Czechoslovakia
Founded
in 1918 after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Czechoslovakia
comprised three distinct areas: the Czech lands, Slovakia, and Podkarpatská Rus
province (Subcarpathian Ukraine). In the context of the Holocaust,
Czechoslovakia has a diverse and regionally specific history, and
each area is well represented in the interviews of the Shoah Foundation
Institute Visual History Archive.
The Shoah Foundation conducted 567 interviews
in the Czech Republic, 664 in Slovakia, and around 90 in
Subcarpathian Ukraine. As many as 5,362 interviewees were born here: 999 in the Czech lands, 1,940 in Slovakia,
and 2,373 in Podkarpatská Rus. Furthermore, over 10,600 witnesses discuss their experiences in Czechoslovakia
before, during, and after the war. The collection includes 566 interviews
in the Czech language and 573 in Slovak.
The
territorial ambitions of Nazi Germany had a decisive impact on Czechoslovakia
on the eve of World War II. The country was partitioned into three
distinct parts as a result of German involvement, either directly
or indirectly. In October 1938, Nazi troops occupied the Sudetenland
(the annexation is described at length in 77 testimonies); in March
of the following year, Hitler proclaimed the German Protectorate
of Bohemia and Moravia (220 testimonies). Also that March, Slovakia
declared independence, becoming a puppet state of Nazi Germany. The
separation was complete when in November 1938 and March 1939, Hungary
annexed the whole of Podkarpatská Rus province and a strip
of southern Slovakia (described specifically in 668 testimonies).
Many fled. Some of those who reached the United Kingdom, where the government-in-exile was established, went on to fight in Czechoslovak units of the British Army; others who went east enlisted with the Czechoslovak division set up in the Soviet Army in 1941. These units are discussed in 161 testimonies.
The Czech Lands and Sudetenland
In
terms of the modern-day Czech Republic (Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia),
the majority of the testimonies relate to the major cities, particularly
the capital Prague. Czech Jews were first subject to the malevolence
of Nazi rule even before the outbreak of World War II. After the German occupation of March 1939, laws
restricting Jews that were already in force were increased in their severity and attacks on and seizures of Jewish property
became commonplace.
Deportations
soon began. As early as October 1939, an experimental deportation
plan moved a group of Moravian Jews to an area of Poland (the so-called "Nisko and Lublin plan"); four survivors in the archive recount their experiences of this. In 1941, others were deported to the ghettos in the east: 30 survivors interviewed in the archive were deported from Czechoslovakia to the Lódz
ghetto, eight were sent (via Theresienstadt) to the Riga ghetto,
two to the Minsk ghetto. Some managed to avoid deportation at least
temporarily, while a number managed to emigrate before that option
was curtailed in October 1941.
Beginning
in 1942, most remaining Jews were sent to the Theresienstadt "model ghetto" (discussed by 2,193 interviewees in total, 704 of whom were born in Czechoslovakia). From Theresienstadt, most Czech Jews were moved to Auschwitz. The archive also contains references to numerous labor camps established by the Nazis in Bohemia, Sudetenland, and Silesia, as well as camps set up in Moravia specifically for Hungarian Jews after 1944. A few testimonies in Czech refer to the Panenské Brezany (Jungfern Breschan) camp, the private camp of Frau Heydrich, wife of Reinhard Heydrich (the SS chief and "Protector" of Bohemia and Moravia). A small number of Jews in mixed marriages avoided deportation until early 1945. Others discuss the mixed-marriage camps such as Prague Hagibor and Lípa (Böhmisch-Leipa).
After liberation in 1945, Prague became a focal point for refugees. Of those who survived, many Czech Jews chose to emigrate. Nevertheless, around half of the 999 interviews with people born in the Czech lands were conducted in the Czech Republic. Those who did remain recount their experiences under Communist rule, including reminiscences of the Prague Spring of 1968.
The
testimony of Hanus Münz (interview code 6804, Czech) is an extremely rare example of a Czech survivor of Malyi Trostenets. Richard Glazar (interview code 8552, German) is one of only two survivors from the Czech lands of the Treblinka II death camp. Kurt Thomas (interview code 28104, English), who also gave an interview to the Shoah Foundation, is a Czech survivor of the Sobibór death camp. The testimony of Viktor Las (interview code 6809, Czech) is remarkable for his description of performing cleanup work after the notorious German massacre
of the village of Lidice.
Slovakia
In Slovakia, Jews were not under direct German rule but were subject to a regime that strove to follow national socialist ideals. Beginning in 1939, a series of anti-Jewish measures were introduced; from 1941, Jewish men were sent to work for the Slovak Sixth Labor Battalion.
The mass deportation of Jews began in March 1942. Slovak Jews were some of the first prisoners to be deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The archive includes testimonies of prisoners who survived from that time (e.g. Ria Elias, interview code 25023, Portuguese). Several testimonies discuss the Slovak escapees from Auschwitz, Rudolf Vrba (Walter Rosenberg), Josef Lanik (Alfred Wetzler).
A
unique aspect of Slovak Holocaust history is the activity of the "Working
Group" (Pracovná Skupina). This organization was made
up of members of the
Ústredna Zidov (the Slovak Judenrat) who, through a variety of methods
including bribery, attempted to save Slovak Jews from deportation. Partly as
a result of their efforts, the deportations were stopped in October 1942. The
Working Group played a major role in getting the camps Sered', Nováky,
and Vyhne designated as labor camps so that their Jewish specialist workforces
would be safe from deportation.
The
archive includes interviews of Andrew Steiner (interview code 5154,
English), the last living member of Working Group; Emanuel Frieder
(interview code 7202, Hebrew), brother of rabbi Armin Frieder of
the Working Group; and Gideon Frieder (interview code 22840, English),
rabbi Frieder's son. Vladimír Bachnár (interview code
24550, Slovak), a member of the communist underground, discusses
his activities in the Working Group as an insider in the deportations
department of the Judenrat. The archive also includes the testimony
of Ernest [Arnost] Rosin (interview code 32034, German), a Slovak
Jew who escaped from Auschwitz in May 1944 and was one of the four
contributors to the Auschwitz Protocols, a report on the mass killings at the camp.
Transit camps/deportation centers such as Nitra, Poprad,
Zilina, and others are discussed in a number of testimonies. Interviews also relate the activities of the Hlinka Guard and the Freiwillige Schutzstaffel, the Slovak and ethnic-German militias.
At least 200 interviews include discussions of the Slovak National Uprising of 1944 and its subsequent collapse. The archive contains a number of interviews with partisans who fought in the uprising. Survivors who participated were able to remain in Slovakia until liberation, hiding in the mountains and forests.
The
Slovak National Uprising is discussed especially in the Slovak-language
interviews. Among them, Alexander Bachnár (interview code 14754, Slovak; cousin of the aforementioned Vladimír Bachnár)
was one of the Jewish partisan commanders of the uprising; another
Jewish partisan figure is Bernard Knezo (interview code 17272, Slovak).
Among
the rarer experiences recounted in the testimonies are those of the
wartime Slovakian administration of a small area of southern Poland,
including the town of Jurgów.
Among the non-Jewish interviewees is Anton Rasla (interview code 20285, Slovak), who was the chief prosecutor in the postwar trial of Jozef Tiso. An example of a Slovak rescuer is Stefan Pancik (interview code 37777, Slovak), whose family protected Andrew Steiner and others.
A total of 1,940 of the archive's interviewees were born in Slovakia. The Shoah Foundation conducted 664 interviews in Slovakia.
Podkarpatská Rus
(Subcarpathian Ukraine) and Southern Slovakia
Distinct
from the Czech lands and Slovakia were the eastern province of Podkarpatská Rus and a strip of land on the southern Slovakian border. After March 1939, these areas came under Hungarian rule and were known in Hungarian as Kárpátalja and Felvidék,
respectively.
Hungarian
authorities enacted several Anti-Jewish laws. In 1939, the Hungarian
army began to draft men of age into the forced labor service (Munkaszolgálat),
a section of the army that performed menial and dangerous tasks on
the front lines without weaponry (at least 1,700 interviews in total
describe this experience). Conscripts to the forced labor battalions
often avoided deportation to Auschwitz, instead being marched to
camps in Germany and Austria in late 1944-early 1945.
The first deportations took place in summer 1941. Hungarian authorities expelled a large number of Jews without Hungarian citizenship to the Skala and Kolomyja area of southwestern Ukraine (prewar Poland), an event described in over 250 testimonies. In August, they handed over 23,000 of these so-called alien Jews to German and Ukrainian forces, who massacred them in Kamenets-Podol'skii.
The
deportation of the majority of Jews from this part of occupied Czechoslovakia
took place after the Nazi invasion of Hungary on March 19, 1944.
Immediately, the Germans set about aggressively enacting the Final
Solution, assisted by the Hungarian authorities and gendarmerie.
Ghettos were established as early as the next month (the archive
contains information on 26 ghettos in Kárpátalja and Felvidék).
In May 1944, Jews were being deported en masse to Auschwitz, and
by that summer, the area was Judenrein.
A
total of 2,373 interviewees were born in Podkarpatská Rus
province. Almost all of these interviews were conducted in other
parts of the world and in various languages, attesting to the widespread
emigration of the surviving Jewish community from the area. The Shoah Foundation conducted
90 Russian-, Ukrainian-, and Rusyn-language testimonies with Jewish and Roma survivors remaining in what is today Zakarpats'ka oblast of Ukraine.
