did exist in the Protectorate.203 The situation in Slovakia differed in certain respects. The Slovak and ­German intelligence agencies were in agreement when it came to the strong ­anti-Jewish sentiments in Slovak’s majority society. Traditional stereotypes in which the Jews were portrayed as Hungarian servants and exploiters of the ‘little’ Slovak people were skillfully used by the Tiso regime. Contrary to the postwar narrative arguing that local fascist groups did not find much wartime public backing, there was indeed a need to caution segments of society not to take the solution to the Jewish question into their own hands. Until the latesummer of 1944 and in opposition to the Protectorate, Slovakia enjoyed relative stability and prosperity. Again, the character of the regime is of a fundamental difference. The loyalty to the regime seemed rather pragmatic, as the great deal of expectations and later even bigger disappointment with the Aryanization process showed. It was only around the 1942 deportations that the situation reports explicitly express the first signs of sympathies and concerns about the fate of the Slovak Jews. However, it was only after the suppression of the Uprising that we have evidence of the help and rescue offered to the Jews on a more perceivable scale. It still needs to be stressed that the tie between the regime and its people seemed to be broken by then. The cause was mainly the failed promise of all the guaranteed benefits to stem from the economic discrimination of Jews. Furthermore, both úšb and sd reports point to the quickly declining belief in the German victory as early as 1943. With the Axis wartime losses, the question of the postwar order – the return of the Jews, including what will happen to the stolen property – entered the intelligence reports. 203 Láníček, 2013, 146–86; Láníček, 2016, 143–74; Kateřina Čapková, “Germans or Jews? ­German-speaking Jews in Poland and Czechoslovakia after World War ii,” Jewish History Quarterly, no. 2 (246), 2013, 348–62.

122

chapter 2

With the major defeats of the German armies at the turn of 1942/43, the theme of the postwar order in Czechoslovakia began to be discussed by ‘ordinary’ Czechs and Slovaks. Suddenly, the ‘threat’ of the Jewish return emerged. The anticipated defeat of the Germans led to the conclusion that the Jewish property would be up for grabs. The propaganda presenting the Jews r­ eturning with the Allied armies as well as the inability of ordinary people to comprehend the totality of the German extermination of the Jews led to the rise of anti-Jewish sentiments socially. These developments can thus help explain the problematic restitution and rehabilitation of the Jews after the war. In a way, 1945 was a return to the autumn of 1938, when the first attempts to ­remove the Jews from any prominent positions in society emerged. It was also when the majority society first gained access to Jewish property left behind or sold by the Jewish emigres quickly trying to leave Europe.

chapter 3

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder On May 15, 1945, members of the Slovak National Council (Slovenská národná rada), the highest lawmaking body in Slovakia, gathered for what the Council’s chairman Jozef Lettrich (1905–1969) projected to be a festive and memorable session: drawing a line between the past and the present. This expectation was fostered by the fact that the roughly 70 council members gathered in a building on Župné námestie in downtown Bratislava, formerly used by the Assembly of the Slovak Republic (Snem Slovenskej republiky), the legislative body between 1939 and 1945. To accentuate the wartime horrors, referred to as ‘the past, the dark past that cannot return,’ Lettrich’s introductory statement resorted to phrases such as the ‘betrayal of the Slovak nation,’ the ‘malign consequences of the fascist regime’ or ‘the biggest historical crime against our nation.’1 His speech was typical for postwar Slovak discourse in which the majority society was stripped of any responsibility for the wartime crimes committed by the Tiso and Tuka regime. As we show here, statement such as these derived from the wartime narratives of the Czechoslovak resistance. With them, the process of exonering the majority society began well before any postwar retribution, however defective, could even take place. For Lettrich, as well as the many other speakers that day, the wartime Assembly embodied ‘a fascist regime and a dictatorship,’ a period when ‘all civic rights of our people were suppressed.’ By gathering at the site of the March 14, 1939 declaration of the Slovak state,2 a clear cut with the chapter of Slovakia’s fascist past was symbolized. It was now time to close this episode, prosecute those responsible for the ‘betrayal of the Slovak people,’ and establish an official account of what happened during the war. The constructed tale of two Slovaks has persisted in Slovak historical consciousness for decades to come. When it comes to painting their past in brighter colors, the Slovak political elites were in an unenviable position. Unlike its Czech counterpart, the Slovak postwar leadership could not refer to an occupation under foreign rule, at least not for most of the war, when explaining the causes of the ‘wicked, corrupt,

1 ‘snr 1945–1946, Minutes,’ May 15, 1945, Společná česko-slovenská digitální parlamentní knihovna (The Joint Czech and Slovak Digital Parliamentary Library), http://www.psp.cz/ eknih/1945snr/stenprot/003schuz/index.htm. 2 Lipták, Slovensko v 20. storočí, 177.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004362444_005

124

chapter 3

fascist regime’ that ruled in Slovakia for five years with minimal opposition. Remaining in control of their own country for most of the war, representatives of both dominant postwar parties in Slovakia, the Democratic Party and the Communist Party, needed first and foremost to distance the country’s new leadership from that ‘dark past that cannot return.’3 Whereas the Hlinka Slovak People’s Party, the state-party of wartime Slovakia, presented all what was to be condoned, the Communists and Democrats positioned themselves as representing the future. Similarly to the building on Župné námestie in Bratislava, representing the downfall and now also a new beginning for the Slovak nation, the history of the Old Town Square (Staroměstské náměstí) in the heart of Prague was often evoked in the early days following the defeat of Nazi Germany. As crowds gathered at the square to welcome the arrival of President Edvard Beneš from exile on May 16, 1945, Prime Minister Zdeněk Fierlinger (1891–1976), who served as a member of the Social Democratic Party and was the wartime ambassador of the government-in-exile in Moscow, was present to make a statement. He reminded his fellow citizens not only about the ‘glorious fights of our barricade fighters [barikádníků]’ that had taken place around the square some ten days earlier, but filtered in also some more distant stories from the Czech past: Here, on Old Town Square, which saw the beheading of the Bohemian noblemen [in 1620], and witnessed the tragedy following the defeat at the Battle of the White Mountain [Bitva na Bílé hoře], and saw the triumphant return of our first President Liberator [Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk], you – the second President of Czechoslovakia [Edvard Beneš], stand again, as the victor over the dreadful danger that threatened our state and our two nations, the Czechs and the Slovaks. You stand as the victor over the Nazi monsters that drenched our country in the blood of thousands of innocent victims.4 Putting an end to the rebellion of the Bohemian estates, the Battle of White Mountain on November 8, 1620 disrupted the sovereignty of the Czech statehood, transferring the center of power completely to Vienna. Yet, the battle was approximately two hours long, a piece of trivia that is just as overlooked as the fact that it was not a national but a religious dispute. Half of the beheaded ‘Czech’ lords did neither know nor speak Czech. Despite all of this, the Battle of

3 ‘snr 1945–1946, Minutes.’ May 15, 1945. 4 Rudé právo, May 17, 1945, 2.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

125

White Mountain has belonged to the most popular pieces forming the Czech historical consciousness.5 Exemplifying the memorialization of losses over victories, the defeat of White Mountain became a ‘national defeat.’ The following three hundred ‘post-White Mountain years’ were narrated as one long period of darkness (temno).6 Referenced in Fierlinger’s speech, Tomáš G. Masaryk was a figure turned into a national myth already before his death in 1937. Paradoxically, Masaryk himself spoke about a Czech ‘cult of martyrdom,’ the existence of which he supported by pointing to the fact that even the most notable period of Czech history was filled with betrayal and suffering. The ‘golden age’ began with Wenceslaus i, Duke of Bohemia, being murdered in 935 (or 929) by a group of noblemen allied with his younger brother, Boleslav. This period ended with the 1415 execution of the Church reformer Jan Hus, accused of heresy against the doctrines of the Catholic Church. Savoring the taste of their own losses was not specific to the Czechs and Slovaks. In fact, it exceeds what the early-20th century literary critique Arnošt Procházka called the ‘Slavic mystic masochism,’ or the pleasure in being nearly ‘exterminated, oppressed, ethnically re-engineered.’7 In connection with the process of narrating history through an ethnic lens, this chapter reexamines how the Czech and Slovak victimhood facilitated the exclusion of Jews from the country’s past. In other words, how retelling one’s own past through the prism of suffering enabled Czechs and Slovaks to look through the harm they themselves committed against ‘others.’ Besides excluding the Jews, Czechs and Slovaks have also whitewashed their histories of anything remotely German and Hungarian, making these not become more authentic, as probably expected, but rather more discontinuous, perforated as the famous Emmental cheese. Nowadays, when browsing through bookstores in both countries, the literature on Czech or Slovak history is separated from books on Jews and Judaism, often even catalogued under the o­ riental-sounding ‘Judaica.’ Similarly, wartime experience is divided into works that either try to capture the realities of the Protectorate and the Slovak state or focus on the ‘Jewish tragedy,’ thus also presenting the Holocaust as their, not our, story. Yet curiously enough, the total number of ‘Czechoslovak victims’ of the war (usually estimated at 360,000) includes the Jews, who formed a disproportionate

5 Jiří Rak, Bývali Čechové: české historické mýty a stereotypy (Praha: H & H, 1994), 129. 6 Robert B. Pynsent, Questions of Identity: Czech and Slovak Ideas of Nationality and Personality (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1994), 190–96. 7 Arnošt Procházka, Diář literarní a umělecký (Praha: Nakladatelství L. Bradáče, 1919), 338.

126

chapter 3

segment of the wartime casualties (approximately 277,000). These n ­ umbers have largely been ignored, as has the fact that many of the victims never considered themselves Czech or Slovak, and had never been accepted as part of Czech or Slovak societies during their lives. In fact, almost 100,000 victims, mostly Jews, came from Subcarpathian Rus’, whose wartime fate has not yet entered even the margins of the Czech and Slovak master narratives, and who during their lives were hardly considered Czech or Slovak. What came to symbolize the war in both former-regions of Czechoslovakia was national suffering and heroism, be it the Slovak National Uprising, the Prague Uprising or the Lidice and Ležáky massacres, misleadingly embodying the planned so-called solution to the Czech question (with the so-called solution of the Jewish question widely accepted, then and now, as the prelude to what was to await the majority Czech people).8 While the history of the Second World War in the Bohemian lands and Slovakia cannot be retold without the Prague Uprising, Lidice or the Slovak National Uprising, the events also cannot fully explain it either. Terezín further exemplifies this tension between national history, at least in its presentation, and the Jewish tragedy. The site of the former ghetto Theresienstadt is sometimes called a concentration camp. Signified by the Ohře River that divides the Small Fortress (a Gestapo prison) from the former ghetto, the latter quickly came to play a central role in remembering the Second World War for the Jewish community. The first tryzna, a ceremony memorializing the dead, was already being held at the site on September 1, 1945, only two weeks after the ghetto’s final dissolution. From the mid-1940s, Jewish communities throughout the Czech lands held annual commemorative ceremonies during the month of March, which marked the liquidation of the Theresienstadt Family Camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau on March 8–9, 1944. This event was the largest single massacre of Czech Jews, and Czechoslovak citizens for that matter, during the war.9 With the exemption of the late 1960s, when a new exhibition concept was discussed, Terezín stood as a symbol of antifascist Communist resistance and the Nazi persecution of political prisoners.10 The separation of the Holocaust as something Jewish and the Second World War as belonging to the Czechs and Slovaks can explain why the re-opening of the Pinkas synagogue did not 8

Peter Hallama, Nationale Helden und jüdische Opfer: Tschechische Repräsentationen des Holocaust (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 44–48; Gabriela Havlůjová, Lidice po Lidicích (Kladno: Český svaz bojovníků za svobodu, zo Kladno – Halda, 2014), 10. 9 Sarah Cramsey, “Saying Kaddish in Czechoslovakia,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 7, no. 1 (2008): 35–50. 10 Hallama, Nationale Helden und jüdische Opfer, 63–142.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

127

q­ uestion the established paradigms. It was restored between 1950 and 1959, and the names of all the Jewish victims of the Holocaust were painted on the walls: as ‘the memorial is located in a synagogue, it is an object belonging to the Jewish community and is not a public space equipped with symbolic meaning for the Czech population.’11 Seperating the Holocaust from the Second World War and placing wartime histories into the well-known framework of suffering at the hands of the Germans and Hungarians made local collaboration a secondary concern. In a renewed Czechoslovakia, the spring of 1945 was turned into a symbol of national (and later class) emancipation. It was prominently painted as the victory of the Czech and the Slovak people against their national and socioeconomic enemies. Even with this, however, the Holocaust was not forgotten in the 1950s or 1960s, sparking a wave of difficult questions about responsibility, especially that of wartime political actors.12 Reformist Communist historiography challenged established paradigms, including those concerning Czech-German relations, the transfer (expulsion) of Germans after 1945, the involvement of non-Communist circles in the Slovak National Uprising as well as the resistance in exile and the national emancipation in general.13 Nevertheless, the inability to reflect on local involvement in the Holocaust enabled charges of collaboration to reach, paradoxical as it may seem at first, the Jews themselves.

11

12

13

Michal Frankl, “The Sheep of Lidice. The Holocaust and the Construction of Czech National History,” in Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe, ed. John-Paul Himka and Joanna B. Michlic (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013), 166–94. Tesař, “‘Záchrana národa’ a kolaborace”; Pasák, “Generál Eliáš a problémy kolaborace”; Ivan Kamenec, “Židovská otázka a spôsoby jej riešenia v čase autonómie Slovenska,” Nové Obzory 10 (1968): 155–80; Ivan Kamenec, “Snem Slovenskej republiky a jeho postoj k problému židovského obyvateľstva na Slovensku v rokoch 1939–1945,” Historický časopis 17, no. 3 (1969): 329–62. Jiří Kořalka, “Historiography of the Countries of Eastern Europe: Czechoslovakia,” The American Historical Review 97, no. 4 (October 1992): 1026–40; Hudek, Najpolitickejšia veda, 199–213; Vítězslav Sommer, Angažované dějepisectví: stranická historiografie mezi stalinismem a reformním komunismem (1950–1970) (Praha: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny – ­Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, 2011), 344–405; Vítězslav Sommer, “Válka, odboj a hledání historické identity československého komunismu,” in Válečný prožitek české společnosti v konfrontaci s nacistickou okupací (1939–1945): sborník příspěvků ze sympozia k 70. výročí vypuknutí druhé světové války, ed. Jana Burešová and Zdeněk Hazdra (Praha: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, 2009), 111–24.

128

chapter 3

Tales of Suffering

Efforts to construct a particular narrative of the war were present immediately­ after the 1945 liberation – even earlier in fact. In May 1945, both Fierlinger and Lettrich attempted to adjust the past to fit the present. Their strategy aimed at separating the majority of Czechs and Slovaks from the renegades of the nation, now labeled traitors, henchmen and collaborators. This genre of terms was reserved for those standing on the fringe of social inclusion, and not representating the two nations. There was also a push to separate the majority society from the ‘others,’ namely the ‘German and the Hungarian minority, serving to a large extent as a compliant tool of the aggressor politics against the republic.’14 Historical reminiscences were set to reinforce the country’s existence and maintain its claim to legitimacy of the border regions. What is more, Lettrich’s and Fierlinger’s words marked the establishment of a new collective memory:15 While the Germans and the Hungarians continued to play the villain, the Czechs and the Slovaks finally got their well-deserved victory. The war and the common suffering served as a trigger for the postwar purge of those who had betrayed the nations from within, yet this did not stop it from pursuing those who had done so from the outside as well. Already in April 1945, as the Slovak National Council celebrated the liberation of Bratislava and the western parts of Slovakia, proclamations were made regarding the forthcoming cleansing of the public life. Acknowledging the need to punish all those who worked against the state – including former members of the Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party – Slovak officials were not eager to confine the purge. One such advocate was the leader of the Slovak Communist Party Gustav Husák, who had been actively involved in the Uprising. He made it clear that there would not be any exemptions for Germans and Hungarians. These had to completely disappear from postwar Czechoslovakia. ‘We will not tolerate a single German in our country,’ Husák declared in April 1945, promising that the ‘German question’ would be solved by deporting Germans from Czechoslovakia. The same fate was to await the Hungarians: The Hungarians were not faring badly in the First Czechoslovak Republic,­ but they joined the little fascist union in 1938, which deprived the­

14 ‘snr 1945–1946, Minutes.’ June 5, 1945. 15 Nancy Wingfield, “The Politics of Memory: Constructing National Identity in the Czech Lands, 1945 to 1948,” East European Politics & Societies 14, no. 2 (2000): 248.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

129

republic of important territory and took 700,000 Slovaks away from us. It is fair to say that most Hungarians have become our national enemies, and that we have to deal with them as we do with the Germans.16 By wrapping the Second World War experience in an easily recognizable narrative, painful questions on local collaboration got sidetracked. Though seemingly amusing in retrospect, the following story neatly summarizes the atmosphere. When Lettrich was just about to conclude a session of the Slovak National Council, he asked the present members for a little more patience before inviting Husák to take the stand. In his short but emotional speech, Husák prepared the ground by reminding those present of the November 1938 First Vienna Award, which resulted in the loss of the largely Magyar-populated territories in southern Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus’. More than six years later, it was now time for a ‘little satisfaction.’ As he revealed shortly thereafter, this ‘little satisfaction’ came in the form of an old sabre once allegedly belonging to Miklós Horthy, the Regent of Hungary for much of the interwar and wartime years (March 1, 1920–October 15, 1944), which Husák at that point handed over to Lettrich. The stenographical records of the Council session give us a glimpse of Lettrich’s reaction to this unexpected gift: Honourable members of the Slovak National Council! It is unusual for chairmen of legislative bodies to accept sabres as presents. But in this case, allow us to make an exception and, in keeping with the proposal of the Vice Chairman and Commissioner of Home Affairs, [Gustáv] Husák, allow us to accept this sabre, and allow me to do so on behalf of the Board of Commissioners of the Slovak National Council, by acknowledging that I am taking it into the safe-keeping of the Council as a symbol – as evidence of the formal victory of the Slovak national cause in this war. (Applause) And I promise that we shall cherish and protect this symbol as clear evidence that no Slovak soul shall ever again be brought under foreign domination. (Dr Jozef Lettrich receives the sabre from Colonel Bodieky [Bodiekého šablu]) (Applause)17 The ‘victory of the Slovak national cause’ in the spring of 1945, no matter how detached from reality, finally put an end to the ‘millennium of serfdom.’ This reference is to the historical myth of a thousand years of suffering under the

16 Čas, April 19, 1945, 3. 17 ‘snr 1945–1946, Minutes.’ June 5, 1945.

130

chapter 3

Hungarian yoke. Interestingly yet not surprisingly, we first hear of the ‘millennium serfdom’ at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, a time that will be later characterized as the birth of the Slovak National Awakening (Slovenské národné obrodenie).18 At no point before do we hear of a five-, six- or nine-hundred-year-long servitude (poroba). The notion of the millennium serfdom comes as an established fact. While the First Czechoslovak Republic was meant to formally end the ­thousand-year-long servitude of the Slovaks and the t­ hree-hundred-year-long period of darkness for the Czechs, it was only in spring 1945 when both ­Hungarians and Germans were defeated, this time for good. What is more, the White Mountain could now be overturned. To use the words of Klement Gottwald from June 1945, who justified a law on the confiscation of German and Hungarian land, the mistakes of the previous rulers needed to be atoned for (odčinit): ‘We correct mistakes made by our Czech kings Přemyslids who invited German colonists here and who we want to get rid of once and for all now.’19 A few days later on July 1, 1945, an actual manifestation for redeeming the legacies of the White Mountain battle took place at the historical site with an audience of approximately 150,000 people.20 Prime Minister Fierlinger promised that the injustice of the White Mountain, which had repeated itself in the form of the Nazi occupation, would be ‘redeemed in full – by making the Czechs and the Slovaks masters on their soil again.’ Václav Majer, the Minister of Nutrition and Food Industry, linked the past with a commitment for the future as he stressed the role of harvesting for reconstruction of the state.21 As the reformist branch of Communist historiography later argued in the 1960s, the struggle for national existence that began in the 17th century – or perhaps even earlier in the reform Hussite movement of the 15th century – culminated in 1945 and paved the way for Socialism.22 We ought to stress here once again that there is nothing particularly Czech or Slovak when it comes to narrating history through notions of victimhood 18

Eduard Krekovič et al., eds., “Tisícročná poroba?,” in Mýty naše slovenské (Bratislava: ­ cademic Electronic Press, 2005), 72–73. A 19 Klement Gottwald, Deset let: sbornik statí a projevů, 1936–1946 (Praha: Nakladatelství ­Svoboda, 1946), 287–88; Tomáš Staněk, Odsun Němců z Československa, 1945–1947 (Praha: Academia – Naše vojsko, 1991), 60. 20 Odčiňujeme Bílou horu; proslovy z manifestace na Bilé hoře, dne 1. července 1945 (Praha: ­Jednotný svaz českych zemědělců, 1945). 21 Práce, July 3, 1945, 2. 22 Sommer, Angažované dějepisectví, 380–82; Ladislav Holý, The Little Czech and the Great Czech Nation: National Identity and the Post-Communist Transformation of Society (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 35–36.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

131

imposed on dominant ethnic groups. In Austria, for instance, the myth of being the first victim of Hitler’s Germany dominated the official handling of the Nazi era up to the 1980s. Unlike in Germany, where the Nazi period became ‘normatively internalized’ as a negative-reference event, National Socialism became ‘externalized’ in Austria as a phase of foreign rule standing outside Austrian history and for which Austria bore no responsibility.23 In communist Hungary, the Holocaust became something of a Jewish story that was remembered and discussed almost exclusively within the Jewish community, which starkly contrasted with historian István Bibó’s early postwar calls.24 In postwar Poland, it was only in the immediate aftermath of the war that we can speak of a historiography of the Holocaust; after this, the Jewish story was then pushed to the background for decades.25 What is more, it was in the context of blaming them (in this case, the ‘Germans’), retelling the country’s past in ethnic colors and pushing the Holocaust to the background, as a story of the ‘others’ (that is ‘Jews’ and ‘Germans’, in no sense of the Czechs or Slovaks) that the myth of resistance was born: If Germans were guilty, then ‘we’ were innocent. If guilt consisted of being German or working for Germans and their interests – and it could hardly be denied that in every occupied country such persons had been present and prominent – then innocence had to mean an anti-German stance, after 1945 but also before. Thus to be innocent a nation had to have resisted, and to have done so in its overwhelming majority, a claim that was perforce made and pedagogically enforced all over Europe, from Italy to Poland, from Netherland to Romania.26 23

24

25 26

Heidemarie Uhl, “From Victim Myth to Co-Responsibility Thesis. Nazi Rule, World War ii, and the Holocaust in Austrian Memory,” in The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe, ed. Richard Ned Lebow, Wulf Kansteiner, and Claudio Fogu (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 48. Regina Fritz and Imke Hansen, “Zwichen nationalem Opfermythos und europäischen Standards. Der Holocaust im ungarischen Erinnerungsdiskurs,” in Universalisierung des Holocaust?: Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik in internationaler Perspektive, ed. Jan Eckel and Claudia Moisel (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008), 59–85. Natalia Aleksiun, “Polish Historiography of the Holocaust – Between Silence and Public Debate,” German History 22, no. 3 (2004): 406–32. Tony Judt, “The Past Is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe,” Daedalus 121, no. 4 (1992): 90–91.

132

chapter 3

Current historiography has characterized the development of national myths of the war and the wartime suffering. Historians have described how the ­victims of the Holocaust were assimilated into universal groups, of the persecuted civilian population or anti-fascists, in postwar discourse. Likewise, discourses on wartime collaboration in the Holocaust by local populations were conveniently lost, often in stressing the German crimes committed against the local majority population or in predetermining easily identifiable groups of local traitors and collaborators. Thus, the narrative of victimhood, which excluded the Jews, echoed throughout postwar Europe.27 Historians often treat the emergence of the national master narratives as a purely post-1945 matter, largely ignoring the wartime origins of this pan-European phenomenon. The roots of these narratives, nevertheless, are much deeper; a fact that also ­historians who deal with the postwar memory of the Holocaust in postwar Czechoslovakia surprisingly overlook.28

‘We Know That You Are Not Guilty!’: Origins of the Postwar Myths

The opportunities to articulate a coherent narrative of the Holocaust and local involvement were rather limited during the war. Apart from official ­German, Hungarian, Czech and Slovak narratives within the previous borders of interwar Czechoslovakia, the main avenues were the bbc broadcasts from ­London and, to a lesser degree also the Communist broadcasting from ­Moscow.  The  Czechoslovak bbc Service started broadcasting in late-1939 and became the predominant means of communication with the occupied homeland for the Czechoslovak government-in-exile. These transmissions were heard either directly by those who, against all odds, listened to the radio or those relying on word of mouth, which is what the official places called whispering propaganda. Any direct impact of these broadcasts is, of course, difficult to gauge, making all conclusions speculative by default. Yet, we need to acknowledge the role the bbc and Moscow airwaves played in the formation of the official ­master narrative of the war, especially because we can see similarities between the narratives as they were articulated in 27

Michal Frankl, “The Sheep of Lidice. The Holocaust and the Construction of Czech National History”; Peter Hallama, Nationale Helden und jüdische Opfer: ­Tschechische Repräsentationen des Holocaust (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015); Livia Rothkirchen, “Czechoslovakia,” in The World Reacts to the Holocaust, ed. David S. Wyman and Charles H. Rosenzveig (Baltimore: jhu Press, 1996). 28 Hallama, Nationale Helden und jüdische Opfer.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

133

­London and Moscow, and the postwar discourses of the Holocaust in liberated Czechoslovakia. When dealing with the origins of the Czechoslovak postwar master narrative, the complex influences shaping the content of the bbc broadcasts need to be addressed. Czechoslovak exile politicians were largely responsible for the content of the speeches, but the broadcasting as a whole fell under the domain of British censorship. The broadcasters followed the directives of the British Political Warfare Executive (pwe), the agency in control of broadcasting to occupied Europe; notably, it recommended which themes should be raised. This was also the case with the broadcasts that dealt with the persecution of the Jews in occupied Europe. This is what occurred, for example, during the first broadcasts on the concentration of Czech Jews in Theresienstadt in early March 1942.29 Hence, the British ‘liberal democratic imagination’30 – the universalization of the conflict – had a significant impact on the formation of the Holocaust in the Czechoslovak master narrative. In broadcasts debating the situation in the Protectorate, the exile politicians took care to condemn the Nazi and Slovak anti-Jewish policies and their barbarism. True, the fate of the Jews was ‘the most terrible.’31 However, they were always careful to position the Jews as the first victims of Nazism. Eventually, these German policies would reach other subjugated nations, in this case the Czechs. In mid-December 1942, at the peak of the Allied campaign condemning the Nazi extermination of Jews, the journalist and regular contributor to the bbc Josef Kodíček wrote the following: Mad bestiality of this grand-pogrom should be also a rehearsal for the murder of other nations. Because – surely no one is deceived here – ­others will follow the Jews, and the only program that Hitler will fulfill to the letter, is the program of murdering helpless and useless. That following the Jews (and including them), Poles, Russians, Czechs, Yugoslavs will be exterminated, is demonstrated by a number of facts. The Nazi ­conscience has to toughen by looking at the murder of Jews so it does not waver when it comes to the others.32

29

Gabriel Milland, “Some Faint Hope and Courage: The bbc and the Final Solution, 1­ 942–1945” (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Leicester, 1998), 35. 30 Tony Kushner, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: A Social and Cultural History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). 31 AČRo, bbc 1939–45, Ripka’s broadcast, January 5, 1944. 32 AČRo, bbc 1939–45, Kodíček’s broadcast, December 15, 1942.

134

chapter 3

The Nazi program was ‘to exterminate the Czech nation and Czech culture without a trace, whether there is an occasional excuse for it or not.’33 The ­particular nature of the Nazi persecution of the Jews was rarely acknowledged when the victims of the Nazi racial policies were discussed. Even if they were the most brutally persecuted to date, they were still only the initial target in a long list of future victims. The persecution of the Jews was perceived through the ultimate prism of Nazi policies against all nations, including their planned solution to the Czech question. Furthermore, the fact that the Jews were ‘scattered and defenseless’ was the main reason that they were ‘the only ones with whom the Nazis [could] thoroughly carry out their program. On them alone have they been able to show that they carry out their promises and murder has taken place in which is unparalleled in history.’34 According to this line of argumentation, it was the weakness, passivity and lack of resistance by the Jews that caused their tragic plight. In contrast, the lurking Nazi persecution of other nations was interpreted as being stalled by national defiance and resistance: The new executions, new persecution and all the fury of the Nazi scum in our countries is an unshakable proof of the constant and brave resistance of our people and their firm will to give in to continue the fight until the enemy is destroyed, until the day freedom is achieved.35 This narrative, which took a full force after 1945, had clearly already entered Czechoslovak discourse during the war. This was also the case with the effort to present ordinary Czechs (and to some extend, as we will latter see, also the Slovaks) as people who, in line with their democratic tradition, rejected antisemitism and German efforts to impose their ideology in the Czech territories. The efforts of the German and Czech propagandists were fruitless: All this wireless twaddle and the whole cycle about the Jews [What do you know about the Jews? by Alois Kříž] have one aim only: shamelessly to poison. To implant imbecility and dissolution among people, to reduce them to the level of the times when witches were believed in, to whip up among them hatred which is foreign to them, and turn their attention

33 AČRo, bbc 1939–45, Bohuslav Laštovička’s broadcast, May 30, 1943. 34 AČRo, bbc 1939–45, Ripka’s broadcast, January 5, 1944. 35 AČRo, bbc 1939–45, Jiří Hronek’s broadcast, April 12, 1942.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

135

away from the German robbery and bestiality. This effort cannot have any success. The Czech people are not Germans. The Czech people do not ­believe that the war was caused by the Jews or cyclists.36 That poison from abroad will have no effect upon our people.37 These were not appeals to the Czech people to avoid collaboration with the Germans in their policies against the Jews. Often against the evidence available to the exiles, these were rather overt statements trumpeting the outstanding democratic inclination of ordinary Czechs and their immunity to Nazi antisemitic ideology. The enlightened Czech people, following the democratic and humanistic tradition of Tomáš G. Masaryk, did not take part in what we now call the Holocaust: Thanks to the heroic struggle which Masaryk […] carried on [during the Hilsner Affair], our intelligentsia and our people became possessed with disgust for antisemitism and cast out the degrading, uncultured, barbarous, biological racial teachings from their emotional background. This process of spiritual and moral regeneration contributed considerably to the Czechs’ individual and national consciousness: it was generally recognised that those members of the nation who were racially of Jewish origin could be just as good patriots and decent people or otherwise as could those belonging to any other racial origin. We here are well informed about everything that is happening at home. Therefore, we also know well how everyone has behaved and is behaving towards the Jews. It fills us with justified pride when we can announce to the civilised world that our people behaves towards the persecuted Jews with Christian sympathy and profoundly human understanding for their cruel hardships. We are happy that the German anti-Semites are joined only by a handful of rascals who speak Czech and Slovak but have sold their souls to their slave-drivers.38

36

‘Za všechno můžou Židi a cyklisti’ (‘The Jews and the cyclists are always at fault’) has been a popular Czech and Slovak saying. Its origins are, however, hard to track down. The saying has made it also to the title of one of Ján Kalina’s (a man we introduce in ­Chapter 4) autographical books. Ján Kalina, Zavinili to židia a bicyklisti (Bratislava: Marenčin pt, 2000). 37 AČRo, bbc 1939–45, Kodíček’s broadcast, November 28, 1941. 38 Hubert Ripka, We Think of You (London: Maccabi, 1941). Transcript of Ripka’s broadcat on September 18, 1941.

136

chapter 3

The question of Czech collaboration with the Germans in the Holocaust was simply non-existent during the war, though the Czechoslovak government-inexile was evidently aware of the existing antisemitic sentiments among the Czech population, which further increased during the war. When the question of local collaboration was raised, it was always in relation to a small group of collaborators labeled ‘miserable creatures’ and the renegades of the nation.39 This effort to whitewash the record of people in the former Czechoslovak territories reached its apex in the exiles’ treatment of the situation in Slovakia. Local sources of Jewish persecution created a delicate situation as well as immense opportunities for the exiles’ propaganda. Aware that the image of the Slovak people as antisemitic and benefiting from the Jews’ predicament could harm the reputation of Czechs and Slovaks, the exiles overtly worried this could complicate the Czechoslovak diplomatic position for any postwar peace negotiations. Concurrently, a skilful treatment of the Slovak story could serve as a suitable way to taint the image of the Tiso government and condemn it as a morally corrupt and reprehensible group of traitors. It was the higher-ups who betrayed interwar Czechoslovakia, the ‘democratic tradition’ of the prewar republic, as well as the Christian ethics and morality of the good-hearted Slovak people. Tiso, Tuka, Mach and a handful of others represented an exception, and not the people themselves. Such whitewashing, the creation of the tale of two Slovaks, was the main feature of the broadcasts directed to Slovakia. In June 1942, at the peak of the deportations of Slovak Jews to Poland, the exile interior minister Juraj Slávik (1890–1969) addressed the audience in Slovakia: Slovak kinsmen, the crimes of your traitors and unworthy leaders  must appear in a quite new and even more frightful light. […] [T]he ­God-fearing Slovak people will avenge its shame and disgrace, […] it will make order with the traitors and diabolic evil-doers […]. The whole world is shocked at the cruelty and the un-Christian vengeful rage with which the executioners of Mach and Tuka are running amok. Revenge and hate are their law. […] You yourselves see every day how they are shaming and distorting the doctrine of Christ. Only look at what they are doing to the Jews. Šaňo Mach publicly boasts that by September he will drive 90,000 Jews from Slovakia. He envies the dubious fame of Herod. In cruelty and mercilessness he wishes to surpass his master, the monster 39 AČRo, bbc 1939–45, Kodíček’s broadcast, December 5, 1944.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

137

Hitler. He is a ­disgusting vengeful lackey who wishes to curry favor with his commander­and master.40 As many after him, Slávik differentiated between the actions of the Slovak government and the sentiments of ordinary Slovak citizens. The persecution of the Jews was presented as a crime committed by the ‘traitorous leaders’ of the Slovak state.41 While the Slovak population’s cooperation in the Final Solution did not find its way into the broadcasts, the government’s persecution of Jews was criticized regularly. Chairman of the Czechoslovak State Council (the exile parliament) Pavol Macháček addressed this issue in late-August 1942: How much misery and suffering have these Jewish fellow citizens of ours suffered, how many of them have paid with their lives – Slovak history will speak of this bestiality and sadism of a so-called Catholic Government with the greatest shame. These deeds, however, are so horrible and frightful that we are compelled to raise our voice in protest against them in the interests of the good name of the Slovaks and in the interest of Catholicism.42 The propaganda of the exile government proclaimed that after the reestablishment of the Czechoslovak Republic, in addition to the inclusion of Slovakia as a unified state, the democratic spirit would rule once again throughout the whole country: The Slovak people has never been inhuman and cruel and it has always had a profound faith in God. […] in tormented Slovakia cruelty and fury will pass into oblivion. Again we shall be guided not by the example of Nero and Caligula, not by the laws of Hitler and Mach, but by Christ’s love and by the humanist principles of Masaryk. […] The brotherhood of the Czechs and Slovaks will again be the foundation of a happy life for future free generations.43

40 AČRo, bbc 1939–1945, box 14, Juraj Slávik’s broadcast, June 15, 1942 (originally scheduled to be aired on June 11, 1942). 41 hia, Edward Táborský Papers, box 3, Beneš’s message to Slovakia, March 20, 1943. 42 AČRo, bbc 1939–1945, box, Pavol Macháček’s broadcast, August 31, 1942. 43 AČRo, bbc 1939–1945, box 14, Juraj Slávik’s broadcast, June 15, 1942 (originally scheduled to be aired on June 11, 1942).

138

chapter 3

The main theme of these proclamations was the adherence of the Czechs and Slovaks to liberal democracy. The themes of victimization, resistance and tolerance, as noted, were then fully developed after the war.

Heroes and Cowards

In Czechoslovakia, the importance of the Slovak National Uprising and the Prague Uprising was being persistently accentuated already shortly after the liberation. Speaking of the ‘glory and triumph’ of the Czechs and Slovaks, President Beneš emphasized the significance of both rebellions in his speech on the Old Town Square on May 16, 1945, laying claim to the notion that the war began and ended in Prague.44 To the dismay of many Slovaks, it was not uncommon for Beneš to contest the statewide importance of the 1944 Slovak rebellion. While he referred to it as the ‘uprising of Banská Bystrica,’45 officials in Bratislava pushed for the title of ‘national uprising.’ Similarly, the 1945 Prague revolt was turned into a ‘national revolution.’ The adjective ‘national’ also indicated that the fight against fascism was what actually united the societies. Consequently, when chairman of the Interim National Assembly Josef David opened the 49th session on May 7, 1946, a festive gathering attended by President Beneš and his wife Hana, he was only reinstating the ‘nationwide character’ of the Prague revolt: The nation, recalling that its long subordination and suffering ended only a year ago, is these days reflecting on the forces that sparked the revolt and manifested themselves in revolution. […] Our national revolution was the result of a united popular will, the undivided feeling of all our citizens, in whose souls the idea of the nation and the state was rooted. Let us recall the bitter moments from the time of the Munich Conference, when our fate was decided without us, and recall the astounding unification of the Czech people as a whole, convinced of the injustice that had been done to us. We may say that since the days of the decision at ­Munich cells of resistance and revolution began to organize themselves in our lands. Intensified and confirmed in the correctness of their approach

44 45

Slovo národa, May 17, 1945, 1; Rudé právo, May 17, 1945, 3. Michela and Kšiňan, “The Slovak National Uprising,” 50.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

139

after the March 1939 invasion, these organizations of the underground movement began to spread the idea of insurgency and revenge.46 As shown earlier in Fierlinger’s speech, the barricade fighters came to ­symbolize the revolt itself47 as well as the courage and heroism of the Czech people. Certainly, barricades played their role in the liberation of Prague in early-May 1945. As rumors began to spread about the arrival of Patton’s Third us Army in Prague – never making to the capital as the troops took a different route in the end – and on the imminent capitulation of Germany, anti-Nazi riots stretched throughout the country. As the ‘revolutionary ardour passed from the periphery to the center of the country,’ Prague took center stage. The Czech National Council assumed the leading role in what was to become the Prague Uprising.48 Urged on by Czech Radio, more than 1,500 barricades were built in Prague on the night of May 5, 1945.49 With them, a symbol of the Uprising was born. Before being submerged in celebrations of their liberation by the Red Army, nevertheless, two points of remembrance were competing in regards to the liberation of Prague. Was it ‘active and self reliant overthrow of the German occupation’ or a ‘passive salvation by the Soviet Union’?50 The glorification of the Slovak resistance is even more symptomatic of the postwar atmosphere. Within only a few months of the war’s cessation, the official description of the Slovak National Uprising turned from a ‘childish and cowardly act of Czechobolshevik and Judeobolshevik bandits’ into a glorious and courageous rebellion of ‘our people’ who, hand-in-hand, fought heroically as brothers-in-arms with the Red Army. In October 1944, the Slovak radical periodical Gardista defamed the already suppressed rebellion as an act of the ‘Bolshevik monster’ and its Czech and Jewish51 henchmen, promising an adamant solution of the Czech and Jewish

46 ‘Prozatimní ns rsč 1945–1946,’ May 7, 1946, Společná česko-slovenská digitální parlamentní knihovna (The Joint Czech and Slovak Digital Parliamentary Library), http:// www.psp.cz/eknih/1945pns/stenprot/049schuz/s049001.htm. 47 Eva Palivodvá and Jan Randák, “The Prague Uprising,” in Komunisti a povstania: ritualizácia pripomínania si protifašistických povstaní v strednej Európe (­ 1945–1960) = Communists and Uprisings: Ritualization of Rememberance of the Anti-Nazi Uprisings in Central Europe (1945–1960) (Kraków: Towarzystwo Słowaków w Polsce, 2012), 95. 48 Ibid., 94. 49 Kokoška, Praha v květnu 1945, 140. 50 Palivodová and Randák, “The Prague Uprising,” 96. 51 Gardista, October 5, 1944, 1.

140

chapter 3

‘questions’ in Slovakia.52 In the festive 1945 New Year’s issue of Slovák, a press organ of the Hlinka Party, the prominent ideologue of the Tiso regime Štefan Polakovič used profane language against all those ‘deadly traitors of the nation’ (vlastivrahovia). More explicitly, he claimed they were reckless, lacking principles, selfish, ruthless, irresponsible and, above all, cowardly. Heroism, Polakovič told the readers, is resisting lethargy,53 defying the downfall caused by petty criminals who favored their own aims over those of the nation: ‘Let us renew our being in the spirit of national honor, in the spirit of togetherness, spirit of defiance and heroism, spirit of responsibility and strict justice, because otherwise we will become a rag, being seesawed back and forth by the fate of the war.’ The official propaganda made sure to downplay the importance of the Uprising by calling it a cowardly rebellion of bandits. Along with this, it rejected any impact the events of late-summer 1944 could have had on the majority Slovak population: ‘The direct blame rests only on larger or smaller circles of careless people. They are those implicated in what happened.’54 The Slovak nation, Gardista instigated, ‘apart of pitiful, morally corrupt individuals, does not want to have and also has nothing in common with the Czechobolshevik bandits.’55 Unsurprisingly, the end of the war and the downfall of the Tiso regime in spring 1945 underlined the new reading of the Slovak National Uprising. It became an Uprising of the people, and it was ‘those fascists’ who were at the margins of both the society and its history. For this reason, when addressing the Slovak National Council in May 1945, Lettrich shirked any responsibility of the Slovak nation for the crimes of the Tiso regime. As noted earlier, the Slovak ‘facists’ were not representative of the people as a whole: [Remember that] the Slovak people had nothing to do with the defeatist policy that led to the Munich diktat, the consequences of which were borne by great parts of the oppressed territory of the republic with thousands of members of the Czech and the Slovak nation, that breaking apart the Czechoslovak Republic was against the will of our entire nation, with the insignificant exception of the Slovak fascists, that the so-called Slovak state under the protection of imperialist Germany was an imposed and artificial creation of Nazism and Fascism.56 52 53 54 55 56

Gardista, October 8, 1944, 3. Slovák, January 1, 1945, 1. Gardista, November 1, 1944, 3. Gardista, October 1, 1944, 1. ‘SNR 1945–1946, Minutes.’ May 15, 1945.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

141

Ján Beharka, a former member of the Slovak resistance like Lettrich,57 went even further in his claims: Surely nobody would deny that the German nation as a whole is responsible for all those atrocities and that it shall bear all the consequences. […] There were outcasts from our nation who preferred to sell the freedom of our nation only in order to officially call themselves its leaders or representatives. The Slovak nation has never recognized these usurpers. The Slovak nation, at the first opportunity, proved that it has nothing in common with traitors of its own or foreign blood.58 In many ways, the war’s aftermath was a formative event that followed the limited, though real, impact of the exiles’ discourse. The refreshened version of the Slovak past found supported in the public, and manifestation in visible symbols: towns, villages, army battalions and national institutions were to carry the names of the heroes who took part in the Uprising; public spaces were to be decorated with statues and memorial plaques dedicated to this event. Awards like ‘Hero of the National Uprising,’ ‘For Bravery’ and ‘Freedom Fighter’ were introduced, the highest of which was the ‘faithful son of the brotherly Czech nation’ that was posthumously given to Jan Šverma, a leading Czech Communist who died in the Low Tatras during the Uprising.59 The importance of the Slovak National Uprising was commemorated all over Slovakia. Postwar Slovakia gave birth to a number of simple memorials, often in the form of crosses or stone mounds built through local initiatives. What significantly differentiated these simple memorials from the Uprising’s grandiose monuments built later was the fact that they were erected at the site of the actual fighting and/or places where those who actively joined the Uprising, as well as the victims of the German anti-insurgent operations, were buried. After the Communist takeover in 1948 and revived again in the post-1969 normalization period, monuments grew in size and were typically supplemented with a red star. They were moved to the centers of towns and frequented, easily visible sites.60 From the 1950s onwards, both in historiography and iconography, the 57

Jozef Jablonický and Miroslav Kropilák, Slovník Slovenského národného povstania (Žilina: Epocha, 1970), 23. 58 ‘snr 1945–1946, Minutes.’ 59 Michela and Kšiňan, “The Slovak National Uprising,” 63. 60 Ľubomír Lipták, “Pamätníky a pamäť povstania roku 1944 na Slovensku,” Historický časopis 43, no. 2 (1995): 363–69.

142

chapter 3

partisan outplayed the soldier, even if the popular statue of a partisan holding an assault rifle shows that one symbol pervaded the other.61 The official narrative of the Prague Uprising in the mid-1950s gave way to the liberation of Prague by the Red Army. While it pushed the climax of celebrations in the Czech lands from May 5 to May 9, the legacy of the Slovak National Uprising grew with the opening of its official museum of commemoration in 1955. Masaryk square in the center of Banská Bystrica was renamed the Square of the Slovak National Uprising immediately after the war, and tens of memorials mushroomed in Slovakia, mostly in the central and western regions. Yet, at the beginning of the 1950s, the Institute of the Slovak National Uprising was turned into the Institute of the History of the Communist Party of Slovakia, probably as a result of the campaign against the Slovak ‘bourgeois nationalism.’ This shows how the political processes of the early 1950s and the effort to break the back of Slovak autonomous sentiments influenced the memory of the war. Jozef Jablonický, a prime historian of the Slovak National Uprising, observed that situational politics was indeed what defined the official remembrance with respect to the rebellion: With hindsight, and in view of how participants in the Slovak National Uprising ended up, history has become increasingly anonymous. Individuals, including eminent figures, were not judged according to their actual participation in the Uprising, but according to whether they currently wielded or did not wield political power.62 The discourse on the Slovak National Uprising has oscillated, then and now, between the ‘pros’ and ‘cons,’ but it was also internally influenced by the struggles of the Communist party, most notably by the fight against the ‘bourgeois nationalists.’ In the early-1950s, some of the leaders of the Uprising (including Husák) were charged with treason, sabotage and espionage in connection with the ‘anti-state conspiratorial center led by Rudolf Slánský [former General Secretary of the Party and another Communist member who took part in the Uprising].’63 Interestingly, however, what all these conflicting interpretations of the Uprising seemed to have in common is that they have always presented

61 Ibid. 62 Jablonický, Glosy o historiografii snp, 39. 63 Edita Bosák, “Slovaks and Czechs: An Uneasy Coexistence,” in Czechoslovakia 1918–88: Seventy Years from Independence, ed. Harold Gordon Skilling (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991), 78.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

143

‘a black and white picture, and ordinary people and ordinary soldiers were never treated negatively.’64 Commemorating the Uprising, the Slovak state and the local persecution of the Jews was also shaped by the ludak émigré historians in the West. The collapse of the Tiso regime in the spring of 1945 in combination with the Communist takeover in early 1948 contributed to the number of former political and cultural Slovak elites escaping to the West. With the establishment of research institutions like the Slovak Institute in Rome or the Slovak Institute in Cleveland and through their employment at numerous Western universities, these revisionist historians began to influence scholarly debates on this issue, especially when research on these topics was treated as highly suspicious within Czechoslovakia.65 The works by Jozef Kirschbaum, Stanislav Ďurica or František Vnuk – to name only a few – navigated narratives of the Slovak National Uprising and the Holocaust.66 When it comes to twisting the historical account, the exile historians strived hard to turn Tiso into a savior of Jews, claiming at times that he had saved more Jews than had actually lived in wartime Slovakia. The consequent allegations, including the rumors that Israel erected a memorial to Jozef Tiso in Jerusalem in 1981, partially spread through Communist Czechoslovakia as well (and are repeated by Tiso’s apologists even today).67 Resistance both at home and in exile (though for a long time only the army in the East) was at the center of postwar master narratives. Jews actively participated in the Czechoslovak army in both the East and the West, especially in the war’s major battles (Tobruk, Sokolovo and Dukla); they also contributed to internal resistance such as the Slovak National Uprising. Despite this, the role of the Jews in the liberation of the country was ignored throughout much of Czechoslovakia’s communist era. It was commemorated only thanks to the pioneering work on the subject by historians living abroad, such as Erich Kulka, Ladislav Lipscher and Livia Rothkirchen, who have demonstrated how Jews significantly contributed to the resistance.

64 65 66 67

Michela and Kšiňan, “The Slovak National Uprising,” 62. Yeshayahu A Jelinek, “A Whitewash in Colour: Revisionist Historiography in Slovakia,” East European Jewish Affairs East European Jewish Affairs 24, no. 2 (1994): 119. Vrzgulová, “Memories of the Holocaust.” Ročenka Slovenského zväzu protifašistických bojovníkov, 1986, 134, Igor Cagáň, “K údajnému pamätníku Jozefovi Tisovi v Jeruzaleme apel k stanovisku izraelského veľvyslanca na Slovensku,” November 30, 2014, http://jozeftiso.sk/jt/ludovy-kultus/267-k-udajnemu -pamatniku-jozefovi-tisovi-v-jeruzaleme.

144

chapter 3

These scholarly contributions from the 1970s and 1980s, however, were only able to make their way into Czechoslovak discourse after the end of the Communist regime in November 1989.68 In general, recent historiography has succinctly summarized the previous inadequate coverage of the topic as follows: [The origin of] a large number of soldiers as well as the widespread antiSemitism in the units were ignored, if not denied, by the official historiography. This was especially apparent in the approach to the Czechoslovak army formed in the Soviet Union in which [Jewish] soldiers, mostly refugees who were sent into labor camps by the nkvd and were released by following German attack on the Soviet Union, at the beginning made up an absolute majority. It was this army, commanded by Ludvík Svoboda, that was later glorified by the official historiography and propaganda.69 While partial studies on Jewish resistance and revolt were published in Communist Czechoslovakia, especially by Kamenec and Kárný,70 Jews were largely absent from official stories of wartime heroism.71 The memorial of Kremnička, a small village near Banská Bystrica, illustrates the nationalization and universalization of victims that Tony Judt so eloquently captured with respect to the public memory of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe: ‘It is not that the horrors and crimes of the war in the east were played down – on the contrary, they 68

69 70

71

Ladislav Lipscher, Die Juden im slowakischen Staat: 1939–1945 (München; Wien: Oldenbourg, 1979); Ladislav Lipscher, Židia v slovenskom štátě: 1939–1945 (Bratislava: Print-Servis, 1992); Erich Kulka, Židé ve Svobodově armádě (Toronto: Sixty-Eight Publishers, 1979); Erich Kulka, Jews in Svoboda’s Army in the Soviet Union: Czechoslovak Jewry’s Fight against the Nazis during World War ii (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America – Institute of Contemporary Jewry, 1987); Erich Kulka, Židé v Československé Svobodově armádě (Praha: Naše vojsko, 1990). Frankl, “The Sheep of Lidice. The Holocaust and the Construction of Czech National History,” 174. Ivan Kamenec, “Židovský a koncentračný tábor v Novákoch,” Horná Nitra. Vlastivědný sborník 3 (1966): 51–68; Ivan Kamenec, “Vznik a vývoj pracovných táborov a stredísk na Slovensku v rkoch 1942–1944,” Nové Obzory 8 (1966): 15–38; Ivan Kamenec, “Racial Problem in the Policy of Slovak Nationalist (Ľudák) Government in the Years 1938–1945,” Studia Historica Slovaca 10 (1978): 153–206; Miroslav Kárný, “Ein Auschwitz-Bericht und das Schicksal des Theresienstadter Familienlagers,” Judaica Bohemiae 21, no. 1/2 (1985): 9–28. See also Václava Horčáková, “K historiografii o rezistenci Židů v českých zemích a na Slovensku v letech druhé světové války,” in Židé v boji a odboji: rezistence československých Židů v letech druhé světové války: příspěvky účastníků mezinárodní konference konané ve dnech 17.-18. října 2006 v Praze, ed. Zlatica Zudová-Lešková (Praha: Historický ústav, 2007), 345–55.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

145

were repeatedly rehearsed in official rhetoric and enshrined in memorials and textbooks everywhere. It is just that Jews were not part of the story.’72 Projected by the famous Slovak architect Dušan Jurkovič in 1947 and built in 1949, the memorial commemorates the series of massacres with 747 people murdered between November 1944 and March 1945. For the killings, Einsatzkommando 14, a part of Einsatzgruppe H, was assisted by the Emergency Units of the Hlinka Guard (Pohotovostné oddiely Hlinkovej gardy), which was formed in early-September 1944 to help suppress the rebellion. While more than half of those murdered were Jews, the memorial was, as were so many others, dedicated to the ‘victims of fascism’ and was generally known as the Memorial of the Slovak National Uprising. Among the Jewish victims was the famous member of the resistance Haviva Reik, also known as Chaviva Reiková, who parachuted to Slovakia from Palestine. A pyramid-shaped monument with a relief of three crosses was later supplemented with a red star. A Jewish Menorah with an inscription of the Hebrew word ‫( זכור‬Zachor, Remember) – a work of a Slovak-Israeli architect, Juraj Arieh ­Fatran – was added to the memorial only in 1995. More importantly, presented as a crime committed by the Nazi troops, local involvement in the massacre was not discussed until the late-1950s when members of the Emergency Units of the Hlinka Guard faced justice in what has been characterized as a Communist show-trial. Such an assesment stems from the terms of the sentences being set well before the trial: five accused received death sentences while the rest were to spend multiple years in prison. While their participation in the massacre was not denied, it was presented as a result of their deep hatred towards the Slovak nation. The innocence of the Slovak people was maintained.73 We do not wish to imply that the Holocaust disappeared from collective memory in post-1945 Czechoslovakia altogether. However, with the exception of the war’s immediate aftermath, the Holocaust occupied no more than a marginal place in the official remembering. A number of important accounts, especially those written by Holocaust survivors, appeared in the early postwar years. Already in 1945, Alfréd Wetzler, an escapee from Auschwitz, published the very first book on the death factory, Osvienčim, hrobka štyroch milionov ľudí (Auschwitz, the Graveyard of Four Million People), under the pen name Jozef Lánik. Shortly thereafter, Erich Kulka together with Ota Kraus published a comprehensive historical account of Auschwitz entitled Továrna na smrt

72 73

Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 822. Peter Sokolovič, “Proces s členmi Pohotovostných oddielov Hlinkovej Gardy v roku 1958,” Pamäť národa 6, no. 3 (2010): 19–38.

146

chapter 3

(The Death Factory).74 In 1949, the Documentation action in Bratislava ­published the historical survey called Tragédia slovenských židov (Tragedy of Slovak Jews), a title that was to become popular in Slovak historiography.75 Furthermore, Holocaust survivors, both men and women, published their first memoirs within the few years following the liberation. Later on, a number of fictional works and even feature-length films on the Holocaust appeared, generating a heightened attention to the plight of the Jews during the war.76 What is more, Imrich Stanek’s historical account of the wartime years, Zrada a pád. Hlinkovští separatisté a tak zvaný slovenský stát (Betrayal and Fall: Hlinka’s Separatist and the So-Called Slovak State), was published in Czech in 1958 and included a chapter on the deportation of ‘non-Aryan citizens,’ m ­ eaning those considered Jewish. Influenced by the times and spiked with attacks on religion, specifically the ‘clerofascism’ of the wartime state, the chapter gives a relatively accurate account of the Holocaust in Slovakia. Nevertheless, it again adamantly denies any inkling of responsibility of the majority society: There is no doubt that the population of Slovakia was constantly exposed to antisemitic propaganda in the press, in church, school, and electoral campaigns already in the pre-Munich Republic; this vile propaganda reached its peak under the rule of the clerofascists. But to ascribe racist, antisemitic attributes to Slovaks is nonsense and distorts the problem.77 While young scholars were to write dissertations on this subject in the 1970s, research on the Holocaust remained a largely private endeavor, as the examples of Kárný and Kamenec illustrate. Kárný began to study Czech literature and history at Charles University in Prague before the war, but the closing of universities in 1939 disrupted his academic path. Because of his Jewish origin, Kárný was deported to Terezín, Auschwitz and Kaufering, a satellite camp of Dachau. After the war, Kárný worked as a journalist in the communist Rudé právo, but was forced out as his brother Jiří was condemned in the campaign accompanying the infamous 1952 74 Kraus and Kulka, Továrna na smrt. 75 Lánik, Oswiecim, hrobka štyroch miliónov l’udí. Krátka história a život v oswiecimskom pekle v rokoch 1942–1945.; Dezider Tóth, ed., Tragédia slovenských Židov: materiály z medzinárodného sympózia, Banská Bystrica 25.-27. marca 1992 (Banská Bystrica: DATEI, 1992); Gabriel Hoffmann, Katolícka cirkev a tragédia slovenských židov v dokumentoch (Partizánske: Vydavatel’stvo G-Print, 1994). 76 Tatarka, Farská republika; Rudolf Jašík, Námestie svätej Alžbety (Bratislava: Mladé letá, 1958). 77 Imrich Stanek, Zrada a pád: Hlinkovští separatisté a tak zvaný slovenský stát (Praha: Státní nakladatelství politické literatury, 1958), 295.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

147

Slánský trial. Following his retirement in the early-1970s, Kárný became a freelance historian, whereby turning the flat he shared with his wife, Margita, into a research hub on the Holocaust and Nazi Germany.78 In the process, Kárný published extensively in Judaica Bohemiae (a scholarly journal published by the Jewish Museum in Prague) and collected documentary material on all aspects of the life and death of the Jews from the Bohemian lands during the Holocaust. Most of his research, however, was only published in German or in regional Czech journals with a very low circulation. It was not until the fall of Communism that his research was able to reach a wider audience in his homeland. This was also the case with Kamenec, who survived the war in hiding and later studied history at the Comenius University in Bratislava. His groundbreaking work Po stopách tragédie (On the Path of Tragedy) only appeared in print in 1991, although it had already been defended as a dissertation in 1971. Because of this, research on the persecution of the Jews in both the Protectorate and the Slovak state largely took place outside of Czechoslovakia ­until 1989. Numerous works by Czechoslovak historians in Israel, most notably ­Yeshayahu Jelinek, Yehoshua (Robert) Büchler, Akiva Nir (Karol Neufeld), Gila Fatran, Livia Rothkirchen and Erich Kulka, proved that the arguments of Jewish passivity or even cowardice during the Second World War were based on incorrect assumptions.79 From the early-1960s, Rothkirchen was discussing the underground movement in the Protectorate as well as the resistance in the Slovakia, and so did Jelinek. The latter drew his first conclusions on the subject from oral testimonies based at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem.80 As a member of a youth pioneer group Hashomer 78

Frankl, “The Sheep of Lidice. The Holocaust and the Construction of Czech National History,” 175. 79 Livia Rothkirchen, Hurban Yahadut Slovakia (Destruction of Slovakian Jewry) (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1961); Livia Rothkirchen, “Activities of the Jewish Underground in Slovakia,” Yad Vashem Bulletin, no. 8/9 (1961): 28–30; Livia Rothkirchen, “The Defiant Few: Jews and the Czech ‘Inside front’ (1938–1942),” Yad Vashem Studies 14 (1976): 35–88; Livia Rothkirchen, “The Slovak Enigma: A Reassessment of the Halt to the Deportations,” East Central Europe 10, no. 1 (1983): 3–13; Akiva Nir, (‫)הסלובקי במרד‬: ‫( האש במעגל שבילים‬Tel-Aviv: Moreshet, 1967); Akiva Nir, Stories from Paths in a Ring of Fire (New York: American Zionist Youth Foundation, 1978); Yehoshua Robert Büchler, The Story and Source of the Jewish Community of Topoltchany (Israel: Committee for Commemorating the Jewish Community for Topoltchany and Vicinity, 1976); Erich Kulka, Collection of Testimonies and Documents on the Participation of Czechoslovak Jews in the War against the Nazi-Germany (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1976). 80 Rothkirchen, Hurban Yahadut Slovakia (Destruction of Slovakian Jewry); Rothkirchen, “Activities of the Jewish Underground in Slovakia”; Rothkirchen, “The Defiant Few”; Yeshayahu Jelinek, “The Role of the Jews in Slovakian Resistance,” Jahrbücher Für Geschichte Osteuropas 15, no. 3 (1967): 415–22.

148

chapter 3

Hatzair in Czechoslovakia, it was Nir who later organized resistance in the labor camp Sereď (the camp was dissolved in August 1944, and many of its prisoners joined what became the Slovak National Uprising. In September of the same year, however, the camp was transformed into a German concentration camp).81 He went on to publish his recollections in Hebrew in 1967. Other works on the Holocaust emerged among Czech and Slovak émigré historians and survivors in the United States, Britain, Germany and Switzerland.82 As has been already noted, the black-and-white narration of the wartime years – the dichotomy of good and evil as well as that of heroes and ­cowards – characterizes the official postwar discourses in both the Czech lands and ­Slovakia. In 1946, the author of one of the first books on home resistance, Hrdinové domácího odboje (Heroes of domestic resistance), Jaroslav Vozka urged to take ‘courage to review the actions of groups and individuals, and not be afraid to point out not only the beautiful phenomena of heroism and courage, but to denounce cowardice and treachery.’83 In fact, the first books documenting the heroism and suffering of Czech people in the Protectorate had been made available in London during the war, largely in English, as a proof of the Czechs’ contribution to the Allied war efforts and their suffering at the hands of the Germans.84 While all of the fallen were quickly celebrated as heroes, those standing trial after the war in one of the newly established Extraordinary peoples’ courts were labeled traitors and cowards, often well before the judges reached a verdict. The members of the German and Hungarian minority, as a whole, were called the fifth column (pátá kolona), which implied that only an ethnically homogenous state could ensure that ‘Munich’ would not be 81

82

83

84

On the history of the camp, see Ján Hlavinka and Eduard Nižňanský, Pracovný a koncentračný tábor v Seredi 1941–1945 (Bratislava: dsh, Dokumentačné stredisko holokaustu, 2010). Zdenek Lederer, Ghetto Theresienstadt (London: Goldston, 1953); Lipscher, Die Juden im slowakischen Staat; Avigdor Dagan, Gertrude Hirschler, and Lewis Weiner, eds., The Jews of Czechoslovakia: Historical studies and surveys. 3 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1984). As quoted in Petr Koura, “Od hrdinů k zbabělcům, od zbabělců k hrdinům. Účastníci protinacistického odboje a jejich obraz,” in Hrdinství a zbabělost v české politické kultuře 19. a 20. století: výběr z příspěvků ze stejnojmenné konference, která proběhla ve dnech 25.-27. října 2006, ed. Jan Randák and Petr Koura (Praha: Dokořán, 2008), 223. Two Years of German Oppression (London: Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1941); Eugene V. Erdely, Germany’s First European Protectorate: the Fate of the Czechs and Slovaks (London: R. Hale, 1942); Eugene V. Erdely, Prague Braves the Hangman (London: Czechoslovak, 1942); Heroes and Victims (London: Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1945).

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

149

repeated. In contrast, traitors, cowards and collaborators represented only a ‘negligible portion of our citizens.’85 Potentially as a reaction to these impenetrable categories used during (but not exclusively) the aftermath, a number of postwar films and novels questioned the possibility of clear-cut heroes and villains. The first movie on the life in the Protectorate, V horách duní (Mountains Are Rumbling, 1946), was directed by Václav Kubásek and tells the story of a tailor named Jakub Skýva living in a remote village somewhere on the Bohemian-Moravian border. As an ss unit guns down a British aircraft, Skýva gives shelter to the Czech pilot, now being furiously looked for by the Nazis. Skýva is actually denounced by one of his fellow countryman, arrested and seriously wounded by the Nazis. He dies surrounded by his friends on the eve of the Prague Uprising.86 Another such example showed the story of two unlikely heroes of the war in a traditional Czech comedy fashion. This mainstream feature film is entitled Nikdo nic neví (Nobody Knows Anything, 1947), starring two popular actors, Jaroslav Marvan and František Filipovský, who in this farce try to hide the body of an unconscious sa man, because they think they killed him. Almost fifteen years later, the novel Smrť si vraví Engelchen (Death is Called Engelchen, 1959) revisited the massacre at Ploština, Moravian Wallachia, where twenty-four civilians had been burned alive in April 1945 in retaliation for their support of partisans. The author, Ladislav Mňačko, dwells on the thin line between a hero and a collaborator. His praised novel, which was adapted into a film in 1963, tells a story of a partisan Voloďa wounded in the liberation of Zlín in the spring of 1945. As he comes to life, a local named Kroupa rushes him into the hospital with the words, ‘Make way for the wounded hero!’ Voloďa is irritated with the man as he keeps pouring expensive cognac into him and, encouraged by locals, makes sarcastic comments about Kroupa’s newly found patriotism. Voloďa then chases him off: ‘That’s what he deserves!’ cried a weary elderly woman. Women seem more passionate in such matters than men do. ‘A collaborator like that!’ A new word. Where did it come from? I’m hearing it from the mouth of this woman for the first time. Later it becomes an accurate term, which indelibly, unforgettably enters the consciousness of the nation, repeated in similar situations as a refrain. It took hold in the little crowd of people, and flared up like a bonfire. ‘Col-la-bor-ator! Collaborator!’ shouted the 85 ‘Prozatimní ns rsč 1945–1946.’ May 7, 1946. 86 František Götz, V horách duní…: ( Jakub Skýva – člověk spravedlivý) (Praha: Státní výroba filmů, 1945).

150

chapter 3

crowd. Before Mr Kroupa recovered from this unexpected turn of events, before he realized that he should run for it, it was too late. He was surrounded by a circle of scowling people.87 The thin line between patriots and traitors, heroes and cowards, continued to be discussed throughout the Czechoslovak New Way, both in novels and films. Some examples of this are Josef Škvorecký’s Zbabělci (The Cowards, 1958), Peter Solan’s Boxer a smrť (Boyer and Death, 1962), Štefan Uher’s Orgán (Organ, 1964), Zbyněk Brynych’s A pátý jezdec je strach (The Fifth Horseman is Fear, 1964), Ján Kadár’s Obchod na korze (Shop on the Main Street, 1965), which received the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film, and Jiří Menzel’s Ostře sledované vlaky (Closely Watched Trains, 1966), also awarded an Oscar. Symptomatically, it has continued to form the main storyline in recent movies on the Protectorate as well, for example, Musíme si pomáhat (Divided We Fall, 1999), or Protektor (Protector, 2000). Nevertheless, despite such attempts, the issue of local collaboration in the Holocaust has remained on the margins of the master narrative of the Second World War in (former) Czechoslovakia.

Collaboration and Guilt

We have already discussed that notions regarding any deeper involvement of ordinary Czech and Slovak individuals in the persecution of the Jews were largely absent both during the war and in the postwar period. In fact, they are rarely articulated even today. The presence of the German civil and military administration in the Protectorate from March 1939 helped overshadow any previously detailed plans to segregate the Jewish minority. Beyond this, the behavior of ordinary Czech people during the war has never been subject to detailed scrutiny. In Slovakia, the crimes of the treacherous government were, in the public’s eyes, separated from the true feelings of the good-hearted Slovak people. The feeling of collective guilt is a necessary precondition for an apology, still missing today, the reduction of prejudice towards the out-group and the creation of a more positive model of intergroup relations.88 All of this, 87

88

Ladislav Mňačko, Smrt si říká Engelchen (Prague: Mladá fronta, 1961), 14. (This autobiographical novel was first published in Slovak as Smrť sa volá Engelchen, Bratislava: Slov. vydav. polit. lit., 1959). Michael J.A. Wohl, Nyla R. Branscombe, and Yechiel Klar, “Collective Guilt: Emotional Reactions When One’s Group Has Done Wrong or Been Wronged,” European Review of Social Psychology 17, no. 1 (2006): 9.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

151

however, depends on three conditions: 1) the self-categorization as a member of the group bearing responsibility for the harm, 2) understanding that one’s group is the one guilty for the harmful actions, and 3) the perception of this harm as illegitimate and immoral. The degree of experienced guilt depends on ‘the perceived difficulty and costs to the ingroup of correcting the wrongs committed.’89 As it seems, any of these conditions have yet been met – and this again applies to both Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Gila Fatran argues that only during retribution, especially in the trial of Jozef Tiso, ‘did the issue of the Holocaust of the Jews receive attention.’90 As this chapter manifests, the war and its immediate aftermath were formative both in the initial reflections on the Second World War and the establishment of who is who, that is who were the victims and who were the oppressors. Yet in Slovakia, the execution of Tiso did not shake up this paradigm but transformed him into ‘competing symbols of the Slovak wartime experience: war criminal and Slovak martyr.’91 This hypothesis is supported by Kulka’s statement on Slovak exile historians: ‘We are acquainted […] with the mentality and attitude of many Slovaks in exile towards the former fascist Slovak State and its President Tiso, glorified as a great statesman, hero and even a saint.’92 When it comes to expressions of Slovak responsibility for the Holocaust, scholars often point to a joint proclamation by the parliament and the government of the Slovak Republic issued a few days before Christmas Eve in 1990. The proclamation condemned the deportations of the Jews from Slovakia and is reminiscent of the October 1987 dissidents’ declaration known as the Declaration of Regret. Following commemorative acts at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles that marked the 45th anniversary of the first deportations from Slovakia in late-March 1942, a group of twenty-four Slovak dissidents published a declaration apologizing for the deportations and expressing remorse for the crimes committed against the Jews in Slovakia. While stressing that they themselves could not be held accountable for the crimes committed during the war, they felt obliged to speak out because, until then, the Slovak authorities had not issued any public condemnation: 89 Ibid. 90 Gila Fatran, “Holocaust and Collaboration in Slovakia in the Postwar Discourse,” in Collaboration with the Nazis Public Discourse after the Holocaust, ed. Roni Stauber (London; New York: Routledge, 2010), 188. 91 Ward, Priest, Politician, Collaborator, 257. 92 Erich Kulka, “The Slovaks in Exile Seek Reconciliation,” The Voice of Auschwitz Survivors in Israel, no. 34 (April 1986): 2.

152

chapter 3

We do not wish to weaken the expression of regret and our plea for forgiveness by adding any historical background. We leave it to the historians to judge […] we neither wish to bring up the Church’s opposition to the persecution of our Jewish neighbors, nor do we wish to detail the aid given by many of our people to those who were cruelly hunted out […] we refuse to use these arguments in this Declaration, because they may weaken the single issue on which we think it is important to express our view: a profound regret and sincere request for forgiveness for all that happened to our Jewish neighbors and brothers when they were deported. It is no surprise that this 1987 declaration was quickly rejected by the official Czechoslovak authorities as foreign propaganda, making the following claim in one of the November 1987 issues of the daily Pravda, issued simultaneously in Rudé právo:93 Yes, there were fascists in Slovakia too, as there were in other countries. They committed numerous crimes, especially against their own nation. In Slovakia there are many mass graves bringing to mind the horrors of fascism. Members of many nations and nationalities lie there, but most of them are of course Slovaks.94 This discourse was entirely in line with the official Communist policies of remembrance that stated, often against historical evidence, that most of the Czechoslovak Jews murdered during the war had been assimilated into the Czech and Slovak nations. In this view, most of the Jews had completely severed their relations with the Jewish community as well as with their own Jewish heritage. Hence, they should not be treated and commemorated as Jews, even though this was exactly the reason why the Nazi and Slovak authorities persecuted and murdered them during the war. This notion needs to be seen in conjunction with the ideological struggle of the Communist Bloc against the State of Israel and its claim to represent and protect the interests of Jews all over the world, including in Communist states. These twenty-four Slovak intellectuals, however, were not the only ones to reflect on the past in and around October 1987. Originally based on an ­invitation from an association of Slovak Holocaust survivors living abroad, a representative of the Slovak World Congress was supposed to speak at 93 94

Rudé právo, November 24, 1987, 3. Pravda, November 24, 1987, 3.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

153

the memorial service at Yad Vashem. Notions that the Congress, the largest body representing Slovak émigrés, was unwilling to distance itself from the legacy of the wartime regime and express regret for the persecution of Jews was leaked beforehand, causing the eventual retraction of the invitation. The written version of the prepared speech, published in the exile journal Horizont, summarizes arguments of some of the influential émigré circles as follows: But life must go on. Even this terrible tragedy cannot be used only for negative purposes, for seeking to continue with the revenge, and so on. On the contrary, we must learn from it. As a whole, the Slovak nation is not responsible for the suffering of the Jews; only those individuals who became a tool in the Nazi project are responsible.95 Unsurprisingly, the question of wartime collaboration in the Holocaust has attracted more attention in Slovakia than in the Czech Lands. During the Communist era, the question of the Czechs’ wartime contribution to the persecution of the Jews, or even their lack of support for the persecuted minority, rarely entered public discussion, though there were some minor exceptions to this. Domestic historiography, in contrast to scholarly articles published in Israel, largely ignored the topic. Even Czech-Jewish historians in the United States who were still adhering to the myth of Czech democracy did not address the question in the most comprehensive volume on the history of the Holocaust in the Czechoslovak territories published until 1989.96 In contrast, publicists in Communist Czechoslovakia at the service of the Party soon focused on the question of the wartime collaboration, yet instead of dealing with the non-Jewish contribution to the Holocaust, they directed their efforts to discussions of alleged Zionist collaboration with the Nazis. This was a concentrated effort to use history as a means to discredit the State of Israel, the political and ideological enemy of Communist countries.

Jews as Collaborators

In February 1967, workers repairing the attics in the city of Terezín, the site of the former Theresienstadt ghetto, made a surprising discovery: the diary of Egon Redlich, written during his incarceration in the ghetto. Redlich, a m ­ ember 95 96

Horizont, December 1987, 9. Avigdor Dagan, Gertrude Hirschler, and Lewis Weiner, eds., The Jews of Czechoslovakia.

154

chapter 3

of Zionist organizations, spent almost three years in the ­ghetto ­working in the youth department of the Jewish Council of Elders. It was a position that, for a long time, protected him from deportation, at least until late-1944 when he was sent with his wife and son to Auschwitz-Birkenau and murdered. It took almost thirty years, until 1995 to be exact, before the whole diary publicly appeared in Czech with appropriate scholarly annotations, though it was available in English by 1992. Nonetheless, selected quotes from the diary were published in early-1974 through the Communist Party weekly Tribuna as a part of the normalization campaign against their ideological opponents.97 This campaign brought new elements into the Communist struggle against Zionism and the State of Israel, but it was also triggered by the efforts to deflect accusations from international Jewish organizations of the difficult position of Jewish communities in the Eastern Bloc. During the normalization, the campaign against Zionism underwent significant changes in comparison with the pre-1967 period. One of the main outlets after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 that published frequent and vicious attacks against Zionism was Tribuna (with a subtitle that could be read in English as a weekly for Ideology and Politics). Besides contemporaneous debates of Israeli policies in the Middle East, analyses of then-recent military conflicts and the oft-repeated accusations against Israel as an outpost of American imperialism in the Middle East, Tribuna frequently published historical and philosophical articles that debated the history of the Zionist movement (making thereby various links to the Holocaust). The founder and first editor-in-chief of Tribuna was Oldřich Švestka, a member of the Central Committee of the cpc who belonged to the conservative branch of the Party. In August 1968, he co-signed an invitation letter in which pro-Soviet members of the Party asked Leonid Brezhnev, the leader of the Soviet Union, to invade Czechoslovakia. From the first number published in January 1969, Tribuna stood behind the politics of normalization and fought against any social manifestations of dissent. Moreover, it rallied against all real and imagined enemies abroad. Though initially ostracised, Tribuna soon established itself as a leading political medium in the Czech lands.98

97

98

Miroslav Kryl published a short text about the diary already in 1970. His dissertation on the topic, however, was not accessible to the public. Miroslav Kryl, “Nový pramen k dějinám terezínského ghetta,” Terezínské listy 1 (1970): 17–23; see also; Ludmila Chládková, “Vzpomínáme,” Terezínské listy 1 (1970): 92–93. Jakub Železný, “Vznik týdeníku Tribuna jako první legální tiskové platformy antireformních sil v roce 1969,” Sborník Národního Muzea v Praze/Acta Musei Nationalis Pragae 57, no. 4 (2012): 53–57.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

155

The authors of the lengthy articles in Tribuna did not belong to the top ranks of the Communist Party. In fact, we often lack details about the authors who, as some evidence suggests, came from the ranks of the Secret Police. One thing is clear: they had unrestricted access to secret intelligence reports and surveys, which they used in defamatory campaigns against former reformers, current dissidents and any political groups or movements identified by the Party as a potential target. This was a common practice at that time. For instance, Czechoslovak television used secret police recordings in programs against opponents of the regime at home and abroad, such as Pavel Tigrid, a prominent representative of anti-Communist exiles who lived in Paris.99 Relying on sources from the Soviet Union, Tribuna published reviews of the works by Soviet anti-Zionist writers and applied their conclusions to Czechoslovak situations. The theme of the alleged Zionist collaboration with the Nazis was not entirely novel for the normalization period. Similar accusations against parts of the Jewish community had emerged during the war, reappearing later as a part of the postwar retribution all over Europe and in Israel. The question of Jewish collaboration had been an often-debated theme also among survivors of the Shoah. Many of the wartime leaders and Jewish prominent prisoners, like Kapos in the camps or former members of the Jewish Councils, faced allegations from the survivor community since the end of the war. Survivors organized honor courts in the immediate postwar period, and some of the wartime leaders were subjected to criminal investigations, such as the last Jewish Elder of Theresienstadt Rabbi Benjamin Murmelstein, or even put on trial.100 Memoir literature and first cinematographic representations of the Holocaust, including Radok’s Daleká cesta (1948), thematized the perceived Jewish collaboration during the war.101 Further down the road, the famous Czech Holocaust film Transport z ráje (Transport from the Paradise, 1962) was to allude to the role of Jewish Councils during the war, but the Zionist link was largely absent, at least for the uninformed observer. In fact, the theme of Jewish collaboration rarely entered mainstream discussions in Czechoslovakia until the 1970s. The first scholarly studies on the Holocaust breached the subject of Jewish leadership, and some of these works triggered heated public debates. An exemplary illustration of this was when Hannah Arendt published her book 99

Jarmila Cysařová, “Československá televise a politická moc 1953–1989,” Soudobé dějiny 9, no. 3–4 (2002): 534. 100 Hanna Yablonka, “The Development of Holocaust Consciousness in Israel: The Nuremberg, Kapos, Kastner, and Eichmann Trials,” Israel Studies 8, no. 3 (2004): 1–24. 101 Feder, Židovská tragedie: dějství poslední; Láníček and Liebman, “A Closer Look at Alfred Radok’s Film Distant Journey.”

156

chapter 3

on the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem, in which she directly accused the Jewish leadership of contributing to the catastrophe.102 In relation to the Czech lands, the first serious scholarly analysis of the Theresienstadt ghetto, published by the London-based émigré Hans G. Adler in the mid-1950s, also contained sharp criticism of the ghetto leadership.103 Ironically, new scholarly inquiries into postwar retribution have revealed that it was only in the 1960s and the 1970s, as a direct effect of the 1961 Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem, that the ‘classification of victims and perpetrators and their public evaluation became frozen into two inflexible categories: Jewish victims and Nazi perpetrators.’104 In the immediate postwar environment, members of the Communist Party (for example, Karel Kreibich, a German Communist from Czechoslovakia) were alleging that Jewish capitalists and bourgeoisie, as well as parts of the Zionist movement, welcomed the appointment of Hitler in the 1930s. More than this, they were willing to cooperate with him or at least did not perceive him as a threat for Jewish interests.105 Also in Slovakia, a country praised by Hitler as a model ally, charges of wartime collaboration stretched to include the Jews. One such accusation originated from the 5th illegal central committee of the Slovak Communist Party, formed by Karol Šmidke, Gustav Husák and Ladislav Novomeský. A situation report, most likely written by Husák in July 1944, ­accused Slovak Jews, not even specifically Zionists, of collaborating with the Gestapo as well as with the local Slovak agency, the State Security Headquarters. Anectodial evidence suggests that the document was available to researchers at least few years before its release, and that Husák himself dismissed its publication in Vilém Prečan’s collection of documents on the Slovak National Uprising from 1965. Nevertheless, it was only in mid-1969 that Husák’s situation report conveniently appeared in the press: The Jews were weak wherever they were accepted to work in the underground. The operation almost always failed, and they revealed everything they knew. About 35 of their people worked for the Slovak secret police 102 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963). 103 Hans Günther Adler, Theresienstadt: 1941–1945: das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft. ­Geschichte, Soziologie, Psychologie (Tubingen: Mohr, 1955). 104 Laura Jockusch and Gabriel N. Finder, “Introduction: Revenge, Retribution, and Reconciliation in the Postwar Jewish World,” in Jewish Honor Courts: Revenge, Retribution, and Reconciliation in Europe and Israel after the Holocaust, ed. Laura Jockusch and Gabriel N. Finder (Detroit: Wayne State University Press; published in association with The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2015), 12. 105 Věstník ŽNO, September 17, 1948, 405f.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

157

(úšb) and the Gestapo, which is why they are not accepted for any (underground) work today.106 In the early-1950s during the Slánský trial and the subsequent trials of ‘bourgeois nationalists,’ defendants were accused of collaboration during the war and serving the Gestapo. This was the case for both Bedřich Reicin and Otto Šling, who were among those sentenced to death and executed. Denunciations of Jewish collaboration went hand-in-hand, more often than not, with the renunciation of any Czech or Slovak responsibility: The criminals who are sitting in the dock shamelessly took advantage of the Czech and Slovak people, who have always abhorred antisemitism, all the more so after the Second World War, when the Nazis, in a fit of racist fury, murdered Jews on a massive scale in concentration camps and gas chambers. Various Jewish profiteers, factory owners, and bourgeois elements took advantage of precisely these sentiments in society to worm their way into our party, steeling themselves against any criticism and hiding their vicious class-enemy faces with the suffering of the Jews during the Nazi fury.107 During the 1970s, allegations of Zionist collaboration were presented in the framework of historical research and based on sources left behind by wartime Zionist activists in combination with postwar police investigations for retribution trials. Investigations were even initiated by the Communist police into the wartime behavior of the Czech Jewish leaders. Some historians believe that such investigations had started even earlier, in the 1950s, but those seem to be just individual cases of alleged collaborators.108 Available primary evidence suggests that a comprehensive covert reseach of archival holdings was officially ordered only in the mid-1970s; this appears to be in response to the unfolding debate in the Party press as well as to several exchanges between the Jewish exiles and Czechoslovak publicists. In a confidential report, the Interior Ministry identified 217 alleged Jewish collaborators and Gestapo informers (112 direct informers and 105 with unclear connections) in the Czech territories between

106 Nové slovo, August 21, 1969, quoted in Lipscher, Židia v slovenskom štátě, 208. 107 Proces s vedením protištátneho sprisahaneckého centra na čele s Rudolfom Slánským (Prague: Ministerstvo spravodlivosti, 1953), 504. 108 Livia Rothkirchen, “Czechoslovakia,” 186.

158

chapter 3

1933 and 1945.109 These were mostly cases of individual acts of collaboration and denunciation that had not been utilized by the Party press before. In the meantime, the campaign against the alleged Zionists-fascists continued to perpetuate itself. Attacks on wartime Jewish leadership became a key element in the contemporary ideological fight against Zionism and the State of Israel. These articles and reportages were not published by scholars but rather publicists and, at times, even members of the Communist Secret police. ­Allegations that the Zionists, receiving a promise from the Nazis to spare their communities, collaborated in the deportation of the assimilated Jews played a key role in the anti-Israeli campaign. Furthermore, the Communist ideologues presented the State of Israel and its Zionist ‘bourgeois nationalist’ establishment as a racist, in fact fascist, regime that acquired its practices from Nazi Germany. Now, they were using these Nazi methods in their fight against the oppressed Arab people. The beginning of this campaign was signaled in the Soviet Union by the Pravda newspaper. In February 1971, a commemoration for the victims of the Babi Yar massacres from September 1941 was held with references to Zionist collaboration with the Nazis.110 Shortly thereafter, the Czechoslovak Radio in Prague broadcast a series of programs repeating these allegations. They emphasized stories about the wartime pact between the Nazis and Zionists, which eventually allowed ‘the Zionist elite’ to escape to Palestine.111 The Prague radio and Communist newspapers continued to publish similar stories in the years to come, which triggered an unlikely response in March 1973. The Chairman of the Council of Jewish Religious Communities František Fuchs, who in 1973 publicly condemned any efforts to smear the reputation of the wartime Czech-Jewish (including Zionist) leadership, believed they never betrayed the communities in Prague, nor later those in the ghetto.112 Fuchs had been a long time supporter of Jewish assimilation in Czechoslovakia and had spent a part of the war working for the Prague Jewish Council of Elders. Soon after the 1973 protest, Fuchs was removed from his position in the Council as a result of, so it was argued, the fight against Zionists in the ranks of the Jewish Communities in Czechoslovakia.113 Exile Czech-Jewish activists even asserted 109 110 111 112

abs, Z-10-1019, final report, March 1977. Rothkirchen, “Czechoslovakia,” 183. Daily News Bulletin (jta), December 27, 1971. Fuchs until his deportation to Theresienstadt in 1943 worked for the Prague Jewish Community. Věstník ŽNO, March 1973, 1f. 113 Marie Crhová, “Israel in the Foreign and Internal Politics of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and Beyond,” Jewish Studies at the ceu 4 (2004–2005): 259–86; Ján Hlavinka, “Židovská komunita pod kontrolou,” Pamäť národa, no. 2 (2005).

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

159

that Fuchs and other leaders of Jewish communities were removed after they declined to publicly support the notion of collaboration of the wartime Zionist leadership, which included the first Elder of the Theresienstadt ghetto Jacob Edelstein, and/or refused to issue an anti-Israeli statement.114 A similar source suggested that the Communist authorities planned to create a special exhibition in one of the remaining Prague synagogues frequented by foreign visitors. The exhibition in question would display ostentatious evidence of the NaziZionist collaboration.115 Besides playing a prime role in the anti-Zionist hysteria, Tribuna became one of the main venues where Communist publicists engaged in presenting what they deemed academic research of the Shoah in the service of the Communist policies during the 1970s. The 1970s was a time when historical research on the Shoah was strictly limited by censorship. Leading Communist historians (such as Václav Král) even rejected the publication of historical research on children in the Theresienstadt ghetto, commenting that the suffering of Jewish children during the war now served as a justification for Israeli policies against the Arab population. The argument was that Czechoslovakia, as a Communist state, should not support Israel racist policies by emphasizing Jewish suffering in the past.116 This line of thinking was followed by Tribuna journalists, who in particular sharpy condemned a letter, published in 1968 by historians at the Terezín Memorial, expressing support for Israel.117 In the counterattack, the journalists in Tribuna kept employing an overt comparison between Zionism, racism and fascism. They emphasised that ‘most’ of the victims of the Holocaust were assimilated Jews whose memory should not be abused by the ‘racist Zionist regime’ and ‘their chimeric vision of the Jewish nation dispersed all over the world.’ As Tribuna concluded, the assimilated victims of the Holocaust would curse the current racist Israeli terror in the same way as they had cursed the Nazi policies at the moment of their death.118 The aim of articles such as these was to construct Zionists as moral degenerates needing to be condemned for their activities in Israel and the occupied territories. The articles were also to attest that the Jewish organizations had no moral credit to criticize the situation in Communist countries. One of the main 114 Listy, December 1977, Erich Kulka, “S prorokem Jeremiášem proti Chartě 77.” 115 Ibid. 116 Ibid. Kotouc Kurt, Interview, October 2004, http://www.centropa.org/biography/kurt -kotouc Testimony by Kurt Kotouč who in his strange judgment managed to connect the publishing of children’s prose with the “aggression of Israel against the Arab world.” See also Svědectví. Čtvrtletník pro politiku a kulturu, XIV/55, 1978, 415. 117 Tribuna, May 17, 1972, 20. 118 Tribuna, January 9, 1974, 15.

160

chapter 3

contributors of articles on Zionism was Jiří Bohatka, who had a direct access to the sources from Communist archives as well as to testimonies submitted by Jewish survivors after the end of the war during the criminal investigations for retribution trials. At the time, the public and exile groups did not know much about Bohatka’s background. The London based International Council for Jews of Czechoslovakia, which published a regular newsletter about the events behind the Iron Curtain, identified him as an employee of the Ministry of National Defense or of the Communist Secret police. Yet, the Council, which only had indirect access to information from Czechoslovakia, was often wrong in identifying authors of anti-Jewish articles in the Communist press. In fact, Bohatka was a pseudonym of Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Jiří Aleš (1929–82), an employee of the Interior Ministry and then-Lecturer at the University of the State Police (snb). Aleš joined the Communist Party immediately after the war, regularly contributed to Rudé právo and, after graduating from the Communist University of Political and Economic Sciences, entered the services of the Czechoslovak police. Aleš’s superiors praised his intelligence, skills to work with available sources and ability to theoretize approaches to ideological struggles between the Communists and their enemies. He welcomed the 1968 invasion and gave his talents to the service of the new régime. Throughout the 1970s, he continuously produced articles against Zionism, though his work suffered from his psychological problems and low work ethic caused by his progressing alcoholism and its consequential repercussions for his health. Twice divorced, he left the University in 1979 after suffering several heart attacks caused by his drinking and died soon after, still in his early fifties.119 Aleš had systematically researched the topic of Jewish collaboration and published articles on some of the most prominent cases. For instance, he wrote on Robert Mandler, a collaborator with the ss and an informer in the Theresienstadt ghetto, and Erwin Frankenbusch, a Jewish agent of the Prague Gestapo office killed in the Terezín Small Fortress in April 1944. In these articles he attempted to construct a connection between Jewish confidents of the Gestapo and the Zionist Organization. A lack of available evidence did not disway Aleš from publishing other highly speculative and distorted articles. Instead of properly analyzing his activities during the war, Aleš presented Mandler as an official representative of the World Zionist Organization in the Protectorate, who, in cooperation with the Gestapo, organized the emigration of Zionists to Palestine and the deportation of the ‘Jewish part of the Czech nation’ to ghettos and death camps. Aleš claimed that the Zionist organization 119 abs – Kanice, Aleš’s personal file.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

161

promised Eichmann a smooth deportation for the assimilationist part of the community, which is why they sent Mandler, a resident of Vienna, to Prague. The articles attempted to undermine Israelis’ claim of representing Jewish communities around the world along with their efforts to speak for all the victims of the Holocaust: The Zionists, who now claim the right to speak on behalf of the millions of dead Jewish citizens, are themselves complicit in their deaths. They organized the selection of Jewish citizens for deportation, accompanying them to the gates of the concentration camps, so that they could, following precise lists, hand them over to the Nazis. […] Their souls are black, because their hands are stained with the blood of Jewish martyrs, which falls on their heads too.120 Interestingly, even officials at the Interior Ministry, in reference to his articles on Mandler, concluded that Aleš published sensational articles that were often not based on available evidence.121 Nevertheless, as the main flag bearer of the anti-Zionist campaign, he continued to write on Zionist collaboration with Nazi Germany until his death in 1982. Aleš further developed the notion of Zionist collaboration with the help of Redlich’s diary.122 At this point, historians were not allowed to publish scholarly books or articles in Czech on the history of the genocide,123 yet Aleš had free access to primary sources in archives. By abusing history for an ideological struggle against Israel, his articles continuously appeared in Tribuna. Aleš even accussed Israeli historians of stealing documents from the Czechoslovak archives proving wartime Zionist collaboration. This could be an effort to limit the access of foreign historians to the Czechoslovak archives. More importantly, any future questions about the lack of documents on Jewish collaboration could be deflected by the theories that Aleš was putting ­forward.124 In his analysis of Redlich’s diary, Aleš pointed to the role of the Jewish Councils and alleged dominance of Zionists among the Jewish elders in Prague, and later Theresienstadt, during the war. Yet again, he directly accused 120 Tribuna, December 1 and 8, 1971, 20. 121 abs, Z-10-1019, Robert Mandler. 122 This article was criticised in exile newspapers by Erich Kulka: Listy, December 1977, Erich Kulka, “S prorokem Jeremiášem proti Chartě 77.” 123 Judaica Bohemiae published articles in German. Some of them, by Miroslav Kárný, were later published in Czech in regional journals, but not in mainstream historical journals. 124 Daily News Bulletin (jta), March 12, 1973.

162

chapter 3

them of sealing the pact with Eichmann allowing them to avoid deportation at the expense of the assimilationist part of the Jewish community. In this way, Aleš concluded that they had decided to sacrifice the ‘death branch’ of the Jewish community for the benefit of Zionists and the future Jewish state in Palestine. In Aleš’s view, the Zionist-assimilationist struggle in the ghetto was a part of the fight of the Czech nation against their German and Zionist enemies: The struggle for the physical survival of the Czech nation was also waged in Theresienstadt. [The Nazis] wanted to exterminate these members of the Czech nation too, because they considered them Jews whereas the Zionist accomplices of the Nazis deported them to their deaths in the eastern ghettos and concentration camps because they saw them as Czechs and enemies of Zionism.125 Aleš thus presented the Zionists as more than just collaborators wanting to save at least parts of the Jewish community from their demise. They were also intentionally targeting members of the Czech nation and contributed to their deaths in the East. Aleš painted a simplified image of the situation in the ghetto, completely ignoring other conflicts behind the walls, especially between the German, Austrian and Czech Jewish communities. By contrast, he focused his energy purely on the Czech-Zionist dichotomy. Although the Zionists formed the main part of the original ghetto Council of Elders, there were also assimilationists represented in the Council. Aleš repeatedly mentions František Weidmann, who had been in charge of the Prague Jewish Community and, after the deportation to the ghetto, joined the Council of Elders. Weidmann was a representative of the Czech-Jewish assimilationist movement who, even in the ghetto, promoted Czech culture. More importantly, he was not a Zionist. Aleš, however, included Weidmann among the leaders of the Zionist movement and characterized him as one of the main collaborators with the Nazis, which further proves Aleš’s manipulation with historical facts in order to suit his current political needs.126 In Aleš’s articles, the Zionists were almost portrayed as partners of the Nazis and not their victims; as people who consistently and systematically fought against any manifestation of Czech culture in the ghetto, and imposed Jewish and Hebrew culture on children against the will of the assimilated majority with the intention of denationalizing them and removing them from the 125 Tribuna, January 23, 1974, 20. 126 Tribuna, January 17, 1973, 20. Tribuna, January 2, 1974, 20.

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

163

Czech nation. They sealed a ‘pact with the devil,’ but in the end were not even able to save their own people: ‘it is not only that the Zionists did not rescue many ordinary members of the movement from the transports, but through their active role they are co-responsible for the almost total extermination of the Jewish part of the Czech nation.’127 Notably, the fact that almost all of the leaders of the Zionist groups, including Redlich, had been murdered was not mentioned in this series of articles. According to Aleš, the Zionists attempted to remove prominent members of the Zionist movement, members of Jewish bourgeoisie and capitalist circles from the deportation lists. Moreover, they sacrificed eminent cultural activists and writers of a Czech-Jewish background, such as the popular writer of comedy and children’s books Karel Poláček and the philosopher and philologist Bedřich Baum.128 In Theresienstadt, Redlich worked in the Commission that had the right to exclude people from deportation trains to the East in the event that they were deemed necessary for the running of the ghetto. Redlich was often approached by individuals who wanted to save their relatives or friends, and he mentally suffered from this ‘privileged’ position. In opposition, Aleš suggested that Zionists abused this position for the benefit of the movement, on some occasions even sending orphaned children to the East instead of the chaverim (Zionist pioneers). Redlich’s plans during the war to leave Europe after the liberation and move to Palestine were then presented as an effort to escape just retribution at the hands of the survivors and Czechoslovak justice: That is also why he’s waiting for the end of the war and his departure for Palestine, which would be an escape from his own conscience, an escape from those he met in the ghetto, and whom he wronged: ‘What happens when we get back after the war […] ? Our attitude to others? I now feel that, for me, my leaving (Aliyah) for Israel, is an escape. Escape from the people here in Europe, escape from my life here in the Diaspora, escape from the old life to the new. ’129 The manipulation of quotes from Redlich’s diary, taken entirely out of context, is omnipresent in Aleš’s articles. The Zionists, in Aleš’s view, had no right to represent Czech and Slovak Jews – Subcarpathian Jews were largely absent in postwar discourse – murdered during the war:

127 Tribuna, January 9, 1974, 20. 128 Tribuna, January 31, 1973, 20. 129 Tribuna, January 2, 9, 16, and 23, 1974.

164

chapter 3

Regardless of the subsequent tragic fate of their individual members, the Zionist self-government in Theresienstadt (and its executive bodies) was an organization that, in direct collaboration with the Nazis, ‘walked over dead bodies.’ They were complicit in the almost total extermination of the Jewish part of the Czech nation, most of whom, even in the face of death in Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek, never betrayed their faith in the Czech nation. The Czechoslovak people therefore rightfully include the dead of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz amongst the 360,000 murdered Czech and Slovak patriots. And we shall never forget them!130 This behavior was typical of the Zionist leadership during the war, or so Aleš claimed. In another article, written under the new penname Jiří Leša, he focused on the fate of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. Adam Czerniakow, the tragic hero who committed suicide rather than collaborate with the Germans in the organization of the transports to Treblinka, was characterized by Aleš as a former functionary of the American Zionist organization the Joint. This organization was considered an espionage agency by Communist Czechoslovakia and banned in the country from 1950 until 1981. As a member of the ‘collaborationist’ Council of Elders, Aleš continued, Czerniakow misinformed the ‘workers’ in the Warsaw ghetto when he kept them under the impression that the Jews were peacefully living in their new settlements in the East. According to Aleš, the ‘Jewish bourgeoisie and their Zionist leadership’ betrayed the Jewish workers and, in cooperation with a small group of Ukrainian and Latvian nationalists together with 50 ss men, deported 300,000 Jews to their deaths. International Jewish agencies were informed about the Holocaust by Jan Karski, whom Aleš wrongly introduced as a member of the Jewish underground movement in the Warsaw ghetto, but did nothing to help the European Jews: ‘It is understandable that the Zionists, who collaborated with the Nazis in the extermination of the assimilated European Jews, were and are silent about their complicity in this crime.’131 This reference to the supposed silence during the war was evidently contrasted with the current protests of the international Jewish agencies against the ‘alleged’ persecution of Jews in the Communist countries.132 130 Tribuna, January 23, 1974, 20. 131 Tribuna, June 9, 1976, 20. 132 These articles triggered efforts of Israeli historians and publicists to research the history of Jewish Councils in Theresienstadt and Prague. Several years later, Livia Rothkirchen, one of the chief historians of Yad Vashem published a series of articles on the Jewish

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

165

In this way, the concerns of the State of Israel and international Jewish o­ rganizations regarding the fate of Jews in the Eastern Bloc were deflected with references to the past Zionist negotiations with Nazi Germany and fabricated stories about a Zionist contribution to the Final Solution. According to this logic, the Zionists, a term that acquirred the vaguest possible meaning, had no moral standing to criticize the situation in the Eastern Bloc. Their past and present crimes against humanity, including their direct contribution to the genocide of Jewish and Czech communities during the war, revoked this privilege. However, Aleš saw a clear connection between the behavior of Zionists in the Theresienstadt ghetto and what he described as their current imperialist, even ‘fascist,’ policies in the Middle East. The Zionist education of Jewish children in the ghetto was, he claimed, only the preparation for a future imperialist colonization of the Middle East. Redlich’s comments about the need for the Jews to learn Hebrew, as well as Arabic, were explained as a laying of the groundwork for the subjugation of the indigenous population in Palestine and the occupation of the Arab territories: At the time of the greatest Nazi expansion and their extermination of nations, Zionists thus dreamt of seizing foreign Arab territories, but they created real prerequisites for that by learning the language of the nation they wanted to colonize.133 Furthermore, the publicists in Tribuna, with Aleš in the first row, often published personal attacks against those who criticized Communist policies against the Jewish population. History shaped the present. These individuals were labeled as renegades of the Communist movement or/and Zionists. Their belonging to non-Czech cultures was overtly emphasized. When the chairman of the International Committee of Jews from Czechoslovakia Karl Baum criticized the Czechoslovak government (and Aleš’s ­articles in Tribuna, which was characteristic of his organization from the late-1960s ­onwards), he was depicted as a former journalist of Prager ­Tagblatt, a ­German language (non-Czech) newspaper in Prague. In a similar f­ashion, Avigdor ­Dagan, a ‘sworn Zionist,’ was described as a graduate of Prague ­German ­University. It was emphasized, in the case of the Professor of German ­studies Council in Czechoslovakia. In 1981, Ruth Bondy, a survivor of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, published a biography of Jacob Edelstein, a Zionist head of the Jewish Council in Theresienstadt between 1941 and January 1943, who was later – together with his whole family – murdered in Birkanau. 133 Tribuna, January 16, 1974, 20.

166

chapter 3

Eduard ­Goldstücker who spent the war in London, that he had asked the Czechoslovak exile government to fund his chair in German Studies at the moment when Germans were exterminating the Czech nation.134 In an effort to link the proposed dark collaborationist past of ‘Zionists’ with the reform movement in the late-1960s, Bohatka entitled an article ‘Zionism with “human face.”’ This was one of his most viscious attacks on the wartime Zionist leadership, especially on the last Jewish elder of Theresienstadt, the Vienna Rabbi Benjamin Murmelstein. It was an evident reference to Socialism ‘with human face,’ as the reform movement in 1968 called their efforts to transform the rigid Communist Czechoslovakia into a more open society.135 The ‘Zionists’ were presented as an alien people to the culture of the Czech and Slovak nations, including those individuals of Jewish origin: No, the Zionists are not heirs to the legacy of the dead martyrs of the Czech and Slovak nations, who underwent martyrdom for the freedom of their homeland. Nor are they spokesmen for living Czechoslovak citizens of Jewish origin whose homeland is Socialist Czechoslovakia.136 The campaign against the Zionists as collaborators and followers of the Nazis continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s.137 In 1986, Josef Šebesta, identified as an official in the Czechoslovak interior ministry, published a novel entitled In the Promised Land? (V zemi zalíbené?). The book, which falsely presented itself as the first study on Israeli history,138 tells a story of Leo and Elza, a Jewish couple who emigrated from Europe to Palestine in the 1930s. As the book cover promised, the author followed the story of two ordinary Jews and offered a ‘fundamental depiction of the history of a state, which is especially now at the center of political affairs.’139 Šebesta did not hide what this ‘fundamental depiction’ ought to be, and portrayed ‘Zionists’ as racist oppressors who knew when to pull out the antisemitism card. Zionists believe that ‘people in the world are by nature antisemites. They go to extremes and assert that if a

134 Tribuna, May 17, 1972, 20 and May 24, 1972, 21; Tribuna, June 6, 13 and 20, 1973; Tribuna, ­January 17, 1973, 20. 135 Tribuna, January 31, 1973, 20. 136 Ibid. 137 Tribuna, July 14, 1982, 9. 138 Erich Terner and Edita Terner, Stát Izrael: malá země velkých problémů. (Praha: Orbis, 1950); Arnošt Lustig, Miláček (Praha: Československý spisovatel, 1969). 139 Josef Šebesta, V zemi zaslíbené? (Praha: Melantrich, 1986).

The ‘Jew’ as a Reminder

167

­single Jew stepped on Mongolia, immediately a natural instinct of antisemitism would arise there. Zionists also claim that they are the only oppressed minority in the world.’140 In the book, Šebesta accused the historian and popular writer Erich Kulka, an ‘informer of the Gestapo in Vsetín,’ of collaboration with the Nazis during the war.141 Kulka stayed in Czechoslovakia after 1948 and only left for Israel in 1968.142 He was under surveillance by the Secret Police from 1960 onwards because of his contacts with the Israeli legation in Prague, Simon Wiesenthal in Vienna and the Yad Vashem in Israel. The question of his alleged collaboration with the Gestapo in Vsetín was one of the main fields of the investigation performed by the Secret Police, though they had to conclude that there was no direct evidence supporting the claim. The first public accusations against Kulka emerged in the late-1960s and 1970s. The Secret police had discovered his lobbying directed at the Czechoslovak Jewish youth, on holidays in Yugoslavia in the late 1960s, to emigrate to Israel. Aleš thus characterized him as Kulka-Schön (Schön was his native name), an informer of Gestapo and member of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando, a special unit of prisoners who serviced the gas chambers and crematoria.143 It all stemmed from the name ‘Kulka’ being mentioned during the postwar interrogation of a member of the Gestapo.144 The renewed attacks in Šebesta’s book, however, triggered Kulka’s response; he filed a libel suit in Czechoslovakia. The trial took almost two years, during which some of the Czechoslovak newspapers continued their defamatory ­tirades against Kulka.145 Šebesta and other journalists quoted articles by Aleš/ Bohatka from the early-1970s as the source of the allegation. Other newspapers simply stated that the libel suit was another attack by Zionist conspirators against Communist Czechoslovakia. Yet, the trial also indicated that the situation in Czechoslovakia was changing. Before the end of the proceedings, the Melantrich Press, which published Šebesta’s book, withdrew the r­ emaining 140 Ibid., 17. 141 See also Jiří Tichý, “Krátce ke knize Josefa Šebesty,” Revolver Revue, no. 9 (1988): np. 142 Ibid. 143 They consistenly referred to him as Kulka-Schön, a practice revealed already during the campaigns against the Party enemies in the 1950s, to stress his alleged non-Czech background. Tribuna, May 17, 1972 20 and May 24, 1972 21. 144 abs, H-665, Operace Krkavec, Závěrečná zpráva, March 25, 1968. Unfortunately, these highly biased confidential reports by the Secret Police are now sometimes used by historians to reach conclusions about Kulkas’ private live during and after the war. 145 Haló sobota, December 17, 1988, 3.

168

chapter 3

unsold copies from bookstores.146 Even more surprisingly, the Prague court decided in September 1989 – two months before the Velvet revolution – in Kulka’s favor, though it only ordered that the publisher had to publish an apology. There was no indemnification, and Melantrich Press was not obliged to destroy the remaining copies of the book.147 Nevertheless, already before the revolution, the Czechoslovak (Communist) justice put boundaries, however vague, on the Communist distortion of history.

146 Ibid. Also, a delegation of the Central Committee of the cpc visited Israel in April 1987 – though it did not lead to the re-establishment of official relations. 147 Ibid.

chapter 4

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’1 On the last Friday of July 1972, Ján Kalina, by then already in custody for six months, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. Kalina, who survived the war as a Jew under a false identity as shown earlier, was found guilty of three crimes: first, he played records of an ‘offensive content’ to his friends and colleagues; second, he publicly asserted that antisemitism was a state policy of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic; third, he sent documents to Belgium in which he mocked the Socialist order. The record Kalina played in the safety of his own home was Karel Kryl’s Bratříčku, zavírej vrátka. He had bought it legally before it was completely sold out in September 1969, a year after the Warsaw Pact invasion that Kryl responded to in his debut album. The documents he sent abroad contained a copy of Kalina’s book of jokes and anecdotes, marketed freely in Czechoslovakia until 1970. With historical irony, the authorities could not stop the distribution of the satirical book in Czechoslovakia simply because the 25,000 printed copies had sold out too quickly.2 At the core of the fabricated process against Kalina and the charge of offending the republic in particular was an article published in Pravda (Bratislava) which promoted František J. Kolár’s book Sionismus a antisemitismus (Zionism and Antisemitism), a key example of antisemitism in Czechoslovakia during the so-called period of normalization, the era after the Soviet-led invasion of August 1968. The lengthy article, signed by Ján Novák, was most likely authored by the leading Slovak pro-Soviet journalist Miloš Marko. The text was more than just a review of Kolár’s book. It elaborated on many of the book’s arguments and placed them in a context better understandable for the Slovak reader, reaching far beyond the originally stated attack against Zionism. Hence, Novák put the postwar restitution of Jewish property at the forefront, criticising rich Jewish capitalists while completely disregarding the wartime Slovak state and the state-sponsored looting of Jewish property during the Second World War. In some parts, for instance when writing about the ‘epidemics of Jewish literature on the topic of concentration camps’ in the 1950s and the emergence of Jews as ‘“martyrs,” oppressed, kneaded, defenceless people’, Novák (Marko) adopted

1 Ján Kalina, Odpočúvaj v pokoji, čiže, Basa story (Bratislava: Vydavateľstvo pt, 2004), 17. 2 Dušan Tarangel, “Tisíc a jeden vtip,” Kultura.sme.sk, March 21, 2013, http://kultura.sme .sk/c/6738327/tisic-a-jeden-vtip.html.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004362444_006

170

chapter 4

Kolár’s words as his own, thereby making it hard to distinguish between the author and the reviewer: Simply, the well-known Jewish trait of making the worst of things and the imagined hurt of a minority that had been oppressed for centuries began again, even though here what remained of antisemitism was now only negligible, insignificant, and somehow sporadic. Zionist pseudohumanism became an integral part of Czech and Slovak literature, and they ­presented it – like liberalism and revisionism – as the only ‘real’, ‘democratic’, and ‘humanist’ Socialism.3 Kolár’s book, as well as Novák’s (Marko’s) adaptation for Slovak readership, at times bordered on the language employed by the Stalinists in the early-1950s. Labels such as opportunists, imperialists, and aggressors were only a few of the names Novák used against those allegedly standing in opposition to the Socialist order. As Kalina remembers, those who managed to adjust their views quickly enough to fit the normalization era were seen as the ‘“healthy core of the party”; fascist radicals called themselves “left-wingers,” while those standing by democratic principles became “right-wingers” and “counterrevolutionaries.” When they write “Zionist,” they mean “Jew.”’4 The image of the ‘Jew’ as a ‘Zionist’ (and the image of the ‘Zionist’ as a ‘Jew’) became the most prominent feature of the Czechoslovak discourses on the Jews in the second half of the twentieth century during the long Communist rule (1948–89). The normalization era represented only the final stage in the development of the Czech and Slovak perceptions of Zionism. The uses and abuses of this image had their sources in the prewar and wartime period. That is why we need to take into account the nature of the political discourses on Zionism already present during the war and its immediate aftermath before we move on to the discussion of the Communist understanding of Zionism, Zionists, antisemitism and anti-Zionism. During the twentieth century, Zionism – a Jewish nationalist movement – became one of the most influential Jewish ideological streams worldwide. The political movement, firmly established in the 1890s, gathered strength in the first half of the twentieth century. Several diverse ideological branches developed within the Zionist movement, so the group was never homogeneous. The emergence of the organized Zionist movement brought about a new dynamic concerning the relationship between Jewish communities and majority 3 Pravda, July 27, 1970. 4 Kalina, Odpočúvaj v pokoji, čiže, Basa story, 17.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

171

s­ ocieties all over the world. With the development of modern nationalism and modern nation states, the governing authorities articulated new sets of expectations from their populations. The idea of national loyalty and acceptance of a particular national culture began to guide the complex relations between governments and their populations. The attitude of the leading Czechoslovak politicians, publicists and society at large towards Zionism, along with the image of the ‘Jew’ as a ‘Zionist,’ developed over time. From the very beginning, it was inextricably linked to a nation state’s attitude toward a minority – the Jews – that was perceived as professing a different set of loyalties that were not always neatly aligned with the expectations of the current political elites. The political and geopolitical situation in Europe, East-Central Europe in particular, shaped these sentiments towards Zionists. The changing attitudes in regards to the existence of ethnic minorities in East-Central Europe between 1918 and 1948,5 although not primarily aimed at the Jews – a diminishing minority that was not the most vocal p ­ olitically – bore implications for the majority societies’ perceptions of the Zionists’ position in European states. The development of the colonization project in Palestine and later the establishment of the State of Israel further changed the agenda and inevitably impacted the image of Zionists in Czechoslovakia. Concurrently, after the Second World War, the rise of radical leftist – internationalist – ­ideology in East-Central Europe, which culminated in the establishment of the Communist regimes, further shaped the perception of the Jews and Zionists. Another point to consider was the volatile, often imagined, relationship between Zionism and antisemitism (not to mention anti-Zionism). The constant existence of antisemitic prejudices and discourses, often in relation to the activities of the Zionist movement, either in the sense that Zionism would lead to the disappearance of antisemitism or that it was a source of antisemitism raises the final question to be considered in this chapter. Thus what we explore here is the perceived contribution of Zionism and Zionists to the worldwide solution to the Jewish question, or to its perpetuation. At the core of the dispute was the perceived Jews’ failure to submerge into the recognized nations of the postwar republic, the Czechs and Slovaks. From a Marxist-Leninist perspective, the Jews of Czechoslovakia did not represent a nationality of their own, and it was only the Zionist leaders who, even after the creation of Israel, kept reviving the notion of a Jewish nation in the diaspora. 5 Marina Cattaruzza, “”Last Stop Expulsion” – The Minority Question and Forced Migration in East-Central Europe: 1918–49,” Nations and Nationalism 16, no. 1 (2010): 108–26.

172

chapter 4

By failing to assimilate, Zionists once again confined Jews to a ghetto. Hence, it was the Zionist movement, according to the Party ideologues, that prevented antisemitism from vanishing once and for all.6 Kalina’s comments we quote at the beginning of the chapter suggest that the anti-Zionist campaign took on a new twist after 1968, but the ambiguous relationship of the Czechoslovak state towards Zionism predated the normalization period. Going back to prewar and wartime Czechoslovakia, we first demonstrate the conditional support of the Czechoslovak political elites, including Communists, for the Zionist project. To do so we need to start by e­ xploring the historical roots of the image of the Jew as a Zionist.

Czechoslovakia and Zionism until the Communist Takeover

Zionists developed their political and cultural activities in Czechoslovakia long before the collapse of the interwar republic in late-1938. The movement originated in both Bohemia and Moravia in the late-19th century as well as in Upper Hungary that later became Slovakia. After 1918, the Czechoslovak political leadership supported the activities of the Zionist movement, at least in their official proclamations, yet the practical support for the Zionists’ cultural and national program in the republic was limited. The Czechoslovak state allowed, but did not force, the Jews to belong to the Zionist movement; notably, there were no proposed emigration schemes like in Poland and Romania in the late-1930s. Being a Zionist was a matter of choice, and the declaration of Jewish nationality – not necessarily active Zionism – was for some also an escape mechanism in addition to being a way to manifest political loyalty to the new republic.7 At the same time, we need to differentiate between the political and ­national-cultural construction of a Zionist. Since a large part of the Jewish community preferred German or Hungarian as their language of daily communication, this Czechoslovak decision was influenced by the effort to weaken the territorial minorities, which often professed overt or covert irredentist tendencies. The declaration of Jewish nationality was then seen as a manifestation of loyalty to the new Czechoslovak state. The Czechoslovak political establishment often doubted the existence of Zionism in Czechoslovakia as a fully fledged national movement, and the Jews were first of all seen as a religious group. In addition to this, the belonging to 6 Tribuna, May 17, 1972, 20 and May 24, 1972, 21. 7 Klein-Pejšová, Mapping Jewish Loyalties in Interwar Slovakia, 47–85.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

173

the Jewish national movement was often perceived solely as a veil for the real belonging to the German or Hungarian nation. That being said, the Czechoslovak state supported Jewish emigration to Palestine for those determined to fulfil the practical Zionist program.8 This situation dramatically changed after the disintegration of interwar Czechoslovakia during the Second World War when the official Czechoslovak political leadership established the centre of the resistance movement in Western Europe, mainly in Paris and London, under the leadership of President Edvard Beneš. The political program of the London-based exiles – who later formed the cornerstone of the postwar government with the Moscowbased Communists – was to work on the reestablishment of Czechoslovakia as a nationally homogeneous state of Slav character. Seen as a cause of past and future troubles, ethnic minorities, especially the Germans and Hungarians, did not have a place in in the country any more.9 The attitude toward the Jews was more complex. The Czechoslovak exiles continued supporting Zionism, and Zionists, as long as they fought for their national homeland, were commended for their efforts. It was only the colonization of Palestine that transformed the Jews into a nation in the eyes of the Czechoslovak politicians – in particular Beneš, the main person articulating the Czechoslovak vision on Zionism and the Jewish question prior to 1945. The conditions of the diaspora, Beneš suggested, adversely affected the Jews themselves as well as the attitude of others toward the minority. Only an independent and self-confident attitude – when the Jews had begun to colonize their ancient homeland despite all adversities and hardships – was the true way of Zionism and Jewish nationalism. Keeping that in mind, the opinion of Czechoslovak politicians and much of the public was that a Zionist could never be Czech or Slovak. Those not belonging to the narrowly defined Slovaks or Czechs simply had no place in postwar Czechoslovakia. This rhetoric appears also in what little was written 8 For a detailed history of Zionism in Czechoslovakia see Tatjana Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia: Minority Nationalism and the Politics of Belonging (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2016); Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia; Wein, History of the Jews in the Bohemian Lands; Jan Láníček, Arnošt Frischer and the Jewish Politics of Early 20th-Century Europe (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). 9 Ray M. Douglas, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012); Philipp Ther and Ana Siljak, Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944–1948 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001); Stanek, Zrada a pád: hlinkovští separatisté a tak zvaný slovenský stát; Detlef Brandes, Der Weg zur Vertreibung, 1938–1945: Pläne und Entscheidungen zum “Transfer” der Deutschen aus der Tschechoslowakei und aus Polen (München: R. Oldenbourg, 2001).

174

chapter 4

on the Jewish question and Zionism during the war in the exile press.10 Such strong national sentiments, caused by the prewar destruction of Czechoslovakia and the German occupation, led to the reinforcement of the Czech and Slovak identity that was built on ethnic and linguistic principles.11 Whereas the conditions in prewar Czechoslovakia made it possible for Zionists, or Jewish nationalists, to exist in the country, the new attitude toward minorities turned the situation upside down. Political loyalty was completely replaced by a demand for national homogeneity. The exiles formulated this program in the early stages of the war, and it became a key component of their efforts to solve the Jewish question after the liberation of Czechoslovakia.12 Public statements of Czechoslovak politicians reveal how the authorities perceived Jews, suggesting that Jews had the option to choose whether they wanted to be a part of the Czech or Slovak nation or instead wanted to perceive their Jewishness in ethnic terms. Concurrently, their choice came with a ­burden – if they wanted to be Zionists and took their Zionism seriously, they had to give up their Czechoslovak citizenship and move to Palestine. What is more, the task of the Zionists was to help with the solution of the Jewish question worldwide. Jews had to decide where their loyalties stood. Only those who felt and spoke Czech or Slovak and desired to share their future with the Czech or Slovak nations had a place in the liberated republic. The civic leadership in liberated Czechoslovakia accepted this discourse.13 Even otherwise liberal journalists and publicists revealed similar sentiments. In the early postwar years, the writer and publicist Míla Pachnerová repeatedly published articles in Dnešek – the successor of interwar liberal Přítomnost, published by the famous journalist Ferdinand Peroutka – in which she combatted existing antisemitic sentiments in society. Yet, her articles point to the complex environment in postwar Czechoslovakia where even authors who had fought against antisemitism kept stressing the need to solve the Jewish question in the country. In Pachnerová’s opinion, Zionists could not stay in Czechoslovakia except as foreigners – or guests – and ‘behave as such.’ If not behaving appropriately, they would have to leave the country altogether.14 10 11

Čechoslovák, January 30, 1942, 5. Miroslav Hroch, “Central European Path to the Modern Nation: Myth and Reality,” The Annual of Language & Politics and Politics of Identity x, no. 1 (2016): 7–15. 12 Láníček, Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews, 1938–48. 13 Ibid., 42–75 and 116–136. 14 Dnešek, June 6, 1947, 163f. Pachnerová was also one of the few mainstream journalists who on several occasions published ­articles about the Jewish persecution during the war. She kept receiving letters in which people complained about her efforts to point to the fate of

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

175

The Czechoslovak politicians bestowed the burden of helping secure peace upon the Zionists. They had to make their contribution to the solution of the minority problems in postwar Europe and help with the transformation from multinational states to nation states. Beneš had already commented in late1940 that ‘one of the biggest tasks for the postwar period must be the complete eradication of antisemitism. In order to achieve this, Zionism is the best instrument, but only consistent Zionism.’15 Hence, the Czechoslovak political elite expected that the Zionists would contribute to the disappearance of antisemitism. Beneš repeatedly asserted this vision after the war when he publicly suggested in a conversation with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: The establishment of a Jewish Home in Palestine is a necessity for all nations, because antisemitism is a regrettable but practically inevitable social phenomenon. It will not vanish till the creation of a Jewish country granting citizenship to all Jewry.16 In the view of the Czechoslovak president, antisemitism not only threatened Jews but also poisoned the minds of people in general, and could lead to instability in postwar Europe. Antisemitism was the first step that right-wing political radicals – the National Socialists and their collaborators (Beneš meant the Tiso regime) – had utilized on their way to absolute power. They had attacked the weakest minority to garner support before turning against other social sectors and later against neighbouring countries. The Jews might have been the first target, but the radicals aimed for the rule over other nations as well. Hence, the proposed physical removal of a large part of the Jews from Czechoslovakia was seen as the major benefit of practical Zionism in the minds of Czechoslovak politicians. Consequently, they invested tremendous energy to facilitate the migration of Jews to the Middle East and supported the creation of the Jewish state after the war. This theme was not really discussed in the pages of the exile press, and hence we cannot offer further conclusions about alternative discourses. Likewise it is almost impossible to offer any insights into the perception of Zionism by ‘ordinary’ people in Czechoslovakia, in contrast to their views of the Jews as perceived agents of Germanization or Magyarization. the Jews during the war. On the other hand, Pachnerová supported the idea that German Jews should be expelled from the country together with other Germans. 15 Láníček, Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews, 1938–48, 50. 16 Daily News Bulletin (jta), 12 August 1945, “Benes Tells jta Correspondent Anti-Semitism Exists in Slovakia but not in Bohemia”; see also akpr, D11484/47, excerpt from Aufbau, August 7, 1945.

176

chapter 4

Czechoslovak politicians believed that the relocation of Zionists would be in the best interest of the people of Palestine and that both parts of society – Jews and Arabs – would live in peace and prosperity. Expressing what Edward W. Said has usefully called the Orientalist view,17 Beneš suggested that the ­Zionists faced a formidable task in the Middle East: Jews now have the responsible task of assimilating into the big family of the Semitic nations and bringing peace and order to them, to lay the foundations for economic prosperity and a just social order. I express the hope that a progressive arrangement of relations in the territory to which the Jews around the world are now turning their eyes will, once all the momentary troubles have been dealt with, facilitate the ultimate amicable coexistence of all the inhabitants of Palestine, and will thus contribute to the well-being of all mankind as well.18 The support for practical Zionism was articulated in very similar terms by Jan Masaryk, the popular Czechoslovak foreign minister (1940–48) and son of the first Czechoslovak president, though he put more emphasis on moral support for Jewish national aspirations. During the war and in the early postwar years, he consistently presented the creation of the Jewish state as the obligation of the world to the Jews: ‘The Jews have been especially singled out and b­ ecame the chosen people in the worst possible sense of the word. […] To them and their fellow victims all over the world you and I owe a tremendous debt.’19 For Masaryk, there could not be ‘decent peace’ in the world unless the international community solved the Jewish problem – through Zionism. Masaryk did not believe that the partition of Palestine, proposed by the United Nations in 1947, was an ideal solution, but he hoped that both the Arabs and Jews would be able to live together in two separate states within Palestine for the benefit of the Middle East. In contrast to Beneš, Masaryk believed it was the Shoah – the concentration camps and gas chambers – that moved the world to support Zionism and allowed the surviving Jews to have a state: The main motive for me has always been the Jewish problem of humanity. What has concerned me the most is the fact that an entire nation, and not exactly the worst one, has for centuries been exposed to c­ onstant 17 18 19

Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). Věstník žno, December 19, 1947, 389. Daily News Bulletin (jta), 21 June 1945, Jewish Problem Must Be Solved Before a Decent Peace is Established, Masaryk Says.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

177

danger and, after the last horrific murdering, has been searching for its own home. I think we have no right to call ourselves a cultured nation until we solve the Jewish problem and until the terrible ghost of the ­Wandering Jew, wandering the world without a home, vanishes.20 The main personalities in the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and the civic part of the postwar government consistently supported the Zionist project. Although their motivations and rhetoric differed somewhat, the main aim was clear: Zionism would lead to a positive solution of the Jewish question in Czechoslovakia and in the world at large, and in a long run, it would contribute to collective security in a postwar world. Conversely, the opinion of Zionism by leaders of the Communist Party, which during the war rose to prominence in the Czechoslovak resistance movement, remained ambiguous. In Communist orthodoxy, Zionism was perceived as bourgeois nationalism that detracted workers from a socialist revolution that would establish an internationalist and classless society.21 Already in 1903, Lenin slandered the ‘Zionist fable of an eternal antisemitism’ in an attack on the Bund, a secular and anti-Zionist Jewish Socialist Party that played a major role in founding the Russian Social Democratic Party.22 He insisted that antisemitism could be defeated only by the union of the Jewish and the non-Jewish proletariat. With their hostility towards assimilation, Zionists kindled racial difference and national animosity.23 Furthermore, the Communists perceived Zionism as an ideological enemy of Communist internationalism, an offspring of Capitalism and an imperialist movement that was suppressing the rights of the indigenous Arab population in the Middle East. Even in the interwar period, they were often waging bitter struggles against Zionists for the souls of poor Jewish communities in the Eastern parts of Czechoslovakia.24

20 21 22

23

24

Věstník žno, February 6, 1948, 61. Vladimir Iljic Lenin, “Does the Jewish Proletariat Need an ‘Independent Political Party’?” Iskra, no. 34 (February 15, 1903). Vladimír Iljič Lenin, “Potřebuje židovský proletariát ‚samostatnou politickou stranu‘?” in V.I. Lenin, Spisy, Svazek 6, leden 1902–srpen 1903 (Praha: Státní nakladatelství politické literatury, 1953), 333. Zvi Gitelman, “The Evolution of Soviet Anti-Zionism: From Principle to Pragmatism,” in Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism in the Contemporary World, ed. Robert S. Wistrich (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990), 11–25. Yeshayahu A Jelinek, The Carpathian Diaspora: The Jews of Subcarpathian Rus’ and ­Mukachevo, 1848–1948 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia.

178

chapter 4

The Communist attitude towards Zionism and the State of Israel during the late-1940s and into the 1950s has been subject to extensive historical enquiry. The Soviet Union played a central role in setting the official political course of action among Communist parties. In the spring of 1947, Joseph V. Stalin suddenly changed his negative attitude toward the partition of Palestine and played a pivotal role in the decision of socialist countries to support the creation of ­Israel that, as he hoped, would turn into a new member of the socialist camp. On May 14, 1947, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Andrei Gromyko, declared Soviet support for the partition of Palestine – if no other solution was feasible. The Czechoslovak case shows that the Soviet volte-face caught local Communists by surprise. Still, their very reserved attitude toward Zionism did not change, and they remained sceptical about the possibility that Israel could be turned into a new member of the progressive bloc of socialist countries. The Czechoslovak Communist leadership survived the war in exile in ­Moscow and London. After 1943 and in contradiction to their internationalist ideology, the Communists decided to support the transformation of Czechoslovakia into a nation state and expel unwanted minority groups. The exiles were also the first in the Communist movement who attempted to articulate the Party vision of the postwar treatment of the so-called Jewish question, though they continually avoided the question of Zionism. In mid-1944, Václav Kopecký, a leading Communist émigré in Moscow, articulated the Communist confusion about the Jewish question in an article published in Československé listy. Kopecký’s exposé voiced the new Communist nationalist vision of Czechoslovakia, by which time they had already abandoned the internationalist rhetoric and, for example, supported the planned expulsion of Sudeten Germans. Moreover, one of the main tasks for the postwar period – and here Kopecký agreed with the London-based exiles – was to destroy antisemitism as a reactionary, anti-Soviet, anti-working class and anti-democratic movement. Both the Jews and the Czechoslovak society had to contribute to the solution of the Jewish question. For Kopecký, the assimilation of the Jewish population in the socially and economically transformed Czech or Slovak nations would be the main avenue through which the Jewish question would ‘forever ­disappear […] as a decoy for reactionary elements.’25 Yet, Kopecký kept systematically avoiding the question of what would happen to those who belonged to the Jewish national movement. At this point, the Communists still rejected the creation of a Jewish nation state in Palestine, but the Soviet Union temporarily allowed the development 25

Václav Kopecký, Antisemitismus poslední zbraní nacismu (Praha: Svoboda, 1945), 16. (­Reprint from Československé listy, July 15, 1944).

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

179

of Jewish national culture and consciousness in their territories during the war (for example, in the form of the Jewish Antifascist Committee26). Along with this, the Czechoslovak Communists toned down their previous criticism of Zionism. Even for Kopecký, belonging to the Jewish nation was suddenly a positive choice equivalent to belonging to the Czech or Slovak nation. After the war, according to the Communist ideologue, ‘nobody will prevent Czechoslovak citizens of Jewish origin from considering themselves a separate Jewish nationality, and thus forming a minority, which will be accorded all the rights, including those of religious nature.’27 He completely ignored, however, the question of Zionism and Palestine. He repeated this statement again in September 1945, shortly after the liberation of Czechoslovakia. Kopecký remarked that although the Czechoslovak government would prefer complete assimilation of the Jewish population in the country, nobody would limit the civic rights of those who would like to consider themselves as belonging to the Jewish nation.28 Leaders of the Communist Party temporary acknowledged the possibility for Jews in the diaspora to develop their national consciousness, though the idea was articulated only vaguely. The real meaning of Kopecký’s words remained unclear. If the Czechoslovak state was transformed into a purely Slav country, how would the nature of this state be reconciled with the existence of a separate Jewish national minority in its midst? Kopecký was a politician who often changed his opinion based on the current priorities of the Communist Party and of the Soviet Union. He carefully toed the political line established in Moscow, and he eventually became a supporter of the State of Israel during the brief period of Communist friendship with the Jewish state before turning into one of the most vicious Czechoslovak antisemites in the early-1950s. In contrast, other Communists in the crucial years of 1944–50 remained faithful to the Marxist orthodoxy and did not accept the new vision of Communism that acknowledged the progressiveness of the Zionist project. During the war and in the first postwar years, a group of German Communists from Czechoslovakia – some of them from Jewish backgrounds, most notably Karel Kreibich (a non-Jew), Pavel Reiman (previously Paul Reimann) and Louis ­Fürnberg – repeatedly voiced their opinion on the Jewish question in the country. In their case, we need to consider their precarious personal situation shortly after the end of the war, when they, as outsiders (even double 26

Shimon Redlich, War, Holocaust, and Stalinism: A Documented Study of the Jewish AntiFascist Committee in the ussr (Luxembourg: Harwood Academic, 1995). 27 Kopecký, Antisemitismus poslední zbraní nacismu, 15. 28 Věstník žno, October 1, 1945, 11.

180

chapter 4

o­ utsiders) in the nationally homogenizing societies – people coming from German (Kreibich) or German-Jewish cultures (Reiman and Fürnberg) – faced uncertainties about their own future in the country.29 Kreibich was a Czechoslovak-German Communist in exile in London and later briefly became the chairman of the Union for Czechoslovak-Israeli Friendship only to work as the Czechoslovak Ambassador to Moscow after that. Already during the war, he fought against antisemitism and repeatedly suggested that there was a place in Czechoslovakia for all the Jews who had remained faithful to the republic and wanted to contribute to the reconstruction after the war.30 On the other hand, he completely ignored the question of Jewish nationalism and Zionism. Reiman, born into a Jewish family in Brno, was more forthcoming in his scepticism about the Zionist solution to the Jewish question. He was a veteran of the Communist Party and Comintern who had spent the war in ­London while the Nazis murdered 14 of his closest relatives. He belonged to those Communists who often articulated views wavering from the Party leadership and had been criticised by Moscow for political and ideological deviations. For Reiman, the war and the Shoah solved the Jewish question. Not only had a majority of the Jews been murdered, but there were no Jewish Capitalists left in the country; the suffering at the hands of Germans also solved the national dimension of the Jewish question; the Jews would shed the German parts of their identity. Reiman suggested that among those who fought during the war or survived the camps, socialist and progressive ideals prevailed. The survivors would soon be able to fully assimilate into the Czech and Slovak nation and solve the Jewish problem once and for all. Surprisingly, although a devoted Communist, Reiman overtly addressed the readers by referring to ‘us,’ ‘the people of Jewish origin,’ which demonstrates how the Shoah strengthened or reinforced ties within the Jewish community. Yet, Reiman rejected Zionism as a solution to the Jewish question, even accusing Zionists and the Anglo-American imperialists of artificially creating the problem of displaced persons in Germany with the i­ntention to further their 29

30

Michal Reiman, “O Poly Reimanovi (místo vzpomínek),” in Bolševismus, komunismus a radikální socialismus v Československu. Volume II, ed. Zdeněk Kárník and Michal Kopeček (Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny av čr, 2004), 63–83; Zdeněk Kárník, Michal Kopeček, and Michal Reiman, eds., “O Polym Reimanovi (pokračování). Místo vzpomínek,” in Bolševismus, komunismus a radikální socialismus v Československu. Volume IV (Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny av čr; Dokořán, 2005), 145–76; Jan Gerber, Ein Prozess in Prag. Das Volk gegen Rudolf Slánský und Genossen. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016). Karl Kreibich, Einheit, June 17, 1944, ‘Boehmische Juden’, 15–17. Karel Kreibich, “O židovské tradici a Masarykově humanismu,” Nové Československo, September 30, 1944.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

181

agenda in the Middle East. For Reiman, as for other orthodox Marxists, Zionists remained a reactionary faction of Jewish bourgeoisie and Capitalists.31 Kreibich and Reiman focused on what they perceived to be a positive solution to the Jewish question that was possible with the help of the establishment of a classless Communist society. In their eyes, any other solution could only lead to the perpetuation of the Jewish problem globally and was, by default, reactionary and anti-Communist. Reiman also clearly stated that Czechoslovakia could only be a country for those who fitted in nationally. If those who had remained loyal but felt that they did not belong in the country left Czechoslovakia and created their existence in other countries, the ‘Jewish question’ would be solved once and for all. In this case, however, Reiman clearly meant German and Hungarian-speaking Jews who would undergo full assimilation and integration into respective national communities. Zionism was outside of his framework of reference.32 There were common features in the ways in which both major political streams in postwar Czechoslovakia perceived the role of the Jews in the solution of the Jewish question nationally and in the protection of democracy and stability in Europe. The key difference remained that while the civic side of the government largely preferred the Zionist solution, the Communists – for the time being – remained silent about Palestine or, in the case of lower level politicians, outright rejected the Jewish nationalist movement. This alternative discourse also emerged among the renegades of the Communist Party who had been expelled from the movement before the war but remained fateful to Marxism in their ideological views. In particular, Záviš Kalandra and Stanislav Budín (whose orginal name was Bencion Bať), both active in postwar political life until at least the Communist takeover, voiced a sharp criticism of Zionism and Zionists.33

31 32 33

Pavel Reiman, “Židovská otázka dnes,” Tvorba 15, no. 32 (1946): 505–7. Pavel Reiman, “Ještě jednou o antisemitismu a židovské otázce,” Tvorba 15, no. 12 (1946): 667–69. Kalandra belonged to leading Communists in the interwar period before he was expelled from the Party for his criticism of the Moscow show trials in the 1930s. During the war, he was imprisoned in German concentration camps and after the liberation continued working for socialist parties. Budín was a member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party already in the 1920s and in the 1930s rose to prominence as the Editor-in-Chief of Rudé právo. In 1936, he was expelled from the Party for ‘right-wing opportunism’ and spent the war in the United States. Stanislav Budín, Jak to vlastně bylo (Praha: Torst, 2008); František Kohout, Socialisté a antisemitismus (Praha: Československá sociální demokracie, propagační oddělení, 1946), 12.

182

chapter 4

For Kalandra, antisemitism could be eradicated only with the help of S­ ocialism and internationalism. He had in fact already written against antisemitism before the war.34 In contrast to Kopecký, Kalandra directly turned against Z ­ ionism and Jewish bourgeois nationalism while additionally rejecting the idea of Jewish national assimilation. In a way very similar to the German philosopher Bruno Bauer more than a hundred years before, Kalandra called on the Jews to liberate themselves from Judaism: Education must provide the one correct solution to the Jewish question too. It is not Zionism, which is given to fascist tendencies, with its plan for the Jewish occupation of Palestine; it is not a hundred per cent biological assimilation, nor, of course – need one even emphasize this? – is it its racist opposite, the ‘purifying’ extermination of the Jews. It is nothing that would concern only the Jews; the Jewish question is a question of mankind, and Socialism shows the way to a joint solution: in a brotherhood of free nations, finally without phony chauvinistic arrogance, there will be a place even for the dispersed Jewish nation, which, liberated from the pressure of a hostile environment, will liberate itself from its exclusivity.35 It is noteworthy that Kalandra’s discourse on Zionism, along with the connections he made between Zionism and fascism, resembled the rhetoric employed much later in the 1970s by the Communist normalizers in Czechoslovakia. Such perceptions of Zionism had deep roots among radical left-wing intellectuals. Moreover, Budín pointed to the class dimension of practical Zionism in Práce, a newspaper of trade unions. At the time when terrorist attacks by Jewish groups such as Etzel and Irgun plagued Palestine, Budín accused the Jewish bourgeoisie of supporting terror because they wanted to create a Jewish state under British patronage rather than under the influence of the Soviet Union.36 Budín visited Palestine in mid-1947 at the wish of his wife, who had come from a Zionist family with relatives living in Jewish Palestine. Born into a large Jewish family in Galicia, Budín opposed Zionism from his early childhood and accepted the Socialist solution to the Jewish question. Much later, he wrote the following in his memoirs: 34

Pynsent, “Conclusory Essay,” 246. Pynsent quotes from Kalandra’s introduction to Antisemitismus a dělnická třída, written by Ferdinand Jeřábek in 1938 (Pynsent believes that Kalandra wrote the whole booklet, not just the introduction). 35 Kohout, Socialisté a antisemitismus, 22f. 36 Petr Bednařík, “Vztah židů a české společnosti na stránkách českého tisku v letech 1945– 1948” (Unpublished PhD Thesis, Charles University, Prague, 2002), 212. Bednařík quotes from Práce, August 24, 1947, 3.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

183

In opposition to the Zionist solution to the Jewish question – the idea of a Jewish national community, the return to the extinct Hebrew ­language that would create a new national bond, the idea of emigration, and the creation of a Jewish nation state in Palestine – we put the Socialist solution: class struggle and internationalism, rejection of Hebrew as a dead, language that is solely for religion, whose return is linked to clericalism, and Socialist revolution, which would eliminate antisemitism and would, among other things, also solve the Jewish question.37 With a wife coming from a large family of committed Zionists, Budín scaled down his criticism of Zionism after the war, becoming supportive of the ­national-liberation fight of the Jewish settlers against the British colonizers yet still stressing that Zionism was not for him. Likewise, although Budín was sympathetic to the Socialist kibbutzim, he viewed the emerging Israeli economy to be in favor of a capitalist way of managing economic affairs.38 Between 1945 and 1947, the left-wing press cautiously approached the topic of the Jewish colonization of Palestine. In their opinion, the only solution to the Middle-Eastern crisis was the creation of one state, which would secure the interests of both the Arab and Jewish working people, against the exploitation by the Jewish bourgeoisie and the Arab feudal leaders. Yet already at this time, Rudé právo – the mouthpiece of the Communist Party – warned that Zionism was getting in the thrall of imperialism as a trailblazer of the American efforts in order to get to the rich oil resources in the Middle East. Through their struggle against the Arab population, the Zionists were creating, according to the Communist newspaper, a new dimension of the Jewish problem in the world.39 Also in the following years, members of the Communist Party vacillated between practical realpolitical course set by Moscow, and own ideological doubts about the Zionist project.

Zionism as a Progressive Force?

The ideas expressed by Marxist intellectuals did not influence the actual direction of the governments’ policies in the crucial years of 1945–48. In the autumn of 1947, Moscow informed the national Communist parties that they ought 37 Budín, Jak to vlastně bylo, 407. On his background see, Ibid., 9–11, and 32f. 38 Ibid., 409f. 39 Bednařík, “Vztah židů a české společnosti na stránkách českého tisku v letech 1945–1948,” 205. Bednařík quotes from Rudé právo, August 15, 1947, 2. Rudé právo, April 19, 1947, 2.

184

chapter 4

to support diplomatically as well as practically the plans for the partition of Palestine.40 The backing by the Soviet Union and the Communist Parties became momentous, and the subsequent military support for Israel coming from Czechoslovakia was a major factor that decided the Israeli War of Independence. In Czechoslovakia, leading Communists suddenly assumed the p ­ osition of devoted supporters of practical Zionism, though not without reservations. Addressing the Jewish community in Czechoslovakia shortly after the approval of the partition plans in November 1947, Kopecký, now in the position of the Minister of Information, praised the Jewish colonists in Palestine. His assistant interpreted his views for the Jewish Community as follows: The creation of an independent Jewish state in Palestine undoubtedly means the creation of a base on which the lives of thousands of your ­fellow believers can healthily develop in the future. I am firmly convinced that this decision will expand the front of progressive, ­uncompromisingly anti-fascist, firmly democratic nations by one already proven warrior.41 The Communist leaders thus suddenly elevated the Zionist project among the progressive forces. According to Kopecký, the creation of a Jewish state would furthermore be the final step toward the full development of the Jews as a nation.42 This was based on the principles formulated by Stalin, who wrote: ‘A  nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.’43 Communist ideologues rejected that the Jews, living in a diaspora with no compact territory and with their ‘unhealthy’ social structures, could be considered a nation. The colonisation of Palestine and the socialist nature of kibbutzim removed major obstacles, and the hard life in Palestine transformed the Jewish community into a nation. In 1948, shortly before the declaration of Israeli independence, Kopecký reinforced this message in an interview with the Palestine Post: ‘We are w ­ itnessing 40 41 42 43

Jiří Dufek, Karel Kaplan, and Vladimír Šlosar, Československo a Izrael v letech 1947–1953: studie (Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny av čr, v nakl. Doplněk, 1993), 9. Věstník žno, December 12, 1947, 384. Věstník žno, February 6, 1948, 59. J.V. Stalin, Marxism and the National Question (first published in 1913) quoted in Erik van Ree, The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth Century Revolutionary P­ atriotism (London; New York: Routledge, 2003), 66.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

185

an amazing event, a moment of a historical turn and of a new, glorious chapter in the two thousand years’ history of the Jewish people. Now you can start a new life in your own country and your own language, in a free spiritual and economic development as any other free nation in the world.’44 For some S­ lovaks and Czechs ‘of Jewish origin’, nevertheless, this historical turn was met with mixed emotions. Livia Bitton-Jackson (Elli Friedmannová) recalls ­thousands of people, mostly survivors as herself, out in the center of Bratislava celebrating the un resolution on the partition of Palestine, passed on November 29, 1947. Yet when less then six months later Friedmannová was asked whether she was a Zionist as she had been seen celebrating the approval of the partition plans, she felt threatened. Her being both a Socialist and a Zionist needed to be explained to the authorities: I am seized by a momentary panic. For a member of the Socialist Teachers Union, this may be a dangerous admission to make. I quickly add, ‘But I am a loyal member of my union. I do not see any contradiction. One can be a Socialist and a Zionist simultaneously. There are socialist communes in Israel. The kibbutzim. They are based on Socialist principles. Some are even Marxist. Did you know that?’45 While the Zionist project now had the backing of the Communists, this support was only conditional, a theme that soon surfaced in public conversations. Kopecký identified necessary preconditions for the ultimate solution to the Jewish question in the world. Referring to statements by the famous SovietJewish writer Ilya Ehrenburg, Kopecký praised the fight of the Israeli soldiers against the ‘British mercenaries,’ but he concurrently warned Israelis and Jewish communities globally that the complete eradication of the Jewish problem was possible only through the victory of Socialism and the working class over nationalism, fascism and racism.46 Although Kopecký noted that Jewish ­Palestine was only defending itself against the attacks of the Arab neighbours, the Communist ideologue ultimately believed that the Arab working class would eventually realise that the only solution to the situation in Palestine was through the cooperation of all members of the working class.47 In a similar vein, another member of the Communist old guard born in Prague to a ­German-Jewish family who had taken part in the Russian Bolshevik revolution, 44 Věstník žno, February 20, 1948, 83f. 45 Jackson, My Bridges of Hope, 178; Bitton-Jackson, Mosty nádeje, 149. 46 Věstník žno, October 29, 1948, 478. 47 Věstník žno, February 20, 1948, 83f

186

chapter 4

Arnošt (Ernst) Kolman believed that the solution to the Jewish question could be achieved only through social liberation and cooperation with the progressive parts of the Palestinian Arab society.48 In particular, the hope that the new Jewish state would have a good memory about the forces that secured Israeli independence, which was expressed publicly by Kopecký at the time, sounds ominous from hindsight.49 The minister sent his sincere congratulations to the Jewish nation, but at the same time concluded that the creation of a Jewish state also meant the Jewish problem in the rest of the world would cease to exist. Jews who would decide to stay in diaspora would have to undergo complete assimilation and unconditionally support the nation in which they live.50 There would not be any special relationship between Jews in diaspora and the State of Israel. Moreover, Kolman had already criticised the Israeli leadership by this point because they ignored the fact that most Jews had already integrated into European societies and were not part of any global Jewish nation, as the Zionists claimed.51 These statements emphasise the conditionality of the Communist support for the Zionist project and, in contrast to Zionists, a narrow understanding of Jewish nationhood. The events in Czechoslovakia in late-February 1948 further complicated the situation. After a brief political crisis, the Communist Party established oneparty rule. The Communists officially declared that there was no racial persecution and all traces of antisemitism would eventually disappear together with the last remnants of the old Capitalist and bourgeois elements under the new regime in Czechoslovakia. The logic behind this was not hard to follow. If antisemitism was a product of fascism as well as Capitalism and if Communists were the epitome of anti-fascism, how could racial intolerance exist in post-1948 Czechoslovakia? The victory of the progressive forces also cast further doubts on the necessity of the Zionist project. Reiman clearly articulated these views in one of his addresses to the Jewish community in the Czech lands: The Jewish question has ceased to be a problem in the old sense of the word, because the full civil and political equality of all citizens, irrespective of their religion or so-called ‘race’, is a matter of course in the ­people’s 48 49 50 51

Věstník žno, May 14, 1948, 229. See also Kolman’s memoirs: Arnošt Kolman, Zaslepená generace. Paměti starého bolševika (Brno: Host, 2005). Věstník žno, May 28, 1948, 254. Věstník žno, February 20, 1948, 83f. Věstník žno, May, 14, 1948, 229.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

187

democracies. And not only civil and political equality: the ­evolution ­towards Socialism and a planned economy provides them with a secure existence, work, and numerous other social benefits. […] When Jewish citizens today ask where their home is, where they can build their lives on firm foundations and boldly look to the future after their terrible suffering in the last decade, there is only one answer: the Czechoslovak People’s Democratic Republic has become a home for all its citizens who have a good attitude towards people who want to work and to build a better future and a new Socialist social order.52 Reiman stressed that the 1948 February takeover ended any manifestations of antisemitism in the society that kept driving the Zionist project. Concurrently, the new Czech Jewish leadership – the old one was purged shortly after the takeover, and most of the Zionists were removed – and certain members of the Communist Party, such as Reiman and Kreibich, appealed to the Jews to manifest their determination to join the new socialist society and prove that they wanted to be part of the new order. The Jews, already rooted in the society, had no reason to leave the country that in the May 1948 Constitution prohibited any manifestations of ‘Nazism, fascism, racial and religious hatred [which imlictily made antisemitism illegal], and national chauvinism’, and promised economic prosperity to everybody who was willing to work for the benefit of the society.53 From hindsight, the question of emigration from post-February Czechoslovakia became one of the litmus tests for the Jewish community. The Czechoslovak Jews as well as lower-level Communists faced the unclear attitude of the Czechoslovak Communist leaders. Although officially there was no reason for the Jews to leave the country, the Jews were actually the only group whose large-scale emigration was allowed, in fact encouraged. The Czechoslovak government established close relations with the new Israeli administration and made an agreement with the Israeli Minister (envoy) Ehud ­Avriel-Überall concerning the emigration of 20,000 Czechoslovak Jews to Israel, at that time ­almost half of the Jewish community. In the end, approximately 15,000 to 19,000 Jews emigrated by mid-1949.54 52 53 54

Věstník žno, May 21, 1948, 241f. Věstník žno, November 5, 1948, 489f; Věstník žno, June 4, 1948, 269; Věstník žno, April 30, 1948, 205f; Věstník žno, April 23, 1948. According to the American Jewish Yearbook, there were about 55,000 Jews in postwar Czechoslovakia (this number included 11,000 refugees). Leon Shapiro, “Czechoslovakia,”

188

chapter 4

The government’s decision to support Jewish emigration contrasted with the public discourse by Communist activists who suggested that only a tiny group of devoted idealists, adherents of reactionary circles, and members of the bourgeoisie that had opposed the new political system, planned to leave the country. The Communists kept repeating that there would not be many Jews leaving for other countries, Israel included. Zionist activists and others who had urged Jews to move to other countries were presented as panic-­mongers or, in Louis Fürnberg’s view, as people who were utilising ‘the infatuation of the youth, particularly of the Jews, caused by the previous horrific events [the Shoah], for adventurous purposes.’55 Some of the prominent Communists had troubles understanding the Czechoslovak support for Zionism. In December 1951, shortly after the incarceration of Party’s General Secretary Rudolf Slánský and at the point when the anti-Zionist nature of the prepared trial became evident, Kreibich summarized his struggle and distrust against Zionism in then-recent years in a letter to the Political Secretariat of the Central Committee of the cpc, stressing that already in 1949 he had warned against the support that Zionism had among some of the high-ranking Party leaders. We need to understand Kreibich’s letter in the context of the ongoing inner-party purge, and as an attempt to clear his name from any connections with ‘class enemies’. At the same time, it is evident that many among the old members of the Party simply could not comprehend the sudden turns in the Communist policies towards Zionism in the late-1940s. They distrusted Zionism on ideological grounds and were deeply persuaded that the Party should, under any circumstance, be in opposition to Zionism and Zionists.56 Yet at the time of high Stalinism, there were only a handful of Communists willing to criticise the Party. Ivan Klíma, a famous Czech writer, encapsulates the era in his two-volume memoirs as follows:

55 56

in American Jewish Year Book, 1947, 411. Petr Brod estimates that from the 40,000 Jews in postwar Czechoslovakia, approximately half left for Israel. Petr Brod, “Židé v poválečném Československu,” in Židé v novodobých dějinách, ed. Václav Veber (Praha: Karolinum, 1997), 147–62. Numbers for Slovakia speak of 2,270 Jews who emigrated in 1948 (out of whom 1,351 left for Israel). Altogether, it is estimated that 8,929 Jews left for Israel between 1948–9 (and other about thousand Jews moved to other countries in the West). Yehoshua Robert Büchler, “Znovuobživenie židovskej komunity na Slovensku po druhej svetovej vojne,” Acta Judaica Slovaca 4 (1998): 73. Věstník žno, April 30, 1948, 205f. See also Věstník žno, September 10, 1948, 395. na, Václav Kopecký Papers, Volume 13, item 223, Kreibich to the Political Secretariat of the cc cpc, December 26, 1951.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

189

The party leadership decided everything: which era was worthy of following, which should fall to the wayside; which thoughts were necessary to disseminate and which to forbid. Who was a hero, who a coward, who was an inventor, who was a scientist, who was a cheat, and who was an ally, and, most important, who was an enemy, a subversive, a revisionist, a Zionist, a Trotskyite. Nothing announced by the party could be doubted unless the party doubted it. The Party decorated its secretary [Slánský] with the highest honors and a year later had him hanged.57 It is noteworthy that Kreibich was later, in 1952 and 1955, one of the few Czechoslovak Communists who protested against the ‘antisemitism and racism’ that accompanied the Slánský trial and the persecution of those ‘of Jewish origin.’ In line with Marxist ideology, Kreibich was a lone voice willing to criticize the Party in the first half of the 1950s and was at first not able to comprehend the Party support for Zionism as well as the resurgent antisemitism later on. For him, there was a clear distinction between a Jew and a Zionist.58 The schizophrenic policies and statements on Jewish emigration confused many of the leading Communists and were later utilized during the trials of the early-1950s to show that Zionist and imperialist forces infiltrated the Party structures, allowing the emigration of Jews together with their property. Furthermore, though the decision of the Jews to follow their ideals was officially supported by the Communist Party, it inevitably raised the question of Jewish determination to build a new socialist order in Czechoslovakia. More than that, minorities tended to be judged by their ‘visible’ (public or those made public) members.59 Afterwards, the fact that more than a half of Jewish survivors had left Czechoslovakia – often for ‘bourgeois Israel’ – cast a shadow over the whole community. If there was no need for the Jews to emigrate, how should the Communists perceive the extensive migration? Did the Jews leave in high numbers because they were committed Zionists and idealists, or because they in principle disagreed with the new Socialist order?60 The Communist policies allowed for a large variety of ex post interpretations that could easily be used and abused. 57 58 59 60

Ivan Klíma, Moje šílené století (Praha: Academia, 2010), 151. Ivan Klíma, My Crazy Century: A Memoir (New York: Grove Press, 2013), 442–43. O procesech a rehabilitacích. I.,/Zpráva “Pillerovy komise” o politických procesech a rehabilitacích v Československu v letech 1949 až 1968/ (Brno: Florenc, 1990), 88. Peter Salner, “‘Viditeľní’ a ‘neviditeľní’ Židia v slovenskej spoločnosti po roku 1945,” Acta Judaica Slovaca 4 (1998): 122. See also Věstník žno, June 4, 1948, 269f.

190

chapter 4

Evidently, even the Jews who decided to stay in Czechoslovakia were not a­ utomatically included in the progressive ranks. The Party urged them to contribute to the solution of the Jewish question and join in the building of the new Socialist system with all their strength.61 These repeated allusions – published in the Jewish minority press, now under full control of the Party – perpetuated the image of a Jew who was not a fully reliable element in both national and socio-economic sense from the perspective of the regime. The Jews remained emblematic of the bourgeois world, and this connection later became crucial in the developing years leading up to the campaign against Zionism as a bourgeois nationalist ideology, where the image of a ‘Jew-Zionist’ dominated. It is usually assumed that the anti-Zionist campaign in Czechoslovakia led to a complete reversal in the previous Communists’ policies. We cannot, however, identify any major diversions in the few years after February 1948. Although the Party supported Israel in the late-1940s, this support was always conditional and accompanied by repeated warnings and strong recommendations about the direction of Israel’s geopolitical orientation and inner-political developments. In May 1949, the Union for the Czechoslovak-Israeli Friendship celebrated the first anniversary of the State of Israel with statements about the Israeli fight for independence being part of the national-liberation struggle of subjugated nations all over the world against the British and American imperialists in the Middle East. Concurrently, the Secretary General of the Union warned Israel against the creeping infiltration of the ‘dollar imperialism’ that could harm the interests of the working people.62 In reality, and regardless of the Party’s political support for Israel, official places were sceptical of the number of committed Communists among the Jews who immigrated to Israel. For them, many of the émigrés came from ‘reactionary circles.’ The Party was split in their attitude toward emigration. Whereas one part tried to limit the emigration of those who were not committed Communists or leftists, the interior ministry supported the departure of a large number of Jews because they were perceived as unproductive elements who would not get used to life in the country and who were not willing to contribute to the building of Communism.63 The feeling that the Jews or ­Zionists – in the national and socio-economic sense – were not ‘one of us’ was in any 61 62 63

Věstník žno, March 11, 1949, 109f. Věstník žno, May 13, 1949, 213f. Jana Svobodová, Zdroje a projevy antisemitismu v českých zemích, 1948–1992: studie (Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny av čr, 1994), 25f. In the end, around 2,500 soldiers and colonists moved to Israel in the framework of the volunteer brigade and other interconnected units. Marie Bulínová, ed., Československo a Izrael v letech 1945–1956: dokumenty (Praha:

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

191

case strong. While before February 1948 the Czech political elite perceived Zionists primarily as non-Czechs and non-Slovaks, a Zionist was first of all a non-Communist in the Communist imagination. The question that remained unresolved for the time being was whether it was better to have these elements under control in Czechoslovakia or to let them leave for Israel. These contemplations clearly emerged during the formation of a volunteer unit for the Israeli Army that was trained in Czechoslovakia. Despite the embargo imposed on the Arab-Israeli conflict by the United Nations, the Czechoslovak state sold weapons and military equipment to Haganah and the Israeli army in addition to training soldiers, pilots, and paratroopers. Discussions about the organization of the military unit originated when two competing visions emerged in early-1948. The first, proposed by Israeli Communists, imagined a small unit of politically reliable officers who would help spread Communist ideals in the future Israeli army and society. In contrast, the Jewish Agency and later the Israeli legation in Prague (under Avriel-Überall) tried to negotiate with the Czechoslovak government and the Party the formation of a larger military unit for the Israeli army fighting the War of Independence. In the end, the latter conception prevailed, and the Party agreed to the formation of a unit with the strength of 4,500 soldiers (1,000 from Czechoslovakia, and the rest from Poland and Hungary). This vision prevailed despite the opposition from certain Party members, such as Reiman (later purged for alleged contacts with Zionists), who argued there would not be many Communists willing to move to Israel, and the Czech and Slovak Jews who would join the brigade would be infested with Zionist ideals.64 Even then, the Party hoped that it would be possible to keep the ideological views of the soldiers under control and that an officer corps, composed of committed Communists, would shape the worldview of the soldiers in the right direction. These hopes did not materialize, and soon after the beginning of the military training the Party realised that there were only approximately 8–15 committed Communists in the unit – which reached the size of 1,300 ­soldiers; moreover, they were not politically active in any conceivable way. The unit was described as full of Zionist, even reactionary elements, with some of the volunteers belonging to the right-wing Irgun group, labelled in prepared reports as a group of ‘fascists.’

Ústav pro soudobé dějiny av čr ve spolupráci s Historickým ústavem České armády a se Státním ústředním archivem, 1993). 64 Bulínová, Československo a Izrael v letech 1945–1956, 316. Doc. 117 – Interrogation of Reiman, May 4, 1956.

192

chapter 4

Simultaneously, although the unit was being prepared for a military campaign in the Middle East, many of the volunteers considered it an easy way to move to Israel and settle there as colonists with no intention of contributing to the political fight of the Communist movement. At one point, Reiman warned that ‘the whole operation got out of Party’s control.’65 There were even attempts to stop the transfer of the brigade to Israel. The head of the Party International Department, Bedřich Geminder (1901–52), decided in the end that although the composition of the unit was ‘not good,’ the whole operation had already gone too far and needed to be completed according to the original plan. Between January and March 1949, the brigade was transferred to Israel where it, as the Czechoslovak Communists had already anticipated, made no contribution to the Communist fight against the ‘bourgeois,’ ‘imperialist’ and ‘reactionary’ circles.66 In the meantime, even the most optimistic Communists conceded that the State of Israel was in the hands of ‘bourgeoisie’ shortly after the first Israeli elections in January 1949, in which the Mapai (Labour Party) scored a substantial victory and the Communist Party of Israel failed to attract voters.67 Soon, the Communist Bloc again sharply turned their official policies toward Z ­ ionism and Zionists. This change lasted, with a minor break in the late-1960s, until the end of Communism in Czechoslovakia. The early-1950s witnessed a rise of anti-Zionism, which resembled the worst tradition of virulent antisemitic campaigns of the past.

The ‘Jew’ as a Zionist

During the hearing at the Central Committee Commission for the investigation of the political trials in May 1956, the once-Party specialist on the Jewish affairs Reiman described the police interrogation he had experienced in November 1952. The police officers confronted him with crimes allegedly committed by the conspiratorial centre in the Central Committee under the leadership of Rudolf Slánský (1901–52), including the previous Communist Czechoslovakia’s support for Israel. In the interrogation, Reiman claimed that he had opposed the pro-Zionist policies of the late-1940s – especially of Bedřich G ­ eminder, who became one of the main defendants in the Slánský trial. Although Reiman figured only as a witness in the prepared Slánský trial, ‘who had full c­ onfidence 65 66 67

Dufek, Kaplan, and Šlosar, Československo a Izrael v letech 1947–1953, 68. Ibid., 74. Věstník žno, February 4, 1949, 49f.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

193

of the Party’, he was still implicated in the support of Zionism according to the police officers.68 As the investigative officer explained, Reiman’s ‘bourgeois Jewish origin’ was the main reason why he had let himself be led astray by Geminder. Reiman’s class and racial origin thus automatically made him less reliable in the eyes of the Communist police and susceptible to the activities of imperialist, bourgeois and Zionist agents. In the eyes of the police officers, the sole fact that Reiman repeatedly met with representatives of Zionist organizations in the late-1940s could be a sufficient reason for his imprisonment. Four years later, Reiman in particular complained that the Communist police had forced him to sign a protocol in which they stressed his Jewish background (židovský původ), despite the fact that he had been an active member of the Communist movement since the 1920s.69 Reiman described an almost comical story when he had challenged the formulation in the protocol about whether the reasons for Slánský’s and Geminder’s criminal activities were their ‘Jewish’ or ‘bourgeois Jewish’ backgrounds. Reiman was only willing to accept the latter formulation.70 Oskar Langer, a devoted Communist throughout his life, was similarly stubborn with respect to the formulation of charges made against him in connection to the Slánský trial. Accompanied by his wife Jo, Langer escaped to the United States during the Second World War. Despite losing most of their family members in the Shoah, Langer and his wife returned to Czechoslovakia in 1946 with the intent to help build Communism. A well-respected economist at the Central Committee, Langer was arrested in 1951 on the charge of Zionism and made to testify in the Slánský trial. He sat in the dock one year later, being sentenced to 22 years in prison. In the letter, addressed to President Antonín Zápotocký (1884–1957) and smuggled out of the prison, Langer shows the care he paid in setting the record straight: When they wanted me to confess to being of Jewish nationality so that they could classify me as a bourgeois nationalist I refused. I said truthfully that although of Jewish descent, I was born in Slovakia and always thought of myself as a Slovak. I was being interrogated in shifts by two 68 Bulínová, Československo a Izrael v letech 1945–1956, 315–18. “Interview with Pavel Reiman with the cc cpc Commission for the investigation of the political trials, May 4, 1956.” 69 Pavel Reiman, Ve dvacátých letech: vzpomínky (Praha: Nakladatelství politické literatury, 1966). 70 Bulínová, Československo a Izrael v letech 1945–1956, 315–18. “Interview with Pavel Reiman with the cc cpc Commission for the investigation of the political trials, May 4, 1956.”

194

chapter 4

officers, eight hours each. One of them jumped on my foot every time I did not say what he wanted to hear me say. In the end I conceded that I was of Jewish nationality. This statement I was made to repeat a hundred times, with my arms stretched up and then kneeling. From that day on my name appeared in documents with the appendage ‘prisoner under interrogation, of Jewish nationality’. Allow me, Mr President, a question. Every time Pravda has occasion to commemorate the concentration camps, where my father, my sister with her children and five more of my close relatives were murdered, why does it state that 150,000 Czechs and Slovaks perished in Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, etc.?71 These anecdotes clearly illustrate the atmosphere in Czechoslovakia at the peak of the purge that reached well beyond the inner-party ranks and which brought new elements into the debate about Zionism. The Slánský trial opened on November 20, 1952. Fourteen defendants faced a long list of accusations, including espionage and high treason. The alleged conspiratorial centre, with the former Party General Secretary Slánský at the head, was accused of attempts to turn Czechoslovakia into a capitalist country in the service of American and British imperialism. The Slánský trial was part of the purges during the consolidation of the Communist regimes in the Socialist Bloc after the Stalin-Tito split in 1948. Yet the situation in Czechoslovakia slightly differed. It also became part of a large antisemitic wave of late Stalinism that culminated in the prepared Doctors’ plot and the planned deportation of Soviet Jews to Siberia.72 In Prague, eleven of the fourteen defendants in the Slánský trial were of ‘Jewish origin’, and the fact was overtly and consistently stressed – as we have seen already in Reiman’s and Langer’s interrogations. The indictment also emphasised that all the ‘Jewish’ defendants came from bourgeois families, which automatically turned them into supporters of Zionism, being conceived as Jewish bourgeois nationalism; only the two Czech defendants, Josef Frank and Karel Šváb, came from ‘working class’ background.73 During the trial, Zionism was characterized as a tool in the fight of ­American imperialism against the People’s democracies. In 1947, the prosecutors claimed, the American leadership reached an agreement with David Ben 71

72 73

Jo Langer, Convictions: My Life with a Good Communist (London: A. Deutsch, 1979), 131; Žo Langerová, Vtedy v Bratislave: môj život s Oskarom L. (Bratislava: Albert Marenčin pt: snm – Múzeum židovskej kultúry, 2015), 219. Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (Bloomington; In.: Indiana University Press, 2001), 147–156. Proces s vedením protištátneho sprisahaneckého centra na čele s Rudolfom Slánským, 44–5.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

195

Gurion ­according to which the United States would support the creation of the State of Israel, upon which international Zionist organizations would be used for espionage purposes in the Eastern Bloc. The main contacts in Czechoslovakia cooperating with the Israeli minister Ehud Avriel-Überall were Slánský and Geminder as stated by the Communist prosecutor. They created a network of Zionist agents in the Party who kept undermining the Communist system and economy. They were accused of allowing the activities of the Joint, an American philanthropic agency that allegedly engaged in ‘espionage, sabotage, foreign exchange machinations, black marketeering and smuggling,’ along with other Zionist organizations that were often involved in anti-state activities and even terrorism.74 The prosecutors also blamed the conspiratorial centre for the previous support of Jewish emigration from Czechoslovakia, which was labelled as the emigration of Jewish bourgeoisie that took their property with them and caused harm to the Czechoslovak state and economy. The fact that the Party and government had previously supported the emigration and that some of the defendants – for example Slánský and Otto ­Fischl – had been in opposition to a large number of Jews leaving the country, taking their property with them, was ignored. In late-1948, the question of Jewish emigration was not discussed by the Czechoslovak government and was most likely approved only by the inner-Party circle. There seemed to be an informal agreement whereby the Czechoslovak state allowed the emigration and the I­ sraeli government promised to help with the negotiation of a $50 ­million dollar loan for Czechoslovakia from the United States, which nonetheless never materialized.75 The confidential nature of such an arrangement could suddenly be used as evidence that the traitors acted without the knowledge of ‘loyal’ Czechoslovak Communists.76 The trial proceedings, which were broadcast on the Czechoslovak Radio and published in the press, emphasised the image of a Jew as a non-Czech or non-Slovak. Several of the defendants had in the past changed their Jewish or German-sounding names, a move taken not only by Jews after the war.77 In such cases their original names were emphasised or hyphenated during the trial, such as when André Simone was ‘revealed’ as Otto Katz, Ludvík Frejka as Ludwig Freund, or Bedřich Hájek (a witness) was presented as Hájek-­Karpeles. Furthermore, the defendants were first of all characterized as Zionist agents. 74 Ibid., 35–36. 75 Dufek, Kaplan, and Šlosar, Československo a Izrael v letech 1947–1953, 68. 76 Bulínová, Československo a Izrael v letech 1945–1956, 269f. 77 sna, pv – bezp. odbor, b. 442, f. 5021. An overview of requests to change surname, June 28, 1945.

196

chapter 4

In reality, although some of the defendants had been active as children or ­teenagers in Zionist youth organizations, they became committed C ­ ommunists who severed any relations with their Jewish roots in their adult years.78 The fact that there were contradictions in the accusations against the ­alleged Zionists, in that people could synchronously be labelled rootless cosmopolitans and bourgeois nationalists, did not bother the prosecutors. A prime ­example of these strategies was the interrogation of Geminder, who was asked by the presiding judge if he needed an interpreter first and then later deemed neither fluent in Czech nor in German by the prosecutor, which, the judge ­argued, was a typical example of a rootless cosmopolitan.79 In the end, eight of the eleven ‘Jewish’ defendants received the death penalty and were executed. The remaining three ‘Jews’ received life imprisonment, though they were ­released in the 1950s and 1960s.80 The trials against the alleged anti-state conspiratorial centres also continued in Slovakia, where several leading Communists were accused of various forms of deviations from the Communist ideology, in particular Slovak bourgeois nationalism. The figure of a Zionist enemy soon emerged here as well. Many of those accused were Communist officials of Jewish origin; many of them, however, did not consider themselves Jewish, a ‘crime’ they were forced to admit under severe beating.81 Thus, an unlikely alliance of Slovak bourgeois nationalists and Zionists was forged in the files of Communist justice. These accusations even reached the prominent 1954 tribunal against the ‘Slovak bourgeois nationalists,’ led by Gustav Husák who was the deposed Communist head of the Board of Commissioners (the Slovak semi-governmental institution after 1945). One of the defendants, the former Commissioner of the Interior and non-Jew Daniel Okáli (1903–87), was accused of covering and harbouring the subversive activities of Zionist organizations in Slovakia 78 Wein, History of the Jews in the Bohemian Lands, 158–64; Wein, A History of Czechs and Jews, 155–70. 79 Proces s vedením protištátneho sprisahaneckého centra na čele s Rudolfom Slánským, 109f. Also Rudé právo, November 28, 1952, 2. 80 According to the report of the Piller Commission on the crimes of the 1950s, up until 1951 investigations against ‘bourgeois nationalists’ (on the Slovak as well as Czech side, against Otta Šling and Marie Švermová) were treated with priority. Only with the turnaround from ‘bourgeois nationalism’ and ‘titoism’ to Zionism, provoked by the changes in official policies toward Israel, did the fabricated case against Rudolf Slánský rise to prominence. O procesech a rehabilitacích. I.,/Zpráva “Pillerovy komise” o politických procesech a rehabilitacích v Československu v letech 1949 až 1968/, 71–3; Rychlík, Češi a Slováci ve 20. století, 408. 81 Langerová, Vtedy v Bratislave, 142.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

197

and allowing the ‘illegal transports’ of the Jews and their property from the country.82 Even prior to this, the purge had hit lower level officials at the Commission of the Interior and the ranks of the Slovak police, including Jewish members of the Secret Police (Štátna bezpečnosť, ŠtB).83 As in the case of the Slánský trial, those ‘of Jewish origin’ formed a majority of defendants.84 They allegedly helped with the establishment of a Zionist network in the Slovak security forces by appointing other Zionists in strategic positions with the intention to undermine the Communist security apparatus. They also established connections with the State of Israel and allowed the Jewish bourgeoisie to emigrate with large amount of foreign currency, personal property and valuables during the large wave of emigration in 1948 and 1949. In this case, the accused allegedly cooperated with the Prague leaders of the Prague Conspiratorial Centre, in particular with the deputy finance minister at the beginning of the ­Communist rule Otto Fischl – another defendant at the Slánský trial; interestingly, he was well-known for putting obstacles in the way of emigrants to Israel who tried to leave with their property.85 Similar to the situation in Prague, the links between the defendants and ­Zionist organizations in Slovakia could be very vague; for example, it was sometimes in the form of prewar membership in Zionist youth groups, contributions to Jewish social welfare, cooperation with Western Jewish humanitarian agencies or contact with people who had any imaginable relation with ­Zionist groups. Additionally, the class origin of the defendants would often lead to accusations of Jewish bourgeois nationalism. This campaign reinforced the ­image of a ‘Jew-Zionist’ who as an internal enemy, as well as a class enemy, was 82

83

84

85

Jan Rychlík, “Praha, 1954, 4. března. Návrh textu obžaloby proti Gustávu Husákovi, L­ adislavu Novomeskému, Danielu Okálimu, Ivanu Horváthovi a Ladislavu Holdošovi, vypracovaný ministrem vnitra Rudolfem Barákem, předložený ke schválení politickému sekretariátu úv ksč,” in Češi a Slováci ve 20. století. Česko-slovenské vztahy 1945–1992 (­Praha: Academic Electronic Press – Ústav T.G. Masaryka, Praha, 1998), 458. Ješahaju Andrej Jelínek, Dávidova hviezda pod Tatrami. Žídia na Slovensku v 20. storočí (Praha: Vydavateľstvo Jána Mlynárika ipeľ, 2009), 398–403. Jozef Jablonický, Podoby násilia (Bratislava: Kalligram, 2000). Ivica Bumová, “Sionizmus a židovský buržoázny nacionalizmus na Slovensku – ­východiská (1948–1970),” in Židovská menšina v Československu v letech 1956–1968: od destalinizace k pražskému jaru, ed. Blanka Soukupová and Miloš Pojar (Praha: Židovské muzeum v Praze, 2011), 108–14. Karel Kaplan, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990). yivo Archives, RG347.7.1, Bedřich Landa, Report on Czechoslovakia, June 26, 1949.

198

chapter 4

seeking to undermine the Communist regime by working for an international network of Zionist, reactionary circles in the service of Western imperialists. The Communist police were cautioned to remain vigilant of anyone of ‘Jewish origin’. Class, nationality and race were all used as factors in the creation of the ‘Jew-Zionist’ image.86 The situation in Slovakia, however, also varied in part. In contrast to the Czech lands, Zionist organizations in Slovakia developed extensive activities after 1945 and continued to function until the early-1950s, especially in the fields of social help and emigration.87 They were in contact with Okáli, who took a lenient approach toward Jewish emigration, which included cases of transmigrants from Hungary, even at the time when Jews from the Czech lands could no longer leave the country. Thus, when the Prague court judged another group of ‘Zionist and imperialist agents’ in August 1953, sentenced were not only imaginary but also actual Zionist activists, among them former members of the Central Zionist Union, the Palestine Office and even the Israeli legation. A part of their subversive activities consisted of their alleged efforts to persuade even those among Slovak Jews who, the judges claimed, ‘wanted to assimilate and stay in the country’ to leave for Israel, thus further draining the limited resources of the emerging people’s democracy. Although their activities in the late-1940s had the blessing of the official authorities, the Party now completely changed their attitude toward Jewish emigration and attempted to cleanse their own conscience by sentencing the Zionist activists to long prison terms.88 All the trials in the early-1950s were accompanied by a campaign in the mainstream press, which clearly articulated the Communist understanding of Zionism after the turn in the official Czechoslovak-Israeli, and especially the Soviet-Israeli, relations in 1949–50. The press summarized the official position as follows: Zionism is the ideology of the Jewish bourgeois state, the ideology of Jewish bourgeois nationalism, by which the Jewish nationalistic bourgeoisie, in the pay of American imperialism, is endeavouring to influence our 86 87 88

See Hlavinka, “Židovská komunita pod kontrolou.” Benjamin Eichler, “Slovenské židovstvo a jeho boj o záchranu v periode 1939–1972,” 1972, yivo Institute for Jewish Research. Martin Šromovský, “Postoj vládnej moci k židovskej otázke v rokoch 1948–1953 – introdukcia do problematiky,” in Slovensko v rokoch neslobody 1938–1989 iii., ed. Anton Hruboň, Juraj Jankech, and Katarína Ristveyová (Banská Bystrica: Vydavateľstvo umb – Belianum, 2014), 260–79.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

199

citizens of Jewish descent. It is in the service of the class enemy that the Zionists have wormed their way into the Communist parties in order to disrupt and undermine them from within. Certain members of our party, too, have come under the influence of Zionism. They have succumbed to the ideology of cosmopolitanism and Jewish bourgeois nationalism, and do not judge events from the viewpoint of the working class, of the struggle for socialism.89 We have seen that Communists never abandoned their criticism of Zionism as a bourgeois nationalist movement, but political consideration led to a temporary suppression of overt criticism. The Communist plans to establish a client state in the Middle East received the first blow in January 1949 when the Mapai party of the Prime Minister David Ben Gurion won the elections. Although a Labour party, for the Communists they were bourgeois and rightwing S­ ocial Democrats willing to cooperate with capitalist and imperialist countries. Shortly thereafter, the United States announced that they would provide a loan of 100 million dollars to the new state. The Israeli acceptance of the plan was proof, for the Soviet Union at least, that the Israelis had chosen the Western side in the Cold War conflict. Soon after, the policies toward Israel changed very quickly. For instance, the new Israeli minister to Czechoslovakia, ­Samuel Eliashiv, was called ‘an envoy of a bourgeois pro-American state’ in 1950.90 Czechoslovakia stopped their military support and from 1955 onward sealed several military deals with Arab countries, especially with Egypt and Syria.91 Even before the Communist government made another turn in its foreign policy, the regime attempted to curb the activities of the Zionist movement in Czechoslovakia. The Jewish Commission of the Czechoslovak Party’s Central Committee recommended the removal of Zionist activists from the leadership of the Jewish Communities immediately after February 1948.92 Zionists were perceived as those who fought for particularistic Jewish interests and did not work for the benefit of the state and toward an internationalist, classless society. Zionists were also under suspicion because of their contacts with international Jewish organization, including philanthropic and humanitarian agencies. 89 Meyer, The Jews in the Soviet Satellites, 162. Quoted from Pravda, January 23, 1952. 90 Bulínová, Československo a Izrael v letech 1945–1956, 315–18. 91 Wein, History of the Jews in the Bohemian Lands, 146. 92 Bulínová, Československo a Izrael v letech 1945–1956, 315–18. “Interview with Pavel Reiman with the cc cpc Commission for the investigation of the political trials, May 4, 1956.”

200

chapter 4

The Communist Party tried to get all fund-raising for Zionist causes under control to make sure that the money would be used for purposes that were in line with Communist priorities.93 The Communists in Bohemia and Moravia quickly got the boards of Jewish Communities under control, but this proved to be more difficult in Slovakia where Zionists dominated in the Jewish communities. The main attack against the Zionist groups in Slovakia started only in late-1948 and early-1949, at a time when leading Zionists such as Vojtech Winterstein, Oskar Krasňanský and Leo Rosenthal were imprisoned on allegations of financial machinations but they were soon released and allowed to emigrate. Activities of the remaining Zionist groups like Hashomer Hatsair, the Central Zionist Union and the Palestine Office, which had helped with the organization of Jewish emigration, ended by the early-1950s as the remaining members, who did not manage to escape in time, were imprisoned.94 All things considered, the Jewish Communities in Slovakia were then under full control of the Communist Party. The effort to close Zionist groups in Czechoslovakia increased during 1949. This occurred after the beginning of the first show trials in the Eastern Bloc, but already before the pinnacle of these campaigns, the Slánský trial, gained its final anti-Zionist form. László Rajk, the former Hungarian foreign and interior minister, was sentenced to death and executed in October 1949. One of the points of his indictment was his alleged cooperation with Zionist and imperialist agencies. Shortly after Rajk’s execution, the leaders of the Czechoslovak Communists pointed to the fact that the Hungarian leader was in close contact with Zionist organizations, including the Israeli leftist Mapam Party (United Workers Party), based on the indictment. These Mapam agents, according to the Secretary of the Union for the Czechoslovak-Israeli Friendship Vladimír Waigner, were using the mask of left-wing politicians to move freely around the Eastern Bloc and organize Zionist activities.95 This perception of Zionism as an enemy movement across class boundaries led to the imprisonment in Czechoslovakia of Mordechai Oren, a prominent Israeli activist and a member of Mapam as well as Hashomer Hatsair, in 1951. In Israel, Oren promoted a close cooperation between Jewish and Arab Socialist parties. Yet, a 93 94

Ibid., 173f. , Doc. 63, W. Stamberger to B. Geminder, November 6, 1948. Anton Baláž, Transporty nádeje (Bratislava: Marenčin pt, 2010); Šromovský, “Postoj vládnej moci k židovskej otázke v rokoch 1948–1953 – introdukcia do problematiky”; Bumová, “Sionizmus a židovský buržoázny nacionalizmus na Slovensku – východiská (1948–1970).” 95 Bulínová, Československo a Izrael v letech 1945–1956, 226f. Doc. 88, Weigner’s report for the cc cpc about the activities of Zionist organizations, November 15, 1949. Ibid., 229. Doc. 90, Report on Political Parties and Other Organizations in Israel etc., 1949.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

201

report of the Czechoslovak police noted that Mapam was ‘a party that rejects the ­Marxist understanding of the national question.’ The conclusion was clear: even ­Zionists who pretended to work for the interests of the working class were potential spies cooperating with reactionary forces. They were even more dangerous because of the fact that they used the mask of committed socialists to work for a reactionary political movement.96 Prominent Party members, especially Kopecký, led the ‘campaign against Zionism and cosmopolitanism,’ and even President Klement Gottwald repeatedly warned against the danger of Zionism for the people’s democracies. In Kopecký’s case, the attacks soon turned into antisemitic ramblings: ‘You recognize them at the first sight – alien by their mentality, alien to the nation, country, people, who disguise their cosmopolitanism by the appearance of ­internationalist radicalism.’97 If members of the Central Committee still did not completely understand who was being accused of ‘cosmopolitanism,’ ­Kopecký was quick to provide an explaination: ‘It is not a question of race. I know, for example, that there are people of Jewish origin, who have fully grown together with the nation and state, who are already like native people of the nation and state. But there are not many cases of such people in our country.’98 Clearly, it was a matter of race and blood. The ‘cosmopolitans,’ according to Kopecký, did not share any interests with the Czech and Slovak people and were alien to the Communist ideology. Most of them came from bourgeois families with some having strong links to religion in the past, which had further augmented their links to Zionism.99 Shortly after the imprisonment of Slánský in December 1951, Kopecký summarized the view of the Communist party as follows: In recent years, Zionism, which has always been an expression of bourgeois ideology, has become an extremely serious threat. Zionist sentiments among people of Jewish origin were in general greatly inflamed. This was because of Hitler’s racist rampage and then, as we know, the creation of the Jewish State of Israel during the partition of Palestine, 96

Ibid., 246. Doc. 90, report, prepared most likely by the State police, about political parties in Israel, world Jewish organizations and Jewish organizations in Czechoslovakia, 1949. See also Ivo Pejčoch, “Politické procesy s Šimonem Ornsteinem a Mordechajem Orenem – antisemitské tendence v komunistickém československu,” Terezínské listy: Sborník Památníku Terezín, 2011, 142–54. 97 Bulínová, Československo a Izrael v letech 1945–1956, 246. Doc. 96, Kopecký’s speech at the meeting of the cc cpc, September 6, 1951. 98 Ibid. Doc. 96, Kopecký’s speech at the meeting of the cc cpc, September 6, 1951. 99 Ibid.

202

chapter 4

which called for the recruitment of Jews to emigrate to Israel, and tried to influence people of Jewish origin all over the world.100 The danger for Kopecký stemmed from the fact that the State of Israel claimed to represent all the Jews in the world and tried to mobilize those ‘of Jewish origin’ for the fight against the Socialist Bloc. Evoking the old myth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Communist ideologue described a meeting of the world Zionist organization in Paris in 1949 in which the leaders, he claimed, decided to infiltrate Communist parties in the Eastern Bloc and undermine the new Communist regimes. Although officially fighting against Zionism, Kopecký repeatedly condemned all those ‘of Jewish origin’ who did not come from the working class and were alien to the interests of workers and nation. Slánský and others utilized the fact that Czech society ‘had never been antisemitic.’ After 1945, they deflected all attacks against the activities of Zionists and cosmopolitans in the Party apparatus with comments that the Party had to be careful not to be accused of antisemitism. This allowed ‘Jewish bourgeois nationalists’ to gain positions in the state and plot against the interests of the people.101 Thus, while previously Czechoslovak authorities had presented ­Zionism as the most suitable means to destroy the last remnants of antisemitic feelings in Europe, Zionists were now accused of utilising the alleged threat of antisemitism – an ideology officially associated with the dark rule of Nazi G ­ ermany – to destroy the progressive forces in the people’s democracy. In fact, the prosecutors tried to prove that there was no antisemitism in socialist countries, in contrast to the reactionary West that supported the activities of Zionist agents. The court interrogation of André Simone exemplified this twisted logic in the Slánský trial. In his coerced statement, Simone, a former editor of the Rudé právo, repeated the axiom of the Communists: Presiding Judge: Your name is André Simone. Is that your real name? Simone: My real name is Otto Katz. … Presiding Judge: Is there anything you wish to add to your testimony? Simone: […] A lot has been said about my crimes. But there are crimes, which are not in the criminal code, and these have not been discussed. As a conspirator, I am responsible for all my actions and for all crimes 100 Bulínová, Československo a Izrael v letech 1945–1956, 249. Kopecký at the meeting of the cc cpc, December 6, 1951. 101 Ibid., 276f. Doc. 105, Kopecký’s speech at the national conference of the cpc, December 16–18, 1952.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

203

committed by each member of our conspiratorial centre. I am of J­ ewish origin. Which are the countries where fierce antisemitism is on the increase? The United States and Great Britain. I have joined the spies of those states. Which are the countries with an increase of racism? The United States and Great Britain. I have joined the spies of those states. Which country has a law against racism and antisemitism? The ussr. I have made an alliance with the antisemites against the sssr, joined by the u.s., British, and French intelligence.102 Authors are in agreement that the anti-Zionist and antisemitic elements were brought to the trials by Soviet advisers invited to Czechoslovakia with the task of unmasking the internal enemies; for instance they introduced the idea that ‘Slánský is an enemy because he is a Jew.’103 Historians also agree that the strong antisemitic underpinning was the main element that differentiated the Slánský trial from the previous purges in the Communist Bloc. Yet, as Paul Lendvai notes, although ‘the “Zionist plot” was fabricated in Moscow, […] the campaign against the two isms, Zionism and cosmopolitanism, picked up a momentum of its own in Czechoslovakia.’104 Evidently, the campaign fell on a fertile ground and soon even spread to the lower levels of the Party structure. The cacophony of allegations that accompanied the Slánský trial, which introduced Trotskyites, Titoites, cosmopolitans, bourgeois nationalists and ­Zionists to the discussion, found its simplistic version in the trial proceedings. For the consumption of ordinary people not able to see through the chimeric and demonic portrayal of the enemy – this almost incomprehensible list of accusations – the state prosecutors and Communist ideologues decided to use a simple term: ‘of Jewish origin’; Kaplan even suggests that the draft version of the indictment use the expression ‘the Jews,’ but President Gottwald decided to use the term ‘of Jewish origin’ instead.105 Hanuš Steiner, a renowned theoretician of Marxist-Leninism, supports these conclusions. This decision and the practical policies that accompanied the purge turned anti-Zionism into antisemitism. In a short essay published in 1969, Steiner roundly condemned Zionists as ‘reactionary nationalists.’ A ­ lthough he believed that the campaigns against Zionism should be part of the Communist ideological struggle, the practical policies of ‘deformed C ­ ommunism’ in the 102 Proces s vedením protištátneho sprisahaneckého centra na čele s Rudolfom Slánským, 229; Czechoslovak Home Service, Proceedings of Slansky Trial, Prague 1952, accessed August 27, 2016, http://archive.org/details/ProceedingsOfSlanskyTrialPrague1952. 103 Kaplan, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary, 135. 104 Paul Lendvai, Antisemitism in Eastern Europe. (London: Macdonald and Co., 1972), 259. 105 Kaplan, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary, 223.

204

chapter 4

1950s impacted all those of ‘Jewish origin.’ They lost their posts in the state and party administration, and even non-prominent ‘Jews’ suffered consequences in their professional and personal lives. Steiner emphasised that an active fight against Zionism should not automatically be considered antisemitism.106 Yet, the Communist regime of the 1950s, with its anti-Zionist rhetoric, intentionally appealed to old anti-Jewish sentiments in society and indiscriminately targeted all Jews in the country. Several explanations have been put forward when looking for the aims of the whole campaign. Historians argue that the Party either wanted to improve their image among Arab countries or wanted to put the blame for a difficult ­socio-economic situation in Czechoslovakia, several years after the takeover, on the outsiders within the Czechoslovak society. It was a publicly known fact that there were a large number of people born into Jewish families in the top ranks of the Party. The Party leadership, at least officially, tried to imprint in their audience the idea that antisemitism was alien to socialist society in Czechoslovakia and that people had to differentiate between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Nevertheless, Kevin McDermott and Melissa Feinberg clearly prove that in response to the propaganda ‘ordinary’ people – as far as we have the opportunities to gain insights into the grassroots’ sentiments – expressed crude and strong antisemitic opinions at the time of the trial, almost ignoring the anti-Zionist elements of the campaign.107 There was also an increasing feeling among Party members that Jews ­betrayed the Party, which led to the rise of antisemitic feelings among those who – in their own words – had previously fought against anti-Jewish ­prejudices.108 ­Furthermore, a careful analysis of popular opinion at the time of the trial convincingly proves that the anti-Jewish parts of the indictment were some of the few elements largely accepted by the population, with voices of dissent expressing doubts about other accusations against Slánský and his ­co-defendants. Whereas Jews were Zionists for Communist officials, for the majority societies, Jews were first and foremost all Communists. According to some, antisemitism revived by the Slánský trial found appeal especially in ­Slovakia. Within days after the trial, doors and windows of Jewish houses were painted in Bratislava 106 Hanuš Steiner, “Ideologie a psychologie antisemitismu a deformace marxismu,” Filozofický časopis xvi, no. 2 (1969): 187–91. 107 Kevin McDermott, “A ‘Polyphony of Voices’? Czech Popular Opinion and the Slánský ­Affair,” Slavic Review 67, no. 4 (2008): 840–65; Melissa Feinberg, “Fantastic Truths, Compelling Lies: Radio Free Europe and the Response to the Slánský Trial in Czechoslovakia,” Contemporary European History 22, no. 1 (2013): 107–25. 108 Vladimír Kolár, Co už máma nenapsala (Praha: bmss-Start, 2008), 80f.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

205

with sayings like ‘Jews live here’ or ‘Down with c­ apitalist Jews!’109 Antisemitism also found its way into the sessions of local Party organizations, and here contrary statements that a Jew could not be a Communist were not r­ are.110 The rise of antisemitic tendencies was so steep that the Party leadership did not know how to respond. On the other hand, the campaign came as a hard shock for Jewish survivors, among whom many believed in the ideals of the Communist revolution that would remove all traces of racial persecution after the war.111 An internal memorandum about the reception of the trial among Prague factory workers warned that ‘the “race question” was so acute that it demanded immediate political intervention in order to avoid “race hatred.”’ The attributes ascribed to the ‘Zionist’ conspirators were immediately projected onto Jews as such, without any distinction of their class, origin or alleged ideological views.112 Both McDermott and Feinberg emphasise the need to see the links between the antisemitic sentiments expressed during the trial, with developments between 1938 and 1948, and the rise of anti-Jewish sentiments after Munich; however, this simplified conclusion seems difficult to prove.113 The leaders of the Communist Party realized the problematic implications that the campaign could have less than ten years after the end of the war, a point at which official manifestations of antisemitism were illegal in Czechoslovakia.114 Peter Meyer (Josef Guttmann, a leading prewar Communist, who was purged in 1933 and later emigrated to the United States) believed that the vicious antisemitic responses in society had unsettled the Party. Less than two weeks after the execution of Slánský and his co-defendants, Gottwald tried to explain the difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism in a speech at the Party conference. In his opinion, a person of Jewish background was not automatically a Zionist: ‘The class origin of the particular person is decisive, as is his attitude toward his homeland, his dedication and work for Socialism. […] Anti-Zionism, that is a defence against American espionage, sabotage and 109 The Jewish Chronicle, November 28, 1952, 14. 110 Šromovský, “Postoj vládnej moci k židovskej otázke v rokoch 1948–1953 – introdukcia do problematiky,” 272; Kaplan, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary, 137. 111 This feeling of disilusionment was described by the popular writer Ota Pavel in the short story Běh Prahou. Ota Pavel, “Běh Prahou: jak tatínek byl a zase nebyl komunistou,” 1972. 112 McDermott, “A ‘Polyphony of Voices’?” 851. 113 McDermott, “A ‘Polyphony of Voices’?”; Feinberg, “Fantastic Truths, Compelling Lies.” 114 The May 1948 Constitution outlawed any public manifestation of fascism. See ­article 37 (2) in “Constitutional Law of May 9, 1948,” accessed November 2, 2016, http://www.psp.cz/ docs/texts/constitution_1948.html.

206

chapter 4

subversive agencies.’115 Gottwald’s statement was possibly one of the avenues taken in attempts to calm the public. Not insignificantly, Meyer also believed that the speech was an attempt to limit the damage to Czechoslovakia’s image abroad.116 In a very similar tone, the Czechoslovak ambassador to the United Nations Václav David rebuffed all criticism from Israeli diplomats by stating that a ‘duly constituted’ Czechoslovak court ‘had exposed a gang of spies and saboteurs who had been in the service of the United States.’ According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, David continued: Because some [in fact most] of the accused in the Slánský trial were of Jewish origin should they have been dealt with in a different manner than the non-Jewish accused? Was immunity against punishment for criminals of Jewish origin being demanded [?] […] The struggle against Zionism is a struggle against espionage, sabotage and subversion […] and had nothing to do with antisemitism.117 Even Radio Free Europe and Czech émigrés who worked for the station in West Germany (at least in the decade under strutiny) tried to persuade their listeners in Czechoslovakia that while antisemitism was present in the highest circles of the regime, it was alien to the Czech and Slovak people and imported to the country from the Soviet Union.118 These statements very much resembled the efforts of the exile Czechoslovaks during the Second World War, who portrayed the persecution of the Jews in the Protectorate and Slovakia as being executed by forces alien to the true spirit of the ordinary Czech and Slovak people.119 Yet, similar to the circumstances during the war, it seems that the situation was far more complex. This was a development not anticipated by the exile activists and journalists, but at the same time it was also an outcome not entirely welcomed by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Despite public statements by leading Communists, testimonies by the survivors of the purges and contemporaries confirm that the police interrogations in the 1950s had strong antisemitic underpinning.120 Police officials often made 115 Bulínová, Československo a Izrael v letech 1945–1956, 274f. Doc. 104, Gottwald’s speech at the national conference of the cpc, December 16–18, 1952. 116 McDermott, “A ‘Polyphony of Voices’?” 850; Meyer, The Jews in the Soviet Satellites. 117 Daily News Bulletin (jta), April 17, 1953. 118 Feinberg, “Fantastic Truths, Compelling Lies.” 119 Láníček, Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews, 1938–48. 120 Langerová, Vtedy v Bratislave.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

207

antisemitic remarks, some of them even praising Hitler for his extermination of the Jews. The Party kept stressing that the campaign did not go against the Jews per se. Yet in that case, what was, in the Communist imagination, the relationship between Zionists and Jews, and who was or could be a Zionist? In fact, anybody who had a vague relation with Jewishness – who was ‘of Jewish origin’ – was a potential Zionist. During the purges, central and public institutions cleansed themselves of those ‘of Jewish origin.’121 Relatives of those sentenced during the trials suffered consequences and were unable to find decent jobs.122 Jiří Kosta, who emigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1968 despite having been a committed Communist after the war, characterized the atmosphere of fear among the Jews in Czechoslovakia: The atmosphere of mutual suspicion and fear made its way even into people’s private lives and destroyed many friendly relations. […] In about 1950, a new antisemitism proceeded from Stalin: any form of Jewish identity was persecuted under terms such as ‘Zionism’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’. Consequently, a doubly fearful atmosphere prevailed in our circles. The pressure became so great that one was continuously searching for faults in oneself, and feared that perhaps he or she might not be tough enough. It was probably in this regard that the perversion most intrinsic to the system resided. Completely baseless accusations struck individuals deep in their inner core, where they changed into a bitter sense of guilt. One was constantly assailed by the thought that he or she may have done something wrong, was unreliable, or even had unwittingly betrayed the Party.123 The fact that Israel chose the imperialist side in the Cold War, or so it would seem according to the Communist rhetoric, raised the question of loyalty to s­ocialism among Jewish communities in the Eastern Bloc. A large number of Jews emigrated to Israel, making all Jews – or, better formulated, all those of Jewish descent – suspect of sympathies with Zionism and the State of Israel. What is more, the Communist police were concerned that Jewish émigrés, young men in particular, could have knowledge about the military ­capabilities of the Czechoslovak army or could use contacts in the country

121 Budín, Jak to vlastně bylo, 480. 122 Kolár, Co už máma nenapsala; Heda Margolius Kovály, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941–1968 (Cambridge, Mass.: Plunkett Lake Press, 1986). 123 Jiří Kosta, Život mezi úzkostí a nadějí (Praha: Paseka, 2002), 92.

208

chapter 4

to gather ­intelligence that could be used in military conflict between East and West.124 During the 1950s, the Party continued to suspect all those ‘of Jewish origin,’125 and in a certain way created the category of potential Zionists and cosmopolitans. The State Secret Police began to compose a card index of all ‘Jews’ in Czechoslovakia, Operation RODINA (Family). This complex surveillance of the Jewish community continued until 1962, when it was temporarily stopped because of its antisemitic underpinning.126 However, after the suppression of the Prague Spring, it eventually developed into the infamous Operation P ­ AVOUK (Spider) in the 1970s.127 As one historian argues, the Communist officials did not believe that all the Jews who decided to stay in Czechoslovakia after 1949 did so because of their love for the country and with the intention to assimilate completely into the main Slav nations of the state.128 Furthermore, there were also renewed ties to the Jewish community among people who had not been interested in their family roots before, because of the Shoah. Even completely assimilated and integrated people shared sympathies for Israel; notably, this was so strong that in 1948 Stalin was shocked by the support the creation of Israel received among the Jews in the Soviet Union, which was publicly manifested when large crowds welcomed the first Israeli ambassador to Moscow, Golda Meyerson [Meir]. Almost every Jewish person in Czechoslovakia had a relative or friend in Israel and many of them cared about the fate of the state. Thus, the understanding of the term ‘Zionist’ could easily be applied to anybody who expressed sympathies with Israel or had ‘even remote awareness of Jewish identity.’129 The whole, largely 124 Peter Salner and Ivica Bumová, eds., “ŠtB a židovská mládež (na príklade Západoslovenského kraja v rokoch 1969–1980),” in Židovská komunita po roku 1945 (Bratislava: Ústav etnológie sav, 2006), 67–100. 125 Steiner, “Ideologie a psychologie antisemitismu a deformace marxismu’,” 188. 126 Jacob Ari Labendz, “Re-Negotiating Czechoslovakia: The State and the Jews in Communist Central Europe: The Czech Lands, 1945–1990” (Unpublished PhD Thesis, Washington University, Saint Louis, Mo., 2014), 463–521; Koutek, “Zahraniční odboj na vlnách bbc. Československé vysílání z Londýna 1939–1945,” 40–42. 127 Labendz, “Re-Negotiating Czechoslovakia: The State and the Jews in Communist Central Europe,” 463–521. 128 Labendz, “Re-Negotiating Czechoslovakia: The State and the Jews in Communist Central Europe.” 129 Martin Šmok, “‘Every Jew Is a Zionist, and Every Zionist Is a spy!’ The Story of Jewish Social Assistance Networks in Communist Czechoslovakia,” East European Jewish Affairs 44, no. 1 (2014): 78; Labendz, “Re-Negotiating Czechoslovakia: The State and the Jews in Communist Central Europe.”

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

209

­ eterogeneous ­community formed in the minds of Czechoslovak Communists h into a coherent group of potential or real Zionists. Another problem created from the Communist perspective was the existence of the Israeli diplomatic corps in Socialist countries. Hence, there was an embassy of an enemy state (using the Cold War terminology) in Czechoslovakia that maintained close contacts with parts of the Czechoslovak society. The oft presented claim that Israel represents or cares for all Jews in the world further disquieted the Communists. In 1960–61, when Israel was prearing the Eichmann Trial, the Czechoslovak government was reluctant to support the Israeli prosecutors with evidence against Eichmann as they feared it would support the Israeli claims that the state represents all the Shoah victims, regardless of their nationality.130 In 1967, Israeli diplomats were accused of ­espionage but also of efforts to influence the Jewish population in the republic towards supporting the bourgeois nationalist state. Those ‘of Jewish origin’ were allegedly susceptible to the recruitment for espionage and other criminal activities. As Martin Šmok argues, in the Communist view, ‘every Jew [was] a Zionist, and every Zionist [was] a spy.’131 Israeli diplomats were constantly under surveillance, and the Secret Police kept an eye on their contacts in the local population. This was also the case of people who kept receiving social support from American Jewish humanitarian organizations. The existence of similar agencies, such as the Joint, evoked the danger of a (chimeric) enemy involvement in the Communist states. The Joint was accused of espionage and financial machinations, including smuggling and black-maketeering, and in 1950 it had to leave Czechoslovakia. After the departure of the Joint, the social assistance was distributed through a network of social workers who received funds via the Israeli legation in Prague. In the 1950s, a series of smaller trials took place in which groups of social workers – often elderly people – were sentenced to prison terms for distributing social assistance ‘for the purpose of subversive activities.’ The allegations were succinctly articulated in the final report of ­operation dana in 1957, which characterized it as an action by ‘persons of Jewish origin’, members of an ‘underground o­ rganization’ that was built and run by diplomatic officials of the Israeli embassy, with the aim of […] establishing a wide network throughout 130 Crhová, “Israel in the Foreign and Internal Politics of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and Beyond,” 262–66. 131 Šmok, “‘Every Jew Is a Zionist, and Every Zionist Is a spy!’ The Story of Jewish Social ­Assistance Networks in Communist Czechoslovakia,” 78.

210

chapter 4

Czechoslovakia, comprising Czechoslovak citizens of the Jewish religion, who would be willing, at the right moment and as instructed by the ­Israeli embassy, to actively [sic] carry out enemy activities against Czechoslovakia. For this purpose, mainly people from the ranks of the former bourgeoisie were involved in this organization.132 The persecution of the remaining Jews also reached Slovakia. In 1957, at least 38 people who had distributed financial support from Western humanitarian agencies were imprisoned in one of the Slovakian regions, pointing to the extent of the whole operation and the persistence of the belief in the existence of Zionist conspiratorial networks.133 The thaw after Stalin’s death and Khruschev’s secret speech at the 20th Party Congress in 1956 had little influence on the public image of Zionism and Z ­ ionists in Czechoslovakia. Also, the Soviet policy toward Israel remained largely unchanged even though the Eastern Bloc maintained diplomatic relations with Israel until 1967. Revisions of political trials had already started in Czechoslovakia in the mid-1950s. For a long time, the party maintained that, overall, the accused, Slánský in the first place, were guilty of distortions in the execution of Communist policies even if there had been mistakes in the execution of the political trials. Their alleged support for Israel and for the ‘emigration of Jewish bourgeoisie’ from Czechoslovakia was still listed among the main transgressions. This approach continued even after some of those ­sentenced during the main wave of purges had already been released from prison. Oren received clemency from President Zápotocký in 1956 and immediately left for Israel. This did not mean, however, that his sentence was unjust in the eyes of the Communist justice. Oren’s efforts to achieve a revision of the process were unsuccessful, and the Communist justice confirmed in 1958 that he had validly been sentenced according to the law.134 In October 1957, the first secretary of the Party’s Central Committee, ­Antonín Novotný (elected the President of Czechoslovakia one month later) ­confirmed the ambiguous attitude of the Party towards the revision of the show trials in a speech, whereby he reiterated the danger of Zionism in the past and present: 132 Světlana Ptáčníková and Vladimíra Vaníčková, “Judaika v Archivu Ministerstva vnitra,” in Sborník Archivu ministerstva vnitra, vol. 3, 2005, 322f. V-2722 mv. 133 Bumová, “Sionizmus a židovský buržoázny nacionalizmus na Slovensku – východiská (1948–1970),” 115. 134 O procesech a rehabilitacích. I.,/Zpráva “Pillerovy komise” o politických procesech a rehabilitacích v Československu v letech 1949 až 1968/, 159.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

211

The question of Zionism must be seen in this whole configuration of ­people and in this group of people. Let us not deny what kind of people got into high Party positions after 1945 […] In the end we realized that they were making a pact with the Israeli state […]. It was made by people who in many cases had played leading roles in the interwar Zionist organizations and were connected with international capital.135 Zionism was clearly understood as an anti-Communist movement, but Novotný’s statements still carried the antisemitic underpinning that characterized the discourses of leading Communists in the early-1950s. Fundamentally, the statements did not elicit any response from the present members of the Central Committee.136 The idea that in the early-1950s Zionists had infiltrated the Party leadership was very much alive. After the anti-Israeli turn in early-1950, leading Czechoslovak Communists returned to their anti-Zionist rhetoric now intersperesed with antisemitism. While Zionism had always been presented as an abstract movement of dispersed people by the propaganda, now it received a real shape in the form of Israel, whose government betrayed the trust of the Communist Bloc. Yet the image of a ‘Jew-Zionist’ retained its vague, almost chimeric form of a subversive movement, an octopus spreading its tentacles in people’s democracies, ­seeking to undermine the forces of progress. A Zionist became a political, national and socio-economic (class) enemy. The thaw did not bring any major changes; what is more, antisemitism was not absent from the thaw itself. While the violent public campaign stopped, the Party continued to treat Zionism as one of the main ideological enemies of Communism. Even academic (and hence supposedly objective) books on the national question in Czechoslovakia, for example by Miloš Hájek and Olga Staňková, characterized Zionism as a ‘chauvinist,’ ‘rasist’ and ‘reactionary’ movement whose influence in Czechoslovakia needed to be eliminated.137 There were rarely any alternative public discourses available. It was only the slow liberalization in society during the 1960s and the earthquake in the Middle East in 1967 that led to new open debates about Zionism, the State of Israel and Jews in Czechoslovakia in the past, present and future. 135 O procesech a rehabilitacích. I. 136 O procesech a rehabilitacích. I.,/Zpráva “Pillerovy komise” o politických procesech a rehabilitacích v Československu v letech 1949 až 1968/, 163f. 137 They also implicitly defended the sentence against Rudolf Slánský. Miloš Hájek and Olga Staňková, Národnostní otázka v lidově demokratickém Československu. (Praha: Státní nakladatelství politické literatury, 1956), 63f.

212

chapter 4

Zionist Conspiracy with a ‘Human Face’

Late at night of August 21, 1968, people across Czechoslovakia woke up to the ­information that five armies of the Warsaw Pact (the Soviet, Polish, East ­German, Bulgarian and Hungarian) had started invading Czechoslovakia. ­Officially, they came to save the Communist regime, threatened by alleged counterrevolutionary attempts and plans to remove Czechoslovakia from the socialist camp in the Cold War conflict. In the ensuing propaganda campaign justifying the invasion, the Soviet, Polish and East German media c­ ontinuously employed anti-Zionist rhetoric and blamed a Zionist conspiracy for what they called the internal turmoil in Czechoslovakia. As early as August 25, 1968, Neues Deutschland, the mouthpiece of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, was claiming that ‘Zionist forces have taken over the leadership in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.’138 In a very similar way, Żołnierz Wolności, the newspaper of the Polish People’s Army, suggested that all the leaders of the liberalization movement in Czechoslovakia – regardless of whether they were Jewish or not – were ‘agents of the International Zionist Organization Joint.’139 The anti-Zionist campaign continued in the following months as purges gradually removed the main reformers from the Czechoslovak leadership and established a political system of normalization, a hard-core conservative type of Communist regime. In December 1970, the Central Committee of the cpc approved a key document that provided an official evaluation of the developments during the turbulent months of the Prague Spring, which was the attempt to liberalize the Czechoslovak society and establish ‘socialism with a human face.’ The Lessons from the Crisis Development in the Party and Society after the 13th Congress suggested that ‘a significant impact in the fight against Socialism in Czechoslovakia had the forces that were involved from the position of Zionism, one of the instruments of international imperialism and antiCommunism’; only the quick international help of the Warsaw Pact armies saved Communism in the country.140 This short sentence confirmed that antiZionism again assumed a central position in the Communist fight against class and ideological enemies. The ‘Zionist’, in this case both a Jew and non-Jew, as an ideological enemy reentered the Communist discourse. 138 University of Southampton Archives, MS241/11/1/1, undated manuscript debating the anti-Zionist campaign in Czechoslovakia in 1968. 139 Ibid. 140 Poučení z krizového vývoje ve straně a společnosti po xiii. sjezdu ksč. Schváleno plenárním zasedáním úv ksč 11. Prosince 1970 (Příloha Rudého práva, leden 1971), 7.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

213

Following the Soviet lead, the Czechoslovak government had cut all relations with Israel in June 1967 in response to the Six Day War, presented as a brutal Israeli imperialist invasion, and continued previous military cooperation with the Arab states. Later, Communist authorities provided military facilities and funding to Arab terrorist organizations and contributed to the international propaganda campaign against Zionism. In 1975, Czechoslovakia ­co-authored the Declaration of the General Assembly of the United Nations that condemned Zionism as a form of racism. At the same time, Zionism gradually disappeared from the speeches of most of leading Communists, at least after the initial propaganda barrage of 1969–72, and was relegated to writings by occasional publicists or party conservatives like Vasil Biľak, the influential Secretary of the Central Committee of the cpc. In Biľak’s speeches, nevertheless, the threat of Zionism usually appeared among a cliché of phrases in which he listed all enemies of the socialist order in Czechoslovakia, with no further elaboration on its specificities.141 The debate about the previous and future attempts of ‘Zionist espionage headquarters’ to undermine Socialism in Czechoslovakia moved to the Party press, but it occasionally appeared in radio and on television as well. During the normalization, the Communist Party tried to use allegations of a Zionist conspiracy as a way to discredit the previous attempt to liberalize the totalitarian society. Authors debate if the renewed attack on Zionism was a result of an ideological indoctrination from the Soviet Union or whether we also can talk about local initiatives.142 We can also discuss how far the theme of an alleged Zionist conspiracy really preoccupied the minds of Party conservatives, or if it served just as a useful tool to discredit the reform movement and emerging dissent groups. The truth is that during the 1960s, Jewish themes contributed to the general liberalization and helped to undermine the control that the Communist Party held over society. Two events are usually identified as contributing to the origins and development of the reform movement in Czechoslovakia. In late-May 1963, a scholarly conference convened in Liblice Castle, near Mělník in central Bohemia, debated the work of Franz Kafka and the importance of Bohemian German literature. The main organizer was Eduard Goldstücker, professor of German literature and a long-time Party member who had been born into a Jewish family in Slovakia. Goldstücker spent the war in ­Britain 141 Speech of the cpc Secretary Vasil Biľak (Czech Television, 1971), https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=0JqQAC16kqc. 142 icjc Newsletter, No. 5, 1972, Open letter from Karl Baum to Gustav Husák. Baum believed that there were local sources of the campaign.

214

chapter 4

working for the Czechoslovak government-in-exile before he became the first Czechoslovak minister to Israel in 1948. He was purged in the early-1950s, receiving life imprisonment. Released from the prison in 1956 and rehabilitated, he eventually became one of the main public voices during the Prague Spring as the Chairman of the Union of Czechoslovak Writers. The importance of the conference stemmed from the fact that it debated Kafka’s works that had been rejected by the Communist watchdog for their decadence, and in this way helped to undermine Communist control over the cultural sphere.143 One year after the conference, Max Brod, Kafka’s best friend, visited Czechoslovakia from Israel and further contributed to the public debate about Kafka’s work. At the same time, cultural contacts with Israel increased and several Czechoslovak writers, including Emil F. Knieža, Arnošt Lustig and Erich Kulka, visited the Jewish state.144 The main challenge to the Communist grip on power in Czechoslovakia came in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The Communist leadership delivered heated condemnations of Israel. President Novotný even used for this purpose his public speech at the commemoration event in Lidice (June 11, 1967), the village razed during the war by the Germans in retaliation for the assassination of Heydrich on May 27, 1942. In a speech that commemorated the victims of the Nazi regime, the Czechoslovak president devoted a disproportionate part to the public condemnation of what he characterized as Israeli ‘imperialism’, and expressed support for Arab countries. Novotný thus made an indirect comparison between Nazi Germany and Israel.145 The Czechoslovak media – television, radio and newspapers – carried out a campaign that attacked Israeli policies. Concurrently, the Party justified the severance of relations with Israel by accusing Israeli diplomats in Czechoslovakia of espionage. Rudé právo depicted the Israeli diplomats as people with German sounding names, fluent in Czech and Slovak (former non-Slav Czechoslovak citizens, Zwi Shamir/Kurt Stein, Karel Yaaron/Karel Grinwald, Nahum Lavon/Erik Liebman), who kept contacting those ‘of Jewish origin’ and paid them large sums of money for secret information. The diplomats also breached the diplomatic protocol by visiting Jewish Communities without the approval of the state and, furthermore, tried to persuade young people and intelligentsia to move to ­Israel. The diplomats, Rudé právo claimed, followed the directives of the World Jewish Congress to work with Jewish youth throughout the world, educating them in the Jewish national spirit and making them supportive of Israeli 143 Eduard Goldstücker, Vzpomínky: 1945–1968 (Praha: G plus G, 2005), 129f. 144 American Jewish Yearbook, 1965, 441. 145 Rudé právo, June 12, 1967, 1f.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

215

­policies.146 The Jewish state, but especially the Zionist movement, was again presented as a threat not only for the Middle East but also – as a subversive and counterrevolutionary movement – for Communist countries. The response in Czech and Slovak society was far less decisive. First protest voices against the strong criticism of Israel emerged almost immediately after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Jewish organizations within Czechoslovakia refused to condemn Israeli policies and parts of the community organized small public demonstrations in support of Israel.147 Journalists, publicists and writers were at the forefront of the efforts to articulate an alternative discourse. The main platform for the criticism of the Party’s policies offered the Fourth Congress of the Union of Czechoslovak Writers, where several speakers including Arnošt Lustig, Jan Procházka and Pavel Kohout, sharply condemned Czechoslovak policies. As one author commented on the importance of the Congress, it was ‘the first forum for unprecedented criticism of Novotný’s international and domestic policies, as well as the first forum for open debate about Czechoslovakia’s future.’148 Another scholar called it ‘the catalyst agent for the reform movement.’149 The attitude toward Israel was only one of the topics critically debated at the Congress, but by this point it linked the emerging liberalization movement with Zionists and Jews in the minds of the conservative part of the Communist Party. Two months later and in protest against the anti-Israeli policy, Slovak writer and journalist Ladislav Mňačko emigrated to Israel; though returning to Czechoslovakia in 1968, he left again after the Warsaw Pact invasion. In a humorous way typical for Mňačko, he later claimed, as one author recalls, ‘When Czechoslovakia broke diplomatic relations with Israel, he broke relations with Czechoslovakia and assisted by media, left for Israel.’150 In response,

146 Rudé právo, June 15, 1967, 2. 147 Crhová, “Israel in the Foreign and Internal Politics of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and Beyond,” 247–7; Eichler, “Slovenské židovstvo a jeho boj o záchranu v periode 1939–1972”; Livia Rothkirchen, “State Anti-Semitism during the Communist Era (1948–1989),” in Anti-Semitism in Post-Totalitarian Europe, ed. Jan Hančil (Praha: Franz Kafka Publishing, 1993), 130. 148 Jaromír Navrátil, The Prague Spring 1968: A National Security Archive Documents Reader (New York: Central European University Press, 1998), 5. 149 Lendvai, Antisemitism in Eastern Europe., 260; Wein, A History of Czechs and Jews, 170–75. 150 Jozef Leikert, “Emigrácia Ladislava Mňačka do Izraela ako prejav odporu voči antiizraelskej politike Československa,” in Slovensko a svet v 20. storočí: Kapitoly k 70. narodeninám PhDr. Valeriána Bystrického, DrSc., ed. Bohumila Ferenčuhová (Bratislava: Historický ústav Slovenskej akadémie vied, 2006), 218.

216

chapter 4

the Presidium of the Central Committee expelled Mňačko from the Party and deprived him of his Czechoslovak citizenship.151 Czechoslovakia’s relations with Israel remained at the forefront of debates during the Prague Spring, which demonstrated the politicization of the public sphere in the country. There was strong support for Israel in the Czechoslovak population, not the least because of their rejection of the Soviet’s great power policies in the Middle East.152 In the first half of 1968, there were ­several ­grassroot initiatives that called for the renewal of diplomatic relations with Israel, including a petition organized by university students in Prague that collected over 13,000 signatures.153 Articles praising Israel’s policies and its military achievements appeared in the press, which also relayed relatively open discussions between supporters of Israel and those who advocated the Arab case, including an exchange between Lustig and the prominent Slovak Communist Ladislav Novomeský.154 More liberal journals – such as Student – ­published interviews with Israeli diplomats, including Avigdor Dagan who was previously known as Viktor Fischl. During the Second World War, Fischl served as a secretary to Jan Masaryk.155 In 1968, the rehabilitation of the victims of Stalinist justice brought the question of antisemitism and the previous state persecution of the Jews to the fore. The first memoirs by victims of the purges or their relatives were published.156 Furthermore, journals and newspapers relayed sharp criticism of the situation in neighbouring Poland.157 In the spring of 1968, the Gomulka leadership initiated another massive campaign, as Dariusz Stola suggests, against Zionism and ‘Zionism’ – the production of (imagined) Zionists, often non-Jews, by state

151 Karel Kaplan, ed., Všechno jste prohráli!: Co prozrazují archivy o iv. sjezdu Svazu československých spisovatelů, 1967 (Praha: Ivo Železný, 1997), 134f. 152 Michal Reiman, Rusko jako téma a realita doma a v exilu: vzpomínky na léta 1968–1989 (Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny av čr, 2008), 36. 153 Harold Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution. (Princeton, N.J.: ­Princeton University Press, 2016), 633. 154 Rudé právo, May 12, 1968, 3. 155 Tribuna, May 24, 1972, 21. 156 Josefa Slánská, “Zpráva o mém muži,” originally published in sequels in Literární noviny, April-June 1968. It was published in book form in English and later in Czech. Josefa Slánská, Report on My Husband. (New York: Atheneum, 1969); Josefa Slánská, Zpráva o mém muži (Praha: Nakl. Svoboda, 1990); Eugen Löbl, Svedectvo o procese s vedením protištátneho sprisahaneckého centra na čele s Rudolfom Slánskym (Bratislava: Vydavateľstvo politickej literatúry, 1968); Artur London, Doznání: v soukolí pražského procesu (Praha: Československý spisovatel, 1969). 157 Lendvai, Antisemitism in Eastern Europe, 269f.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

217

propaganda – which soon took a sharp antisemitic turn. The liberalization in Czechoslovakia allowed the press to criticize the developments in Poland.158 Debates about antisemitism – past and present – became part of the liberalization process. Although those of Jewish background did not play any prominent role in the reform movement, they, in particular Goldstücker and František Kriegel, soon became the main targets of the overt and covert a­ ttacks from the opponents of the liberalization. In late-June 1968, Goldstücker published an article in Rudé právo entitled ‘Attention, citizens!’ revealing the content of anonymous letters he received and which contained strong antisemitic insults. In Goldstücker’s opinion, similar anonymous letters constituted a serious danger for a healthy development in society. In the following weeks, public declarations were adopted across Czechoslovakia, where workers’ committees expressed support for Goldstücker, and further articles along these lines emerged in the Party press.159 Concurrently, the editors of Rudé právo and Goldstücker received ‘­hundreds’ of letters, some of them anonymous, rejecting antisemitism; still, some of them  – a minority of about 13%, according to Goldstücker – again included strong antisemitic statements. It is important to acknowledge the existence of the anonymous letters, that, as it has been implied, either came from the conservative part of the Communist movement or, as Goldstücker believed, from those who had interrogated political prisoners and prepared political trials in the 1950s.160 Yet, it is equally significant to emphasise the public debates, and the overwhelming rejection of antisemitic sentiments that went along with it, that these letters initiated in the pages of Rudé právo and Práce as well as on television. Rudé právo even published an article under the title ‘­Antisemitism  = Anti-Communism.’161 Later, in the early normalization, the whole affair was turned against Goldstücker as it was claimed that he had written the antisemitic letters himself with the intention to discredit conservatives in the Party.162 While being widely discussed during the Prague Spring, antisemitism was not socially absent during the liberalization process. Benjamin Eichler, who until his emigration to Canada in 1972 led the Jewish Community in Bratislava, recalled that anti-Jewish statements were voiced openly in the widely ­attended 158 Dariusz Stola, “Anti-Zionism as a Multipurpose Policy Instrument: The Anti-Zionist ­Campaign in Poland, 1967–1968,” Journal of Israeli History 25, no. 1 (2006): 175–201. 159 Wolf Oschlies, “Antizionismus in der Tschechoslowakei ii.,” 1970, 3–9. 160 Rudé právo, June 23, 1968, 3 and in July 10, 1968, 5. 161 Lendvai, Antisemitism in Eastern Europe., 276f. Rudé právo, July 16, 1968, 5. 162 Goldstücker, Vzpomínky, 155; František J. Kolár, Sionismus a antisemitismus (Praha: ­Svoboda, 1970), 19. Tribuna, June 20, 1973, 26.

218

chapter 4

pilgrimage to the Milan Rastislav Štefánik Memorial, commemorating the ­Slovak politician and one of the founders of the First Czechoslovak Republic, in May 1968. To underline the resurrection of Nazi language with respect to the Jews, Eichler referred to the pilgrimage as a ‘marsch,’ using the German word.163 Antisemitism and the attitude toward the Arab-Israeli conflict s­imply ­became a part of the public debate by 1968, and this fact was to shape the  ­developments after the Soviet-led invasion. During the normalization, the Party conservative circles, which were under Soviet patronage, soon responded to the previous discussion. They built their discourse on the articles that emerged at the time of the 1967 conflict before the liberalization process in ­Czechoslovakia reached its peak, as well as on the import of antiZionist r­ hetoric from the Soviet Union. In the following years, Czechoslovakia ­assumed, alongside the Soviet Union, the position of a socialist country with the most vicious anti-Zionist, and, in certain cases, even antisemitic discourse. The main Soviet inspiration came in the form of Yuri Ivanov’s book ­Beware: Zionism!, translated into Czech and published in 1970. The book articulated the official Soviet policy toward the State of Israel and the Zionist movement, which was characterized as a form of imperialism cooperating with the capitalist West. More significantly, the Czech edition contained a new conclusion written by Jevgenij Jevsejev (Evgeni Evseev) that described the ‘Zionist influence’ over the liberalization process in Czechoslovakia. Ivanov’s and Jevsejev’s book was labelled as ‘the high point of the antisemitic campaign,’164 and it was allegedly also adopted as a primer for higher grades at elementary schools in Czechoslovakia. During the normalization, exile Jewish groups intensively speculated about Jevsejev’s identity and erroneously identified him in turn as a Czech journalist who had contributed to the Aryan Struggle (as Svatopluk Dolejš) during the war; still more proclaimed that he was an employee of the Czechoslovak interior ministry and police force (they probably confused him with the already mentioned Jiří Aleš).165 In reality, Jevsejev was a Russian author who acquired fame as a supposed specialist on Zionism between the 1970s and 1990s. This theory is supported by the fact that in the early-1970s, Jevsejev published in the Soviet Union 163 Eichler, “Slovenské židovstvo a jeho boj o záchranu v periode 1939–1972.” 164 American Jewish Year Book, 1971, 416. 165 Benjamin Eichler also asserts that this was a pseudonym and that the postscript was written by a Czech author who he identifies only by his surname Doležal (Doležál). Eichler, “Slovenské židovstvo a jeho boj o záchranu v periode 1939–1972.”

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

219

two books on Zionism and Israel: Fascism under a Blue star (Фашизм под голубой звездой) and Zionism: Ideology and Politics (Сионизм: идеология и политика). Jevsejev characterized Zionism firstly as a form of anti-Communism chosen by imperialists as a ‘quirky, but extremely sharp and effective weapon’ to undermine People’s democracies. In 1968, Zionists, so Jevsejev argued, eager to change the official Czechoslovak relations with Israel, deployed their agents to crucial posts in the mass media (for example, Jan Štern, Jiří Ruml, Jiří ­Dienstbier, Milan Weiner, Kamil Winter, Jiří Hochman, Zdeněk Hejzlar and Jiří Pelikán) and with their help spread Zionist propaganda in Czechoslovakia. The main force in the attack on socialism assumed politically active ‘Zionists,’ in particular Goldstücker, and the group around Kriegel that was, according to Jevsejev, supported by the Secretary of the Israeli embassy.166 According to Jevsejev, Goldstücker was ‘guilty’ of challenging the socialist cultural dogma at the Liblice conference and of accusing the conservative wing of the party of antisemitism. This was manifested in the published anonymous antisemitic letters. In contrast, Kriegel had been the target of systematic antisemitic attacks for a long time, including from some of the leading members of the Soviet politburo.167 He was born into a Galician Jewish family and studied at the German University in Prague, two facts that provided sufficient ammunition to conservative propagandists for years to come. The hatred against him further escalated when he was the only one among the leading Czechoslovak Communists who refused to sign the Moscow Protocol in which the Czechoslovak Communists, kidnapped and held in the Kremlin in late-August 1968, legitimized the Soviet-led invasion.168 Thanks to the Zionist agents, as Jevsejev believed, imperialists continued in their subversive activities previously led by the Israeli embassy. The agents tried to persuade the intelligentsia to emigrate to Israel and harm the economy in addition to attempting to educate the youth in the Zionist spirit. 166 Jevgenij Jevsejev, “Doslov,” in Sionismus (Praha: Nakladatelství Svoboda, 1970), 154–89. See also Ondřej Koutek, “Akce ‘Pavouk’. Evidování židovského obyvatelstva Státní bezpečností za normalizace,” Paměť a dějiny 11, no. 1 (2017): 43. Koutek mentions the interior minister Josef Pavel, chairman of the National Assembly Josef Smrkovský, Gertruda SekaninováČákrtová mp, rector of the Political University of the cc cpc [Vysoká škola politická úv ksč] Milan Hübl central director of the Czechoslovak Radio Zdeněk Hejzlar, central ­director of the Czechoslovak Television Jiří Pelikán, and the writer and journalist Jiří Kratochvíl, among others, as members of this so-called “Kriegelklub.” 167 Kevin McDermott, Communist Czechoslovakia, 1945–89: A Political and Social History (­Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 143. 168 Lidová demokracie, March 4, 1977, 3f.

220

chapter 4

This theme was later taken over by Czechoslovak Communists, in particular ­Pavel Auersperg, the chairman of the international department of the cc cpc, who ­talked about Zionism in 1968 as a ‘class enemy infection’ spreading in ­Czechoslovakia.169 Furthermore, Jevsejev continued by asserting that Jewish Communities, which had become ‘a fertile ground’ for Zionist plots, financed and supported the establishment of ‘counterrevolutionary’ organizations like the kan (Club of Committed Non-Party members, a group of intellectuals) and K 231 (Club 231, an organization of former political prisoners of the Communist regime). Their influence, so he claimed, reached far beyond the confines of the Jewish community in Czechoslovakia. As in the cases of other Communists who had propagated anti-Zionist ideas, Jevsejev sharply denied that he would be presenting antisemitic views. He instead suggested that such accusations had been used by Zionists to blacken any opponents of their imperialist ideology. Nevertheless, his allegations against Jewish Communities considerably enlarged the pool of people who could be accused of counterrevolutionary and Zionist activities – in the sense of serving the interests of imperialism – now encompassing almost all people active in Jewish communal affairs. His statement that a Jewish Communist (a term that denotes a racial characterization), who proudly observed the military achievements of Israel, ceased to be a Communist and became a Zionist furthermore confirmed a very vague, abstract and elastic understanding of the term.170 Jevsejev systematically stressed the leading role played in the Prague Spring by people ‘of Jewish origin’ among intellectuals and students. Quoting an ­article from Pravda (Bratislava), he asked whether it was a coincidence that one-third of all the remaining Jews emigrated from Czechoslovakia after the Soviet-led invasion, thus forming a disproportionate part of the post-August émigrés. They were either afraid of possible retribution or accepted the Zionist propaganda, spread from Vienna, that accused the Soviets of anti-Jewish policies.171 In either case they became unreliable elements. In the West, JewsZionists established contacts with the recent émigrés and planned to use them in their future attacks against the socialist countries.172 Hence, Jevsejev painted the image of an imminent danger for Czechoslovak society, coming from within as well as outside of the country. 169 Rudé právo, November 1, 1972, 3. 170 Jevgenij Jevsejev, “Doslov,” in Jurij Ivanov, Sionismus (Praha: Nakladatelství Svoboda, 1970), 167. 171 Ibid., 162f. 172 For this theme see also Rudé právo, May 14, 1970, 6; Jevsejev, “Doslov,” 164f.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

221

The influence from Moscow seemed crucial for the initiation of the campaign, but the Soviet propagandists found keen followers in Czechoslovakia.173 The content of Ivanov’s book was relayed, with explanatory comments, through a series of articles in the weekly Národní výbory (published for members of the National Committees, that is local administrations) by Jaromír Lang, a literary historian, member of the parliament and pro-Soviet conservative.174 The length of Lang’s articles points to the importance the purged Party ascribed to Ivanov’s book and in particular to Jevsejev’s conclusion. The Party leadership wanted to make sure that the main tenets of the anti-Zionist campaign reached the lower-levels of state administration. Oschlies concludes that Lang’s text, with its overt attacks directly against Jews, fell only short of the antisemitic campaigns of late-Stalinism.175 Furthermore, Lang characterized Zionists, with their international intelligence centres (for example, in Paris under Tigrid), and their allies in Czechoslovakia (for example, ‘Kriegels, Goldstückers, Reimanns, Pelikans and Liehms’) as ‘lackeys of capital and imperialism,’ people ‘alien to our national spirit’ and true ‘cosmopolitans without homeland.’176 The spectre of the discourses used during the Slánský trial returned to Czechoslovakia. The main role in the initial stages of the Czechoslovak anti-Zionist campaign was assumed by František J. Kolár (1919–84), characterized after his death as a ‘persistent producer of anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist vituperative literature bordering on antisemitism.’177 Kolár was born into a Jewish family, but later completely cut any connections with his Jewish heritage. He tied his whole life to the Communist Party and joined the youth Communist organization of Komsomol by the age of 16 in 1934. He spent the war in British exile serving in the Czechoslovak army but sticking to the ideals of the forthcoming socialist revolution. In 1945, he returned to Czechoslovakia and worked as a journalist in Rudé právo along with joining the Party apparatus as an economic expert in the Central Committee’s Commission on National Economy. He was purged in July 1952 because of his Jewish background, allegedly based on a coerced confession of Goldstücker, and in 1954 sentenced to 15 years for sabotage. During the interrogations, Kolár, in a similar way to other ‘Jewish’ defendants, was systematically presented as a Zionist. He fiercely rejected this charge. 173 Tomáš Kulka, “The ‘New’ Forms of Anti-Semitism in Czechoslovakia,” Dispersion and Unity: Journal on Zionism and the Jewish World. 19/20., 62f. 174 Národní výbory, no. 34–39. Also the Slovak newspaper published a series of excerpts from Ivanov’s book in Pravda na víkend (Pozor, sionismus!) in June 1970. 175 Wolf Oschlies, “Antizionismus in der Tschechoslowakei iv.,” 1970, 7. 176 Národní výbory, no. 34–39. 177 icjc Newsletter, Vol. XV, No. 4, 1984.

222

chapter 4

Despite the experience of suffering that extended to his family – his wife lost her job and could not find any proper employment; she had to look after three children while taking on an unskilled profession despite being a respected writer of theatre plays and later film scripts – Kolár remained a committed Communist and blamed his imprisonment on distortions in Communist practice at the time of the cult of personality, it means the period of high Stalinism in Czechoslovakia. Released after seven years of imprisonment in 1959, which was much later than others sentenced during his trial, Kolár re-joined public life and worked as a journalist in leading positions in Rudé právo and Kulturní tvorba. Regardless of his personal experiences with Communist justice and antisemitism, he assumed the place of a prominent critic of Israeli policies, Zionism and of what Kolár characterized as the Jewish influences on Czech culture in the late-1960s.178 It is likely that Kolár was selected as a leader of the attack on Zionism precisely because he had a Jewish background. The Communist press, when reviewing Kolár’s thoughts on Zionism, concluded that he could not be accused of antisemitism due to his family origin and the persecution he had personally experienced in the 1950s.179 One author characterized Kolár’s work as ‘a textbook example of antisemitism during normalization,’180 but it needs to be understood that his theses on Zionism had originated before the Prague Spring. Kolár adopted a lukewarm attitude toward the liberalization process, though it seems that he maintained close contact with one of the main protagonists of the reform movement, J­ osef Smrkovský, the chairman of the National Assembly.181 Shortly after the Six Day War in June 1967, which was when liberal Czech and Slovak activists expressed support for the Jewish state threatened by a complete destruction by its Arab neighbors, Kolár in Rudé právo rejected the imperialist Zionist aggression against the neighbouring peaceful Arab countries and presented Israel only as a pawn in the game of the imperialist powers. He also condemned any activities of Israel’s sympathisers in Czechoslovakia.182 Kolár largely focused on contemporary questions, but he also addressed the historical roots of the Zionist movement and the role Zionists played, or so he believed, in the spreading of antisemitism. Kolár thus compared Zionism and 178 Kolár, Co už máma nenapsala, 65–136.; Wolf Oschlies, “Antizionismus in der Tschechoslowakei iii.” 179 Pravda, July 27, 1970. 180 Blanka Soukupová, “Modern Anti-Semitism in the Czech Lands Between the Years 1895– 1989. A Comparison of the Main Stages of the Most Influential Parts of Czech Nationalism,” Urban People / Lidé Města 13, no. 2 (2011): 253. 181 Kolár, Co už máma nenapsala, 179–206. 182 Rudé právo, July 18, and July 19, 1967, 6 and 6.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

223

Socialism. He argued that while Zionism created antisemitism by isolating the Jews and by establishing artificial ties across class boundaries, Socialism tried to integrate the working class across national groups and create affinity among people regardless of their ethnic origin. That is why Zionism, in Kolár’s view, was a reactionary movement. In fact, Zionists and antisemites had the same political goal, Kolár continued, because they wanted to perpetuate the existence of the Jewish question worldwide: they are both racist movements. For Kolár, Zionism supported the feeling of alienation from non-Jews among the Jewish population and intentionally constructed an ‘artificial Jewish nation’ that had not existed before. Kolár’s analysis of Zionism returns to Marxist and Leninist orthodoxy. Referring to the forefathers of the Communist movement, Kolár suggested that they rejected not only antisemitism but also Zionism from the very beginning. The fight against Zionism, which had already begun by the time of Lenin, could not be perceived as antisemitism. He vehemently protested against the allegations, published in the Western press, that the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union employed antisemitic policies against their own Jewish population. The Communist revolution, which was accompanied by a full assimilation of the Jews, led to the disappearance of the Jews as a particular group: there was no Jewish question in Czechoslovakia.183 In response to the articles, Kolár and Rudé právo received a large number of letters; this was another proof of the increasing politicization of Czechoslovak society during the thaw of the late-1960s. As far as we can gauge from Kolár’s later writing, the readers either rejected his criticism of Israel or condemned Jews per se, not solely Zionists. He selected longer quotes from the letters and prepared answers that represented the view of the conservative wing of the Party towards the Jewish question. Kolár later claimed that he had previously intended to publish this short book in 1968, but these efforts were – ‘not due to his fault,’ which implied censorship by the reformers – unsuccessful. (Kolár lost his prominent position in Kulturní tvorba and withdrew from the public sphere only to return shortly after the Soviet-led invasion. At this time, he rejoined the increasingly one-sided debate on Zionism and the Jewish question in Czechoslovakia.) The book appeared in 1970, a time when Kolár was working as a correspondent for Czechoslovak Radio in Moscow. It was an expanded version of the 1968 manuscript and additionally contained copies of articles on ‘Antisemitism and Zionism’ that Kolár wrote for Rudé právo in April 1970. Crucially, Kolár returned to the question of the relations between Zionism and antisemitism. Although the Communist revolution in 1948 more or less 183 Rudé právo, July 18, and July 19, 1967, 6 and 6.

224

chapter 4

solved the Jewish question in the country, which was deemed to be in its ‘final stage,’ Zionists and Zionist agents, according to Kolár, utilised the mistakes of high Stalinism to raise the spectre of antisemitism even though ‘antisemitism had never been strong in Czechoslovakia.’184 Kolár admitted that the trials during the 1950s had entailed certain traits and characteristics of antisemitism, of which he had a personal experience, but he marginalized the dominant role played by anti-Zionism and anti-Jewish statements during the purges.185 Kolár’s statements were full of contradictions because he also suggested that the awareness in Czechoslovakia of the antisemitic tendencies during the 1950s allowed Zionists to seek new positions in the Party and society ten years later, primarily due to the fact that nobody wanted to be accused of antisemitism if they opposed their activities. This argument was already used by the political elites and prosecutors during the Slánský t­ rial when they explained how Zionist agents entered the Party structures after 1945.186 It confirms that the tropes of high Stalinism re-emerged in the Communist discourse during the normalization. In 1967, Kolár concluded his views on the position of the Jews in Czechoslovakia with the statement that ‘Assimilation in the Czech lands progressed so far that nobody even thinks or even cares whether this or that politician, writer, artist was or is Jewish, they all felt and thought as Czechs.’187 Yet, in a mere three years, he already wrote about ‘Jewish’ intellectuals who discovered their Jewish roots and the feeling of belonging to the Jewish community only after the 1950s. They initiated, he continued, the ‘epidemics’ of Jewish literature and the ‘orgies of Kafkism’ – the defeatist and decadent culture that typically correlated to ‘Jewish self-pitying and exaggeration’.188 Kolár had known Goldstücker for decades, and Goldstücker’s coerced confession led to his imprisonment in 1952. Although Goldstücker had left prison by 1956, Kolár remained behind bars until 1959 and blamed Goldstücker for his unwillingness to help with an earlier release. These personal conflicts could have possibly contributed to ­Kolár’s attacks against ‘Jewish intellectuals’ and Goldstücker.189 The activities of the intellectuals, Kolár continued, further increased during the 1967 war. In this way, Kolár implied that they breached the implicit assimilationist contract with the Czechoslovak state. After 1945, all Jewish survivors 184 Kolár, Sionismus a antisemitismus, 16. 185 Ibid., 81f. 186 Kolár, Co už máma nenapsala, 17. 187 Rudé právo, July 19, 1967, 6. 188 Kolár, Sionismus a antisemitismus, 17. 189 Kolár, Co už máma nenapsala, 68–71.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

225

had to decide whether they wanted to leave Czechoslovakia or stay, but in latter case they had to undergo a process of full assimilation. This new situation had not been respected by the reformists and their supporters, who became disloyal to the state: Those who have remained no longer have the right to sow confusion in our lives by their sentimental sympathies with entirely unsentimental aggressors and imperialist slingers – small Davids, it’s true, who, however, are naughtily shooting from their slings, hidden in the skirt of the mighty Goliath, at the equally weak Davids amongst their poor, though numerous, relations.190 For Kolár, the bearers of Zionist ideals, such as Goldstücker and Lustig, as well as non-Jews, such as Kohout and Mňačko, influenced the cultural and intellectual sphere of life in Czechoslovakia with their ‘pseudo-humanist’ ideas. They tried to re-establish contact with Israel and revive the Jewish question in Czechoslovakia. However, the fall of Dubček and the main reformers in the April of 1969 completely quashed their hopes.191 What was thus the image of a ‘Jew-Zionist’ in Kolár’s writing? A Zionist was a chauvinist nationalist who oppresses other nations, a person disloyal to his ­Socialist homeland and one who fights against the determinist progress of history and perpetuates – for his own interests – the existence of the Jewish problem in the world. A Zionist was a class enemy that, in cooperation with imperialist forces, undermined the socialist order in the Eastern Bloc. Any expression of support for Israel was immediately connected to the spreading of anti-Soviet and anti-Communist ideals; these sentiments were inseparable. ­Zionism was tied to the political efforts of the imperialist world in the present as well as in the past, including the Nazis. The Capitalists who had supported Jewish emigration to Palestine before the Second World War, Kolár suggested, later enabled the rise of Hitler in ­Germany. Now, the Israeli aggression was supported by funds from West ­German ­Capitalists, making another indirect link to Nazi Germany, in addition to funding from rich Jewish Wall Street bankers. Being a Zionist, for ­Kolár, was officially a matter of choice because the Jewish nation did not exist outside of Israel and even there it was created artificially, not through any natural or progressive development. From this line of thought, Svobodová suggests that s­ upressed or hidden Jewishness was the only acceptable way of 190 Kolár, Sionismus a antisemitismus, 50. 191 Ibid., 16–18.

226

chapter 4

expressing ­Jewish ­identity for Kolár.192 Yet, we can go even one step further, any ­connection–even imaginary–with Jewish themes and culture immediately turned an individual, Jewish or non-Jewish alike, into a Zionist. Only no connection at all with one’s Jewishness could be the only acceptable solution for Kolár. Additionally, Kolár further developed the image of a ‘Jewish intellectual’193 – a ‘fictitious enemy’194 – connected with Zionism and imperialism. ‘Jewish intellectuals’ were guilty of the attempted counterrevolution in Czechoslovakia but also of the Soviet-led invasion that was triggered by their subversive activities. Czechs and Slovaks were the victims of the Zionist (or simply Jewish) calculations. In this manner, the guilt for the catastrophe of Czechoslovakia was shifted to Jewish intellectuals, often identified by their original, non-Czech or hyphenated names, or non-Jews in the service of international Zionism; both were alien to Czech culture and society. The position of intellectuals, which here means people who do not gain living through manual labour (it means not from the working class), created an image of people distant from the ­daily problems of ordinary people. This theme was quickly taken over by other journalists: ‘[The intellectuals] lived in a kind of ivory tower and thought that Handlová miners, cooperatives from Zemplín, shipbuilders from Komárno, or vintners from Modrá are interested in this world in nothing else but the Israeli attack against the Arabs and the imagined so-called “Jewish Question.”’195 Kolár’s work received wide publicity in Czechoslovakia. The Slovak Communist newspaper Pravda, as mentioned earlier, published six long articles that debated the content of the book and applied Kolár’s conclusions to the Slovak context. The author, Jan Novák (Miloš Marko), continued the attack on the Zionist-inspired and paid intellectuals. His main target became Vladimír (Vlado) Kašpar, a Slovak member of the reform wing of the Party and chairman of the Union of Czech Journalists in 1968–69. He presented Kašpar as member of the orthodox Jewish Weiss family and someone who had been an active ­Zionist as a student. Although coming from Slovakia, he became the chairman of a Czech group of journalists, thus further confirming his alleged lack of connection with any particular national group. Novák stayed only one step away from the term ‘cosmopolitain.’ Such trimmers, he concluded, claimed to defend the national interests of the Czech and Slovak people.196 All these ­factors 192 Ibid., 7–10; Svobodová, Zdroje a projevy antisemitismu v českých zemích, 1948–1992, 55. 193 Svobodová, Zdroje a projevy antisemitismu v českých zemích, 1948–1992, 52, 57f. 194 Wolf Oschlies, “Antizionismus in der Tschechoslowakei iii,” 15. 195 Pravda, July 27, 1970. 196 Ibid.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

227

were to discredit the former reform movement and bring society to the side of the normalizers. It was to show that the reform movement was just a machination by several Jews or rootless Jewish intellectuals, a combination of class, ideological and national factors of alienation.197 Western media presented Kolár’s book and articles as an example of crude antisemitism, alleging that he was paving the way for new political trials against the Jews. The Times, a mainstream British newspaper, labelled Kolár’s book ‘the first instance in Czechoslovakia of an author of Jewish descent being enrolled in the best Soviet pattern to attack the views apparently held by most Jews.’198 Kolár used this attack to present himself as a victim of vile imperialist propaganda and accused ‘Zionists’ and ‘pro-Zionist activists’ of immorality. They alleged that there was antisemitism in the Eastern Bloc, but at the same time Israel and Zionists cooperated with their ‘protectors’ in the United States, where racism and antisemitism had a ‘free reign across the whole country.’ His rebuttal again reminded people of the coerced statements made during the Slánský trial, for example by Simone.199 Kolár later occasionally appeared in mainstream media and continued to develop his theories on the Jewish question, Zionism and antisemitism. In 1974, he defended a dissertation at the Department of Marxist-Leninist ­Philosophy at the Political University of the Central Committee of the cpc.200 Two years later, in a broadcast on Czech Radio entitled Zionism in Theory and Practice and in an article in Tribuna, Kolár continued to articulate the notion that ‘worldwide Jewish nation exists only in the lunatic dreams of Zionist ­fanatics.’ In another crude statement, he suggested that the Nazi persecution of the Jews came to the Zionists ‘like manna from Heaven’ because it allowed them to strengthen the feeling of belonging among the Jews to the artificial Jewish nation, thereby contributing to the establishment of the Zionist Jewish state.201 He was also one of the first Czech journalists who overtly articulated the Communist vision, comparing Zionism with racism and Nazi Germany as well as the Israeli army with ss troops during the Second World War (see ­Chapter 3).202 197 Johann W. Brügel, “Die kpč und die Judenfrage,” Osteuropa: Zeitschrift für Gegenwartsfragen des Ostens 23, no. 11 (1973): 878. 198 The Times, August 3, 1970, 5. 199 Rudé právo, September 3, 1970, 7. 200 Soukupová, “Modern Anti-Semitism in the Czech Lands Between the Years 1895–1989. A Comparison of the Main Stages of the Most Influential Parts of Czech Nationalism,” 253. 201 American Jewish Year Book, 1978, 446. 202 Rudé právo, February 25, 1971, 6.

228

chapter 4

Ivanov and Kolár’s books, as well as the discussion of their texts by various a­ uthors, were the climax of the public campaign during the e­ arly-normalization. Later, the whole campaign was kept alive by radio broadcasting and the Party press. Also, popular tv programs, films and tv-series occassionally contained covert references to the Zionist espionage activities in Czechoslovakia and the involvement of Zionists, or simply Jews, in the reform m ­ ovement, though it is not clear whether ordinary people were able to comprehend these quite elaborated tropes. For example, this occurred in the popular political-crime tv-series Třicet případů majora Zemana (Thirty Cases for Major Zeman).203 Eventually, Tribuna, a new ideological weekly, became the most important outlet for the anti-Zionist campaign (its circulation increased from 70,000 in 1973 to 90,000 in 1986). In the first years of the normalization, the journalists in Tribuna continued the attacks against the leaders of the liberalization movement, such as Ota Šik (an economic expert and deputy prime minister in 1968) and Goldstücker (who after 1968 stayed in exile). In this case, their attacks were also triggered by comments made in the Western press in the 1970s, whereby Goldstücker protested against the renewed anti-Zionist and antisemitic campaign in socialist countries. In response, Jiří Aleš (Bohatka) published a series of defamatory articles in which he systematically presented Goldstücker as a person who had never really accepted the ideals of Communism and had in fact been involved in Zionist groups since his student years (these statements were later denied by Goldstücker). This was furthermore one of the reasons, according to Aleš, why, following the instructions of Israeli agents, Goldstücker kept calling for the reestablishment of contacts with Israel in 1968. In this respect, Goldstücker was portrayed as somebody who had essentially never been a Czech or Slovak, which he manifested by the decision to pursue German studies and his interests in German literature. This was the image ­Tribuna gave of a leading member of the democratization process, henceforth characterizing him as a Zionist (‘a bourgeois Jewish nationalist’) who propagated German culture and ‘mediocre German(-Jewish) literature’ (Kafka).204 Overall, the journalists in the following years rarely returned to the ­Zionist conspiracy to bring down socialism, though they sometimes interspersed long articles that criticised the alleged current foreign espionage agencies with references to previous Zionist interferences into Czechoslovakia. M ­ anipulating 203 Jan Fingerland, “Major Zeman bojuje se sionisty: Obraz Židů, sionismu a holokaustu v normalizačním seriálu,” in Dvarim meatim: studie pro Jiřinu Šedinovou, ed. Daniel Boušek, Magdalena Křížová, and Pavel Sládek (Praha: Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, 2016), 239–58. 204 Tribuna, June 6, June 13, and June 20, 1973.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

229

words of Max Brod, Tribuna portrayed the Zionists as wirepullers who did not actively join the counterrevolution and rather molded public opinion from backstage.205 By 1970, very similar tropes were echoing in the writings of ­Bohuslav Laštovička mp, a member of the Central Committee of the Party and former chairman of the parliament in the Novotný era who attacked the State of Israel and powerful Jewish Capitalists as follows: Zionism is a reactionary movement of Jewish chauvinism and racism of a fascist type, controlled by Jewish billionaires, American, British, and so on. Jewish billionaire capital influences and even determines not only the policy of the State of Israel, but also the policies of the imperialist powers and world public opinion on the basis of their key positions in the world press, radio, television, and publishing houses.206 This notion was fully developed in the aforementioned Auersperg’s speech from late-October 1972. He asserted that Zionists controlled 50 percent of the press and 70 percent of the tv stations in the United States and played a ­decisive role in the decision-making of the American government.207 The image of a Jew who rules the world from behind the scenes, an epitome of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and of the antisemitic Nazi propaganda, found its place in the writings of Czechoslovak Communists and journalists at the beginning of the 1970s. A more critical issue for the last remnants of the Jewish communities were the attacks against the Jewish communal activists in Czechoslovakia in ­Tribuna. During the democratization process in April 1968, the Council of Jewish Religious Communities published a long statement expressing their wish to maintain contacts with Israel and re-establish relations with international Jewish agencies. These efforts, motivated by social and cultural considerations, were now presented as attempts to facilitate espionage activities in Czechoslovakia during the normalization.208 Such allegations were further supported, in the minds of the supporters of the normalization, by remarks made by the leaders of the Jewish Community in Prague that the idea of a possible destruction of Israel (meaning before 1967) could not leave the Jews in Czechoslovakia indifferent.209 These comments again raised the spectre of political ­disloyalty. 205 206 207 208 209

Tribuna, May 24, 1972, 21. Nová mysl, 1970, no. 3, 858. Rudé právo, November 1, 1972, 3. Věstník žno, April 1968, 1; Tribuna, August 3, 1977. Věstník žno, April 1968, 1.

230

chapter 4

The people ‘of Jewish origin’ in Czechoslovakia ought to be indifferent ­towards Israel if not in direct opposition to its (imperialist) policies. Following Jevsejev’s accusations, these conclusions led to a situation where any member of a Jewish Religious Community in Czechoslovakia could automatically be ­labelled a ‘Zionist.’ Indeed, Israel and Zionism became regular targets of Tribuna. The weekly did not publish short informative articles but rather lengthy polemics – o­ ften divided across five or six numbers – that analysed current foreign political a­ ffairs like Israeli policies against the Arab population or studies that outlined historical sources of current political developments. The articles were, to a certain degree, a response to the efforts of the international Jewish agencies criticizing the notion that Communist policies were against the Jews;210 in particular, there was an outcry from the weekly when Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir issued a public statement inviting all Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel in 1970. The journalists in Tribuna thus outlined their tasks as follows: The task of Communists throughout the world is to explain in Marxist terms, in depth and as a matter of principle, that the State of Israel is not the true national home of the Jewish labourers and working p ­ eople, but is the deformed Zionist realization of their aspirations for self-­ determination as a nation and a state.211 The current Israeli regime was depicted as a militaristic proto-fascist (or already fascist) dictatorship of the Israeli army and bourgeoisie. While the G ­ erman (Nazi) armies murdered ‘Poles, Ukrainians, Jews and Czechs,’ the ­‘Zionist fascists in the uniform of the Israeli army’212 murder Arabs and annexed their territory, pursuing the idea of a Great Israel from the Nile to the E ­ uphrates. This theme was not confined to the pages of Tribuna. In 1974, the plans for a new exhibition at the Terezín Memorial asserted that one of the aims of the Memorial was ‘to demonstrate how Zionists “have not learned anything from the annihilation of the Jews by the Nazis.”’213 In the 1980s, the M ­ emorial in Lidice prepared a special exhibition on the Israeli crimes in Q ­ uneitra, an ­abandoned 210 211 212 213

Rudé právo, February 25, 1971, 6. Tribuna, May 24, 1972, 21. Tribuna, May 17, 1972, 20. Livia Rothkirchen, “State Anti-Semitism during the Communist Era (1948–1989),” in Jan Hančil (ed.), Anti-Semitism in Post-Totalitarian Europe (Praha: Franz Kafka Publishing, 1993), 133.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

231

village in the demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights. The sacred place of Czech suffering under the Nazis thus informed the visitors about the ‘crimes of the Israeli fascists.’214 This campaign against Zionism was maintained, with varying frequency, into the early-1980s, always increasing at the time of wars in the Middle East or at the point when the Czechoslovak Communists experienced internal tensions. Although historians believe that the campaign was slowly dying out, it was quickly revived during the first war in Lebanon. In 1982, Tribuna again attacked Zionism, which ‘has in the last three decades changed from a bourgeois nationalist movement into a militant expansionist ideology and practice of chauvinism and anti-Communism of the large Jewish bourgeoisie and the world Jewish capital.’215 The journalists made the image of a ‘Jew-Zionist’ as an imperialist spy, exploiter, racist and fascist clear. Yet, the precise identification of who was in fact a Zionist constantly ­remained vague. Renewly drawing parallels between Israel and Nazi Germany, Aleš suggested in Tribuna that there had been many Germans who had not been active Nazis but who kept supporting Nazi Germany during the Second World War, at least as long as Hitler’s armies kept conquering Europe. They were co-responsible for the Nazi crimes.216 Thus anybody who felt connection with Israel (this ‘fascist imperialist center’) and who supported their side in the Arab-Israeli conflict, was actually a class enemy, a bourgeois nationalist, a racist and a fascist. Considering the previous attacks on the Prague ­Jewish ­Community217 and the fact that most of the Jews had personal or at least ­spiritual connections with Israel, all Jews in Czechoslovakia could potentially be included in this category. The Communists initially underestimated the connection that remained between the communities in diaspora and the Jews who settled in Israel in the late-1940s. Later they exaggerated this link. These attacks on Jews and Zionists elicited public criticism only in the first year after the August invasion. Still in the position of Party First Secretary in October 1968, Dubček made a brief remark in a long speech suggesting that the post-invasion society could not be stabilized with the help of antisemitism.218 Other articles that condemned the new campaign appeared in the press in late-1968 and early-1969, a time when even the Jewish Community still felt

214 215 216 217 218

icjc Newsletter, Vol. XVI, No. 78, February 1985. Tribuna, March 3, 1982, 8f. Tribuna, May 24, 1972, 21. Tribuna, July 27, 1977, 10. Rudé právo, October 12, 1968, 3.

232

chapter 4

­secure enough to condemn all manifestations of antisemitism.219 In the same month, Petr Pithart, one of the activists in the democratization process and later, after the fall of Communism in 1989, a leading Czech politician, publicly rejected the effort to present the Jews as scapegoats for the ‘nation’s catastrophe.’ The search for scapegoats that Pithart criticized reminds us of the situation in the Protectorate after the arrival of Heydrich in Prague in autumn 1941 and then again after his assassination in June 1942, when the Jews were partly blamed for the radicalization of the German anti-Czech policies.220 Later on in response to Ivanov’s book, the sons of Otto Šling, one of those sentenced in the Slánský trial, named Jan and Karel sent a letter to Husák, the new General Secretary of the Party, in which they protested against the antisemitic campaign.221 In March 1969, leaders of the government and of the Communist Party – ­notably Peter Colotka, the chairman of the Federal Assembly (parliament), Evžen Erban, chairman of the National Front, and Stanislav Rázl, the first prime minister of the Czech Socialist republic after the federalization in 1969 – attended the annual remembrance ceremony (tryzna) for the victims of the March 1944 mass murder of almost 3,800 Czech Jews in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Western media presented their attendance as an expression of opposition against the creeping anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist campaign.222 Yet in the following years, only lonely voices protested against the most blatant examples of antisemitism in the press and television, usually in the form of letters to the editorial staff or the head of the state television. Some of those who complained against the campaign were even Party members, who resented the idea that Communists resorted to antisemitism when criticising dissidents. As one particular writer concluded, there were sufficient grounds to condemn the opponents of the regime without employing racist rhetoric.223 The new party leadership after the purge of 1969–70 rarely joined the antisemitic campaign, though Husák once remarked on tv that the Czechs and Slovaks are educated people who did not need individuals such as ‘Šik, Kriegel 219 220 221 222

Věstník žno, March 1969, 3. Daily News Bulletin (jta), March 27, 1969. American Jewish Year Book, 1971, 417. Daily News Bulletin (jta), March 10, 1969. Svobodné slovo, commented on the memorial observances ‘that a new spirit of democracy and humanism reigns in our country and that in this country with such profound democratic traditions there is no place for anti-Semitism.’ 223 Paulina Bren, The Greengrocer and His tv: The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010).

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

233

and Lederer’ to teach them about democracy.224 All three were often publicly considered Jewish, though Šik vehemently opposed it,225 and the meaning of Husák’s words was clear: Jews – or Zionists – were not Czechs and Slovaks and therefore had no right to contribute to the discussion about the nature of the political system in Czechoslovakia. This seemed to be the most overt antisemitic statement coming from his side. On the other hand, the Czechoslovak policies remained firmly supportive of the Arab side in the Middle Eastern conflict; meanwhile, the Party also neglected the needs of the last remnants of the Jewish communities in Czechoslovakia. The Secret Police were simultaneously keeping a close eye on the Jewish community and composed lists of the Jews in Czechoslovakia (Operation ­PAVOUK). This suggests that the whole community was considered disloyal and potentially supportive of Zionism.226 In fact, the StB clearly employed racist criteria, and everybody who had one Jewish parent was recorded in the quickly expanding card index of Operation PAVOUK. The operation started in 1971 or 1972, and continued until the end of the Communist rule in 1989. Those among the ‘Jews’ who were not members of Jewish Communities, the purely religious organizations officially, were considered even more dangerous because they allegedly tried to hide their Zionist persuasion;227 this was a way of thinking employed already by the founding fathers of the antisemitic movement in the 19th century, such that they considered assimilated or baptized Jews more dangerous than professing individuals. Members of the community were constantly under surveillance and all foreign visitors, including tourists (travelling, for example, to Terezín or to spa towns, such as Karlovy Vary or Piešťany), were immediately suspected of hidden intentions.228 224 Brügel, “Die kpč und die Judenfrage,” 878. 225 Šik, who spent the war in concentration camps, noted that he was not Jewish even by the ‘Nazi standards’. Daily News Bulletin (jta), April 7, 1969. 226 For a detailed analysis of the State police employment of antisemitism in their surveillance of the Czechoslovak Jewish population see especially Labendz, “Re-Negotiating Czechoslovakia: The State and the Jews in Communist Central Europe”; Koutek, “’Akce ‘Pavouk’. Evidování židovského obyvatelstva Státní bezpečností za normalizace,”, 41–54. 227 Crhová, “Israel in the Foreign and Internal Politics of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and Beyond,” 292. According to Koutek, the card index included 17,205 names in 1973. Koutek, “’Akce ‘Pavouk’. Evidování židovského obyvatelstva Státní bezpečností za normalizace,” 47. 228 Jacob Ari Labendz, “Lectures, Murder, and a Phony Terrorist: Managing ‘Jewish Power and Danger’ in 1960s Communist Czechoslovakia,” East European Jewish Affairs 44, no. 1 (2014): 84–108; Labendz, “Re-Negotiating Czechoslovakia: The State and the Jews in Communist Central Europe”; Hlavinka, “Židovská komunita pod kontrolou”; Alena Heitlinger, In the Shadows of the Holocaust & Communism: Czech and Slovak Jews since 1945 (New

234

chapter 4

One of the main targets of the regime became the Jewish Communities that on several occasions in the late-1960s and early-1970s challenged the Communist policies against Israel and the official interpretation of the Holocaust, including the alleged Zionist collaboration with the Nazis. Furthermore, their educational activities were presented as unhealthy efforts to instil chauvinistic and nationalist Jewish (Zionist) ideas in youth. In the first half of the 1970s, Jewish Communities across Czechoslovakia were systematically purged of all alleged ‘Zionists,’ including committed Assimilationists such as František Fuchs, and only reliable activists took their positions, among them even agents of the Secret Police. Henceforth, the Communities focused only on religious affairs and publicly supported the official anti-imperialist and anti-Israeli policies.229 The Secret Police also attempted to limit the international contact that Czechoslovak Jews had, thus ‘paralyzing the negative influence of the foreign Zionist and Jewish organizations.’230 This ‘demonic’ and ‘chimeric’231 image of Zionists remained in the vocabulary of the Communist Party. In January 1977, the dissidents in Czechoslovakia organized the most important action against the Communist regime, the so-called Charter 77, that reminded the Czechoslovak Communists of their promises to respect human rights that they had made in the final act of the csce (Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe) in Helsinki two years before. In response, the Communist Party alleged that the Charter was drafted ‘on order of the anti-Communist and Zionist headquarters.’232 Shortly after the publication of the Charter, the Secret Police attempted to establish how many of the original signatories were ‘pro-Zionists’; they came up with the number of 35, which was less than those who had been expelled from

229

230 231 232

Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2006); Salner and Bumová, “ŠtB a židovská mládež (na príklade Západoslovenského kraja v rokoch 1969–1980),” Hlavinka, “Židovská komunita pod kontrolou,” 20–32; Crhová, “Israel in the Foreign and Internal Politics of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and Beyond,” 285–90. Radio Free Europe, Situation Report, September 3, 1975; Benjamin Eichler, “Slovenské židovstvo a jeho boj o záchranu v periode 1939–1972,” Chapter 3, 1972, yivo Institute for Jewish Research. Crhová, “Israel in the Foreign and Internal Politics of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and Beyond,” 290f. Here we reference the views by Stola. Stola, “Anti-Zionism as a Multipurpose Policy Instrument.” American Jewish Year Book, 1978, 447. The American Jewish Committee officially protested against the anti-Jewish campaign that accompanied the Czechoslovak responses to ­Charter 77. See Daily News Bulletin (jta), April 28, 1977.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

235

the Communist Party (117) but more than the representatives of the Church (15) or Trotskyites (12).233 There were voices in Communist Czechoslovakia that presented the Charter as ‘a revenge after the [1975] un resolution denouncing Zionism as racism,’ alleging that Zionist agents attempted to destabilize the Socialist camp as a response.234 Prague radio even allegedly employed an overtly antisemitic discourse while attacking Jiří Lederer, one of the signatories.235 Those who in the 1970s expressed dissenting views received anonymous letters accusing them of being tools of international Zionism.236 In another case, Czechoslovak journalists went as far as re-employing the rhetoric of the Slánský trial. In their attacks on Kriegel, one of the signatories of the Charter, they pointed to the fact that his Party application in 1945 had been supported by Otto Šling, a ‘revealed and convicted enemy of Socialism, a Zionist, and a Capitalist agent.’237 ­However, this statement, which implicitly confirmed the legality of the 1952 show trial, went too far and had to be retracted because, as the journalists later conceded, Šling’s rehabilitation from 1963 was still valid.238 The atmosphere in Czechoslovakia in the early-1970s was characterized by an anonymous account as follows: If one is to judge by press and radio, the Jew is one of the main obsessions of the present system. He is no longer attacked as ‘a Jew’: It is the ‘Zionist’, the ‘Israeli Fascist’, the ‘Servant of Imperialism’ who bears the continuous flow of invectives. To make sure that the target is identified in the minds of the reader and listener alike, his ‘original name’ is added where he has changed it to a more protective Czech or Slovak version.239

233 Jonathan Bolton, Worlds of Dissent: Charter 77, the Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture under Communism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012), 310, footnote 71. A whispering campaign in Czechoslovakia alleged that 100–150 of the original 240 signatories of the Charter were ‘Jews’, ajyb, 1978, 447. 234 Daily News Bulletin (jta), April 28, 1977. 235 American Jewish Year Book, 1978, 447. ‘[S]uch a Jewish creature… […] a Jewish toady of the true Viennese vintage’. 236 Bolton, Worlds of Dissent, 48. Bolton gives the example of František Janouch, who in 1973 expressed support for Alexei Sacharov’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. See also icjc Newsletter, Vol. VIII, No. 4, 1977, about antisemitic anonymous letters received by Pavel Kohout. 237 Lidová demokracie, March 4, 1977, 3f. 238 icjc Newsletter, Vol. viii, No. 2–3, April 1977. 239 icjc Newsletter, No. 2, 1971, ‘Prague Schizophrenia’.

236

chapter 4

The observer not only noted that the present-day dissidents and émigrés were presented as serving the interests of the Zionist conspirators, but the journalists and politicians in Prague also dug deeper in history to discredit the Zionist movement: The sparse occasions when Jewish communities are remembering the tragic events in the history of Czechoslovak Jewry are no longer attended by government representatives. For the official line is that Jewish men and women who died at the hands of the Nazis, were ‘anti-Fascist fighters’ and not Jews. Those who survived can, according to requirement, be turned into supporters of Zionism and Israel and, consequently, ‘pro-­ Fascists’. […] The canard of a Zionist ‘deal with the Nazis’ delivering Jews to the gas chambers against the emigration to Palestine of a ‘Zionist elite’ came from Prague two months before it was vamped up in Moscow.240 In this manner, the Communist journalists and broadcasters actively contributed to the efforts to discredit the State of Israel and Zionism through allegations of Zionist cooperation with Nazi Germany and even the direct ­participation of Zionists in the Holocaust. This theme, in fact, played a prominent role in the Communist portrayal of a ‘Jew’ as not only a Zionist but also a fascist.

...

In the second half of the twentieth century, the Jew-Zionist trope permeated the image of the ‘Jew’ as somebody who stood outside of the Czech and ­Slovak community. Unlike the earlier discussed tropes – in particular the ­notion about the ‘Jew’ as a foreign socio-economic exploiter, a Germanizer or ­Magyarizer – the ‘Jew-Zionist’ was largely an image imposed from above, spread by the political elites and journalists. As such, it is debatable how far it was ­really internalized by the majority societies. It seems that the Party was aware that this image of a chimeric enemy was too complex for the general consumption and thus simplified it during the Slánský trial into the phrase ‘of Jewish origin’. The ‘Jew-Zionist’ remained a vague image of a distant, though real threat – a label that the Communist regime repeatedly used against its opponents. ­Although there is sufficient evidence to support the thesis that the a­ nti-Zionist campaign contained strong antisemitic underpinning (in particular in the work of the Communist Secret Police), the Communist ideologues persistently 240

Ibid.

When They Write ‘Zionist’, They Mean ‘Jew’

237

opposed any accusations of antisemitism, a social phenomenon generally connected to the previous Nazi racial madness. This was, however, a point where the sentiments in the society diverged from the Party public campaign. From the instances where we have the opportunity to explore responses in the society, we cannot document any extensive application of the Zionist tropes. Whilst before, people were able to visualize German-speaking or Hungarian-speaking Jews who belonged to the more ­affluent parts of the society, which reinforced their prejudices, the ‘Zionist’ behavior did not manifest in daily contact. As a consequence, the anti-Zionist campaign during the Slánský trial led to the documented increase in antisemitism in the population, which was directed not only against the alleged or real ‘Zionists’, but against the Jews as such. Conversely, later, in the critical years of 1967–68, the anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli frenzy of the conservative Communist regime paradoxically even contributed to the temporary liberalization in Czechoslovakia. In contrast, the image of a ‘Jew-Communist’ did not seem to be very prominent in Czechoslovakia, apart from the initial period of the Communist rule until the early 1950s, when it possibly contributed to the spread of popular antisemitism.

Conclusion A lot of what has been written about the Czech and the Slovak troubled pasts, then as well as now, has perceived the end of the Second World War as a transition to something qualitatively better. For instance, in its festive issue on January 1, 1946, the Slovak daily Národná obroda claimed that with the beginning of a new year, a ‘dark circle of seven years’ would come to an end.1 Ján Rozner, a journalist and publicist who, as a ‘Mischling,’ miraculously escaped being deported during the war, likewise envisioned 1946 as a transitional year. The perceived unity that went hand in hand with the euphoria of the liberation was over, or Rozner reflected it as such while reminding his readers of the upcoming parliamentary elections. Though parties might disagree on how to approach domestic and foreign policy issues, a joint task now stood in front of the nation as a whole: ‘Seven months after the military defeat of fascism: to beat him spiritually, to eradicate the last remnants of fascism from the mentality of people who might have compromised themselves with it during the occupation.’2 Rozner came back to the issue of Slovak ‘domestic fascism’ in one of the later issues of Národná obroda. In a nuanced way, far from typical for the war’s aftermath, Rozner showed how ‘fascism’ was turned into a label to discredit political opponents. For the author, the fact that ‘latent fascism’ socially persisted could be demonstrated by the expansion of certain public perceptions: the Tiso regime saved Slovakia from directly engaging in the war, the Slovak state was the best solution at the time, Communism meant blasphemy and was the result of a ‘Jewish, materialistic mentality,’ people should continue to be cautious with respect to the Czechs or ‘Hitler did one good thing and that is that he sent Jews to the gas chambers, but made a mistake when he did not send all of them there.’3 Rozner did not follow any precise methodology when studying the word on the street, and we certainly do not wish to claim these or any similar sentiments were representative of the mood and attitude within the majority ­societies in liberated Czechoslovakia. It nevertheless points to an endurance of certain public perceptions, narratives and images, even if this continuation was, at times, only ‘felt.’ It was not only that notions about one’s own past (and

1 Národná obroda, January 1, 1946, 7. 2 Ibid., 5. 3 Národná obroda, October 6, 1946, 2.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004362444_007

Conclusion

239

the individual and collective roles in the past) persisted, but images of those considered to not belong to the national community did as well. In the first two chapters of this book, we have hence scrutinized the dynamics between the public and popular images of the ‘Jew,’ as articulated in official (political) places, in the safety of the home and the in-between. We did so by including the events following the spring of 1945 rather than understanding the ‘Year Zero’ as a given and impenetrable milestone. As this book shows, the wartime conflict exposed (and, at times, radicalized) the already present anti-Jewish stereotypes. While some of the popular presentations of the ‘Jews,’ especially the racially determined charges made against them, have been borrowed from the language of National Socialism, they were quickly tailored by the local channels of propaganda to fit context-dependent conditions. Other images were a local product, and this particularly applies to the images of the ‘Jews’ as the ‘Czech’ (finding a firm place in the rhetoric of the new Slovak administration), as agents (even puppet masters) of the cowardly exiles living in the safety of London or the protection of Moscow (used in both territories), and of course as Germanizers and Magyarizers (a charge that exceeds the time frame of this book). Giving evidence to what is often ­neglected in historical research, resistance groups further escalated some of the anti-Jewish images as a part of the national radicalization and fight against the German and Hungarian occupiers. In the Protectorate, using media outlets to denounce those who (allegedly or not) transgressed the various anti-Jewish regulations was also a way to get around the authority of the Nazis. Hence, propaganda need to be understood as a two-way street, forming the perception of the ‘Jews’ in the public, while being simultaneously affected by the mood and attitude of the majority societies. Yet other factors, examined in-depth when searching for the place of the ‘Jew’ in popular opinion, need to be taken into account as well. Robbery (and the opportunities the ‘transfer’ of Jewish properties offered) represents one. The propaganda further contributed to the wide acceptance of the notions that Jews were socio-economic exploiters of the Czech and Slovak people, having owned a disproportionate amount of the wealth before the war. The Nazi strategy to redistribute the spoils among ethnic Germans might have prevented Czechs from taking a larger share of the loot, but a new opportunity arose with the fall of the Third Reich. Indeed, the war’s anticipated end was seen as a last chance to enrich one’s self for many Slovaks as well, though here, robbery was what implicated part of the society in the Holocaust and established a strong bond between the people and the nondemocratic regime. While monetary gain played a different role in both territories, the case studies point to the need for including the aftermath in the study of the Shoah in general and local

240

Conclusion

collaboration in particular. The experience of the war blended with previous anti-Jewish sentiments, largely based on national and socio-economic prejudices. This lethal mixture shaped the restitution efforts of the Jewish survivors in both territories. Interestingly enough, propaganda did not only affect popular opinion about the ‘Jews’ and official antisemitism in the midst of the war but contributed to the later accepted perceptions of the majority societies as courageous victims. As shown in the example of the bbc broadcasting, which was the key alternative information outlet for both territories, the filling in of the categories of victims and perpetrators was done well before the end of the war. Whereas the question of Czech collaboration with the Germans in the Holocaust was simply made non-existent, the Slovak political leadership presented a challenge. It is here that the tale of two Slovaks was established, carefully separating the responsibility of the Tiso clique from the innocent rest. The book took us through roughly fifty years of the Czechoslovak past. We have explored how these selected popular and public images of ‘the Jew’ emerged during the war, and how these unchallenged stereotypes were transformed during the postwar and Communist periods. We argue that, contrary to the dominant and even scholarly conception, the end of the war in May 1945 brought no dramatic change in the perception of ‘Jews’ in Czechoslovakia. The Shoah, followed by Czechoslovak policies of national homogenization and the unwillingness of almost all of the majority society to reflect on Czech and Slovak collaboration, led to a transformation of the image of the ‘Jew’ from the dominant trope of a socially unreliable Germanizer or Magyarizer to the image of an equally unreliable Jewish bourgeois nationalist, Zionist and, in the most extreme cases, even a Nazi collaborator and fascist. Sometimes, it seems that the only Jews who were considered to be reliable members of the Czech and Slovak cultures and societies were those who had been murdered during the war, regardless of their previous affiliations. Murdered Jews increased the number of ‘Czechoslovak’ wartime victims of the German, Hungarian and Slovak clero-fascist regimes, and thus, paradoxically, reinforced the national victimology. After 1945, a truly peculiar situation could easily arise when the parents of survivors, having been murdered in ­Auschwitz, were celebrated and commemorated as Czechoslovak victims of the Nazi regime while their son or daughter was denied Czechoslovak citizenship because of his or her family’s previous (real or perceived) cultural ­affiliation with the Germans or Hungarians (in cases even based on a decision their parents had made in the 1930 census to declare their nationality, often based on their language of everyday communication, as either German or Hungarian).

Conclusion

241

Prewar emigration, the Shoah and postwar policies of national homogenization reduced the size of the Jewish community to slightly more than a tenth of what it had been. The creation of the State of Israel and the Communist victory in Czechoslovakia, both in 1948, further drained the remnants of the survivor community of those who had decided to establish their lives outside their former homeland. In countries all over the world, especially amongst people inimical to the State of Israel, international recognition of the Jewish state brought to the forefront the image of the Jew as a Zionist. After a short intermezzo, when the Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe supported Israel in the hopes that it too would soon be a Soviet ally, the Soviet Union and its satellites turned against the Zionist project and renewed their previous fight against Zionism as an ideological enemy of the Communist movement. It was this ideological perception of Zionism and the belief that Zionist organizations worked as espionage agencies for the Western imperialist world that shaped the attitude of the Czechoslovak Communist regime against the State of Israel and the Jewish community in Czechoslovakia for forty years, until the changes beginning in late-1989. In postwar Europe, nobody could deny that it was the Germans (and perhaps also locals on the fringe of the Czech and Slovak society) who were guilty for the crimes of the Second World War. However, this indisputable German guilt whitewashed any traces of collaboration from the majority society. ‘If they were guilty, we have to be innocent’ read the argument, making way for the myth of resistance to take over. The Holocaust was not forgotten in postwar or Communist Czechoslovakia, especially among the small survivor community.4 While we can speak of an official and popular discourse on the ‘Jewish tragedy,’ especially in the immediate aftermath of the war, stories of national suffering and courage have since dominated the memory of the Second World War. The inability to reflect on societies’ co-responsibility for the genocides enabled one to stretch charges of collaboration to include the Jews as Zionists. This approach was not entirely surprising because the image of a ‘Zionist,’ as a national and socio-economic ‘other,’ dominated Czech and Slovak discourses of Jews from the 1940s onwards. Providing an unequal analysis of selected anti-Jewish tropes – the ‘Jew’ as a German and Hungarian, an exploiter, a national traitor, a fascist collaborator and, finally, a Zionist – this book enumerates the nature and perseverance of public and popular perceptions over more than fifty years. Hence, in the

4 Labendz, “Re-Negotiating Czechoslovakia: The State and the Jews in Communist Central Europe.”

242

Conclusion

e­ xample of Ján Kalina and multiple others, this book shows the elasticity of the anti-Jewish tropes and how these were readily available to the various state authorities over time: ‘The end of the first republic contested my illusions on the cure-all of assimilation. From now on the ruling regime graphically reminds me of my racial roots. Not always, of course. Only between 1939–1945, then 1950–1960 and lastly 1970–1972 …’5 5 Kalina, Odpočúvaj v pokoji, čiže, Basa story, 37.

Bibliography

Primary Sources



Czech Republic

Archiv bezpečnostních složek ministerstva vnitra České republiky (ABS) H-665, Operace “Krkavec” Personální spisy Z-10 Archiv Českého rozhlasu (AČRo) BBC 1939–1945 Archiv ministerstva zahraničních věcí (AMZV) Londýnský archiv (LA) Národní archiv (NA) Ministerstvo vnitra – nová registratura (MV-NR) Německé státní ministerstvo pro Čechy a Moravu (110) Státní tajemník u říšského protektora (109) Úřad říšského protektora (114) Václav Kopecký Národní filmový archiv (NFA) Nástup, slovenská filmová spoločnosť Společná česko-slovenská digitální parlamentní knihovna, The Joint Czech and Slovak Digital Parliamentary Library

Israel

Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) 287 Jelinek Central Zionist Archives (CZA) C3, World Jewish Congress – Geneva Office Yad Vashem Archives (YVA) 0.7CZ 0.93

244

Bibliography

Slovak Republic

Slovenský národný archív (SNA) Ministerstvo vnútra (MV) Povereníctvo školstva (PŠk) Povereníctvo vnútra (PV) Úrad predsedníctva vlády (ÚPV) Ústredňa štátnej bezpečnosti (209) Štátny archív Bratislava (SA) Ľudový súd Bratislava (ĽS)



United Kingdom

The National Archives of the United Kingdon (TNA) FO371 University of Southampton Archives (USA) MS241, Institute of Jewish Affairs



United States

Hoover Institution Archives (HIA) Edward Táborský Papers Juraj Slávik Papers National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) T-174 T-175 The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) RG 57.005 YIVO Institute for Jewish Research RG 1097 Papers of Benjamin Eichler RG 347.7.1



Newspapers and Magazines

American Jewish Year Book Arijský boj Bulletin of the Czechoslovak Jewish Representative Committee Čas Čechoslovák Český deník

Bibliography

245

Daily News Bulletin of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Dnešek Gardista Haló Sobota iDNES.cz International Committee of Jews from Czechoslovakia Newsletter Kocúr Lidová demokracie Listy Ľudové noviny Národnie noviny Národná obroda Nástup, časopis mladej slovenskej generácie Nová mysl Práce Pravda Revolver Revue Rudé právo Slovák Slovenská politika Slovo národa Sme.sk Svědectví. Čtvrtletník pro politiku a kulturu Tribuna Tvorba Věstník židovské náboženské obce v Praze (after 1952, Věstník židovské náboženské obce v Československu) Vlajka

Literature “33/1945 Zb. snr o potrestaní fašistických zločincov, okupantov, zradcov.” Accessed July 1, 2017. http://www.noveaspi.sk/products/lawText/1/11701/1/2. Adam, Istvan Pal. Budapest Building Managers and the Holocaust in Hungary. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Adler, Hans Günther. Theresienstadt: 1941–1945: das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft. Geschichte, Soziologie, Psychologie. Tubingen: Mohr, 1955. Aleksiun, Natalia. “Intimate Violence: Jewish Testimonies on Victims and Perpetrators in Eastern Galicia.” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, no. 1–2 (2017): 17–33.

246

Bibliography

Aleksiun, Natalia. “Polish Historiography of the Holocaust—Between Silence and Public Debate.” German History 22, no. 3 (2004): 406–32. Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press, 1963. Auředníčková, Anna. Tři léta v Terezíně. Praha: Hynek, 1945. Baka, Igor. Politický systém a režim Slovenskej republiky v rokock 1939–1940. Bratislava: Vojenský historický ústav, 2010. Baláž, Anton. Transporty nádeje. Bratislava: Marenčin PT, 2010. Barnett, Victoria. “Reflections on the Concept of ‘Bystander’.” In Looking at the Onlookers and Bystanders: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Causes and Consequences of Passivity, edited by Henrik Edgren, 35–52. Stockholm: Forum för levande historia = Living history forum, 2012. Barnovský, Michal. “Slovenská spoločnosť v zrkadle výskumov verejnej mienky v rokoch 1948–1949.” Historický časopis 52, no. 3 (2004): 469–502. Bartov, Omer. “Wartime Lies and Other Testimonies: Jewish-Christian Relations in Buczacz, 1939–1944.” East European Politics & Societies 25, no. 3 (2011): 486–511. Bauer, František. “České noviny za války.” In Šest let okupace Prahy, 71–80. Praha: Osvětový odbor hlavního města Prahy, 1946. Bednařík, Petr. “Antisemitismus v českém tisku v období druhé republiky.” In Židé v Čechách: sborník příspěvků ze semináře konaného 24. a 25. října 2006 v Liberci, edited by Vlastimila Hamáčková, Monika Hanková, and Markéta Lhotová, 32–45. Praha: Židovské muzeum v Praze ve spolupráci se Severočeským muzeem v Liberci, 2007. Bednařík, Petr. Arizace české kinematografie. Praha: Karolinum, 2003. Bednařík, Petr. “Vztah židů a české společnosti na stránkách českého tisku v letech 1945–1948.” Unpublished PhD Thesis, Charles University. Prague, 2002. Benz, Wolfgang, Claudia Curio, and Andrea Hammel, eds. “Special Issue: Kindertransporte 1938/39 - Rescue and Integration.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 23, no. 1 (2005). Bitton-Jackson, Livia. Mosty nádeje. Bratislava: Artforum, 2011. Bolton, Jonathan. Worlds of Dissent: Charter 77, the Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture under Communism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012. Borák, Mečislav. Poválečná justice a národní podoby antisemitismu: postih provinění vůči Židům před soudy a komisemi ONV v českých zemích v letech 1945–1948 a v některých zemích střední Evropy : sborník přispěvků. Praha, Opava: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny Akademie věd České republiky – Slezský ústav Slezského zemského muzea, 2002. Borák, Mečislav, ed. Retribuce v ČSR a národní podoby antisemitismu: židovská problematika a antisemitismus ve spisech mimořádných lidových soudů a trestních komisí ONV v letech 1945–1948 : sborník příspěvků. Praha; Opava: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny Akademie věd České republiky – Slezský ústav Slezského zemského muzea, 2002.

Bibliography

247

Bosák, Edita. “Slovaks and Czechs: An Uneasy Coexistence.” In Czechoslovakia 1918–88: Seventy Years from Independence, edited by Harold Gordon Skilling, 65–81. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991. Brabec, Jiří. “Antisemitská literatura v době nacistické okupace.” Revolver Revue, no. 50 (2002): 272–313. Brandes, Detlef. Češi pod německým protektorátem: okupační politika, kolaborace a odboj 1939–1945. Praha: Prostor, 2000. Brandes, Detlef. Der Weg zur Vertreibung, 1938–1945: Pläne und Entscheidungen zum “Transfer” der Deutschen aus der Tschechoslowakei und aus Polen. München: R. Oldenbourg, 2001. Brandes, Detlef. Die Tschechen unter deutschem Protektorat. München: R. Oldenbourg, 1969. Brandes, Detlef. Germanizovat a vysídlit: nacistická národnostní politika v českých zemích, 2015. Bren, Paulina. The Greengrocer and His TV: The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010. Brod, Petr. “Židé v poválečném Československu.” In Židé v novodobých dějinách, edited by Václav Veber, 147–162. Praha: Karolinum, 1997. Brügel, Johann W. “Die KPČ und die Judenfrage.” Osteuropa: Zeitschrift für Gegenwartsfragen des Ostens 23, no. 11 (1973): 874–80. Bryant, Chad Carl. Prague in Black: Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. Büchler, Yehoshua Robert. The Story and Source of the Jewish Community of Topoltchany. Israel: Committee for Commemorating the Jewish Community for Topoltchany and Vicinity, 1976. Büchler, Yehoshua Robert. “Znovuobživenie židovskej komunity na Slovensku po druhej svetovej vojne.” Acta Judaica Slovaca 4 (1998): 65–77. Budín, Stanislav. Jak to vlastně bylo. Praha: Torst, 2008. Bulínová, Marie, ed. Československo a Izrael v letech 1945–1956: dokumenty. Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR ve spolupráci s Historickým ústavem České armády a se Státním ústředním archivem, 1993. Bumová, Ivica. “Obraz židov v dobovej tlači v rokoch 1945–1948: denníky Čas a Pravda.” In Podoby antisemitismu v Čechách a na Slovensku ve 20. a 21. století, edited by Monika Vrzgulová and Hana Kubátová. Praha: Karolinum, 2016. Bumová, Ivica. “Protižidovské výtržnosti v Bratislave v historickom kontexte (august 1946).” Pamäť národa 3, no. 3 (2007): 14–29. Bumová, Ivica. “Sionizmus a židovský buržoázny nacionalizmus na Slovensku východiská (1948–1970).” In Židovská menšina v Československu v letech 1956–1968: od destalinizace k pražskému jaru, edited by Blanka Soukupová and Miloš Pojar, 108–114. Praha: Židovské muzeum v Praze, 2011.

248

Bibliography

Bystrický, Valerián. “Slovakia from the Munich Conference to the Declaration of Independence.” In Slovakia in History, edited by Mikuláš Teich, Dušan Kováč, and Martin D. Brown, 157–174. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Cagáň, Igor. “K údajnému pamätníku Jozefovi Tisovi v Jeruzaleme apel k stanovisku izraelského veľvyslanca na Slovensku,” November 30, 2014. http://jozeftiso.sk/jt/ ludovy-kultus/267-k-udajnemu-pamatniku-jozefovi-tisovi-v-jeruzaleme. Čapková, Kateřina. Czechs, Germans, Jews National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012. Čapková, Kateřina. “Dilemmas of Minority Politics: Jewish Migrants in Postwar Czechoslovakia and Poland.” In Postwar Jewish Displacement and Rebirth: 1945–1967, edited by Françoise S. Ouzan and Manfred Gerstenfeld, 63–75. Leiden, B ­ oston: Brill, 2014. Cattaruzza, Marina. “‘Last Stop Expulsion’ - The Minority Question and Forced Migration in East-Central Europe: 1918–49.” Nations and Nationalism 16, no. 1 (2010): 108–126. Cesarani, David, and Paul A. Levine, eds. “Introduction.” In Bystanders to the Holocaust: A Re-Evaluation. London: Routledge, 2014. Chládková, Ludmila. “Vzpomínáme.” Terezínské listy 1 (1970): 92–3. Cichopek-Gajraj, Anna. Beyond Violence: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944– 48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Cieslar, Jiří. “Daleká Cesta Alfréda Radoka.” In Alfréd Radok mezi filmem a divadlem, edited by Eva Stehlíková. Praha: Akademie múzických umění – Národní filmový ­archiv, 2007. Cohen, Shari J. Politics Without a Past: The Absence of History in Postcommunist Nationalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. Cole, Tim J. “Constructing the ‘Jew’, Writing the Holocaust: Hungary 1920–45.” Patterns of Prejudice 33, no. 3 (1999): 19–27. “Constitutional Law of May 9, 1948.” Accessed November 2, 2016. http://www.psp.cz/ docs/texts/constitution_1948.html. Corner, Paul. “Introduction.” In Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes: Fascism, Nazism, Communism, 1–15. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Cramsey, Sarah. “Saying Kaddish in Czechoslovakia.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 7, no. 1 (2008): 35–50. Crhová, Marie. “Israel in the Foreign and Internal Politics of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and Beyond.” Jewish Studies at the CEU 4 (2004-2005): 259–86. Cysařová, Jarmila. “Československá televise a politická moc 1953–1989.” Soudobé dějiny 9, no. 3–4 (2002): 521–37. Czechoslovak Home Service. Proceedings of Slansky Trial, Prague 1952. Accessed August 27, 2016. http://archive.org/details/ProceedingsOfSlanskyTrialPrague1952.

Bibliography

249

Dagan, Avigdor, Gertrude Hirschler, and Lewis Weiner, eds. The Jews of Czechoslovakia: Historical studies and surveys. 3. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1984. Dean, Martin. Robbing the Jews: The Confiscation of Jewish Property in the Holocaust, 1933–1945. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Douglas, Ray M. Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012. Draxler, Vladimír. “Slovenský rozhlas 1938–1945.” Acta Universitatis Carolinae. Studia Territorialia, no. 1–2 (2013): 141–75. Dufek, Jiří, Karel Kaplan, and Vladimír Šlosar. Československo a Izrael v letech 1947–1953: studie. Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v nakl. Doplněk, 1993. Eichler, Benjamin. “Slovenské židovstvo a jeho boj o záchranu v periode 1939–1972,” 1972. YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Elias, Ruth. Triumph of Hope: From Theresienstadt and Auschwitz to Israel. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999. Fatran, Gila. “Holocaust and Collaboration in Slovakia in the Postwar Discourse.” In Collaboration with the Nazis Public Discourse after the Holocaust, edited by Roni Stauber, 186–211. London; New York: Routledge, 2010. Feder, Richard. Židovská tragedie: dějství poslední. Kolín: Lusk, 1947. Fedor, Michal. Bibliografia periodík na Slovensku v rokoch 1939–1944. Martin: Matica slovenská, 1969. Feinberg, Melissa. “Fantastic Truths, Compelling Lies: Radio Free Europe and the Response to the Slánský Trial in Czechoslovakia.” Contemporary European History 22, no. 1 (2013): 107–125. Fingerland, Jan. “Major Zeman bojuje se sionisty: Obraz Židů, sionismu a holokaustu v normalizačním seriálu.” In Dvarim meatim: studie pro Jiřinu Šedinovou, edited by Daniel Boušek, Magdalena Křížová, and Pavel Sládek, 239–258. Praha: Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, 2016. Frankl, Michal. “Emancipace od židů”: český antisemitismus na konci 19. století. Praha; Litomyšl: Paseka, 2007. Frankl, Michal. “Prejudiced Asylum: Czechoslovak Refugee Policy, 1918–60.” Journal of Contemporary History 49, no. 3 (2014): 537–555. Frankl, Michal. “The Sheep of Lidice: The Holocaust and the Construction of Czech National History.” In Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe, edited by John-Paul Himka and Joanna B. Michlic, 166–194. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013. Frankl, Michal. “Židé přes palubu: Konstrukce ‘židovské otázky’ za druhé republiky.” Dějiny a současnost 31, no. 3 (2009): 37–39. Frankl, Michal, and Miloslav Szabó. Budování státu bez antisemitismu? Praha: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2016.

250

Bibliography

Fritz, Regina, and Imke Hansen. “Zwichen nationalem Opfermythos und europäischen Standards. Der Holocaust im ungarischen Erinnerungsdiskurs.” In Universalisierung des Holocaust?: Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik in internationaler Perspektive, edited by Jan Eckel and Claudia Moisel, 59–85. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008. Frommer, Benjamin. National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Frommer, Benjamin. “Verfolgung durch die Presse: Wie Prager Büroberater und die tschechische Polizei die Juden des Protektorats Böhmen und Mähren isolieren halfen’.” In Leben und Sterben im Schatten der Deportation: Der Alltag der jüdischen Bevölkerung im Großdeutschen Reich 1941–1945, edited by Doris L. Bergen, Andrea Löw, and Anna Hájková, 137–50. München: Oldenbourg, 2013. Gebhart, Jan, and Barbara Köpplová, eds. Řízení legálního českého tisku v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava. CD-ROM. Praha: Karolinum, 2010. Gerber, Jan. Ein Prozess in Prag. Das Volk gegen Rudolf Slánský und Genossen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016. Gitelman, Zvi. A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present. Bloomington; In.: Indiana University Press, 2001. Gitelman, Zvi. “The Evolution of Soviet Anti-Zionism: From Principle to Pragmatism.” In Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism in the Contemporary World, edited by Robert S. Wistrich, 11–25. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990. Goldstücker, Eduard. Vzpomínky: 1945–1968. Praha: G plus G, 2005. Gottwald, Klement. Deset let: sbornik statí a projevů,1936–1946. Praha: Nakladatelství Svoboda, 1946. Götz, František. V horách duní …: ( Jakub Skýva - člověk spravedlivý). Praha: Státní výroba filmů, 1945. Gracová, Blažena. “‘Židovská otázka’ na stránkách ostravského Českého slova v letech 1939–1942”.’ Časopis Matice moravské 114, no. 2 (1995): 339–52. Gruner, Wolf. Die Judenverfolgung im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren. Lokale Initiativen, zentrale Entscheidungen, jüdische Antworten 1939–1945. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2016. Gruner, Wolf. “The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.” In The Greater German Reich and the Jews: Nazi Persecution Policies in the Annexed Territories 1935–1945, edited by Wolf Gruner and Jörg Osterloh, 99–135. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015. Hahn, Eva. “Verdrängung und Verharmlosung. Das Ende der jüdischen Bevölkerungsgruppe in den böhmischen Ländern nach ausgewählten tschechischen und sudetendeutschen Publikationen.” In Der Weg in die Katastrophe: 1938–1947: deutschtschechoslowakische Beziehungen, edited by Detlef Brandes and Václav Kural, 135–51. Essen: Klartext, 1994. Hájek, Miloš, and Olga Staňková. Národnostní otázka v lidově demokratickém Československu. Praha: Státni nakladatelství politické literatury, 1956.

Bibliography

251

Hallama, Peter. Nationale Helden und jüdische Opfer: Tschechische Repräsentationen des Holocaust. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015. Hallon, Ľudovít. “Arizácia na Slovensku 1939–1945.” Acta Oeconomica Pragensia 2007, no. 7 (2007): 148–60. Havlůjová, Gabriela. Lidice po Lidicích. Kladno: Český svaz bojovníků za svobodu, ZO Kladno – Halda, 2014. Heitlinger, Alena. In the Shadows of the Holocaust & Communism: Czech and Slovak Jews since 1945. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2006. Hilberg, Raul. Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945. 1st edition. New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 1993. Hlavinka, Ján. “Arizácia židovských podnikov v Šarišsko-zemplínskej župe 1939–1945.” Unpublished PhD Thesis, Comenius University in Bratislava, 2013. Hlavinka, Ján. The Holocaust in Slovakia: The Story of the Jews of Medzilaborce District. Budmerice: Vydavatel’stvo Rak, 2011. Hlavinka, Ján. “Židovská komunita pod kontrolou.” Pamäť národa, no. 2 (2005). Hlavinka, Ján, and Eduard Nižňanský. Pracovný a koncentračný tábor v Seredi 1941–1945. Bratislava: DSH, Dokumentačné stredisko holokaustu, 2010. Hoffmann, Gabriel. Katolícka cirkev a tragédia slovenských židov v dokumentoch. Partizánske: Vydavatel’stvo G-Print, 1994. Holý, Ladislav. The Little Czech and the Great Czech Nation: National Identity and the Post-Communist Transformation of Society. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Horčáková, Václava. “K historiografii o rezistenci Židů v českých zemích a na Slovensku v letech druhé světové války.” In Židé v boji a odboji: rezistence československých Židů v letech druhé světové války: příspěvky účastníků mezinárodní konference konané ve dnech 17.-18. října 2006 v Praze, edited by Zlatica Zudová-Lešková, 345–55. Praha: Historický ústav, 2007. Hradská, Katarína. “Jozef Tiso v Hitlerovom hlavnom stane a na Ukrajine roku 1941 vo svetle nemeckých dokumentov.” Historický časopis 51, no. 4 (2003): 685–94. Hroch, Miroslav. “Central European Path to the Modern Nation: Myth and Reality.” The Annual of Language & Politics and Politics of Identity X, no. 1 (2016): 7–15. Hrušovský, František. Slovenské dejiny. Turčiansky sv. Martin: Matica slovenská, 1939. Hudek, Adam. Najpolitickejšia veda: slovenská historiografia v rokoch 1948–1968. Bratislava: Historický ústav Slovenskej akadémie vied, 2010. Husák, Gustav. “K niektorým otázkam Slovenského národného povstania.” In Slovenské národné povstanie roku 1944: sborník príspevkov z národnooslobodzovacieho boja, 1938–1945, edited by Ľudovít Holotík and Miroslav Kropilák. Bratislava: Vydavateľstvo Slovenskej akadémie vied, 1965. Jablonický, Jozef. Glosy o historiografii SNP: zneužívanie a falšovanie dejín SNP. Bratislava: NVK International, 1994. Jablonický, Jozef. Podoby násilia. Bratislava: Kalligram, 2000.

252

Bibliography

Jablonický, Jozef, and Miroslav Kropilák. Slovník Slovenského národného povstania. Žilina: Epocha, 1970. Jackson, Livia Bitton. My Bridges of Hope: Searching for Life and Love after Auschwitz. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. James, Andrea. “Zmeny v postavení židovskej komunity v okrese Topoľčany počas obdobia Slovenského štátu.” Česko-slovenská historická ročenka 2001 (2001): 123–33. Jančík, Drahomír. “Společenské a politické aspekty ‘arizačního’ procesu v českých zemích v letech 1938–1945,” June 18, 2012. http://www.mzv.cz/jnp/cz/o_ministerstvu/ verejne_souteze_a_dotace/vedecke_projekty/vybrane_projekty/o_ministerstvu -verejne_souteze_a_dotace-vedecke_projekty-vybrane_projekty-arizace_v _ceskych_zemich.html. Jašík, Rudolf. Námestie svätej Alžbety. Bratislava: Mladé letá, 1958. Jedličková, Jana. “Zobrazování Židů v Protektorátních Časopisech Arijský Boj, Přítomnost, Roj.” Unpublished MA Thesis, Masaryk University, 2008. Jelínek, Ješahaju Andrej. Dávidova hviezda pod Tatrami Žídia na Slovensku v 20. storočí. Praha: Vydavateľstvo Jána Mlynárika IPEĽ, 2009. Jelinek, Yeshayahu. “Storm-Troopers in Slovakia: The Rodobrana and the Hlinka Guard.” Journal of Contemporary History 6, no. 3 (1971): 97–119. Jelinek, Yeshayahu. “The Role of the Jews in Slovakian Resistance.” Jahrbücher Für Geschichte Osteuropas 15, no. 3 (1967): 415–22. Jelinek, Yeshayahu A. “A Whitewash in Colour: Revisionist Historiography in Slovakia.” East European Jewish Affairs East European Jewish Affairs 24, no. 2 (1994): 117–30. Jelinek, Yeshayahu A. The Carpathian Diaspora: The Jews of Subcarpathian Rus’ and Mukachevo, 1848–1948. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Jevsejev, Jevgenij. “Doslov.” In Sionismus. Praha: Nakladatelství Svoboda, 1970. Jirásek, Josef. Slovensko na rozcestí, 1918–1938. Brno: Tiskové a nakladatelské podniky “Zář,” 1947. Jockusch, Laura, and Gabriel N. Finder. “Introduction: Revenge, Retribution, and Reconciliation in the Postwar Jewish World.” In Jewish Honor Courts: Revenge, Retribution, and Reconciliation in Europe and Israel after the Holocaust, edited by Laura Jockusch and Gabriel N. Finder, 1–28. Detroit: Wayne State University Press; published in association with The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2015. Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. New York: Penguin Books, 2006. Judt, Tony. “The Past Is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe.” Daedalus 121, no. 4 (1992): 83–118. Kalina, Ján. Odpočúvaj v pokoji, čiže, Basa story. Bratislava: Vydavateľstvo PT, 2004. Kalina, Ján. Usmievavé Slovensko: Autobiografománia. Bratislava: Vydavateľstvo PT, 2003. Kalina, Ján. Zavinili to židia a bicyklisti. Bratislava: Marenčin PT, 2000.

Bibliography

253

Kamenec, Ivan. Po stopách tragédie. Bratislava: Archa, 1991. Kamenec, Ivan. “Racial Problem in the Policy of Slovak Nationalist (Ľudák) Government in the Years 1938–1945.” Studia Historica Slovaca 10 (1978): 153–206. Kamenec, Ivan. “Snem Slovenskej republiky a jeho postoj k problému židovského obyvateľstva na Slovensku v rokoch 1939–1945.” Historický časopis 17, no. 3 (1969): 329–62. Kamenec, Ivan. Spoločnosť, politika, historiografia: pokrivené zrkadlo dejín slovenskej spoločnosti v dvadsiatom storočí. Bratislava: Historický ústav SAV, 2009. Kamenec, Ivan. “Vznik a vývoj pracovných táborov a stredísk na Slovensku v rkoch 1942–1944.” Nové Obzory 8 (1966): 15–38. Kamenec, Ivan. “Židovská otázka a spôsoby jej riešenia v čase autonómie Slovenska.” Nové Obzory 10 (1968): 155–80. Kamenec, Ivan. “Židovský a koncentračný tábor v Novákoch.” Horná Nitra. Vlastivědný sborník 3 (1966): 51–68. Kaplan, Karel. Report on the Murder of the General Secretary. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990. Kaplan, Karel, ed. Všechno jste prohráli!: co prozrazují archivy o IV. sjezdu Svazu československých spisovatelů, 1967. Praha: Ivo Železný, 1997. Kaplan, Marion A. Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Karády, Viktor. “Identity Strategies Under Duress Before and After the Shoah.” In The Holocaust in Hungary: Fifty Years Later, edited by Randolph L. Braham and Attila Pók, 147–178. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Kárník, Zdeněk, Michal Kopeček, and Reiman, eds. “O Polym Reimanovi (pokračování). Místo vzpomínek.” In Bolševismus, komunismus a radikální socialismus v Československu. Volume IV, 145–176. Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR; Dokořán, 2005. Kárný, Miroslav. “Czech Society and the ‘Final Solution’.” In Nazi Europe and the Final Solution, edited by David Bankier and Israel Gutman, 309–326. New York: Berghahn Books, 2009. Kárný, Miroslav. “Die Rolle der Kollaboration in der deutschen Okkupationspolitik im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren.” In Okkupation und Kollaboration (1938–1945): Beiträge zu Konzepten und Praxis der Kollaboration in der deutschen Okkupationspolitik, edited by Werner Röhr, 149–63. Berlin; Heidelberg: Hüthig Verlagsgemeinschaft, 1994. Kárný, Miroslav. “Ein Auschwitz-Bericht und das Schicksal des Theresienstadter Familienlagers.” Judaica Bohemiae 21, no. 1/2 (1985): 9–28. Kárný, Miroslav. “Konečné řešení”: genocida českých Židů v německé protektorátní politice. Praha: Academia, 1991. Kárný, Miroslav. “Theresienstädter Dokumente (Teil I.).” Judaica Bohemiae XVII (1981).

254

Bibliography

Kárný, Miroslav. “Vztah české společnosti k Židům v době nacistické okupace.” Československá historická ročenka 2001 (2001): 79–87. Kárný, Miroslav, Jaroslava Milotová, and Margita Kárná, eds. Protektorátní politika Reinharda Heydricha. Praha: TEPS, 1991. Kašpar, Lukáš. Český hraný film a filmaři za protektorátu: propaganda, kolaborace, rezistence. Praha: Libri, 2007. Kelman, Herbert C. “Reflections on Social and Psychological Processes of Legitimization and Delegitimization.” In The Psychology of Legitimacy: Emerging Perspectives on Ideology, Justice, and Intergroup Relations, edited by John T. Jost and Brenda Major. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Kelman, Herbert C., and Lee V. Hamilton. Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Kershaw, Ian. “Consensus, Coercion and Popular Opinion in the Third Reich: Some Reflections.” In Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes: Fascism, Nazism, Communism, edited by Paul Corner, 33–46. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Kershaw, Ian. Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution, 2008. Kershaw, Ian. Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich, Bavaria 1933–1945. Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1983. Klein-Pejšová, Rebekah. “‘Abandon Your Role as Exponents of the Magyars’: Contested Jewish Loyalty in Interwar (Czecho)Slovakia.” AJS Review 33, no. 2 (2009): 341–62. Klein-Pejšová, Rebekah. Mapping Jewish Loyalties in Interwar Slovakia. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2015. Klíma, Ivan. Moje šílené století. Praha: Academia, 2010. Klíma, Ivan. My Crazy Century: A Memoir. New York: Grove Press, 2013. Kohout, František. Socialisté a antisemitismus. Praha: Československá sociální demokracie, propagační oddělení, 1946. Kohút, Leo. Tu bola kedysi ulica. Bratislava: Q 111, 2004. Kokoška, Stanislav. “Odboj, kolaborace, přizpůsobení… Několik poznámek k výzkumu české protektorátní společnosti.” Soudobé dějiny 17, no. 1–2 (2010): 9–30. Kokoška, Stanislav. Praha v květnu 1945: historie jednoho povstání. Praha: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2005. Kolár, František J. Sionismus a antisemitismus. Praha: Svoboda, 1970. Kolár, Vladimír. Co už máma nenapsala. Praha: BMSS-Start, 2008. Končelík, Jakub, Jan Cebe, and Barbara Köpplová. “Press Regulation Between 1939 and 1945: Analysis of Protectorate Press Meetings.” Media Studies 2, no. 4 (2007): 442–62. Končelík, Jakub, Barbara Köpplová, and Jitka Kryšpínová. Český tisk pod vládou Wolfganga Wolframa von Wolmara: stenografické zápisy Antonína Fingera z protektorátních tiskových porad 1939–1941. Praha: Karolinum, 2003. Končelík, Jakub, Pavel Večeřa, and Petr Orság. Dějiny českých médií 20. století. Praha: Portál, 2010.

Bibliography

255

Kopecký, Lukáš. “Případ rozhlasového novináře Aloise Kříže před Národním soudem.” Unpublished MA Thesis. Masaryk University, 2011. Kopecký, Václav. Antisemitismus poslední zbraní nacismu. Praha: Svoboda, 1945. Kořalka, Jiří. “Historiography of the Countries of Eastern Europe: Czechoslovakia.” The American Historical Review 97, no. 4 (October 1992): 1026–40. Kosta, Jiří. Život mezi úzkostí a nadějí. Praha: Paseka, 2002. Koura, Petr. “Od hrdinů k zbabělcům, od zbabělců k hrdinům. Účastníci protinacistického odboje a jejich obraz.” In Hrdinství a zbabělost v české politické kultuře 19. a 20. století: výběr z příspěvků ze stejnojmenné konference, která proběhla ve dnech 25.-27. října 2006, edited by Jan Randák and Petr Koura, 217–244. Praha: Dokořán, 2008. Koutek, Ondřej. “Akce ‘Pavouk’. Evidování židovského obyvatelstva Státní bezpečností za normalizace,” Paměť a dějiny 11, no. 1 (2017): 40–54. Koutek, Ondřej. “Zahraniční odboj na vlnách BBC. Československé vysílání z Londýna 1939–1945”. Paměť a dějiny: revue pro studium totalitních režimů 8, no. 1 (2014): 30–44. Kovačevič, Ivan J. Od Tatier po Azovské more, 1942. Kraus, Michal. Deník 1942–45. Náchod: Kvartus, 2012. Kraus, Ota, and Erich Kulka. Továrna na smrt. Praha: Čin, 1946. Krčmář, Dalibor. “Mimořádné zpravodajství protektorátního SD o reakcích obyvatel na události z 27. a 28. září 1941.” Terezínské listy: sborník Památníků Terezín, no. 20 (2012): 18–39. Krejčová, Helena. “‘Jsem nevinen?’ Süss, Harlan, Čáp a jiní.” Iluminace. Časopis pro teorii, historii a estetiku filmu 5, no. 3 (1993): 77–80. Krejčová, Helena. “Specifické předpoklady antisemitismu a protižidovské aktivity v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava.” In Emancipácía Židov - antizemitizmus ­prenasledovanie v Nemecku, Rakúsko-Uhorsku, v českých zemiach a na Slovensku, edited by Stanislav Biman, Jörg Konrad Hoensch, and Ľubomír Lipták, 147–161. Bratislava: Veda, 1999. Krejčová, Helena, and Anna Hyndráková. “Postoj Čechů k židům. Z politického zpravodajství okupační správy a protektorátního tisku v letech 1939–1941.” Soudobé dějiny 2, no. 4 (1995): 578–605. Krejčová, Helena, Jana Svobodová, and Jan Gebhart, eds. “Někteří z mnohých. K činnosti Josefa Fischera, Karla Bondyho a Miloše Otto Bondyho v českém odboji za druhé světové války.” In Postavení a osudy židovského obyvatelstva v Čechách a na Moravě v letech 1939–1945: sborník studií, 145–161. Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR – Maxdorf, 1998. Krekovič, Eduard, Elena Mannová, Eva Krekovičová, and Andrej Findor, eds. “Tisícročná poroba?” In Mýty naše slovenské, 71–76. Bratislava: Academic Electronic Press, 2005. Kříž, Alois. Co víte o Židech? Praha: Orbis, 1941.

256

Bibliography

Kryl, Miroslav. “Nový pramen k dějinám terezínského ghetta.” Terezínské listy 1 (1970): 17–23. Kubátová, Hana. “Accusing and Demanding: Denunciations in Wartime Slovakia.” Manuscript submitted to Lessons & Legacies, ed. Alexandra Garbarini and Paul Jaskot. Kubátová, Hana. “Návrat ‘domů’?” In Návraty: poválečná rekonstrukce židovských komunit v zemích středovýchodní jihovýchodní a východní Evropy, edited by Kateřina Králová and Hana Kubátová, 24–42. Praha: Karolinum, 2016. Kubátová, Hana. Nepokradeš! Nálady a postoje slovenské společnosti k židovské otázce, 1938–1945. Praha: Academia, 2013. Kubátová, Hana. “Popular Responses to the Plunder of Jewish Property in Wartime Slovakia.” Jewish Studies at the CEU 7 (2013): 109–26. Kubátová, Hana. “Teraz alebo nikdy: Povojnové protižidovské násilie a väčšinová spoločnosť na Slovensku.” Soudobé dějiny 3 (2016): 321–46. Kučera, Jaroslav, and Volker Zimmermann. “Ke stavu českého výzkumu nacistické okupační vlády v Čechách a na Moravě. Několik úvah u příležitosti vydání jedné standardní publikace.” Soudobé dějiny XVI, no. 1 (2009): 112–30. Kučera, Milan, and Zdeněk Pavlík. “Czech and Slovak Demography.” In The End of Czechoslovakia, edited by Jiří Musil, 15–39. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000. Kuklík, Jan et al. Jak odškodnit holocaust?: problematika vyvlastnění židovského majetku, jeho restituce a odškodnění. Praha: Karolinum, 2015. Kuklík, Jan, and Jan Gebhart. Velké dějiny zemí koruny české 15b. 1938–1945. Praha: Paseka, 2007. Kulka, Erich. Collection of Testimonies and Documents on the Participation of Czechoslovak Jews in the War against the Nazi-Germany. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1976. Kulka, Erich. Jews in Svoboda’s Army in the Soviet Union: Czechoslovak Jewry’s Fight against the Nazis during World War II. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America – Institute of Contemporary Jewry, 1987. Kulka, Erich. “The Slovaks in Exile Seek Reconciliation.” The Voice of Auschwitz Survivors in Israel, no. 34 (April 1986): 2–3. Kulka, Erich. Židé v Československé Svobodově armádě. Praha: Naše vojsko, 1990. Kulka, Erich. Židé ve Svobodově armádě. Toronto: Sixty-Eight Publishers, 1979. Kushner, Tony. The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: A Social and Cultural History. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. Labendz, Jacob Ari. “Lectures, Murder, and a Phony Terrorist: Managing ‘Jewish Power and Danger’ in 1960s Communist Czechoslovakia.” East European Jewish Affairs 44, no. 1 (2014): 84–108. Labendz, Jacob Ari. “Re-Negotiating Czechoslovakia: The State and the Jews in Communist Central Europe: The Czech Lands, 1945–1990.” Unpublished PhD Thesis, Washington University. Saint Louis, Mo., 2014.

Bibliography

257

Lagrou, Pieter. “Return to a Vanished World. European Societies and the Remnants of Their Jewish Communities, 1945–1947.” In The Jews Are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to Their Countries of Origin after WWII, edited by David Bankier, 1–24. New York; Jerusalem: Berghahn Books; Yad Vashem, 2005. Lagus, Karel, and Josef Polák. Město za mřížemi. Praha: Naše vojsko, 1964. Langer, Jo. Convictions: My Life with a Good Communist. London: A. Deutsch, 1979. Langerová, Žo. Vtedy v Bratislave: môj život s Oskarom L. Bratislava: Albert Marenčin PT: SNM - Múzeum židovskej kultúry, 2015. Láníček, Jan. “After the Whirlwind: Jewish Absence in Postwar Czechoslovakia.” Journal of Contemporary History 52, no. 2 (2017): 278–96. Láníček, Jan. Arnošt Frischer and the Jewish Politics of Early 20th-Century Europe. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Láníček, Jan. Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews, 1938–48: Beyond Idealization and Condemnation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Láníček, Jan. “Long Shadows of the Shoah: The Aftermath as an Integral Part of Holocaust Historiography.” History 102, no. 350 (2017): 271–86. Láníček, Jan. “The Czechoslovak Service of the BBC and the Jews during World War II’.” Yad Vashem Studies 38, no. 2 (2010). Láníček, Jan. “The Postwar Czech-Jewish Leadership and the Issue of Jewish Emigration from Czechoslovakia (1945–1950).” In Postwar Jewish Displacement and Rebirth: 1945–1967, edited by Françoise S. Ouzan and Manfred Gerstenfeld, 76–96. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2014. Láníček, Jan, and Stuart Liebman. “A Closer Look at Alfred Radok’s Film Distant Journey.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies : An International Journal 30, no. 1 (2016): 53–80. Lánik, Jozef. Oswiecim, hrobka štyroch miliónov l’udí. Krátka história a život v oswiecimskom pekle v rokoch 1942–1945. Bratislava: Povereníctvo SNR pre informácie, 1946. Lederer, Zdenek. Ghetto Theresienstadt. London: Goldston, 1953. Leikert, Jozef. “Emigrácia Ladislava Mňačka do Izraela ako prejav odporu voči antiizraelskej politike Československa.” In Slovensko a svet v 20. storočí kapitoly k 70. narodeninám PhDr. Valeriána Bystrického, DrSc., edited by Bohumila Ferenčuhová, 217–235. Bratislava: Historický ústav Slovenskej akadémie vied, 2006. Lendvai, Paul. Antisemitism in Eastern Europe. London: Macdonald and Co., 1972. Lenin, Vladimir Iljic. “Does the Jewish Proletariat Need an ‘Independent Political Party’?” Iskra, no. 34 (February 15, 1903). Lenin, Vladimír Iljič. “Potřebuje židovský proletariát ‚samostatnou politickou stranu‘?” In V.I. Lenin, Spisy, Svazek 6, leden 1902-srpen 1903, 329–334. Praha: Státní nakladatelství politické literatury, 1953. Lichtenstein, Tatjana. Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia: Minority Nationalism and the Politics of Belonging. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2016.

258

Bibliography

Lipscher, Ladislav. Die Juden im slowakischen Staat: 1939–1945. München; Wien: Oldenbourg, 1979. Lipscher, Ladislav. Židia v slovenskom štátě: 1939–1945. Bratislava: Print-Servis, 1992. Lipták, Ľubomír. “Pamätníky a pamäť povstania roku 1944 na Slovensku.” Historický časopis 43, no. 2 (1995): 363–69. Lipták, Ľubomír. “Politický režim na Slovensku v rokoch 1939–1945.” In Slovenské národné povstanie roku 1944; sborník príspevkov z národnooslobodzovacieho boja, 1938–1945., edited by Ľudovít Holotík and Miroslav Kropilák, 20–49. Bratislava: Vydavateľstvo Slovenskej akadémie vied, 1965. Lipták, Ľubomír. Slovensko v 20. storočí. Bratislava: Kalligram, 2000. Löbl, Eugen. Svedectvo o procese s vedením protištátneho sprisahaneckého centra na čele s Rudolfom Slánskym. Bratislava: Vydavateľstvo politickej literatúry, 1968. Lônčíková, Michala. “Frekvencia antisemitskej propagandy v období 1938–1939 na Slovensku vo vybranej periodickej tlači.” In Antisemitizmus a propaganda, edited by Eduard Nižňanský and Michala Lônčíková, 47–69. Bratislava: Stimul, 2014. Lônčíková, Michala. “Was the Antisemitic Propaganda a Catalyst for Tensions in the Slovak-Jewish Relations?” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, no. 1–2 (2017): 76–98. London, Artur. Doznání: v soukolí pražského procesu. Praha: Československý spisovatel, 1969. Longerich, Peter. Davon haben wir nichts gewusst!: die Deutschen und die Judenverfolgung 1933–1945. Munchen: Siedler, 2006. Lustig, Arnošt. Miláček. Praha: Československý spisovatel, 1969. Luther, Daniel. “Česi v Bratislave 1919–1945: Adaptácia a marginalizácia.” Slovenský národopis 4 (2013): 368–78. Macek, Václav, and Jelena Paštéková. Dejiny slovenskej kinematografie. Martin: Osveta, 1997. Margolius Kovály, Heda. Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941–1968. Cambridge, Mass.: Plunkett Lake Press, 1986. Matějková, Anna. “Antisemitské stereotypy a časopis Arijský boj.” Unpublished Bc Thesis, Charles University, 2015. McDermott, Kevin. “A ‘Polyphony of Voices’? Czech Popular Opinion and the Slánský Affair.” Slavic Review 67, no. 4 (2008): 840–65. McDermott, Kevin. Communist Czechoslovakia, 1945–89: A Political and Social History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Medvecký, Matej. Spravodajské eso Slovenského štátu: Kauza Imrich Sucký. Bratislava: Ústav pamäti národa, 2007. Meyer, Peter. The Jews in the Soviet Satellites. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1953.

Bibliography

259

Michela, Miroslav, and Michal Kšiňan. “The Slovak National Uprising.” In Komunisti a povstania: ritualizácia pripomínania si protifašistických povstaní v strednej Európe (1945–1960) = Communists and Uprisings: Ritualization of Rememberance of the Anti-Nazi Uprisings in Central Europe (1945–1960), 36–66. Kraków: Towarzystwo Słowaków w Polsce, 2012. Mikan, Oktáv. Rozhlasová ročenka za období od 1. ledna 1938 do 15. března 1939. Praha: Český rozhlas, 1939. Milland, Gabriel. “Some Faint Hope and Courage: The BBC and the Final Solution, 1942–1945.” Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Leicester, 1998. Milotová, Jaroslava. “Die Protektoratspresse und die ‘Judenfrage’.” Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente, 1996, 153–83. Mňačko, Ladislav. Smrt si říká Engelchen. Praha: Mladá fronta, 1961. Moravec, Emanuel. O český zítřek. Praha: Orbis, 1943. Moskowitz, Moses. “The Jewish Situation in the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia.” Jewish Social Studies 4, no. 1 (1942): 17–44. Münzer, Jiří. Dospívání nad propastí: deník Jiřího Münzera. Praha: Radioservis, 2002. “Names and Numbers of Righteous Among the Nations - per Country & Ethnic Origin, as of January 1, 2017.” Accessed August 3, 2017. http://www.yadvashem.org/ righteous/statistics. Navrátil, Jaromír. The Prague Spring 1968: A National Security Archive Documents Reader. New York: Central European University Press, 1998. Neumannová, Zdenka. “Protižidovská propaganda.” In Šest let okupace Prahy, 111–116. Praha: Osvětový odbor hlavního města Prahy, 1946. Nir, Akiva. Stories from Paths in a Ring of Fire. New York: American Zionist Youth Foundation, 1978. Nir, Akiva. (‫)בקיהסלו במרד‬: ‫האש במעגל יליםבש‬. Tel-Aviv: Moreshet, 1967. Nižňanský, Eduard. “Antisemitská propaganda a deportácie na Slovensku v roku 1942.” In Antisemitizmus a propaganda, edited by Eduard Nižňanský and Michala Lônčíková, 125–159. Bratislava: Stimul, 2014. Nižňanský, Eduard. Holokaust na Slovensku 7. Vzťah slovenskej majority a židovskej minority (náčrt problému). Bratislava: Nadácia Milana Šimečku - Katedra všeobecných dejín FF UK, 2005. Nižňanský, Eduard. “On Relations between the Slovak Majority and Jewish Minority during World War II.” Yad Vashem Studies 42, no. 2 (2014): 47–89. Nižňanský, Eduard. Židovská komunita na Slovensku medzi československou parlamentnou demokraciou a slovenským štátom v stredoeurópskom kontexte. Prešov: Universum, 1999. Nižňanský, Eduard, and Ján Hlavinka, eds. Arizácie. Bratislava: Stimul, 2010. Nižňanský, Eduard, and Ján Hlavinka, eds. Arizácie v regiónoch Slovenska. Bratislava: Stimul, 2010.

260

Bibliography

Nižňanský, Eduard, and Michala Lônčíková, eds. Antisemitizmus a Propaganda. Bratislava: Stimul, 2014. Noack, Frank. Veit Harlan: The Life and Work of a Nazi Filmmaker. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2016. O procesech a rehabilitacích. I.,/Zpráva “Pillerovy komise” o politických procesech a rehabilitacích v Československu v letech 1949 až 1968/. Brno: Florenc, 1990. Odčiňujeme Bílou horu; proslovy z manifestace na Bilé hoře, dne. 1. července 1945. Praha: Jednotný svaz českych zemědělců, 1945. Oschlies, Wolf. “Antizionismus in der Tschechoslowakei II.,” 1970. Oschlies, Wolf. “Antizionismus in der Tschechoslowakei IV.,” 1970. Otáhalová, Libuše, and Milada Červinková. Dokumenty z historie československé politiky, 1939–1943; vztahy, mezinárodní diplomacie k politice československé emigrace na západě. Praha: Academia, 1966. Palivodvá, Eva, and Jan Randák. “The Prague Uprising.” In Komunisti a povstania: ritualizácia pripomínania si protifašistických povstaní v strednej Európe (1945–1960) = Communists and Uprisings: Ritualization of Rememberance of the Anti-Nazi Uprisings in Central Europe (1945–1960), 94–122. Kraków: Towarzystwo Słowaków w Polsce, 2012. Pasák, Tomáš. “Český antisemitismus na počátku okupace.” Věda a život, March 1969. Pasák, Tomáš. “Generál Eliáš a problémy kolaborace.” Dějiny a současnost 10, no. 6 (1968): 33–37. Pasák, Tomáš. “Problematika protektorátního tisku a formování tzv. skupiny aktivistických novinářů na počátku okupace.” Příspěvky k dějinám KSČ 11, no. 5 (1967): 52–80. Pasák, Tomáš. “Vývoj Vlajky v období okupace.” Historie a vojenství 10, no. 5 (1966): 846–95. Paulovičová, Nina. “Rescue of Jews in the Slovak State (1939–1945).” Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Alberta, Department of History and Classics, 2012. http://hdl .handle.net/10402/era.25987. Pavel, Ota. “Běh Prahou: jak tatínek byl a zase nebyl komunistou,” 1972. Pejčoch, Ivo. Fašismus v českých zemích: fašistické a nacionálněsocialistické strany a hnutí v Čechách a na Moravě 1922–1945. Praha: Academia, 2011. Pejčoch, Ivo. “Politické procesy s Šimonem Ornsteinem a Mordechajem Orenem – antisemitské tendence v komunistickém československu.” Terezínské listy: Sborník Památníku Terezín, 2011, 142–154. Petrův, Helena. Zákonné bezpráví: Židé v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava. Praha: Auditorium, 2011. Pinard, Peter Richard. “Alois Kříž und die Rundfunksendereihe ‘Was wissen Sie von den Juden und Freimaurern?’’” Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente, 2005, 213–275.

Bibliography

261

Pinard, Peter Richard. Broadcast Policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia: Power Structures, Programming, Cooperation and Defiance at Czech Radio 1939–1945. Frankfurt am Main; New York: Peter Lang, 2015. Podolec, Ondrej. “Ticho pred búrkou. (Sonda do nálad slovenskej spoločnosti na jar 1944).” In Slovenská republika 1939–1945 očami mladých historikov III., edited by Martin Lacko, 19–32. Trnava: Katedra histórie FF UCM, 2004. Proces s vedením protištátneho sprisahaneckého centra na čele s Rudolfom Slánským. Praha: Ministerstvo spravodlivosti, 1953. Procházka, Arnošt. Diář literarní a umělecký. Praha: Nakladatelství L. Bradáče, 1919. Ptáčníková, Světlana, and Vladimíra Vaníčková. “Judaika v Archivu Ministerstva vnitra.” In Sborník Archivu ministerstva vnitra, 3:321–42, 2005. Pynsent, Robert B. “Conclusory Essay: Activists, Jews, The Little Czech Man, and Germans.” Central Europe 5, no. 2 (2013): 211–333. Pynsent, Robert B. Questions of Identity: Czech and Slovak Ideas of Nationality and Personality. Budapest: Central European University Press, 1994. Quilitzsch, Anya. “Everyday Judaism on the Soviet Periphery: Life and Identity of Transcarpathian Jewry after World War II.” Unpublished PhD Thesis, Indiana University, Bloomington, 2016. Rak, Jiří. Bývali Čechové: české historické mýty a stereotypy. Praha: H & H, 1994. Rataj, Jan. O autoritativní národní stát: ideologické proměny české politiky v druhé republice 1938–1939. Praha: Karolinum, 1997. Redlich, Shimon. War, Holocaust, and Stalinism: A Documented Study of the Jewish AntiFascist Committee in the USSR. Luxembourg: Harwood Academic, 1995. Ree, Erik van. The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth Century Revolutionary Patriotism. London; New York: Routledge, 2003. Reiman, Michal. “O Poly Reimanovi (místo vzpomínek).” In Bolševismus, komunismus a radikální socialismus v Československu. Volume II, edited by Zdeněk Kárník and Michal Kopeček, 63–83. Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, 2004. Reiman, Michal. Rusko jako téma a realita doma a v exilu: vzpomínky na léta 1968–1989. Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, 2008. Reiman, Pavel. Ve dvacátých letech: vzpomínky. Praha: Nakladatelství politické literatury, 1966. Reiman, Pavel. “Židovská otázka dnes.” Tvorba 15, no. 32 (1946): 505–07. Ripka, Hubert. We Think of You: A Message to the Jews of Czechoslovakia. London: Czechoslovak Maccabi, 1941. Rothkirchen, Livia. “Activities of the Jewish Underground in Slovakia.” Yad Vashem Bulletin, no. 8/9 (1961a): 28–30. Rothkirchen, Livia. “Czech Attitudes towards the Jews during the Nazi Regime.” In The Nazi Holocaust; Public Opinion and Relations to the Jews in Nazi Europe, Vol. 5: Public Opinion and Relations to the Jews in Nazi Europe, 414–450. Westport: Meckler, 1989.

262

Bibliography

Rothkirchen, Livia. “Czechoslovakia.” In The World Reacts to the Holocaust, edited by David S. Wyman and Charles H. Rosenzveig, 156–199. Baltimore: JHU Press, 1996. Rothkirchen, Livia. Hurban Yahadut Slovakia (Destruction of Slovakian Jewry). Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1961. Rothkirchen, Livia. “State Anti-Semitism during the Communist Era (1948–1989).” In Anti-Semitism in Post-Totalitarian Europe, edited by Jan Hančil. Praha: Franz Kafka Publishing, 1993. Rothkirchen, Livia. “The Defiant Few: Jews and the Czech ‘Inside front’ (1938–1942).” Yad Vashem Studies 14 (1976): 35–88. Rothkirchen, Livia. “The Slovak Enigma: A Reassessment of the Halt to the Deportations.” East Central Europe 10, no. 1 (1983): 3–13. Rychlík, Jan. Češi a Slováci ve 20. století: spolupráce a konflikty 1914–1992. Praha: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů; Vyšehrad, 2012. Rychlík, Jan. “Perzekúcia odporcov režimu na Slovensku 1938–1945. (K problematike charakteru ľudáckeho režimu).” In Slovenská republika 1939–1945 očami mladých historikov IV. Zborník príspevkov z medzinárodnej vedeckej konferencie, Banská Bystrica 14–15. apríla 2005, edited by Michal Šmigeľ and Peter Mičko, 119–34. Banská Bystrica: Katedra histórie FHV UMB – Ústav vedy a výskumu UMB v Banskej Bystrici, 2005. Rychlík, Jan. “Praha, 1954, 4. března. Návrh textu obžaloby proti Gustávu Husákovi, Ladislavu Novomeskému, Danielu Okálimu, Ivanu Horváthovi a Ladislavu Holdošovi, vypracovaný ministrem vnitra Rudolfem Barákem, předložený ke schválení politickému sekretariátu ÚV KSČ.” In Češi a Slováci ve 20. století. Československé vztahy 1945–1992, 440–60. Praha: Academic Electronic Press – Ústav T.G. Masaryka Praha, 1998. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Salner, Peter. “‘Viditeľní’ a ‘neviditeľní’ Židia v slovenskej spoločnosti po roku 1945.” Acta Judaica Slovaca 4 (1998): 121–33. Salner, Peter, and Ivica Bumová, eds. “ŠtB a židovská mládež (na príklade Západoslovenského kraja v rokoch 1969–1980).” In Židovská komunita po roku 1945, 67–100. Bratislava: Ústav etnológie SAV, 2006. Schmidt-Hartmann, Eva. “The Enlightenment That Failed: Antisemitism in Czech Political Culture.” Patterns of Prejudice 27, no. 2 (1993): 119–28. Šebesta, Josef. V zemi zaslíbené? Praha: Melantrich, 1986. Sedlák, Petr. “Svět přeživších Židů – prameny a jejich výklad.” Lidé města / Urban people 10, no. 3 (2008): 83–113. Segal, Raz. Genocide in the Carpathians: War, Social Breakdown, and Mass Violence, 1914–1945. Stanford University Press, 2017. Shapiro, Leon. “Czechoslovakia.” In American Jewish Year Book, 1947. Šišjaková, Jana. “‘Prípad Topoľčany’ - Protižidovský pogrom (nielen) z pohľadu dobových dokumentov.” Acta historica Neosoliensia: ročenka Katedry histórie Fakulty humanitných vied Univerzity Mateja Bela v Banskej Bystrici 10 (2007): 232–40.

Bibliography

263

Skilling, Harold Gordon. Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016. Slánská, Josefa. Report on My Husband. New York: Atheneum, 1969. Slánská, Josefa. Zpráva o mém muži. Praha: Nakl. Svoboda, 1990. Slneková, Veronika. “Arizácie židovských podnikov v Trnave ako súčasť tzv. riešenia židovskej otázky v rokoch 1938–1945.” Studia Historica Nitriensia 9 (2001): 168–202. Šmok, Martin. “‘Every Jew Is a Zionist, and Every Zionist Is a spy!’ The Story of Jewish Social Assistance Networks in Communist Czechoslovakia.” East European Jewish Affairs 44, no. 1 (2014): 70–83. Smrek, Ján. Poézia moja láska 2. Bratislava: Slovenský spisovateľ, 1989. Sokolovič, Peter. Hlinkova garda 1938–1945. Bratislava: Ústav pamäti národa, 2009. Sokolovič, Peter. “Proces s členmi Pohotovostných oddielov Hlinkovej Gardy v roku 1958.” Pamäť národa 6, no. 3 (2010): 19–38. Sommer, Vítězslav. Angažované dějepisectví: stranická historiografie mezi stalinismem a reformním komunismem (1950–1970). Praha: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny – Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, 2011. Sommer, Vítězslav. “Válka, odboj a hledání historické identity československého komunismu.” In Válečný prožitek české společnosti v konfrontaci s nacistickou okupací (1939–1945): sborník příspěvků ze sympozia k 70. výročí vypuknutí druhé světové války, edited by Jana Burešová and Zdeněk Hazdra, 111–24. Praha: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, 2009. Soukupová, Blanka. “Modern Anti-Semitism in the Czech Lands Between the Years 1895–1989. A Comparison of the Main Stages of the Most Influential Parts of Czech Nationalism.” Urban People / Lidé Města 13, no. 2 (2011): 235–60. Speech of the CPC Secretary Vasil Biľak. Czech Television, 1971. https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=0JqQAC16kqc. Šromovský, Martin. “Postoj vládnej moci k židovskej otázke v rokoch 1948–1953 – introdukcia do problematiky.” In Slovensko v rokoch neslobody 1938–1989 III., edited by Anton Hruboň, Juraj Jankech, and Katarína Ristveyová, 260–279. Banská Bystrica: Vydavateľstvo UMB – Belianum, 2014. Štábla, Zdeněk. Data a fakta z dějin čs. kinematografie, 1896–1945. Praha: Československý filmový ústav, 1990. Stanek, Imrich. Zrada a pád: hlinkovští separatisté a tak zvaný slovenský stát. Praha: Státní nakladatelství politické literatury, 1958. Staněk, Tomáš. Odsun Němců z Československa, 1945–1947. Praha: Academia – Naše vojsko, 1991. Steiner, Bedrich, and Štefan Engel, eds. Tragédia slovenských židov: fotografie a dokumenty. Bratislava: Dokumentačná akcia pri ÚSŽNO, 1949. Steiner, Hanuš. “Ideologie a psychologie antisemitismu a deformace marxismu’.” Filozofický časopis XVI, no. 2 (1969): 187–91.

264

Bibliography

Steinert, Marlis G. Hitler’s War and the Germans: Public Mood and Attitude during the Second World War. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1977. Stokes, Lawrence D. “The German People and the Destruction of the European Jews.” In The Nazi Holocaust; Public Opinion and Relations to the Jews in Nazi Europe, Vol. 5: Public Opinion and Relations to the Jews in Nazi Europe, 61–85. Westport: Meckler, 1989. Stola, Dariusz. “Anti-Zionism as a Multipurpose Policy Instrument: The Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland, 1967–1968.” Journal of Israeli History 25, no. 1 (2006): 175–201. Švalbová, Manca. Vyhasnuté Oči. (Requiem). Bratislava: Pravda, 1948. Svobodová, Jana. Zdroje a projevy antisemitismu v českých zemích, 1948–1992: studie. Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, 1994. Tatarka, Dominik. Farská republika. Martin: Matica slovenská, 1948. Terner, Erich, and Edita Terner. Stát Izrael: malá země velkých problémů. Praha: Orbis, 1950. Tesař, Jan. “K otázce pracovních postupů při historickém studiu veřejného mínění v době okupace.” Historie a vojenství, no. 6 (1966): 1091–1125. Tesař, Jan. Traktát o “záchraně národa”: texty z let 1967–1969 o začátku německé okupace. Praha: Triáda, 2006. Tesař, Jan. “‘Záchrana národa’ a kolaborace.” Dějiny a současnost 10, no. 5 (1968): 5–9. Ther, Philipp, and Ana Siljak. Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944–1948. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. Tomášek, Dušan, and Robert Kvaček. Causa Emil Hácha. Praha: Themis, 1995. Tönsmeyer, Tatjana. “Kollaboration als handlungsleitendes Motiv? Die slowakische Elite und das NS-Regime.” In Kooperation und Verbrechen: Formen der “Kollaboration” im östlichen Europa 1939–1945, edited by Christoph Dieckmann, Babette Quinkert, and Tatjana Tönsmeyer, 25–54. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003. Tönsmeyer, Tatjana. “The Robbery of Jewish Property in Eastern European States Allied with Nazi Germany.” In Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict Over Jewish Property in Europe, edited by Martin Dean, Constantin Goschler, and Philipp Ther, 81–96. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, 2007. Tóth, Dezider, ed. Tragédia slovenských Židov: materiály z medzinárodného sympózia, Banská Bystrica 25.-27. marca 1992. Banská Bystrica: DATEI, 1992. Uhl, Heidemarie. “From Victim Myth to Co-Responsibility Thesis. Nazi Rule, World War II, and the Holocaust in Austrian Memory.” In The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe, edited by Richard Ned Lebow, Wulf Kansteiner, and Claudio Fogu, 40–72. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Večeřa, Pavel. “Židé a antisemitismus na stránkách vybraných českých deníků v letech 1939–1945.” In Média a realita: sborník prací Katedry mediálních studií a žurnalistiky, 103–20. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2003.

Bibliography

265

Vítámvásová, Jarka. “Kolaborace jako způsob přežití. Židovský zpravodaj Gestapa z Třebíče a jeho zprávy z let 1942–1945.” In České, slovenské a československé dějiny 20. století. Sborník z mezinárodní konference mladých vědeckých pracovníků. Univerzita Hradec Králové, 7.-8. března 2007, 349–355. Ústí na Orlicí: Oftis, 2007. Vondrová, Jitka. Češi a sudetoněmecká otázka, 1939–1945: dokumenty. Praha: Ústav mezinárodních vztahů, 1994. Vrzgulová, Monika. “Memories of the Holocaust: Slovak Bystanders.” Holocaust Studies Holocaust Studies 23, no. 1–2 (2017): 99–111. Vrzgulová, Monika. “Návrat domov? (Biografické naratívy žien, ktoré prežili holokaust).” In Židovská komunita po roku 1945, edited by Peter Salner, 9–30. Bratislava: Ústav etnológie SAV, 2006. Vrzgulová, Monika. “Osudy židov v spomienkach ich nežidovských susedov. Antisemitizmus – ľahostahnosť – konformizmus?” In Podoby antisemitismu v Čechách a na Slovensku ve 20. a 21. století, edited by Monika Vrzgulová and Hana Kubátová. Praha: Karolinum, 2016. Vrzgulová, Monika. “Židovsko-nežidovské vzťahy v životných príbehoch spojených s holokaustom.” In Reflexie holokaustu, edited by Monika Vrzgulová and Peter Salner, 113–140. Bratislava: Dokumentačné stred. holokaustu, 2010. Ward, James Mace. Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013. Ward, James Mace. “The 1938 First Vienna Award and the Holocaust in Slovakia.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 29, no. 1 (2015): 76–108. Wein, Martin Joachim. A History of Czechs and Jews: A Slavic Jerusalem. New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2015. Wein, Martin Joachim. History of the Jews in the Bohemian Lands. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016. Wingfield, Nancy. “The Politics of Memory: Constructing National Identity in the Czech Lands, 1945 to 1948.” East European Politics & Societies 14, no. 2 (2000): 246–67. Wingfield, Nancy Meriwether. Flag Wars and Stone Saints: How the Bohemian Lands Became Czech. Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 2007. Wohl, Michael J.A., Nyla R. Branscombe, and Yechiel Klar. “Collective Guilt: Emotional Reactions When One’s Group Has Done Wrong or Been Wronged.” European Review of Social Psychology 17, no. 1 (2006): 1–37. Wonka, František, and Pavel Suk. Doba zkoušek a naděje: deník děkana Františka Wonky z let 1938–1945. Manětín: Machart, 2010. Yablonka, Hanna. “The Development of Holocaust Consciousness in Israel: The Nuremberg, Kapos, Kastner, and Eichmann Trials.” Israel Studies 8, no. 3 (2004): 1–24.

266

Bibliography

Zavacká, Katarína. “Slovenská národná rada v rokoch 1944–1948.” In Vývoj práva v Československu v letech 1945–1989, edited by Ladislav Soukup and Karel Malý, 606– 34. Praha: Karolinum, 2004. Zavacká, Katarína. “Tlač, cenzúra a propaganda na Slovensku od 6. októbra 1938 do konca vojny.” Česko-slovenská historická ročenka, 2007, 239–74. Železný, Jakub. “Vznik týdeníku Tribuna jako první legální tiskové platformy antireformních sil v roce 1969.” Sborník Národního Muzea v Praze/Acta Musei Nationalis Pragae 57, no. 4 (2012): 53–57.

Index Academy Award (Oscar) 150 Adler, Hans G. 91, 156 Advisers German, in Slovakia 4, 50, 107 Soviet, in Czechoslovakia 203 Agrarian Party See the Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants Aleš, Jiří (also Jiří Bohatka, Jiří Leša) 160–7, 218, 228, 231 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee 164, 195, 209, 212 Antisemitism 7–9, 29, 33–4, 58, 64–6, 69, 73, 77, 78, 81, 88–9, 93–4, 101, 117, 119, 134–5, 137, 166–7, 169–72, 174–5, 177–8, 180, 182–3, 186–7, 189, 202–7, 211, 217–20, 221–4, 227, 231–2, 237, 240 Anti-Zionism 13, 155, 159, 161, 170–2, 177, 188, 190, 192, 200, 203–5, 211–2, 218, 220–1, 224, 228, 232, 236–7 Anti-Zionist Campaigns 232, 237 Arab-Israeli Conflict 191 1967 War 211, 213, 222, 224 Arabs 176–7, 183, 185–6, 226, 230 Arijský boj 32, 38, 41, 45–7, 218 Arendt, Hannah 155 Aryanization As Slovakization 76 In the Protectorate 5, 16, 75–6, 97, 100, 102, 118, 120, 135 In Slovakia 43, 5, 11, 24, 28, 42–4, 6–2, 73, 75–6, 79, 87, 91, 93–9, 115, 118, 121, 169, 239 See also Slovakization; Robbery Assembly of the Slovak Republic 123 Assimilation, Jewish 172 Assimilation contract 93–4 Association of Cinematographers 23 Auersperg, Pavel 219, 229 Auschwitz 2, 6, 91, 106, 145, 146, 164–5, 167, 194, 240 Auschwitz-Birkenau 39, 106, 110, 120, 126, 154, 164, 232 Autonomy, Slovak 4, 9, 20–2, 90, 94

Avriel-Überall, Ehud 187, 191, 195 Axis 108, 121 Baar, Jindřich Šimon 26 Babi Yar massacre 158 Babička 25 Banská Bystrica 99, 138, 142, 144 Barnovský, Michal 83 Bauer, Bruno 182 Baum, Bedřich 163 Baum, Karl 165 Battle of the White Mountain 124, 125, 130 BBC broadcasts 12, 16, 29–34, 36–7, 54, 73, 106, 108–11, 113, 115–6, 120, 132–3 Beethoven, Ludwig van 25 Beharka, Ján 141 Belorussia 62 Bełżec 106 Ben Gurion, David 194, 199 Beneš, Edvard 96, 106, 117, 124, 138, 173, 175–6 ‘Beneš clique’ 38, 40, 44 Benko, Ivan (also Ján Kalina, Peter Karvaš, Ján Robert Lipka, Jozef Repka, Ladislav Schwartz) See Kalina, Ján Berater 4, 50, 107 See also Advisers Bergen-Belsen 1 Berlin 4, 57, 85, 96 Bessarabia 113 Beyrak, Nathan 81 Bibó, István 131 Biľak, Vasil 213 Bitton-Jackson, Livia (Elli Friedmannová)  1, 2, 8, 185 Board of Commissioners (Slovak) 129, 196 Bohatka, Jiří (also Jiří Aleš, Jiří Leša) See Aleš, Jiří Bolshevism 17, 24, 45, 58 See also Judeo-Bolshevism Bourgeois nationalism Jewish 158, 177, 182, 190, 193–4, 196–9, 202–3, 209, 231, 240 Slovak 67, 142, 157

268 Boycott of the Protectorate press 25, 35, 54–5, 103–4 Brabec, Jiří 58 Brandes, Detlef 70, 104 Brezhnev, Leonid 154 British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia 63 Brno 110, 180 Brod, Max 214, 229 Broszat, Martin 80 Brynych, Zbyněk 150 Büchler, Yehoshua (Robert) 147 Budín, Stanislav (Bencion Bať) 181–3 Bund 177 Bund report 34, 109 Burian, Vlasta 32 Čáp, František 26 Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People 147 Central Censorship Commission 50 Central Censorship Committee at the Interior Ministry 20 Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia 154, 156, 188, 192–3, 199, 201, 210–3, 216, 219, 221, 227, 229 Central Economic Office 24 Central Zionist Union 198, 200 České Budějovice 14, 116 České slovo 41 Český deník 38 Charles University 146 Charter 77 234 Charvát, Rudolf 48 Christianity 24, 45 Cold War 199, 207, 209, 212 Collaboration Local 9, 11–2, 16, 26, 31–2, 34, 36–7, 39, 41, 46, 51, 56, 62–75, 91, 111, 118, 175 Making sense of local 128, 132, 135–6, 149–55, 239–41 Of the Jews with Nazis 13, 127, 153, 155–62, 164, 166–7, 234 Colotka, Petr 232 Comenius University in Bratislava 147 Communist Bloc (also Eastern Bloc) 152, 154, 165, 178, 192, 194–5, 200, 202–3, 207, 210–1, 223, 225, 227, 241

Index Communist Party Of Czechoslovakia 154–6, 160, 177, 179, 180–1, 183, 187, 189, 200–1, 205–6, 212–3, 215, 221, 232, 234–5 Of Israel 191, 192 Of Slovakia 42, 68, 83, 124, 128 Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia (1948) 141, 143, 172, 181, 187, 204 Concentration camps 2, 61, 65, 91, 103, 110, 126, 148, 157, 161–2, 169, 176, 181, 194, 233 Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe 234 Conspiracy theories Anti-Jewish 24 Zionist 212–3, 228 Council of Jewish Religious ­Communities 91, 158, 229 Counterrevolution 84, 170, 212, 215, 220, 226, 229 Czech Philharmonic Orchestra 25 Czech Question 18–9, 126, 134 Czechoslovak army 143–4, 207, 221 Czechoslovak Constitution (May 1948)  187 Czechoslovak Institute of Public Opinion 82 Czechoslovak-Israeli relations 198, 214 Czechoslovak State Council 39, 137 Czechoslovakia Czecho-Slovakia 21, 62, 75 First Czechoslovak Republic 8, 16, 19, 90, 96, 128, 130, 218, 242 Liberation of 1, 3–4, 6–7, 64, 67, 82, 102, 114, 128, 138–9, 142–3, 146, 149, 163, 174, 179, 181n National homogenization of 5n, 8, 240 See also Second Republic Czerniakow, Adam 164 Dachau 1, 146 Dagan, Avigdor (Viktor Fischl) 165, 216 Daleká cesta 65, 155 David, Josef 138 David, Václav 206 Daxler, Vladimír 28 Dean, Martin 95 Declaration of regret 151 Democratic Party (Slovak) 124

269

Index Deportations From the Protectorate 6, 16, 26, 33, 37, 46, 48, 51, 54, 56, 60–3, 65, 78, 81, 86, 88, 90–1, 97, 101, 103–5, 109, 113–5, 118, 120, 121, 154, 160–3 From Slovakia 6, 22, 29, 59, 62, 72, 79, 82, 88, 90–1, 99–100, 107, 114, 118, 121, 136, 146, 151 Of Soviet Jews to Siberia 194 Deutsche Partei 96–7 Deutsches Nachrichten Büro 50 Dienstbier, Jiří 219 Dnešek 174 Doctors’ plot 194 Dolejš, Svatopluk 218 Dubček, Alexander 65, 225, 231 Dukla 143 Ďurica, Stanislav 143 East Prussia 107 Eastern front 23, 106 Edelstein, Jacob 159, 165 Egypt 199 Ehrenburg, Ilya 185 Eichler, Benjamin 217–8 Eichmann, Adolf 22, 107, 161–2 See also Trial of Adolf Eichmann Einsatzgruppe H 6, 145 Einsatzkommando 14, 145 Eliáš, Alois 4, 103 Eliashiv, Samuel 199 Emergency Units of the Hlinka Guards 145 Emigration 217, 241 Emigration to Israel 160, 172, 173, 183, 187–90, 195, 197–8, 200, 210, 225, 236 Émigré historians Czech 148 Jewish 148, 156, 161 Slovak 143, 153 See also Historians Endrös, Anton 50 Entpolitisierung 105 Erban, Evžen 232 Estonians 113 Evangelical churches 83 See also Christianity Expulsion Of Germans 5n, 127, 178

Extermination of Jews See Holocaust Faláth, Jozef 22 Fascism 6, 67, 72, 84, 125–6, 128, 132, 138, 140, 145–6, 151–2, 158–9, 165, 170, 182–4, 185–7, 191, 218, 229–31, 235–8, 240–1 Fascist groups 32, 41, 46–7, 67, 69, 71, 74–5, 101, 121, 123 Fatran, Gila 147, 151 Fatran, Juraj Arieh 145 Feder, Richard 64, 66 Federal Assembly 232 Feinberg, Melissa 204–5 Felvidék (Upper Hungary) 93, 172 Fierlinger, Zdeněk 124–5, 128, 130, 139 Filipovský, František 149 First republic (Czechoslovak) See Czechoslovakia, First Czechoslovak Republic First Vienna Award 21, 90, 129 Fischl, Otto 195, 197 Folklore 18 Frank, Josef 194 Frank, Karl Hermann 57, 89, 105 Frankenbusch, Erwin 160 Frankl, Michal 17, 78 Frejka, Ludvík (Ludwig Freund) 195 French National Committee 36 Frommer, Benjamin 46–7, 79 Fuchs, František 158–9, 234 Fürnberg, Louis 179–80, 188 Gajda, Radola 74 Galicia 182, 219 Gardista 40, 96, 107, 139–40 Gašpar, Tido J. 50 Geminder, Bedřich 192–3, 195–6 Gendarmerie 49, 91 General Assembly of the United Nations 213 Generalgovernment 39 German Foreign Ministry 101 German-Slovak talks in Salzburg (1940) 4, 50 Gestapo 65, 87, 104, 109, 114, 126, 156–7, 160, 167 Ghettoization 16, 48, 62 The Golden City 14, 15, 24, 29

270 Goebbels, Joseph 15 Golan Heights 231 Goldstücker, Eduard 166, 213, 217, 219, 221, 224, 225, 228 Gomulka, Władysław 216 Gottwald, Klement 130, 201, 203, 205, 206 Government Allied 36, 109 American 57, 194, 229 Czechoslovak 7, 18, 20–1, 165, 173, 177, 179, 181, 183, 187–8, 191, 195, 199, 209, 211, 213, 232, 236 Protectorate 4, 5, 70–1, 89 Slovak 5, 20–2, 28, 34, 36, 40, 43, 49–50, 73, 88, 90–1, 94, 107, 136, 137, 150–1, 196 Government-In-Exile (Czechoslovak) And the myth of innocence 124, 132–8 And popular opinion 25, 30, 44, 104, 114, 119 And Zionism 177 As an institution 15, 25, 30–1, 36, 38, 44, 55–6, 58, 104, 114, 116–7, 119, 124, 132, 136, 137, 166, 214 Graca, Bohuslav 68 Greek Catholics 83 Gromyko, Andrei 178 Gruner, Wolf 79 Guttmann, Josef (Peter Meyer) 84, 205 Haas, Hugo 21 Haganah 191 Hahn, Eva (Schmidt-Hartmann) 84, 205 Hájek, Bedřich (Hájek-Karpeles) 195 Hájek, Miloš 211 Hájková, Anna 63 Handlová 226 Harlan, Veit 14–5, 29 Hashomer Hatzair 147–8, 200 Hejzlar, Zdeněk 219 Help for the Jews 63–5, 91–2, 114, 121 See also Rescue; Righteous Among the Nations Helsinki 234 Heydrich, Reinhard 4, 6, 11, 56, 103–6, 111, 120, 214, 232 Heydrichiáda 120 Hiding 6, 91, 105, 114–5, 147 Hilbert, Jaroslav 18

Index Himmler, Heinrich Historians Émigré, Czech 148 Émigré, Jewish 148, 156, 161 Émigré, Slovak 143, 153 On local collaboration 62–3, 66–72, 74–9 See also Émigré historians Hitler, Adolf 34–5, 65, 103, 105, 107, 131, 133, 137, 156, 201, 207, 225, 231, 239 Hlavinka, Ján 79 Hlinka, Andrej 18 Hlinka Guard 19, 29, 49, 73, 91, 97, 115, 145 Hlinka Youth 28 Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party 94, 96, 124, 128, 140, 146 Hochman, Jiří 219 Holocaust As a Jewish tragedy 125–6, 241 Comprehending the 119 Films 65–6, 150, 155 Local involvement in the 1, 8–9, 60–4, 72, 74–6, 78–9, 81–2, 91, 124, 132–8, 153, 239–40 Memory of 125–7, 131, 143–6, 151, 152–3, 159, 241 Horgau 1 Horizont 153 Horthy, Miklós 129 Hradec Králové 47, 110 Hungary 6, 21, 90, 129, 131, 191, 198 Huppert, Edith 2 Huppert, Ruth (Elias) 2, 3, 8 Husák, Gustav 67–8, 128–9, 142, 156, 232–3 Hyndráková, Anna 81 Ilava 76 Image Functions of 8–9, 12 Of the ‘Czech’ 16–19 Of the ‘Slovak’ 16–19 See also Jew Imperialism 154, 183, 190, 194, 198, 212, 214, 218, 220–1, 226, 235 Indifference 12, 72, 78 Institute of Public Opinion Research in Bratislava 82 Intellectuals 152, 182–3, 220, 224, 226–7

271

Index International department of the cc cpc 192, 219 Invasion German, of the Bohemian lands 3, 23, 26, 41, 46, 87, 98–9, 101, 114, 139 German, of Slovakia 6, 90–1 Of the Warsaw Pact 154, 160, 169, 220, 212, 215, 218–9, 223, 226, 231 See also Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia Israeli army 191–2, 227, 230 Israeli independence 184, 186, 190 Israeli War of Independence 184, 191 Ivanov, Yuri 218, 220–1, 228, 232 Jablonický, Jozef 142 Jan Cimbura 26 Jančík, Drahomír 97 Jelinek, Yeshayahu (Ješahaju Jelínek) 147 Jevsejev, Jevgenij 218, 221, 228 Jew As agent of London exiles 38–9, 45, 239 As alien 19, 32, 40, 166, 201, 221, 226 As collaborator 13, 127, 153, 155–62, 164, 166–7, 234 As cosmopolitan 196, 199, 201–3, 207, 221 As disloyal 18, 94, 225–6, 233 As enemy 16, 19, 45, 196, 226 As exploiter 26, 32–3, 43–4, 231 As fascist 231 As foreigner 8, 40, 201–2, 221, 231, 236, 239, 241 As German 7, 172, 175, 236, 239, 240–1 As harmful alien 26, 32 As Magyars 7, 34, 40, 121, 172, 175, 236, 239, 240–1 As national chameleon 8, 18, 21, 201 As parasite 24 As revengeful 1, 40, 44–5, 109, 136 As sexual predator 33 As Zionist 197–8, 211, 225, 236, chapter 4 Jewish community In Czechoslovakia 1, 6, 119, 126–7, 152, 155, 162, 172, 180, 184, 187, 208, 220, 224, 233, 241 In the Czech lands 162, 186, 229, 231 In Slovakia 44, 76, 217 See also Prague Jewish Community

Jewish Codex 5, 99 Jewish Documentation Action 73 Jewish Telegraphic Agency 175, 206 Jew Süss 15, 24 Jewish Chronicle 22 Jirásek, Josef 17 Journalists 13, 16, 20, 36, 39, 133, 146, 159, 165, 167, 169, 174, 206, 215, 218, 221, 222, 226–30, 235–6, 238 Journalists-Activist 24, 31–2, 34, 37–8, 41, 46–7, 48–9, 50–57, 59, 71, 86, 91 Judaica Bohemiae 147, 161n Judeo-Bolshevism 57 See also Bolshevism Jurkovič, Dušan 145 Kádár, Ján 150 K 231 (Club 231) 220 Kafka, Franz 213–4, 228 Kalandra, Záviš 181–2 Kalina, Ján (also Ivan Benko, Peter Karvaš, Ján Robert Lipka, Jozef Repka, Ladislav Schwartz) 14, 29, 169–70, 172 Kamenec, Ivan 114, 144, 146–7 kan (Club of Committed Non-Party Members) 220 Kaplan, Karel 203 Kárády, Victor 94 Karlovy Vary 233 Kárná, Margita 147 Kárný, Miroslav 62–3, 70, 75, 81, 91n, 144, 146–7, 161n Karski, Jan 164 Karvaš, Peter (also Ivan Benko, Ján Kalina, Ján Robert Lipka, Jozef Repka, Ladislav Schwartz) See Kalina, Ján Kašpar, Vladimír 226 Katyń 57–8, 114 Kaufering 146 Kershaw, Ian 80, 85, 104 Khruschev, Nikita 210 Kibbutzim 183–5 Kirschbaum, Jozef 143 Kladno 110 Klein-Pejšová, Rebekah 94 Klíma, Ivan 188 Klinger, Paul 14 Knieža, Emil F. 214

272

Index

Kocúr 47 Kodíček, Josef 34, 133 Kohout, Pavel 215, 225 Kohút, Pavel (Kohn) 1, 8 Kokoška, Stanislav 71 Kolár, Erik 65 Kolár, František J. 169–70, 221–8 Kolín 64, 112 Kolman, Arnošt (Ernst) 186 Komárno 226 Kopecký, Václav 178–9, 182, 184–6, 201–2 Korbel, Josef 33 Kosta, Jiří 207 Kovačevič, Ivan Július 23–4 Král, Václav 159 Krasňanský, Oskar 200 Kraus, Jaroslav 106 Kraus, Michal 113 Kraus, Ota 145 Kreibich, Karel 179–81, 187–9 Krejčová, Helena 59, 78, 81, 105 Kriegel, František 217, 219, 221, 232, 235 Kriváň Mountain 17 Kryl, Karel 169 Kryl, Miroslav 154n Kubásek, Václav 149 Kubátová, Hana 77, 81 Kučera, Jaroslav 71 Kulturní tvorba 222–3 Kremnička 144 Kříž, Alois 31–34, 134 Kulka, Erich (also Schön) 143, 145, 147, 151, 167, 168, 214

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich 177, 223 Leša, Jiří (also Jiří Aleš, Jiří Bohatka) See Aleš, Jiří Lessons from the Crisis Development in Party and Society after the 13th Congress 212 Lettrich, Jozef 123, 128, 129, 140–1 Ležáky 11, 91, 107, 126 Liberation 1, 3, 4, 6–7, 64, 67, 82, 102, 114, 128, 138–9, 142–3, 146, 149, 163, 174, 179, 181n, 238 Liblice Castle Conference 213, 219 Lidice 11, 91, 107, 126 See also Memorial, Lidice Lidové noviny 41 Liehm, Antonín J. 221 Lipka, Ján (also Ivan Benko, Peter Karvaš, Ján Kalina, Jozef Repka, Ladislav Schwartz) See Kalina, Ján Lipscher, Ladislav 143 Lipták, Ľudomír 68, 81 Lithuanians 113 Łódź ghetto (Litzmannstadt) 6, 54 Lônčíková, Michala 59 London 15, 22, 25, 30–33, 35, 37–40, 44–5, 54–56, 88, 101, 103–4, 108–10, 114, 116–17, 120–1, 132–3, 148, 156, 160, 166, 173, 178, 180, 239 Loyalty 4, 7–8, 21, 61, 81, 87, 89, 94, 121, 171–2, 174, 207, 229 Lublin reservation 39, 90, 101 Ľudové noviny 40, 45, 113 Lueger, Karl 94 Lustig, Arnošt 214–16, 225

Lagrou, Pieter 61 Lagus, Karel 69 Landräte 4, 89 See also Oberlandräte Lang, Jaromír 221 Langer, Oskar 193–4 Langerová, Jo 193 Lánik, Jozef (also Alfréd Wetzler) See Alfréd Wetzler Laštovička, Bohuslav 229 Latvians 113 Lavon, Nahum (Erik Liebman) 214 Lebanon 231 Lebensraum 97 Lederer, Jiří 233, 235

Mach, Alexander 18, 31, 35, 37, 73, 115, 136–7 Macháček, Pavol 137 Magyarization 94, 175 Majer, Václav 130 Mandler, Robert 160–1 Manětín 102 Mapai 192, 199 Mapam 200–1 Marian, Ferdinand 15 Marko, Miloš (Ján Novák) 169–70, 226 martial law in the Protectorate 56, 103 Martyrdom 125, 166 Martyrs 151, 161, 166 Marvan, Jaroslav 149

273

Index Marxist ideology 74, 116, 179, 181, 183, 185, 189, 201, 223, 230 Marxism-Leninism 171, 203, 223, 227 Masaryk, Jan 33, 35–8, 44, 106, 115–6, 176, 216 Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue 35, 96, 124–5, 135, 137, 142 Massacres of Jews 36, 38, 62, 106, 120 Mauthausen 91 McDermott, Kevin 204–5 Media Role of 23–4, 41, 50–1, 214–5, 219, 227, 232, 239 East German 212 Polish 212 Melantrich Press 167–8 Memorial 141 To Jozef Tiso 143 Kremnička 144–5 Lidice 230 To Milan Rastislav Štefánik 218 To the Slovak National Uprising 141–2, 145 Terezín 159, 230 Menzel, Jiří 150 Meyer, Peter (Josef Guttmann) 84 Meyerson, Golda (Meir) 208 Middle East 154, 165, 175–7, 181, 183, 190, 192, 199, 211, 215, 231 Mikuš, Rudolf 42 Mináč, Matej 63 Minsk 6, 81 Minority 12, 35, 55, 82–3, 87–8, 97, 99, 101, 111, 113, 120, 128, 150, 153, 170–1, 173, 175, 178–9, 190, 217 Mischlinge 6, 86, 118 Mňačko, Ladislav 149, 215–6, 225 Moravec, Emanuel 31, 37–8, 51, 71 Moravská Ostrava 2, 25, 101 Moscow 30, 37, 108–9, 124, 132–3, 173, 178–80, 181n, 183, 203, 208–9, 221, 223, 236, 239 Munich Agreement 3, 20–1 Murmelstein, Benjamin 155, 166 Museum of the Slovak National Uprising 142 Myth Of the Innocence 130–7 See also Martyrdom; Victims

Náchod 113 Národná obroda 238 Národní arijská kulturní jednota 101 Národnie noviny 14, 22, 41 Národní arijská kulturní jednota 48 Náš boj 107 Nástup 14, 23 Nástup Červenobílých 41 National Assembly (Czechoslovak) 20, 138, 219n National Committees 8 National Front 232 National revolution 138 Neumannová, Zdenka 58 Neurath, Konstantin von 5, 89, 103 New York Times 22 Nir, Aviva (Karol Neufeld) 147–8 Nisko 101 Nižňanský, Eduard 59, 76, 79 nkvd 113 Normalization 154–5, 169–70, 212–3, 217–8, 222, 224, 228–9 Novák, Rudolf 46 Novomeský, Ladislav 67, 156, 216 Novotný, Antonín 210, 214–5, 229 Nuremberg Laws 4–5 Oberlandräte 4, 89 See also Landräte Occupation See Invasion Ohře River 126 Okáli, Daniel 196 Operation (Secret Police) DANA 209 PAVOUK (Spider) 208, 233 RODINA (Family) 208 Opinion polls 82 Opluštil, Josef 32–3 Oppenheimer, Joseph 15 Oren, Mordechai 200 Oschlies, Wolf 221 Pachnerová, Míla 174–5 Palestine 145, 158, 160, 162–3, 165–6, 171, 173–5, 176, 178–9, 181–5, 198, 201, 225, 236 Palestine Office 198, 200 Palestine Post 184

274 Pardubice 110 Paris 22, 101, 155, 173, 202, 221 Party of National Unity 20 Pasák, Tomáš 68, 70, 74 Patton, George S. 139 Pelikán, Jiří 219 People’s Party 18, 74, 76, 96, 118, 124, 140 See also Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party Peroutka, Ferdinand 174 Petrův, Helena 48, 78 Piešťany 28, 233 Plzeň (Pilsen) 110, 116 Pinard, Richard 32, 58 Pinkas Synagogue 126–7 Píša, Václav 46 Poláček, Karel 163 Polák, Josef 69 Polakovič, Štefan 140 Poland Nazi-occupied 6, 37, 95, 100, 110–1 Postwar 131, 136 Polish army officers 114 Polish People’s Army 212 ‘Political thaw’ 11, 66, 210–1, 223 Political Warfare Executive 133 Popular opinion Versus public opinion 79–80 Práce 182, 217 Prager Tagblatt 165 Prague 3, 6, 14–5, 20, 25n, 26, 48–9, 56, 58, 63, 65, 84–5, 103, 110–1, 124, 138–9, 142, 146–7, 158–62, 164n, 165, 167–8, 185, 191, 194, 197–8, 205, 209, 219, 229, 232, 236 Prague Jewish Community 162, 229, 231 Prague Spring 67, 208, 212, 214, 216–7, 220, 222 Prague Uprising 32n, 126, 138–9, 142, 149 Pravda (Slovakia) 152, 169, 194, 220, 226 Pravda (The Soviet Union) 158 Prečan, Vilém 156 Přemyslids 130 Prešov 29 Press, Anti-Jewish 20, 22, 39–59 See also Propaganda Press department of the Presidium of the Slovak government 50 Press Group 24, 47, 51, 54 Příbram 74 Prídavok, Anton 29

Index Přítomnost 174 Procházka, Arnošt 125 Procházka, Jan 215 Propaganda Anti-Jewish, in film 14–5, 24–7 Anti-Jewish, in radio 27, 29, 32–7 Anti-Jewish, in press 20, 22, 39–59 Office, in Slovakia 19, 40, 50 Impact of 13, 25, 37, 58–9, 132 Soviet 57, 221 Whispering 25, 30–1, 49–50, 86, 103, 111, 112, 235n See also Film; Media; Press; Press Group; Radio Protestants 82, 99 Protocols of the Elders of Zion 229 Pynsent, Robert 58 Quneitra 231 Radio Czech 32, 139, 227 German, in the Protectorate 53 Receivers 27–8 Slovak 28–9, 31, 37, 108 See also bbc broadcasts Radio Free Europe Radok, Alfred 65–6, 155 Rajk, László 200 Rázl, Stanislav 232 Red Army 139, 142 Redlich, Egon (Gonda) 153, 161, 163, 165 Refugees Jewish 20, 63, 187n See also Migrants Reich Protector 4–6, 24, 51, 54, 98 Reich Protector’s Decree on Jewish Property 5 Reicin, Bedřich 157 Reik, Haviva 145 Reiman, Pavel (Paul Reimann) 179–81, 186–7, 191–4 Reimann (Rajman), Richard 29 Repka, Jozef (also Ivan Benko, Ján ­Kalina, ­Peter Karvaš, Ján Robert Lipka, Ladislav Schwartz) See Kalina, Ján Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants 18

Index Rescue 63–5, 91–2, 114, 121 See also Righteous Among the Nations Restitution 13, 62, 75, 81, 98, 118–9, 121–2, 169 Retribution 13, 46, 66, 72, 96, 123, 151, 155–6, 160, 220 Return of Jews 1, 3, 7–9, 44, 61, 77–8, 81, 88, 95, 113–22 Righteous Among the Nations 91–2 Riots Anti-Nazi 139 Postwar Anti-Jewish 7, 75, 82, 84 Ripka, Hubert 33, 35–6, 38, 55 Rišňovce 19 Robbery Of Jewish belongings in Slovakia 5, 11, 24, 28, 42–4, 6–2, 73, 75–6, 79, 87, 91, 93–9, 115, 118, 121, 169, 239 Of Jewish belongings in the Protectorate  5, 16, 75, 97, 100, 102, 118, 120, 135 See also Aryanization Roma 10, 62, 64 Roman Catholic Church On Jews in Slovakia 42, 76 See also Christianity Rothkirchen, Livia 62, 105, 143, 147, 164 Rosenthal, Leo 200 Rozner, Ján 238 Rudé právo 146, 160, 181n, 183, 196, 202, 214, 217, 221–3 Ruml, Jiří 219 Rusko, Emil 29 Russia See Soviet Union Russian Social Democratic Party 177 Sabinov 100 Sachsenhausen 1, 194 Said, Edward W. 176 Šamorín 1 Schwartz, Ladislav (also Ivan Benko, Ján ­Kalina, Peter Karvaš, Ján Robert Lipka, Jozef Repka) See Kalina, Ján Šebesta, Josef 166–7 Second Republic 21, 62, 75 Shamir, Zwi (Kurt Stein) 214 Shoah See Holocaust

275 Sicherheitsdienst (sd) Prague Office 81, 98 Šik, Ota 228, 232–3 Simone, André (Otto Katz) 195, 202–3 Situational reports as a source 12, 85–88 Škvorecký, Josef 150 Slánský, Rudolf See Trial of Rudolf Slánský Slavík, Jan 105 Slávik, Juraj 36, 136–7 Šling, Jan and Karel 232 Šling, Otto 159, 196n, 232, 235 Slovák 24, 40–4, 140 Slovak Academy of Sciences 66 Slovak Institute in Cleveland 143 Slovak Institute in Rome 143 Slovak National Awakening 130 Slovak Press Agency 50 Slovak National Council 72, 123, 128–9, 140 Slovak National Uprising Jewish participation in 143 Ritualization of 126–7, 138–45 See also Museum of the Slovak National Uprising Slovak soldiers 24, 106–7, 143 Slovakia Autonomous Slovak Land 8, 20–2, 90, 94 German-Slovak talks (1940) 4, 50 Regime of the Slovak Republic 61, 68, 76, 123–4, 143, 153 Slovakization As Aryanization 76 See also Aryanization; Robbery Slovenská politika 40 Slovenská pravda 40 Slovenská sloboda 40 Smetana, Bedřich 14 Šmidke, Karol 156 Šmok, Martin 63, 209 Smokovec 18 Smolenice Conference 66 Smrkovský, Josef 219n, 222 Sobibór 106 Socialist Unity Party of Germany 212 Söderbaum, Kristina 15 Sokolovo 143 Solan, Peter 150 ‘Solution of the Jewish problem’ See Holocaust

276 Sonderkommando 167 Soviet-Israeli relations 178 The Soviet Union 23, 27, 45, 57, 61, 113, 139, 144, 155, 158, 178–9, 182, 184, 199, 206, 208, 218, 223, 241 ss troops 227 Stalin, Joseph V. 178, 184 See also Stalin-Tito split Stalingrad 58, 113 Stalinism 188, 194, 221, 222, 224 Stalin-Tito split 194 Stanek, Imrich 146 Staňková, Olga 211 Star of David (compulsory for Jews) 6, 35, 55, 57, 86, 103, 112 State Secret Police (StB) 208 State Security Headquarters (Slovak) 85, 99, 156 Štefánik, Milan Rastislav 218 Steiner, Hanuš 203 Steinert, Marlis 80 Sterilization 38 Štern, Jan 219 Stola, Dariusz 216, 234 Sturmer, Dorothea 15 Der Stürmer 33, 41, 113 Streicher, Julius 33, 41 Subcarpathian Rus’ (Ruthenia) 3, 61, 126, 129 Sudeten Germans 89, 178 See also Transfer Šváb, Karel 194 Šverma, Jan 141 Švestka, Oldřich 154 Svoboda, Ludvík 144 Svobodová, Jana 225 Switzerland 102, 148 Synagogue 74, 159 See also Pinkas Synagogue Syria 199 Szabó, Miloslav 25 Tatra Mountains 18, 40, 141 Tesař, Jan 68, 70 Theresienstadt Family Camp in AuschwitzBirkenau 39n, 110, 120 Theresienstadt Ghetto 2, 6, 39n, 62–3, 65, 69, 81, 92, 105–6, 108, 110, 120, 133, 153–156, 158n, 159–160, 162, 164–166 See also Terezín Memorial

Index Terezín Memorial 126, 159, 230 The Times 227 Tiso, Jozef Legacy of 123, 136, 143, 240 Prime Minister 20, 22 President 9, 24, 42–3, 59, 63, 107 See also Trial of Jozef Tiso Tito, Josip (Broz) 194 Titoites 203 Tobruk 143 Topoľčany pogrom 84 Trail Of Adolf Eichmann 156, 209 Of Jozef Tiso 151 Of Rudolf Slánský 13, 142, 147, 157, 188, 189, 192–5, 197, 200–5, 210, 211n, 221, 224, 227, 232, 235–7 See also Adolf Eichmann; Jozef Tiso; Rudolf Slánský Transfers Forced, of Germans 8n, 127, 178 Of property 5, 44, 96–8, 115, 239 See also Aryanization Transport z ráje 155 Treblinka 106 Tribuna 154–5, 159, 161, 165, 227–31 Třicet případů majora Zemana 228 Trotskyites 189, 203, 235 Tryzna 126, 232 Tuka, Vojtech 35, 73, 123, 136 Uher, Štefan 150 Ukraine 6, 62, 92 Ungváry, Ferenc 29 Union for Czechoslovak-Israeli ­Friendship 180, 190, 200 Union of Czechoslovak Writers 215 United Nations 178, 191, 206, 213 United Nations Declaration (December 1942) 36 The United States 21, 27, 84, 114, 148, 153, 181n, 193–5, 199, 203, 205, 206, 227, 229 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 81 University of Political and Economic Sciences 160 University of the State Police Večer 20, 41 Velká přehrada 26

277

Index Venkov 17, 20, 41, 53 Victims Assimilated Jews as 159 Category of 10, 151, 156 Commemoration of Jewish 158, 232 Czechs as 124–6, 226, 240 Jews as 15, 76, 127, 132–4, 176 Israel as a representative of Jewish 209 Of fascism 145, 214 Of Stalinism 216 Slovaks as 226, 240 Universalization of 144 Vienna 94, 124, 129, 161, 166–7, 220 Vlajka (group) 32, 35, 47, 101 Vlajka (periodical) 46, 48 Vnuk, František 143 Volhynia 92 Völkischer Beobachter 22 Vozka, Jaroslav 148 Vrzgulová, Monika 77, 79, 81 Waigner, Vladimír 95n Warsaw ghetto 54, 164 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968) 154, 160, 169, 220, 212, 215, 218–9, 223, 226, 231 Washington 37, 109 Wehrmacht 6, 90, 110, 115 Weidmann, František 162 Weiner, Milan 219 Wenceslaus I., Duke of Bohemia 125 Werner, Karel 38–9, 54 Wetzler, Alfréd 145

Wiesenthal, Simon 151, 167 Winter, Kamil 183n, 219 Winterstein, Vojtech 200 Winton, Nicholas 63 Wislićeny, Dieter 107 Wolfram von Wolmar, Wolfgang 24, 47, 51–5, 57, 86 Wonka, František 102 Wrede, F. O. 39 Württemberg 15 Yaaron, Karel (Karel Grinwald) 214 Yad Vashem 91–2, 151, 153, 164n See also Righteous Among the Nations Yugoslavs 133, 167 Zápotocký, Antonín 193 Zeman, Miloš 63 Zemplín 226 Zhitomir 107 Ziemke, Kurt 101, 102n, 105 Zimmermann, Volker 71 Zionist As the enemy of Socialist Czechoslovakia 212 Image of the 13, 170, 229–30, 240–1 Failure to assimilate 172 See also Anti-Zionist; Jew, as Zionist Zionist Groups Collaboration with the Nazis 13, 127, 153, 155–62, 164, 166–7, 234 Membership in 154–5