What is today the Czech
Republic was, before 1938, part of Czechoslovakia - specifically the provinces Bohemia and Moravia & Silesia (including the Sudetenland region). The majority of the
testimonies from here 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 March 1939 invasion by Germany, laws restricting Jews that
were already in force 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.
The Shoah Foundation Institute conducted 567 interviews in the Czech Republic
and 566 in the Czech language. Around 1,000 of the archive's
interviewees were born in what is today the Czech Republic.
See also: Czechoslovakia, Germany
Crispin Brooks
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