Zionism and Jews in Czechoslovakia

19th Century

• Emancipation of Jews in Central and Western Europe

• Eastern Europe – More than 5 milion lived in Russia at the end of the

19th c. – about 10 x as many as in Germany– Only about 200 000 were permitted to live in bigger

towns– 18% of inhabitants of Warsaw – 220 000 Jews – the

biggest Jewish community in Europe– 28% of inhabitants of Cracow

Russia • Alexandr I – relatively liberal policy – Jews were permitted to attend public

schools, buy land and settle on it• Nicholas I – painful restrictions• Alexandr II – golden age; murdered• Alexander III - expulsions and persecutions of Jews

– 1870´s and 1880´s – new wave of antisemitism– Permanent pogroms : Odessa and many other places

» Leo Pinsker – physician – the only cure for antisemtism is to remove the cause and to move the Jewish people to Palestine• „For the living, the Jew is a dead man; for the natives an alien and vagrant; for

property holders a beggar; for the poor an exploiter and a millionaire; for patriots a man without a country; for all classes, a hated rival.“

» When discussed his views with the chief rabbi of Vienna, he was advised to take a rest in Italy and to restore his obviously shattered nerves

» „Autoemancipation“ – few intelectuals influenced by his thoughts consituted the nucleus of the Zionist movements in eastern Europe in the 1890´s – crucial for Herzl

• a plight forced Jews to emigrate to the West, esp. to the USA – between 1892 and 1914 about 2,5 milion Jews left Eastern Europe

France

• Dreyfus affaire – Zola– Bernard Lazare, 1890´s

• A fervent Socialist• One of the main figures in the campaign to rehanilitate Dreyfus and

later on a Zionist

• Theodor Herzl sojourned here

• First racist writings – pseudo-scientific theories about the existence of „higher“ Arian race and „lower“ semitic race

Sionism• Jewish nationalistic movement

– reaction on the racist movement• Sion = hill in Jerusalem, symbol of redemption for the Old Testament

prophets• Jewish agricultural settlements founded in Palestine

– Immigrants received cold and sometimes hostile reaction from the ortodox Jews of Jerusalem

– Part of the Ottoman Empire – in 1893 temporarily banned the immigration of Russia Jews

– Petah Tikva, Rehovot (1890)– By 1910 the settlers were owners of plantations (mainly citrus fruits)

employing mainly Arab workers. Their children were send for education to France.

– 1905 – new wave if immigrants

Theodor Herzl• Founder of Zionism – transformed it

into a mass movement and a political force

• Published „The Jewish State“, 1896– instigated by the Dreyfuss affair– Creation of a Jewish State is the only

possible solution of the problem– Was only 36 years old– Begining of the modern political Zionism– Jewish question is not social of religious

but national one – attacked by Vienna chief rabbi: „Jews are not a nation, the only thing they have in common is the religion and Zionism is not compatible with the teachings of Judaism.“

• Born in Budapest in 1860• Graduated in Law in Vienna• Playwrite

• Lived in Paris• 1897 – Herzl organized the 1st sionistic

congress in Basel• Established the central Zionist

newspaper Die Welt• Altneuland

– many detailed suggestions on the look of Israel and its legal organization

– Science fiction – two visitors in Palestine in 1923 when it has become a modern Jewísh state

• Promoted the necessity of the strenghtening of the Jewish self-awareness and national consciousness

• Hebrew became a modern language– Eliezer ben Jehuda (1858-1922) – large

hebrew dictionary

Palestine• Since the WWI British

mandate territory

• The Balfour Declaration – 1917– A letter from the UK´s

Foreign Secretary A.J. Balfour to Baron Rotschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of the UK.

• „His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.“

Czechoslovakia

1st Czechoslovak Republic• 1918-1938• One of the few states which recognized the Jewish nationality as

equal to all other nationalities in the country• Tomáš Garrique Masaryk – 1st president

– Western-oriented, liberal, and moderate nationalist• Liberal democracy• Industrialised Bohemia and Moravia + less developped Slovakia and

Ruthenia (Subcarpathian Rus)• 3 milion German minority – Sudetenland• Czech and Moravian Jews reformed, quit Yiddish – fruits of Haskalah• Max Brod: „In the Prague of my youth there were only a few

families that were completely faithful to the Jewish tradition.“

Franz Kafka• 1883-1924• Born and lived in Prague• All his sisters murdered by

Nazis in concentration camps• Convinced sionist – was fluent

in hebrew and dreamt about the life in the land of Israel

• Burried at the New Jewish Cemetery at Prague 3, Žižkov (Želivského metro stop)

• Max Brod did not respect his last will and published his writings

Max Brod

• 1884-1968

• Leader of the Zionist federation of Bohemia – leading political force during the 1st Republic

• In 1939 fled to Palestine and settled in Tel Aviv

Sigmund Freud

• 1856-1939• Born in Moravia

(Příbor/ Freiberg)• Lived in Vienna• Psychanalysis• Fled Nazis to London

in 1938 where he died (euthanasis)

Gustav Mahler

• 1860-1911• Born in Czech-Moravian

highlands• Lived in Vienna and

New York• Monumental

symphonies

Edmund Husserl

• 1859 - 1938• Born in Prostějov in

Moravia• Founder of modern

phenomenology• Got baptized (protestant)• Forced by Nazis to leave

the university where he taught and in 1936 he had to move out of his appartment;

Zionism in the Czech Lands

• 1893 – Prague group Makabee : Jews are a people in their own right

• 1899 – Bar Kochba – Prague Zionist group– Search for the Jewish roots– Established a Jewish Party – entered the

Parliament during the 1st Republic• Poland, Hungary – political parties with

antisemitic programs x not in the Czech Lands

Czech Lands

• Hilsner affaire – Masaryk defended with succes the Jewish victim of a false

accusation from a superstitious blood libel (Polna in Moravia)• Inimaginable in Poland or Romania – openely antisemitic states –

Zionism popular here only insofar it meant the mass departure of Jews from Europe

– The only country with a succesful campaign against anti-Semitism

– Masaryk supported Zionism and the Jewish national rights– Masaryk was as well an unusual statesman in his

championing of Jewish national rights in the diaspora

Slovakia• Eastern Ortodox Judaism• Part of Hungarian Jewry• Hasidic influences from Galicia• Bratislava (Poszony, Pressburg) – famous center of Ortodox Judaism

– Great Yeshiva– Hatam Sofer – one of the most renowned sages of the early 19th century

• Since 1867 general magyarisation– In many Jewish families the parents conversed in German while the children, who

attended Hungarian schools, spoke to each other in Magyar.• Yiddish survived into the 20th century in the small towns of eastern Slovakia

(influence of Galicia)• Magyarised Jews were very much disliked by the Slovak nationalists • Slovak antisemitism – close connection between Slovak nationalism and the

Catholic church – Jews were identified with the social and national enemy• Proportionally Jews were more numerous in Slovakia than in the Czech lands

Ruthenia (Subcarpathian Rus)

• Peasant Rusyns (Ruthenians)• Hungarian landowners• East Orthodox Jewish communities• Small magyarised Jewish elite + majority

yiddish speaking Jews• Hasidism was extremely influential here• Munkacs, Uzhgorod (Ungvar)

Czechoslovakia

• 1930: 357 000 Jews – 2% of the population– The highest proportion in Subcarpathian Rus

• Bohemia – nearly 50% of all Jews lived in Prague• Subcarpathian Rus – 80% lived in shtetlekh and

villages– The largest Jewish peasantry, the poorest and the most

involved in physical labor of all European Jewries• Czechoslovakia – a multinational state by definition• Religious and national Jewish identity was legitimate

and Jews were expected to be loyal to Czechoslovakia

1st Czechoslovak Republic• A wave of anti-Jewish feeling swept over East Central Europe

immediately after the WWI– In Czechoslovakia it was felt more seriously in Slovakia and its capital,

Bratislava• Economic prosperity low profile of anti-Semitism• Bohemia and Moravia – Jewish party

– Main languages of young Jews were Czech and Slovak• Slovakia – anti-Zionist Orthodox party „League of Israel“• Hasidic Munkacs (Mukačevo) rebbe in Ruthenia was hostile to

Zionism and to secularizing tendencies• However a large Zionist movement like in Poland never developed

here– The Jewish party did not necessarily promote the Zionist ideas

The Collapse of Czechoslovakia• 1930´s – Great Depression mass strikes• 1934 – rise of bolshevism – Gottwald: „Not Masaryk but Lenin“ escaped to Russia• 1935 – Konrad Henlein Sudeten German party won elections• Slovakia

– strong influence of the Horthy´s irredentist propaganda– Anti-Czech and anti-state feeling, separatism– Growing anti-Semitism– Radical movements associated with the Catholic church and the more extreme received

support from the Nazi Germany– Tiso – the Prime Minister of autonomous Slovakia, a priest

• The neighbours of Czechoslovakia : antidemocratic regimes– Beck in Poland– Horthy in Hungary– Dolfuss in Austria– Hitler in the Nazi Germany

The Collapse of Czechoslovakia• 1935 – Masaryk abdicated and recommended Beneš for

President• 1937 – Germany added Austria („anschluss“)

• GB and France did not do anything against this „family affair“ because they did not want to risk a military conflict with Hitler for the countries in the Central Europe

• 1938 – Sudeten German Party was preparing a military attack of Czechoslovakia as a result, the Czechoslovak army partially mobilzed and Germany

decided to wait Hitler spoke of protecting Germans living out of the Reich Henlein : „We must make impossible demands that can not be

satisfied“ and provoke Czechoslovak crackdown while avoiding a final agreement

Munich

• Chamberlain and a the French minister of Foreign Affairs decided that Sudeten will be ceded to Germany and gave an ultimate to the Czechoslovak governement• CS refused but finally has been forced to accept

• 1938 – Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Daladier met in Munich and fully accepted German claims Czechoslovakia was forced to cede Sudeten to Germany, a part of the territory to Poland and a part of Slovakia to Hungary

The Collapse of Czechoslovakia

• March 1939 Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia and a separate Slovak fascist state (in fact a Nazi protectorate)

Czechoslovakia 1938-39