Figure 1.--. |
|
Czechoslovakia was the first non-German country occupied by the Germans. First the Sudetenland was occupied under the Munich Accord (October 1938). Later Hitler ordered the rest of the country occupied in violation of the Munich Agreement (March 1938). Hitler in total violation of the Munich agreement ordered the Wehrmacht to seize the rest of Czechoslovakia--Bohemia and Moravia. German troops marched into Prague on March 15, 1939. Britain and France protested diplomatically, but took no action. The Germans established a "protectorate." The Slovaks succeed from Czechesoslavakia and set up slavishly compliant pro-NAZI state. The Czechs people suffered during the German occupation. Losses during World War II, however, were not as great as in many other countries, especially Poland to the north. The major exception were the Czech Jews. I have little information on actions against the Czech Jews at this time. The Einsatzgruppen which murdered so ruthlessly in Poland and the Soviet Union were to my knowledge not employed in Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia was, however, the foreign country occupied by the NAZIs for the longest period. Few Czech and Slovakian Jews survived. More than 70,000 were killed by the NAZIs.
A concentration camp was set up at Thereisenstadt which the NAZIs used as a model camp to show the Red Cross and Western journalists on fact-finding missions. Hitler appointed Heydrich Reichsprotector when he preceived that Neurath was being too lenient. [Michaelis and Schraepler, p. 244.] The SS conducted operations against Slovakian Jews and were assisted by the Slovakian puppet government (March-September 1942).
A bout 350,000 Jews lived in Czechoslovakia before the NAZIs seized the country after the Allies signed the Munich Agreement with Hitler. About one-third lived in Bohemia and Moravia. Jews in Czechoslovakia had full civil rights, enjoyed the same civil rights and religous freedom as all other Czech citizens. We have few details about Jews in Czechoslvakia, but believe that they were highly assimilated. Note the Jewish boy on the dress page.
Czechoslovakia was the first non-German targeted by Hitler. The next target was Czecheslovakia which had beeen created by the Versailles Peace Treaty. After the Anchluss, Hitler began to escalate his tirades against Czecheslovakia, claiming that the erhnic Germans in the Sudetenland were being mistreated. The NAZI rearmament program, the remilitarization of the Rhineland and the Anchluss with Austria came as a shock to Czecheslovakia. Even more so, the lack of response from Britain and France. The Czechs who had defensive alliance with France were prepared to fight. Even with the Anchluss, many Europeans chose to see the NAZI actions as domestic German matters. This changed with Hitler's next target--Czecheslovakia. Hitler in 1938 demanded the Sudetenland in Czecheslovakia which had a minority German population. Neville Chamberlin, the British Prime
Miniister mused how terrible it was that war should be threatened by a "... quarel in a far away country by people of which we know little." A prominent member of the British parliament displayed even more ignoramce when he told the press, "Why should we bother with those gypsies in the Balkans?", meaning the Czechs who were of course not located in the Balkans. In the end, The British and French gave in at talks held in Munich. Chamberlain flew back to London and stepping off the plane waved the agreement signed ny Herr Hitler which he assured the waiting repoters guaranteed "Peace in our time." Churchill was apauled. Most British and French people were releaved. One European leader, Soviet Marshall Stalin, who was not at the conference drew the conclusion that the British and French could not be trusted as potential allies against Hitler. Less well recognized is the impact on the United States. There are many unanswered questions about Munich. Some maintain that if the Allies had honored their treaty obligations that the Wehrmacht would have arrested Hitler rather than gone to war. Others argue that if Hitler had gone to war in 1838, he would have not only overrun France, but the Luftwaffe would have defeated the RAF.
Hitler threatened the Czechs with military action on several occassions after Munich. Finally he called elderly President Dr. Emil Hacha to Berlin (March 14). There after midnight Hitler haranged him. Then Göring offered a mocked applogy for having his bombers destroy Prague, but said it would be a good lesson to the British and French. Hacha fainted and had to be revived. He telephoned Prague ordering that there should be no resistance. Göring and Ribbentrop bullied him into signing a paper asking for German interbention. [Black, p. 512.] Thus independent, democratic Czechoslovakia became the NAZI Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Hacha told the Czech people on the radio, "I have entrusted our country to the Fuhrer and have been promised his trust." The Wehrmacht crossed the border and occupied Bohenia and Moravia in one day (March 15). This was a total violation of the Munich Agreement. Slovakia had succeeded the day before and became Hiler's most slavish puppet state. Hungary with Hitler's approval seized Ruthenia. All of Czechoslovakia was now in the NAZI orbit. The Czechs would pay a terrible price. They would be Hitler's last bloodless victory. They would not, however, be his last stunning victory.
NAZI policies occupation policies in Czechoslovakia varied depending on the individuals ethnic background and the area of Czecheslovakia (the Sudetenland, Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia). There were also smaller areas annexed by Poland and Hungary. The Sudetenland was heavily populated by ethnic Germans. The NAZIs were greeted with enthusiam by the ethnic Germans when after Munich, they entered the Sudetenland. As the Sudetenland was incorporated into the Reich, German law immediately became effctive. We note that some Czechs were forcibly removed from the Sudentenland, but we have few details at this time. NAZI policies in Bohemia and Moravia were much more begin that later implemented in Pland, but became more severe as the occupation progressed, especially after the appointment of Reinhard Heydrich as Governor. The Germans created the Protecorate of Bohemia and Moravia were declared a protectorate of the Third Reich. Czech officials were maintaine as figureheads. All were directed by the NAZI appointed governor or Reich Protector, Baron Konstantin von Neurath. German officials manned all the government departments, cabinet ministries. Local German control offices were established throughout the Protecorate. The Gestapo assumed control of the police. One of the first in a series of NAZI decrees was to dimiss Jews from the civil service and made non-citizens. The NAZIs banned Communists. The Communists and Jews who could fled the country. NAZI authorities mobilized labor for the German war effort. Occupation officials established special offices to supervise the management of industries found to be useful for the war effit. Czechs were drafted to work in keys industies such as coal mines, the iron and steel industry, and armaments production. Some conscripts were sent to Germany for work there. Production of consumer goods was shgarply curtailed and production when possible reoriented toward war poduction. While a small country, Czechoslovakia had heavy industry and played an important role in the German war effort. Authorities instituted very strict rationing. The Czechs as the first occupied country, were the first to be drafted for forced labor in Germany. Czech protests in 1941 angered the NAZIs. Hitler appointed Heydrich Reichsprotector when he preceived that Neurath was being too lenient. [Michaelis and Schraepler, p. 244.] Heydrich's assasination by British-trained patriots were the cause of horendous reprisals by the SS. NAZI policies in Slovakia were more benign because the Slovaks were so slavishly supported of the NAZIS. The Slovaks took an active role in assisdting the NAZIs muder the Jewish population.
The NAZIs seized Czechoslovakia and created the Protecorate of Bohemia and Moravia (March 1939). Slovakia succeeded and became a nominally independent German protectorate. It also became a an enthusiastic participant in the Holocacaust. There were before the Munich Conference about 138,000 Jews living in the Slovakian portion of Czechoslovakia. The Slovaks secceed from Czechososlavakia and set up slavishly compliant pro-NAZI state (March 1939). The NAZI's carved up Slovakia and the resulting NAZI-puppet state had a Jewish population of about 89,000. The Slovaks seeking to appeal to their NAZI masters began enacting anti-Semitic laws nased on the NAZI Nuremberg Laws. Officials targeted Jews as the enemy of the Slovak people. The Slovakian Government enacted the Jewish Code (1941). Slovakian officials began deporting its Jews to NAZI occupied Poland as the death camps were beginning to operate (March 25, 1942). Officials deported 57,628 Jews to Poland, about two-thirds of the Slovakian Jews, in the next 7 months. Only about 600-800 Jews survived these transports. Most of the Slovakian Jews were killed in the death camps of the Lublin district. Some were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Slovakian officials stopped deportations (October 20). At that time the killing of the deportees became widely known in Slovakia. The remaining Jews that were unable to hide were interned in labor camps in Slovakia (Sered, Novaky, and Vyhne). After the tide of battle shifted on the Eastern Front, NAZI allies began reconsidering their position. A Slovak National Uprising occurred (1944). The NAZIs as a result occupied Slovakia (autumn 1944). The first deportations were carried out by the Slovaks. Now the NAZIs began deporting the remaining Slovakian Jews. The NAZIs deported 13,000 Jews to the Polish death camps (primarily (Auschwitz-Birkenau) and to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia and German camps. Slovakia special police commandos murdered 1,000 at this time. While the Slovakian Government loyally supported the NAZIs in killing Jews, there were many Slovaks who risked their lives to hide their Jewish countrymen. Slovaks hid about About 10,000 Jews. The Czechs people suffered during the German occupation. Losses during World War II, however, were not as great as in many other countries, especially Poland to the north. The major exception were the Czech Jews.
NAZI authorities ordered all Jews in Poland and Czechoslovakia concentrated and isolated into ghettos (September 21, 1939). The NAZIs ordered Czech Jews to wear the Star of David. The Reich Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia barred virtually all transfer or sale of property by Jews after October 10, 1941. NAZI authorities in Germany completed the legal process of denaturalizing Jews who had left Germany. The Eleventh Decree under the Reich Citizenship Law provided that German Jews living abroad were no longer be German subjects (ovember 25, 1941). The NAZIs had terminted citizen ship in 1935. The new law provided that all assets of German Jews residing abroad automatically and immediately became property of the Reich. The legal authority for expropriating Jewish property was the primary goal of this measure. It affected not only German Jews in the Reich Protectorate, but in other occupied countries as well.
Reports from Prague convinced Hitler that NAZI aooficials were taking it to easy on both the Czechs and Jews. He appointed Reinhard Heydrich Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Security Police, as Reich Protectorate and disparched him to Prague (September 27, 1941). Heydrich was already operating as Himmler's main subordinate on Jewish matters, but now was an independent authority in the Protectorate answerable directly to Hitler. He reported directly to Martin Bormann for Hitler's information and had at least one private meeting with Hitler (October 25). [Heydrich Fernschreiben] On this occassion he gave a presentation to Hitler which he had earlier discussed with Himmler.
The NAZIs set up the Thereisenstadt ghetto/concentration camp for Czech and foreign Jews to concentrate them before the death camps were operational (1941). They used it as a model camp for propganda purposes. As reports began to leak out about the killing of Jews, thevNAZIs used Thereisenstadt to show to the Red Cross and Western journalists on fact-finding missions. Here the NAZIs used the camp to prove that deported Jews were being treated well. These inspection/fact finding visits, however, were infrequent and superficial. The Jews at Thereisenstadt, of course, were not well treated. The camp, however, was not a death camp. Conditions were superior to Auschwitz. The Jews were stripped of their property upon entering. Rations were limited, but they were allowed adegree of cultural life. The prisoners were allowed to organize classes for the children. They could put on plays and give concerts. They were even allowed to publish acamp newspaper. About 35,000 people died in the camp from starvation and disease. About 80,000 Jews are believed to have been transported from Thereisenstadt to Auschwitz and other death camps, although estimates vary somewhat. The Red Army liberated the camp (May 8, 1945).
The Einsatzgruppen which murdered so ruthlessly in Poland and the Soviet Union were to my knowledge not employed in Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia was, however, the foreign country occupied by the NAZIs for the longest period. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were sent from ghettos in Poland and Czechoslovakia to the extermination camps at Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek. Thereisenstadt served as holding point until the death camps were in operation. Most Czech Jews were murdered in gas chambers. [March-October 1942] Few Czech and Slovakian Jews survived. More than 70,000 Czech Jews were killed by the NAZIs.
The Jews were not the only NAZI targets. The Czechs themselves were targeted by the NAZIs. As in occupied Poland, the NAZIs planned to deport Czechs to make room for German settlers. A Chilean Diplomat stationed in Prague, Gonzalo Montt Rivas, developed close relations with NAZI officials. He attended a lecture delivered by Karl Hermann Frank, the number two NAZI official in the Protectorate (June 1941). Frank explained to his audience, "The Reich has once again manifested its firm intention… of Germanizing all territories within its 'living space.' And experience has shown that the only practical means of achieving this object is to eliminate the native inhabitants, replacing them with its own co-nationals." Hitler was apparently displeased with te slow pace of this process. In part because Frank complained about the Reich Protector. This is one of the main reasons Heydrich was sent to Prague. His assasinatin by Czech agents airdropped into the Protectorate derailed plans for deporting Czechs as did the deteriorating war situation.
We are collecting information on Czech children caught up in the NAZI Holocaust.
Peter Ginz was was a 16-year old Czech boy murdered by the NAZIs. Peter was of mixed Jewish-Christian parentage. In Germany this might have saved him. Individuals with a Christian parent (two non-Jewish grandparents were classified as Mischlings and not Jews. The NAZIs were not as careful in the occupied countries. Peter was transported to Theresienstadt (1942) where he spent 2 years. He founded and edited a magazine there. After Theresienstadt had served its propaganda purpose and with Allied armies closing in on the Reich, the NAZIs began liquidating the camp. Peter was transported to Auschwitz (1944) where he was killed. We would know little about him, just one of the 6 million Jews that the NAZIs killed. But Peter kept a diary which survived. They show a promising artistic and literary talent. The diary only recently cme to light, ironically a a result of the doomed Columbia space shuttle disaster. Israeli austronaut Ilan Ramon took a copy of Peter's drawing "Moon Landscape" with him. A man in Prague who found Peter's diary in a house he purchased contacted Yad Vashem. The diary also included excerpts from novels he was writing. One excerpt reads, "It occurred to me then that my feelings at that moment were like a newspaper before it hits the rolling press. All the preasure from every side disappeared. I wondered why does the pure paper of children's souls have to pass from a young age through the rolling press of life and society, which imprints it with all sorts of qualities and crushes it under the pressure of worries about livelihood and the attack of enemies." [Ginz]
Breitman, Richard. "What Chilean Diplomats Learned about the Holocaust" (National Archive/Interagency Wrking Group, 2001). Breitman is a Professor of History at American University and the IWG Director of Historical Research. His article is in part based on Chilean diplomatic reports.
Frank, Karl Hermann. [British] Summary, 13 Sept. 1941, of Chilean desptach from Gonzalo Montt Rivas (June 24, 1941. Copy in National Archive RG 226, Entry 16, document #7346
Ginz, Peter. ed. Chava Pressburger. The Diary of Peter Ginz (Atlantic Monthly, 2007). 161p.
Michaelis, Herbert and Enst Schraepler. eds. Ursachen und Folgen, Vol. 18. (Berlin Dokumenten-Verlag Dr. Herbert Wendler & Co, undated).
Heydrich Fernschreiben for Lammers, for Bormann, 9 Oct. 1941, NA RG 242, Microfilm T-120, R 1026/ F 406029-034.
Hitler's appointment schedule, NA RG 242, T-84. R 387/ F 516.
Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Return to Main Holocaust country page]
[Return to Main Czechoslovak World War II page]
[Return to Main World War II page]
[Introduction]
[Activities]
[Biographies]
[Chronology]
[Clothing styles]
[Countries]
[Bibliographies]
[Contributions]
[FAQs]
[Glossaries]
[Images]
[Links]
[Registration]
[Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]