CZECHOPEDIA

Czech Jews

20. 3. 2010

The Jewries of what was then Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia had been under direct control of the Hapsburg Empire since 1620 and had experiences of assimilation in the Western Bohemian and Praguer regions.

Adherents of the Jewish religion in 1930 represented 2.4% of the total population. Jews played an important role in the Czech economy: up to 40% of the total capital invested in Czechoslovakian industry in the 1930s was Jewish-owned.

After the Nazi advent to power in Germany in 1933, several thousand Jewish refugees, of whom 4,000 held Czechoslovakian citizenship, entered Czechoslovakia.

Notorious Jewish authors from Czechoslovakia were Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Adolf Donath, Friedrich Adler, Hugo Salus, Franz Werfel, Ludwig Winder, F. C. Weisskopf and Egon Erwin Kisch.

Jews prominent in music included the composer Jaromir Weinberger and on the Czech stage the actors Hugo Haas and Jiří Voskovec.

Post-World War I Czechoslovakia, which was relatively progressive and stable, was a congenial milieu for Czechoslovakian Jewry.

Anti-Semitism in Czechoslovakia was strongly associated with the general conflicts among the nationalities: the Czechs did not see with good eyes the adherence of most Jews to German language and culture. Jews were believed to be supporters of Communism.

At the beginning of 1938 anti-Semitism gained in strength when in Romania the Goga government came to power and Jewish refugees tried to enter Czechoslovakia. Ferdinand Peroutka, the editor of a respected liberal weekly, published a series of articles in which he called for restriction of Jewish rights. A project for a rabbinical seminary, connected with the Prague Czech University, which was to begin functioning in 1938, was not realized.

The problem of Jewish refugees became even more acute with the Nazi Anschluss with Austria, when many Jewish refugees, a large number holding Czechoslovakian passports, entered the country.

According to Chaim Yahil, manifestations of anti-Semitism in Slovakia and the Sudeten area increased. At the time of the Munich conference (Sept. 29, 1938) the Jews from the Sudetenland (more than 20,000), which was handed over to Germany, fled to the remaining territory of the country.

The emigration and escape of Jews from Czechoslovakia started immediately after the Munich conference (Sept. 29, 1938) and increased considerably after the German occupation (March 15, 1939). Half a million pounds sterling, part of a grant made by the British government to the Czechoslovak government, were earmarked for the financing of the emigration of 2,500 Jews to Palestine. In addition, about 12,000 Jews left with "illegal" transports for Palestine.

Many others emigrated to the United States and South America or escaped to neighboring Poland, from where a number succeeded in reaching Great Britain, France, and other countries.

Historian Meir Lamed teaches that after the recognition of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union in 1941, a Czechoslovak division was established in the U.S.S.R. Up to 70% of the members of some of its units were Jews.

According to the 1930 census, Czechoslovakia had a Jewish population of 356,830 out of total of 14,000,000. Of these, 117,551 lived in Bohemia and Moravia and 102,542 in Carpatho-Russia. At the time of the Munich Agreement (September, 1938), the arrival of Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria increased the Jewish population in Bohemia and Moravia to approximately 122,000.

In October 1938, when the German-speaking Bohemian-Moravian border areas were occupied by the Nazis, approximately 25,000 Jews fled their homes there to the unoccupied part of Czechoslovakia. On the basis of the Vienna arbitration decision of Nov. 2, 1938, the predominantly Hungarian parts of Slovakia and Carpatho-Russia were ceded to Hungary; these areas were inhabited by approximately 80,000 Jews.

In 1945, 10,090 Jews registered with the Jewish communities as returning deportees, out of a total of 80,614 who had been deported; 6,392 had died in Theresienstadt, 64,172 had been murdered in the extermination camps, and of the Jews who had not been deported, 5,201 had either been executed, committed suicide, or died a natural death. On the day of the restoration of national sovereignty in Prague, May 5, 1945, there were 2,803 Jews alive in Bohemia and Moravia, who had not been deported, most of them partners of mixed marriages, according to specialist Erich Kulka.

Czechoslovakia had about10,000 Jews by the time of the Velvet Revolution of November 1989, which ousted the country's repressive regime. Under communism, the regime maintained an anti-Zionist policy. Participation in Jewish religious, cultural, or educational activities was either discouraged or banned. Havel's new government in February 1990 reestablished diplomatic relations with lsrael, which had been broken after the Six-Day War in 1967.

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