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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
East European Jewish Affairs, its editors, and the author have tried to identify the existing rights holder. Their efforts did not produce information on who, if anyone, currently holds the rights to the original publication of this piece.
Notes on contributor
Jacob Ari Labendz is the Clayman Assistant Professor of Judaic and Holocaust Studies in the department of history at Youngstown State University, where he directs the Center for Judaic and Holocaust Studies. Dr. Labendz earned his PhD from Washington University in St. Louis in 2014. His scholarship focuses on the social history of Jews in and from Central Europe with a focus on postwar Czechoslovakia. He also writes broadly on antisemitism. Dr. Labendz has published two edited volumes: Jewish Property after 1945: Cultures and Economies of Ownership, Loss, Recovers, and Transfer, and Jewish Veganism and Vegetarianism: Studies and New Directions, co-edited with Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz.
Notes
* Bedřich Fried, “Na rozcestí tří světů.” The publication lists his name alternately as Bedřich and Frederick.
The Czech word for “Jew” is Žid. Its first letter is pronounced like the second “g” in “garage.” Unlike in some Slavic languages at the time, the word did not necessarily have a negative connotation. When Žid is capitalized, it normally identifies a person as nationally Jewish. When it is written in lowercase, it tends to refer to a member of the Jewish religion. Fried consistently capitalized the word Žid throughout this essay.
I have translated the word Židovstvo, which Fried also capitalized, as “Jewry.” It should be understood, in this case, as a national collectivity with a religious tradition. Fried also wrote of židovstvi, which I have rendered “Jewishness,” as it connotes an ethnic culture, heritage, and identity that includes but also exceeds a religious tradition. The Czech word for “Judaism,” Judaismus (wherein the “j” is pronounced like an English “y”), does not appear in this text.
Fried used a handful of English-language idioms, presumably to signal his adjustment to life in America, which is a partial focus of his piece. I have preserved his quotation marks from the original to indicate which words appeared there in English.
All emphasis, including capitalization and italicization, have been preserved from the original. All translations are my own.
1 Thanks are due to Anne Vallas for excellent proofreading.
2 Arendt, “We Refugees,” Kindle, loc. 6,327–6,347/10,706.
3 Kisch, “Jewish Historiography in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia,” 9.
4 Rabinowitz, ed., Jews & Diaspora Nationalism, 189.
5 Diaspora-nationalists tended to see the foundation of a Jewish state or homeland in Palestine and the achievement of national minority rights for Jews in Europe as two parts of a single project, with the former (and the development of super-national organizations) to serve as a guarantor of the latter (and of nationality rights for Palestinians). See Loeffler, Rooted Cosmopolitans and Shumsky, Beyond the Nation-State. For critical reviews, see Gil S. Rubin, review of Beyond the Nation-State, by Shumsky, Tablet, January 9, 2019, https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/276607/beyond-the-zionist-nation-state; and Rubin, review of Rooted Cosmopolitanism, by Loeffler, Marginalia Review of Books, June 6, 2018, https://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/jewish-internationalism. On diaspora nationalism and Zionism in Czechoslovakia, see Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia and Čapková, Češi, Němci, Židé?. See also Shanes, Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish Identity and Rabinovitch, Jewish Rights, National Rights.
6 On European-focused, diasporic socialization and culture among Jewish immigrants to the US, see Kobrin, Jewish Bialystok and its Diaspora.
7 Loeffler, Rooted Cosmopolitans, 48–9.
8 “Council on European Affairs: National Representative Committees,” folder 10, box D94, World Jewish Congress Collection, American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, OH (WJCC) (accessed on microfilm).
9 CJRC, meeting minutes from 8 January 1942, WJCC, folder 20, box H99, WJCC (accessed on microfilm).
10 Hugo Perutz, “Report on the Activities of the Czechoslovak Jewish Representative Committee,” n.d. (1943), 3, folder 16, box H99, WJCC. See also Láníček, Arnošt Frischer and the Jewish Politics, 70–9, and 144–93; and Láníček, Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews, 124; 146–86. See also Rubin, “The End of Minority Rights,” 55–71; and Kurz, “In the Shadow of Versailles,” 187–209.
11 The CJRC participated in schemes organized by the WJC and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to send parcels of food and medicine to Jewish inmates in Nazi ghettos and camps. While the program seems to have brought temporary relief to some recipients in Theresienstadt, it could not have affected the course of the Holocaust. Efforts to send parcels to Slovakia and Auschwitz-Birkenau met with less or no success. Pick, “Newcomers,” 1–5; and Leo F. Behrens, letter to Joseph Pick, 26 June 1942, folder 8, box 23, Guido Kisch Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, Center for Jewish History (GKC-LBI), New York, NY (available online); Friedrich Schlaefrig interviewed by David P. Boder, August 23, 1946, France, http://voices.iit.edu/interview?doc=schlaefrigF&display=schlaefrigF_en; and CJRC, Meeting Minutes, January, 31 1944, folder 20, box H99, WJCC (accessed on microfilm). On the parcel program in general, see Láníček, Arnošt Frischer, 98–104 and 110–24.
12 Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, 104–39.
13 Kieval, “Negotiating Czechoslovakia,” 119.
14 Čapková, Češi, Němci, Židé?, 274.
15 Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry, 200–3.
16 Čapková, Češi, Němci, Židé?, 270–4.
17 Leo Zelmanovits, contribution to Past and Future, 15.
18 For an excellent analysis of these politics, see Láníček, Beyond Idealisation, 45–67; and Láníček, Arnošt Frischer, 68–77.
19 Arnošt Frischer, contribution to Past and Future, 10–11.
20 On B’nai B’rith in Czechoslovakia, see Jurečková, “The District Grand Lodge No. 10,” 44–68; and Färber, “Jewish Lodges and Fraternal Orders,” 229–42.
21 “World Jewish Congress Advisory Council on European Jewish Affairs Czechoslovak Representative Committee,” folder 8, box 23, GKC-LBI (available online); and CJRC, meeting minutes from 15 April and 8 January 1942, folder 20, box H99, WJCC (accessed on microfilm).
22 Fried, “At the Crossroads,” 16; and Theiberger, “Spiritual Resources of Czechoslovak Jewry,” 24.
23 Shumsky, “Historiography, Nationalism and Binationalism,” 45–80; Shumsky, “On Ethno-Centrism and its Limits,” 173–88; and Shumsky, Zweisprachigkeit und binationale Idee.
24 For example, see Slucki, The International Jewish Labor Bund after 1945.
25 Shumsky, “Historiography, Nationalism and Binationalism,” 183.
26 Ibid., 185; Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry, 96 and 200.
27 On the wartime turn, see, Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry, 169–72.
28 Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, 3.
29 Ibid., 10; on language use and antisemitism, 44–56.
30 Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, 6–13, 22, 68–9, 90–1, and 133–5; see also (esp. on territoriality and with comparison to Slovakia and Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia) Kieval, “Negotiating Czechoslovakia,” 103–19, esp. 111 where he cites a 2007 conference paper given by Lichtenstein.
31 Lichtenstein, Zionists of Interwar Czechoslovakia, 21, 48, and 89–110; Čápková, Češi, Němci, Židé?, 43–4; and Ines Koeltzsch, Praha rozdělená i sdílená, 33–78.
On Czech discourses regarding Jewish loyalty and on Czech antisemitism, see Frankl and Szabó, Budování státu bez antisemitismu?. On Slovak political culture see Klein-Pejšová, Mapping Jewish Loyalties in Interwar Slovakia.
32 Rozenblit, “Creating Jewish Space,” 146. Rozenblit argues that many German-speaking Jews in Moravia saw German as a “Jewish language,” rather than as an indication of their belonging to the German nation. Rozenblit, “Creating Jewish Space,” 109. See also, Čapková, Češi, Němci, Židé?, 46–53 and 54–92.
33 Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, 44–8 and 111–8; and Čapková, Češi, Němci, Židé?, 254–5.
34 Čapková, Češi, Němci, Židé?, 198–9 and 272–4; and Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, 11 and 118. On the prewar history of Czech nationalist support for Zionism, see Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry, 107–12; and Kieval, Languages of Community, 198–216.
35 CJRC, meeting minutes from 18 April 1943, folder 20, box H99, WJCC (accessed on microfilm).
36 Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, esp. 11–13, 21, and 53–88. Lichtenstein cites Andrea Orzoff, Battle for the Castle, 86. See also, Kieval, “Negotiating Czechoslovakia,” 118–9; Láníček, Arnošt Frischer, 83; Láníček, Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews; and Wein, A Slavic Jerusalem, 66–72.
37 Láníček, Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews.
38 This included Arnošt Frischer, Past and Future, 11.
39 Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, 53–6; and Fischl, The Jews of Czechoslovakia, esp. 2 and 13.
40 Ahasver (also, Ahasuerus) was the name given to the mythical “Wandering” or “Eternal Jew,” who, according to a seventeenth-century German legend, suffered the punishment of perpetual wandering (until the Second Coming) for the sin of mocking Jesus as he carried his cross to the place of crucifixion. According to Alfred Bodenheimer, the legend was secularized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the image of the “Eternal Jew” entered into (non-Jewish) European scientific discourses on Jews and their purported differences as Jews (or Semites) from non-Jewish Europeans. See Bodenheimer, Wandernde Schatten: Ahasver, 7–8. This Ahasuerus should not be confused with the king who features in the Book of Esther.
41 “Fried Friedrich,” Studenti pražských univerzit 1882–1945 [The students of Prague universities 1882–1945], website of the Institute of the History and Archive of Charles University. Accessed March 23, 2019. https://is.cuni.cz/webapps/archiv/public/person/se/1137633729640538.
42 Information available at www.holocaust.cz. My thanks to Anna Hájková.
43 New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820–1957; New York State, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1917–1967; New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820–1957; New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820–1957; New York, Index to Petitions for Naturalization filed in New York City, 1792–1989 [all databases on-line]. Accessed March 23, 2019. www.ancestry.com. My thanks to Rachel Roberts.
44 Fried engaged in wordplay. Kat’exochèn is Ancient Greek for “par excellence.” In Czech, however, kat means “executioner.” Czech readers would certainly have heard this second meaning, especially in a comparison of Jews and Germans in 1943.
45 Fried was referring to the development of German nationalist thought, its pervasiveness across intellectual and cultural spheres, and, I think, the legitimizing support provided by German universities and intellectuals to the racist and eugenicist program of the Nazis. He contrasted this with the common image of Jews as internationalists, often associated with a liberal and transnational political orientation and the perceived over-representation of Jews in fields like psychoanalysis and finance. The charge of internationalism manifested in the antisemitic discourses of the time as an explanation for why Jews were unfit for inclusion into Europe’s national communities and how they posed a danger to them. According to the myth, Jews acculturated only outwardly in order to gain advantage over non-Jews and to undermine their societies, while maintaining loyalties to each other alone, regardless of citizenship. Internationalism was also used to describe how Jews, as a collectivity, purportedly sought to achieve world domination. These claims featured prominently in German, rightwing anti-Jewish allegations after (and also before) the First World War. They persist today. In Fried’s usage, however, “internationalism” reflects a frustration with the failure of Jews, as he perceived them, to embrace their national identities as Jews, particularly in Czechoslovakia. His charge of internationalism, nonetheless, may reflect internalization of antisemitic tropes. Lichtenstein shows this to have been common among Jewish nationalists in First Republic Czechoslovakia (1918–1938). They believed that by awakening to and developing a sense of Jewish national identity, Jews could undermine a primary cause of antisemitism (i.e., national indeterminacy), demonstrate their allegiance to European nation-states as a loyal national minority, and rid themselves of the shame associated with their losing battle for national inclusion. Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, 104–39.
46 Social scientists and nationalist activists used the term “community of fate” to describe the ties that bound the individual members of a single nation. It is a translation of the German word, Schicksalsgemeinschaft, which appeared in this usage as early as 1907, in Otto Bauer’s Nationalitätenfrage und Sozialdemokratie. See Stargardt, “Gellner’s Nationalism,” 180–1. In deploying the term “community of fate,” Fried set Germans and Jews into relief. One may wonder, however, about his desire, during the Second World War, for Jews to adopt the very political orientation that he attributes to Germans and from which Jews then suffered. To be fair, Fried’s nationalism differed significantly from the racist and expansionist version espoused and practiced by Nazi Germany.
47 Jindřich Kohn (1874–1935) was a philosopher and lawyer who cofounded the Union of Czech Progressive Jews (Svaz českých pokrokových židů) in 1907. Though an assimilationist who advocated for Jews in Bohemia and Moravia to assume Czech national identities, he also rejected radical calls from within his own movement for Jews to assimilate fully into the Czech nation. He also supported Zionism in Palestine as an alternative. The members of the Kapper Club, a Czech-Jewish student group, later embraced Kohn’s philosophies and posthumously published a collection of his works in 1936 under the title Asimilace a věky [Assimilation and the ages]. See Čapkova, “Kohn, Jindřich”. Friedrich Thieberger (below) offered an interpretation of Kohn’s philosophy in his contribution to Past and Future. He explained that Kohn had called for the mutual or bi-directional “ … assimilation of Czechs of Jewish origin with those of Slavic origin, but also vice versa,” which would yield a (Hegelian) “higher standard of common synthesis.” This was to have been the beginning of a greater achievement: “Only through this process can a higher synthesis be attained: from part of the population to the entire Nation; from the Nation to the Continent; from the Continent to the World.” The mission of the Jews, in this telling, was to promote the unity of humanity through processes of dialectical assimilation which were to have begun in the Czech lands. Only antisemitism, understood as “the best criterion of the assimilative capacities of non-Jewish peoples, i.e., their fitness to play a part in world history,” stood in the way. Thieberger, “Spiritual Resources of Czechoslovak Jewry,” Past and Future, 24–7.
48 Felix Weltsch (1884–1964) was a philosopher and journalist. Weltsch was a life-long Zionist “from an early age.” Between the First and Second World Wars, he served as the editor-in-chief of the Zionist weekly, Selbstwehr. Weltsch fled to Palestine in 1939. See Greenbaum, “Weltsch, Felix”. Weltsch contributed an article to Past and Future, “The Bohemian Jews: An Attempt at Characterization,” 31–5. He argued that Bohemian Jews may be characterized by their polar relationship to “romanticism and realism.” While they inherited an ancient and rich romantic tradition, Weltsch explained, they also learned to shun romanticism for more critical perspectives, due to the suffering they had endured at the hands of Christian- and nationalist-romantic movements. Weltsch believed that this dialectic had helped produce luminaries like Sigmund Freud, who appreciated humanity’s powerful romantic tendencies but also subjected them to rational study. Yet Weltsch also suggested that this polarity posed a risk. It had purportedly led Czech Jews to develop a “spirituality of the middle,” an objectivity born of the rejection of dangerous, if once deeply felt romanticism, which runs the risk of yielding an “all-too-great circumspection in regard to everything great and enthusiastic.” Weltsch, like Fried, sought to understand how he and his compatriots had found themselves, in their own eyes, unprepared for the violent midcentury. His choice to find refuge in Palestine on the eve of war reflected a desire to cultivate a more robust Jewish spirit and people – one that he found more appropriate for the age.
49 In this list, Emil Spiegel (1869–1923) represents a specific German-Jewish, bourgeois, Bohemian and Moravia milieu, which had been fundamental to the culture of B’nai B’rith in Czechoslovakia and which émigrés imported to New York. After Spiegel’s passing, a friend recalled him, not only as a poet and philosopher, but also as a “German” and a “Jew”. Accordingly, he was supposed to have been a model of Bildung and a connoisseur of classical German literature. Spiegel promoted of an idealistic and humanistic form of liberal Judaism, based in an historic and religious consciousness. He expounded upon the latter concepts in a 1915 lecture for the Bohemia lodge of B’nai B’rith. Spiegel attributed a near missionary role to Jewishness – and to B’nai B’rith – of imbuing the world with an historically rooted and almost messianic “Jewish optimism” for the achievement of one goal: “a morally united humanity under the one God as the God of morality.” (This resonated with Jindřich Kohn’s philosophy of assimilation.) See Spiegel, Vom jüdischen Wesen: Vortrag, gehalten im Isr, 11. A leader in B’nai B’rith, Spiegel served as the secretary of the Central Committee of the Great Lodge of the Czechoslovak State from its founding in 1919 until his death. After his regional lodge parted ways with its Austrian predecessor and began publishing its own journal, Spiegel assumed the position of literary editor. Jurečková, “The District Grand Lodge No. 10”, 58–9. Six of Spiegel’s poems appeared in Deutsche Arbeit: Monatsschrift für das geistige Leben der Deutschen in Böhmen [German Work: The monthly for the spiritual life of Germans in Bohemia] 6, no. 7 (April 1907): 746. He also contributed at least one essay, “Die Bibel und wir” [The Bible and us], to the aforementioned B’nai B’rith journal, Monatsblätter der Grossloge Česhoslovakischen Staat [The monthly of the Great Lodge of the Czechoslovak state] 2, no. 3 (March 1923): 46–9. Friends mourned Spiegel by publishing a posthumous collection of his poems, Einkehr und Abwehr: Gedichte aus dem Nachlass. Herausgegeben von seinen Freunden [Contemplation and defense: Poems from the estate. Published by his friends] (Vienna and Leipzig: R. Löwitt, 1925). The volume includes a brief memorial by Friedrich Thieberger, referenced above. Siegmund Kaznelson included examples of Spiegel’s work into his collection, Jüdisches Schicksal in deutschen Gedichte, 127–8. After studying law at Jura, Spiegel worked as a tax inspector until failing health led him to retire. His brother, Ludwig Spiegel (1864–1926), was a noted lawyer, professor, politician, and, briefly before his death, elected rector of the Prague German University. On Spiegel see Zohn, “Participation in German Literature,” 478; Schmidt, ed. Ist es Freude, ist es Schmerz? Jüdische Wurzeln—deutsche Gedichte; Jurečková, “The District Grand Lodge No. 10 of B’nai B’rith”; Wininger, ed., Große Jüdische National-Biographie, 585. It is remarkable that Fried included Spiegel into this list of luminaries, as the CJRC tended to downplay the historic, if declining German linguistic and cultural orientation of Bohemian and Moravian Jews. To that end, references to the German-Jewish culture of Bohemian and Moravia in Past and Future are few and mostly historic in nature. At the time of its publication, nationalist politicians in and from Central Europe tended to view language as an outward marker of one’s national identity and loyalty. It could have been perceived as counterproductive for Fried to have mentioned a German-Jewish author in a publication designed to prove Jewish loyalty to Czechoslovakia. Not only had antisemitic factions among Czech nationalists accused Jews of “Germanizing,” but German forces were then occupying Czechoslovak territory. Along these lines, in 1946, the Czechoslovak Jewish Committee (formerly, the CJRC) and the WJC telegrammed the Czechoslovak government with a request that Jews be exempted from a postwar Presidential decree that revoked the citizenship of people who had claimed German or Hungarian nationality in the 1930 census. The committee intended to attach to its petition an historical study by lawyer and historian Professor Guido Kisch (1889–1985), which explained why many Bohemian and Moravian Jews spoke and had spoken German. Even Arnošt Frischer, the Jewish representative on Czechoslovak State Council avoided communicating in German during the war. See memo from Hugo Perutz to Dr. Kubowitzki, 29 April 1946, folder 7, box 25, GKC, LBI, CJH (available online); and Kisch, “Linguistic Conditions Among Czechoslovak Jewry,” 19–32. See also Láníček, Arnošt Frischer, 150–74 and on Frischer, 85; On German-identified Jews during the war and in postwar Czechoslovakia, see Čapková, “Between Expulsion and Rescue”; Láníček, Czechs, Slovaks, and the Jews, 133–58 and 171; Láníček, “What Did It Mean to be Loyal?,” 384–04; and Peschel, “‘A Joyful Act of Worship’,” idem.
50 Thieberger was a Zionist author, translator, and pedagogue. He was a member of the Bar Kochba Association and a leader of B’nai B’rith in the Czech lands. Thieberger moved to Palestine in 1939, where he worked for B’nai B’rith in Jerusalem. See Čapkova, “Thieberger, Friedrich”.
51 Hugo Bergmann (1883–1975), a pioneering and central member of the Prague Zionist movement, raised similar concerns in Past and Future about a perceived multi-generational alienation of Czech Zionists from Jewish traditions and culture. This lack, he believed, had rendered them incapable of developing a “synthesis between Jewish heritage and European life.” Prague Zionism may have promoted synthesis, but for Bergmann, success in that regard depended upon the synthesizers having deep ties to their own national culture. (According to Dmitry Shumsky, it was to this end that Bergmann promoted Hebrew language acquisition and use among Czech Jews. See Shumsky, “On Ethno-Centrism and its Limits,” 186.) Bergmann concluded that the Jewish national project in Palestine had opened the possibility “to work at this task with full consciousness of the cause, though we are very far yet from its solution.” Bergmann, “Bohemian Jewry in the Nineteenth Century,” Czechoslovak Jewry: Past and Future, 34. As a young man, Bergmann cofounded the Maccabi Association and the Organization of Jewish Students in Prague, which became Bar Kochba. In 1919, Bergmann settled in Palestine, where he served as the director of the National and University Library, a professor, and, in some years, the rector of Hebrew University. See Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry, 93–153; Shumsky, “Historiography, Nationalism, and Bi-Nationalism,” esp. 70–7; and Spector, “Bergmann, Hugo”.
52 This references a teaching of Rabbi Hillel, one of the most significant sages of the Mishna. He is reported to have said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” Pirkei Avot 1:14. This teaching continues to be used in rhetorical support of a wide range of political initiatives. This was the case when Fried wrote as well.
53 Before the Second World War, A. Léon Kubowitzki (1896–1966) was a socialist and Zionist politician in Belgium. After fleeing the German invasion in 1940, he arrived in New York, where he served as the general secretary of the WJC. In 1948, he emigrated to Israel, where he continued his political career. See “Kubowitzki, Léon: Biographical History,” website of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure, https://portal.ehri-project.eu/virtual/be-ara-b-b-6-kubowitzki-leon.
54 At the time of publication, Stephen Wise (1874–1949) served as the president of the American Jewish Congress and the founding president of the WJC.
55 At the time of publication, Nahum Goldman (1895–1982) chaired the Administrative Committee of the WJC and sat on the Executive Committee of the Jewish Agency for Palestine.
56 At the time of publication, Professor Selig Brodetsky (1888–1982) served as the chairman of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
57 Leib Jaffee (1876–1948) was a Russian-born Zionist leader and author. At the time of publication, he directed the Keren Hayesod, the United Israel Appeal, which raised funds for the Jewish settlement project in Palestine.
58 At the time of publication, Rabbi Maurice L. Perlzweig (1895–1985) directed the WJC’s International Affairs Department. Perlzweig helped establish the WJC in 1936 and chaired its British section. As a young man, he served as the president of the World Union of Jewish Students. See “Maurice Perlzweig Dead at 89,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 17, 1985, https://www.jta.org/1985/01/17/archive/maurice-perlzweig-dead-at-89.
59 Trained as a lawyer, Ignacy Schwarzbart (1888–1981) was Zionist politician in interwar Poland and was elected to the country’s parliament in 1938. After fleeing to the UK in 1939, he served on the London-based National Council of Poland, the Polish government-in-exile. See Engel, “Schwartzbart, Ignacy”.
60 Born in Russia and trained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau, Germany, Rabbi Ira Sud (1911–1986) served briefly as assistant to the Chief Rabbi of Prague before emigrating to the USA. At the time of publication, he was the rabbi of a synagogue in Albany, New York. He later settled in Skokie, Illinois, where he led Congregation Ezra-Habonim, founded by German-Jewish immigrants in 1938. See “Rabbi Ira Sud,” Chicago Tribune, February 26, 1986, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1986-02-26-8601150113-story.html; and Robert A. Packer, Chicago’s Forgotten Synagogues, 30.
61 Born in Prague, Felix Resek [as his name appears in U.S. documents] (1893–1957) participated actively in Jewish and Zionist circles, eventually assuming a leadership position in the Working Association of Socialist Zionists. He arrived in the USA via the UK in 1939. Resek reported to immigration officials that he was nationally or racially Hebrew, that he spoke German, Czech, French, and English, and that he worked as a doctor. Resek naturalized in the USA in 1944. See New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820–1957; New York, New York, Death Index, 1949–1965; and U.S. Naturalization Records Indexes, 1794–1995 [all databases on-line]. Accessed March 23, 2019. www.ancestry.com. See also Rabinowicz, “Czechoslovak Zionism,” 76. In his contribution to Past and Future, Resek recalled a lecture offered by Arnold Zweig to a group of Jewish youths in Prague in 1932 or 1933 – one of many scholarly evenings of this sort, featuring an astounding list of luminaries. Zweig predicted that the current generation of young Jews would have to form a bridge, in their deaths, from the present to the future. Unhappy with Zweig’s pessimism (at the time of the lecture and years later), Resek wrote, “We have but one hope, which has persisted throughout our sad yet always comforting history: out of need and persecution, in sorrow and suffering, the great leaders of our people, who gave to the persecuted strength to live and go on living, arose … Is not the same being born in Europe’s concentration camps today? Will not that bright new light emerge from the dark prison cells?” He called upon his fellow survivors to form a “living bridge,” to “fulfill the obligation in the spirit of our old Prague, the spirit of strength, devotion and humility,” 18–20.
62 Professor Hugo Perutz (1884–1950) served as the secretary of the CJRC and took an active role in Czech-Jewish politics during the war. He co-edited Czechoslovak Jewry: Past and Future with Guido Kisch. Born in Prague, Perutz emigrated to New York via Lisbon in November 1940. Records show that he identified as being of Bohemian nationality. He seems to have traveled to Canada the following year. Upon his reentry to the USA, he identified as nationally or racially Hebrew. Perutz naturalized as a US citizen in 1948. See US, Border Crossings from Canada to the U.S., 1895–1960; New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820–1957; New York City Department of Health, New York Death Index, 1949–1965; New York, Index to Petitions for Naturalization Filed in New York City; Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936–2007 [all databases on-line]. Accessed March 23, 2019. www.ancestry.com. In his contribution to Past and Future, Perutz lauded Czechoslovak history and democracy. He asserted, “What the Jewish people feel for the Czechoslovak Republic is not just loyalty, it is a feeling and awareness that the fate of Jews in the Czechoslovak republic is absolutely tied to the fate of the republic.” Perutz understood that rebuilding Jewish life in postwar Europe would be difficult and predicted that Czechoslovakia could serve as a model for other Central European states, based upon its history and “deeply anchored” practice of recognizing Jews and extending all civil rights to them. He attributed this to the demographic and ideological variegation within the Jewish minority of the interwar state and to the leadership of President Masaryk and his successor Edvard Beneš.
63 See note 51.
64 See note 47.
65 Angelo Goldstein (1889–1947) co-founded and served as a parliamentary representative for the Jewish Party of Czechoslovakia. He sat on the Zionist General Council from 1931 to 1935 and emigrated to Palestine in 1939. Čapková, “Goldstein, Angelo”. For his contribution to Past and Future, Goldstein composed a brief history of Jewish nationalist politics on the territory of Czechoslovakia, which culminated in the successes of the Jewish Party. He acknowledged that many émigrés would not return to Czechoslovakia after the war. Goldstein professed a complete faith that Jews would retain full civic and religious equality in the reconstituted republic. He left to a dim hope alone, however, the prospect that the Jews of Czechoslovakia would reacquire the nationality rights they had once enjoyed. Goldstein confirmed the predominant view among Czechoslovak exiles that the country’s national minorities had “shown great ingratitude” to the interwar state during “the period of danger.” Yet he insisted, “It is known, however, that in contrast to the German, Hungarian, and Polish national minorities, the Jewish minority stood loyally on the side of state-forming powers; and so not only in peace, but also during the war and in emigration; and there is no doubt that the representatives of the state rightly have full faith in their Jewish fellow citizens.”
66 See note 48.
67 Gerhard Jacoby (1891/90–1960) worked as a lawyer in Berlin before emigrating to Palestine in 1936 and subsequently to the USA in 1939. There, he served as a research associate at the WJC’s Institute of Jewish Affairs. In that capacity, along with other works, he published a report of 355 pages, Racial State: The German Nationalities Policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia. Jacoby also prepared materials for the Nuremberg Trials. He continued to work for the WJC for the rest of his life, both in Europe and the USA, even representing the body before the UN. See “Dr. Jacoby, World Jewish Congress Representative at U.N., Dead,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, August 22, 1962, https://www.jta.org/1960/08/22/archive/dr-jacoby-world-jewish-congress-representative-at-u-n-dead; and “The War Crimes Trials at Nuremberg,” website of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum. Accessed March 23, 2019. https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/nuremberg/index.php. Jacoby opened his essay in Past and Future by invoking the Lidice massacre and the Terezín Ghetto in an effort to portray Jews and Czechs as co-victims of Nazism. He explained that the Nazis had attempted to pit Czechs against Jews, in an effort to dominate and denationalize the former. Jacoby, who lauded the anti-antisemitism of President Masaryk, further exonerated wartime Czechs from collaboration, arguing, “The Czechs have never allowed themselves to be deceived by the phantom of collaboration between Czech and Nazi Germans, and they refused to sacrifice their Jewish fellow citizens on the altar of Nazism.” He further asserted that “The difference between Jewish and Czech destruction by Nazism was only one of time … ” Jacoby’s rhetoric resonated strongly with propaganda of Czechoslovak and Zionist exile elites during the war. See Wein, A Slavic Jerusalem, 109–27.
68 Siegwart Hermann (b. 1887/8) emigrated to New York via Lisbon on 28 January 1941. The records suggest that he traveled with his family. He listed his occupation as professor. Per his contribution to Past and Future, he wrote a short study in 1923, “Highlights of the Science and Natural History of ‘Anti-Semitism’.” See Lawrence Feldman, “Escape: The Evacuation of Jews from German Territory, 1940 – 1941,” draft of publication available on www.academia.edu, Accessed March 23, 2019. https://www.academia.edu/34698509/Escape_The_Evacuation_of_Jews_from_German_Territory._1940_-_1941.
Hermann, in his contribution to Past and Present, argued that fear, which he associated with “primitive man,” motivated antisemitism and other bigotries. “Fear goes hand in hand with distrust, hate and malice,” he wrote, attributing self-interested groupism and war to that emotion. He proposed culture as the antidote to fear and praised Czechoslovakia and its leadership. “Small as it is,” Hermann wrote, “the people of Czechoslovakia is rich in culture bearers, leaders of humanity. It is a courageous people of a high cultural standard. Anti-Semitism never flourished in Czechoslovakia … May it soon be freed of its shackles, and enabled to continue on its own path, fearless and progressive.”
69 A Czech-Jewish activist, who identified as a member of the Czech nation, Emil Kafka (1880–1948) served as the chairperson of the Jewish Religious Community in Prague in the years before the Second World War. After attending a meeting with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Paris in July 1939, he emigrated to London. See Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, 315–9. Emil Kafka’s essay in Past and Future begins by asserting the identification of Prague’s Jewish leaders with the Czech nation, characterizing even the Zionists among them as “Czech oriented.” He called the Jews of Prague “loyal sons of the Czech homeland.” Kafka then reviewed the social, charitable, educational, religious, and cultural programs of the Jewish Religious Community in Prague, including its work helping German- and Austrian-Jewish refugees flee after 1933 and the establishment of the Supreme Council of Jewish Religious Communities in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. Kafka lauded its brave employees. While he understood the challenges that lay ahead, he expressed confidence in the future.
70 Before the war, Joseph C. Pick (1891–1987) was active in the Maccabi Jewish sporting movement in Czechoslovakia and worked as an insurance executive. He immigrated to the USA in 1941, where he consulted for the US War Department and Harvard University, while also selling marine insurance. From the time of his arrival, Pick took an active role in the CJRC, the Czechoslovak Economic Council, founded in 1941 to advise the U.S. government and businesses on the postwar reconstruction of Czechoslovakia, the Joseph Popper Lodge of B’nai B’rith, established by Czechoslovak-Jewish emigres in 1944, and the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews, founded by members of the lodge in 1961. Pick contributed a chapter to each of the three volumes of The Jews of Czechoslovakia: Historical Studies and Survey (New York and Philadelphia: Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews and the Jewish Publication Society of America, 1968, 1971, and 1983): “The Economy,” in vol. 1, 359–438; “Sports,” in vol. 2, 185–228; and “The Story of the Czech Scrolls,” in vol. 3, eds. Avigdor Dagan, Gertrude Hirschler, and Lewis Weiner, 584–610. Pick’s final activities on behalf of Czechoslovak-Jewry focused on providing information to synagogues and other organizations about the provenance of the Czech Torah Scrolls that they had received on permanent loan from the Westminster Synagogue in London. See “The Authors,” The Jews of Czechoslovakia, vol. 3, 613; Joseph C. Pick, “Czechoslovak Newcomers to United States Join in 1941,” 5–6, Center for Jewish History, Leo Baeck Institute, Guido Kisch Collections, available online; and Social Security Death Index, 1935–2014 [database on-line]. Accessed March 23, 2019. www.ancestry.com. Pick’s contribution to Past and Future consisted of a brief overview of the history and highlights of Jewish sporting organizations and elite athletes in Czechoslovakia. He portrayed organized Jewish athletics as essential to character and community formation, and as an endeavor which more closely bound Jewish and non-Jewish citizens. Pick lauded the support of President Masaryk and the Ministry of Public health for Jewish sporting associations. He concluded his piece by imagining Czechoslovak-Jewish athletes resisting Nazi oppression, whether in their own country or in eastern camps. “We fervently hope,” Pick wrote, “that the physical and spiritual training acquired through Maccabi may give them the strength and courage to outlive their oppressors.”
71 Guido Kisch was a prolific lawyer, historian, professor, and editor who had been active in both Germany and Czechoslovakia before the war. He emigrated to New York in 1935, where he taught at the Jewish Institute of Religion/Hebrew Union College, and then to Basel in 1962. Čapková, “Kisch, Guido”.
Guido Kisch used the Past and Present to call for the publication of a “comprehensive work or even a more modest monograph on the one thousand years of Jewish life, work and achievement in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Slovakia and Carpatho-Russia.” He listed a few key historical figures, all of them male and most from the Crown Lands, who might appear in these works, from Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel (1520–1609) to Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and Albert Einstein (1879–1955). The latter had worked on the theory of relativity in Prague. He also named Bohemian Jews who had contributed to American society like Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise (1819–1900), Isadore Bush (1822–1898), and Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandies (1856–1941). Kisch provided much of the impetus for the compilation of Past and Future and for the production of The Jews of Czechoslovakia.