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Acknowledgement
I would like to gratefully acknowledge the financial support for this study provided by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Notes
1. Young, The Texture of Memory, 74.
2. Watson, “Memory, History and Opposition,” 1.
3. When mentioned in official texts, Jews were typically presented as members of a suspect, stigmatized group, assumed a priori to possess the “wrong” bourgeois class origin, pro‐Western (and as such anti‐socialist) “cosmopolitan” orientation, and pro‐Zionist and pro‐Israeli sympathies.
4. Svobodová, Zdroje a projevy antisemitismu v českých zemích, 29, 37.
5. Salner, Židia na Slovensku medzi tradíciou a asimiláciou, 252.
6. Hoffman, Gray Dawn, 31. It is worth mentioning that similarly hegemonic construction also occurred in non‐communist Austria. In line with the founding myth of postwar Austria, that Austria was the “victim of fascism,” the construction of postwar Austrian memory consistently focused on the supposed suffering of all Austrians. The specific Jewish experience was systematically silenced and not integrated into the master narrative of the 1938–45 period. See Bunzl, “Austrian Zionism.”
7. “The Tragedy of the Jews in Post‐War Czechoslovakia” (Charta 77 Document no. 29/1989, Prague, 5 April 1989), Soviet Jewish Affairs 20, no. 1 (1990): 58.
8. Schmidt‐Hartmann, “The Enlightenment that Failed,” 122.
9. As Brod argues, there were published, “from the late 1940s onwards, numerous neutral or sympathetic articles on various subjects such as Israel—depending, of course, on which way the wind was blowing from Moscow at the time—individual Jewish personalities or the history of Jewish communities. All these articles were collected by officials of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Prague and were often referred to in the pages of Věstník, the Czechoslovak Jewish monthly, or the Informationsbulletin, published by the Federation for readers abroad.” Brod, “Letter to Editor,” 127.
10. Although the majority of Czech Jews were secular, the only Jewish organization permitted by the party‐state authorities was a religious one. Following the communist takeover in February 1948, the new regime adopted on November 1, 1949 a new law on religious communities. The new law radically changed the administrative and financial structures of all religious communities and their institutions, and transformed their paid functionaries into state employees. Like all the other official churches and religious groupings, the activities of the Council of Czech Jewish Religious Communities (CCJRC) were closely supervised by the religious secretariat of the Ministry of Culture, which also set the budget for CCJRC. Many decisions were referred to the ideological department of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In 1950, the Prague Jewish Community was forced to hand over to the state most of its historic sites as well as the contents of the Nazi‐sponsored Central Jewish Museum. The Museum was reopened in the aftermath of the Nazi defeat, and over the years presented numerous historical exhibits. Both the State Jewish Museum and the Terezín Memorial were museums rather than Jewish associations, and as such were under the jurisdiction of a different department than CCJRC. The Israeli journalist Charles Hoffman aptly described the relation between Czech Jewry and the State Jewish Museum as “straight out of a fairy tale. The Jews were the poor orphaned children fated to live with the wicked stepmother.” See Hoffman, Gray Dawn, 15.
11. Victims of the Nazis were generally honoured in nationwide annual ceremonies on May 9, the date when Prague was liberated by the Soviet army and the Second World War in Europe finally ended. No special mention was generally made of the Nazi genocide against the Jews at those ceremonies. The Jewish community held its small regular memorial ceremonies in Terezín either in March, to commemorate the March 8, 1944 murder of almost 1200 members of the Terezín family camp in Birkenau or, in September, just before the High Holidays. Like Jews in other East European countries, Czech Jews were not allowed to hold their ceremonies on Yom Hashoah, the date marked each spring as Holocaust Remembrance Day by Jews in Israel and elsewhere in the diaspora. Hoffman, Gray Dawn, 31.
12. Kovács, “Are Hungarian Jews a National Minority?” 68.
13. The irritation the lobbying efforts provoked among officials at the Secretariat for Religious Affairs is evident from a five‐page document dated July 22, 1958 and entitled “Report about the Activities of Jews in Czechoslovakia.” Written by an official named Urban with a disparaging attitude towards victims of the Shoah, it is an openly Antisemitic document: “What is characteristic for all our Jews are their on‐going efforts to gain various advantages and concessions on account of the suffering caused by the Nazi persecution, and excessive sensitivity to any restriction imposed on religious life (or Jewish solidarity), which they tend to see as racial discrimination. Moreover, they are attempting to gain greater social position than indicated by their social importance under today’s conditions. For this reason they are trying to maintain the largest possible number of religious congregations, are attempting to establish a school which would train new religious functionaries, overestimate the overall importance of Jewish memorial objects (such as Jewish cemeteries), and demand their maintenance. They overestimate their social standing also with respect to the development of international relations. Failure to meet their demands creates among them sense of wrongdoing and lack of official understanding.” “Zpráva o činnosti Židů v ČSR,” 1958. State Central Archive in Prague, carton MSK‐56.
14. A catalogue published in 1986 in English by the State Jewish Museum in connection with a special exhibit entitled “The Prague Synagogues in Paintings, Engravings and Old Photographs” refers to the Pinkas Synangoue memorial as “A Memorial to the Victims of Nazi Persecution,” omitting any direct references to Jews. The above‐mentioned Charter 77 document also uses the title “Memorial to the Victims of Fascism.” The location of this memorial within the State Jewish Museum makes the link fairly obvious, but it is nonetheless worth noting that the words “Czech Jewish” or “Czech and Moravian Jewish” do not appear in the title. See Pařík, The Prague Synagogues in Paintings, 21; “Tragedy of the Jews,” 60.
15. Hana Volavková, the first director of the postwar State Jewish Museum, claims that “in order to fit all 77,297 names on the walls of the synagogue, we had to calculate how much space each name will take with added dates of birth and death. The only way to fit all the individual names was to list them under each family surname.” See Volavková, Příběh židovského muzea v Praze, 226.
16. Ibid., 225.
17. A one‐page memo written on June 10, 1957 by an official named Knobloch, State Central Archive in Prague, carton MSK‐56.
18. Ibid.
19. Pařík, The Prague Synagogues in Paintings, 21; Pařík, personal communication, September 2005.
20. “Tragedy of the Jews,” 60.
21. Gruber, Upon the Doorposts of Thy House, 33–37; Brod, “Židé v poválečném Československu,” 157; ⟨http://www.jewishmuseum.cz/en/apinkas.htm⟩.
22. Named after the empress Maria Theresa, the fortress Terezín and adjacent garrison town were built during the rule of Josef II (Maria Theresa’s son) at the end of the 18th century. From its very inception, Terezín was both a military and a prison town. Famous prisoners at the Small Fortress prison included the Greek nationalist Alexander Ypsilanti, Bosnian revolutionary Loja Salich, and a Galician Polish female nationalist, Anna Rozycka. Numerous Prague fighters from the 1848 revolution were imprisoned there, as were the 1914 assassins of Archduke Ferdinand. Numerous other military opponents to Habsburg rule were imprisoned in the Small Fortress during World War I. The Fortress continued to be used as a military prison after 1918 in the newly established Czechoslovakia. Kulišová et al., Terezín, 9–11.
23. The Terezín National Memorial actually comprises three sites. The third site, a branch of the former Flosesenburg concentration camp, is not located in Terezín but in a nearby town, Litoměřice. After the 1938 Munich Agreement, Litoměřice became part of the Third Reich, and as such during World War II lay outside the jurisdiction the Nazi Protektorat of the Czech and Moravian Lands.
24. Munk, “Rok 1991 v památníku Terezín,” 7.
25. Member of parliament and the leader of the Union of Anti‐Fascist Fighters, Jan Vodička wrote on May 28, 1954 to the Ministry of Culture, suggesting that the Terezín Memorial be transferred to the Ministry’s central jurisdiction. A 1960 “Report about the Situation at the Memorial of National Suffering” made a similar request. The Report attributes the catastrophic situation at the memorial, especially its “poor technical infrastructure, low level of service provided by the tourist guides, and a complete absence of professional museum work,” to the memorial’s exclusion from the system of Czechoslovak museums under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture. However, the Ministry was obviously not interested in acquiring this hot potato, preferring to leave the jurisdictional responsibility for the memorial to lower levels of government. Munk, “Z historie památníku Terezín,” 4; Lagus, “První kroky,” 1.
26. Munk, “Z historie památníku Terezín,” 4.
27. Křížková, “Stálá muzejní expozice památníku Terezín,” 55.
28. Ibid., 55–56.
29. Lagus, “První kroky,” 2; Křížková, “Stálá muzejní expozice památníku Terezín,” 55, 57; Munk, “Z historie památníku Terezín,” 5.
30. Křížková, “Stálá muzejní expozice památníku Terezín,” 58–59.
31. Ibid., 60.
32. Munk, “Z historie památníku Terezín,” 6. The neglect of the former Nazi ghetto was one of the five items discussed at a high‐level meeting in 1966 between CCJRC officials and high‐ranking officials from the Ministry of Education and Culture, including the head of the Secretariat for Religious Affairs, Hrůza, and the then Minister of Education and Culture, Professor Jiří Hájek. The CCJRC officials complained that there was no plaque anywhere in Terezín noting what the town was used for under the Nazis, that there was no marker at the site of executions, and that there was no access to the Ohře river where the ashes of more than 30,000 ghetto prisoners were scattered. Chief Rabbi Richard Feder (a former Terezín prisoner) and the rest of the delegation from the CCJRC mentioned that a Museum of the Ghetto should be created in an unused building in the town, and also requested construction of an obelisk in memory of the suffering of the Jews. The other four issues on the agenda were contact with Jews from abroad, CCJRC work with Jewish youth, the restriction of performances of Antisemitic passion plays, and plans for the celebration of 1000 years of the Prague Jewish religious communites and 700 years of the Old‐New Synagogue. Minutes of the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) and CCJRC meeting, Kolovrat Palace, July 14, 1966, State Central Archive in Prague, carton MSK‐56.
33. Křížková, “Stálá muzejní expozice památníku Terezín,” 61; Munk, “Z historie památníku Terezín,” 6–7.
34. Munk, “Z historie památníku Terezín,” 7.
35. Ibid., 8.
36. Ibid., 9–10.
37. Blodig, “New Exposition at the Ghetto Museum;” Marxová, “Místa, která mluví,” 8.
38. Hoffman, Gray Dawn, 30–31.
39. Ibid., 11.
40. Munk, “Rok 1991 v památníku Terezín,” 7.
41. Presentation at the International Symposium on the Activities of Memorials Built on Sites of Former Concentration Camps, Terezín, October 7–9, 1980 (subsequently published in Terezínské listy, no. 11 (1981): 16).
42. State Jewish Museum, Young People in Terezín.
43. “Tragedy of the Jews,” 61.
44. Demetz, Prague in Black and Gold, 14–16; Pěkný, Historie židů v Čechách a na Moravě, 11–12.
45. Pařík, The Prague Synagogues in Paintings, 3.
46. Minutes of MEC and CCJRC meeting, Kolovrat Palace, July 14, 1966, State Central Archive in Prague, carton MSK‐56.
47. “Oslavy 1000 let od příchodu Židů a 700 let Staronové synagogy” (The Celebration of 1000 Years’ Settlement of Jews and 700 Years of Old‐New Synagogue), Council of Czech Jewish Religious Communities, n.d., State Central Archive in Prague, carton MSK‐56.
48. “Návrh politickoorganizačního usměrnění oslav 1000. výročí usídlení židů v Praze a 700. výročí založení synangogy v Praze” (“Proposal of Politico‐organizational Rectification of the Celebration of the Millennial Anniversary of Jewish Settlement in Prague and the 700th Anniversary of the Foundation of a Synagogue in Prague”), Ministry of Education and Culture, n.d., State Central Archive in Prague, carton MSK‐56.
49. Paradoxically, Nahum Goldman visited Czechoslovakia in his official capacity in April 1967. He was the first WJC president ever to visit communist Czechoslovakia.
50. Ibid.
51. The other evidence cited were the officially authorized lectures for youth during 1966–74 at the Prague Jewish community town hall. One of the grounds on which CCJRC officials secured in 1966 official permission to hold regular educational meetings for young Jewish people was by arguing that by leaving Jewish youth to their own devices, by not allowing them to meet as youth in a facility under the control of the Prague Jewish Religious Community (PJRC), the party‐state left Jewish youth open to the influence of Zionist and Israeli individuals and organizations, surely not a desired outcome. Better to have some control through the PJRC than to have no control at all, went the argument, a line of reasoning that the communist authorities of the 1960s found hard to refute. However, this argument also sowed its own seeds of destruction, and could not be sustained over the long run. With the reimposition of communist orthodoxy after 1968, PJRC leaders were themselves accused of promoting Zionism and in 1974 the lectures were terminated. For a detailed description of the history of the lectures at the Prague Jewish town hall, see Heitlinger, “Jewish Youth Activism.”
52. Ministry of Education and Culture, “Materiál k činnosti židovských náboženských obcí” (Evidence on the Activities of the Jewish Religious Communities), unpublished report, n.d., State Central Archive in Prague, carton MSK‐56.
53. Rotkirchen, “Czechoslovak Jewry,” 162.
54. Beneš et al., Malá pevnost Terezín, Kulišová, Malá pevnost Terezín; Tyl and Kulišová, Terezín; Kulišová et al., Terezín; Novák et al., Památník Terezín.
55. “Materiály o nacistické rasové persekuci židů v našich zemích” (Materials about the Nazi Racial Persecution of Jews in Our Lands), Ministry of Education and Culture, March 28, 1962, State Central Archive in Prague, carton MSK‐58. However, Munk is highly critical of one these films, entitled About Booties, Pigtail, and a Pacifier. The documentary apparently combines famous children’s drawings from the Terezín ghetto with documents about communist resistance. By interpreting children’s drawings only through the prism of resistance to the Nazis, the film not only distorted history but also implied that the only such resistance was communist. See Munk, “Z historie památníku Terezín,” 13.
56. State Central Archive in Prague, carton MSK‐58; Altshuler, Precious Legacy.
57. Holy, The Little Czech, 43.