1. Czechoslovakia

2. Czechoslovakia

3. 1st Czechoslovak Republic
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

4. 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

5. Historical Context: Czech Jews
1890´s – 1918 – increasing influence of Czech
1918 – Czech as mother tongue for majority of Jews
Jewish inteligentsia - German

6. 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

7. 1st Czechoslovak Republic
Tomáš Garrique Masaryk – 1st president
Western-oriented, liberal, and moderate nationalist
„If I accept Christ, I can not be antisemitic.“

8. 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

9. 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

10. Ruthenia (Subcarpathian 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

11. 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

12. 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.“

13. 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

14. 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)

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. The Collapse of Czechoslovakia
March 1939 Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia and a separate Slovak fascist state (a Nazi protectorate)

19. Occupation of the Bohemian Lands
March – Protektorat Bohemia and Moravia
Jews progressively excluded from the society
Germanization of Czech factories and goods – broad definition of Jewish belongings