Czechoslovakia1918-1938

Czechoslovakia

• 1918 – solid BOURGEOISIE – moderate, democratic–Political leaders ANTICLERICAL

• Problem: delineation of borders + minorities• Liberal democracy• Industrialised Bohemia and Moravia + less

developped Slovakia and Ruthenia (Subcarpathian Rus)

• 3 milion German minority – Sudetenland

1st Czechoslovak Republic

Historical Context: Czech Jews

• 1867 Jews emancipated– Acculturation, urbanization, bourgeoisie

• Czech and Moravian Jews reformed or secular, 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.“

• Jews had to choose Czech or German – language of high culture

Historical Context: Czech Jews

• 1890´s – 1918 – increasing influence of Czech– 1918 – Czech as mother tongue for majority of

Jews– Jewish inteligentsia - German

Zionism in the Czech Lands

• Between the nations situation Zionism• 1893 – Prague group Makabee : „The Jews are

neither Germans nor Slavs, they 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

• Tomáš Garrique Masaryk – 1st president–Western-oriented, liberal, and moderate

nationalist– „If I accept Christ, I can not be antisemitic.“

1st Czechoslovak Republic

Czech Lands

• Hilsner affaire – Masaryk defended the Jewish

victim of a false accusation from a blood libel (Polná in Moravia)

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

– Masaryk supported Zionism and the Jewish national rights

Slovakia• Part of Hungarian Jewry: • E: 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

• Less acculturation• Yiddish

– small towns of eastern Slovakia (influence of Galicia)

• 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.

• Slovak nationalists + catholic church

• Small Slovak bourgeoisie x highly visible Jewish middle class

Ruthenia (Subcarpathi

an Rus)

• Peasant Rusyns (Ruthenians) – like Galicia but less modernization

• Hungarian landowners• East Orthodox Jewish communities• Small magyarised Jewish elite + majority yiddish speaking Jews• Hassidism extremely influential

Czechoslovakia

• 1930: 357 000 Jews – 2,5 % 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 – Munkacs 43% Jewish– Uzgorod 28% Jewish

Czechoslovak State and its Jewish Citizens

• WWI CZ nationalists needed Jewish support for the creation of CZ state - multinational

• Jews loyal and supportive to Czechoslovakia– Jan Masaryk, 1943, UK: „relations between the

Jews and the Czechs were, in fact, excellent. We knew that when time were hard the Jewish minority would always stand by us. It never let us down.“

1st Czechoslovak Republic

• A wave of anti-Jewish feeling swept over East Central Europe immediately after the WWI– felt more seriously in Slovakia

• 1930´s growing antisemitism in Sudetenland• Jews accused from support of CZ government

by Slovak separatists

Politics

• Bohemia and Moravia – Jewish (Zionist) party– Main languages of young Jews were Czech and Slovak– 1929, 1935 entered Parliament

• Slovakia – anti-Zionist Orthodox party „League of Israel“

• Hasidic Munkacs (Mukačevo) rebbe in Ruthenia was hostile to Zionism and to secularizing tendencies– Collaborated with the CZ Agrarian Party (antisemitic)

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´s Sudeten German party won elections• Slovakia

– strong influence of Horthy´s propaganda– Radical movements associated with the Catholic church supported 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“)• 1938 – Sudeten German Party was

preparing a military attack of Czechoslovakia Czechoslovak army partially mobilized 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

• 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 (a Nazi protectorate)

Occupation of the Bohemian Lands

• March 15 1939 – Protektorat Bohemia and Moravia– Jews progressively excluded from the society– Germanization of Czech factories and goods –

broad definition of Jewish belongings