The future of humanity and culture | NOVEMBER 26
No one reading the November issue of the Aufbau could have missed the front-page editorial message in bold print: under the heading “The Great Trial,” forceful language is employed to decry the abject failure of “the heads of state of the so-called democracies,” who have sacrificed Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany. Jewish refugees are left stranded in no man’s land in Bohemia, in Germany, the Nazis are dealing an “economic death blow” to the Jews, the British are jeopardizing the Zionist project, and “little more than a faint memory” remains of the Evian Conference, summoned in July to tackle the problem of resettling Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Surely, this is “an era of complete sinfulness.” Will those under threat finally brace up?
Politics and farewell | OCTOBER 31
At the end of October, Adolph Markus looked back on an eventful month. Preceded by the Munich Conference, at which representatives of Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy decided that Czechoslovakia was to cede its borderlands (“Sudetenland”) to Germany in exchange for peace, German troops had occupied these areas, which had a sizeable German population totaling about 3 million. As Markus points out, with the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia had lost its line of defense. According to his diary entry, both in Britain and in France, people’s relief that war had been averted was soon followed by deep suspicion regarding Hitler’s true intentions. On a more personal note, the author mentions a hair-styling course and English classes which he has been taking in Vienna, clearly in preparation for emigration. Meanwhile, due to the expectation that soon all Jews would be expelled from his home town, Linz, half of the contents of his apartment had been sold.
Sudeten Jews under attack | OCTOBER 25
On September 29, 1938, the signatories of the Munich Treaty had decreed that Czechoslovakia was to cede to Germany its northern and western border areas, the Sudetenland, which was inhabited predominantly by Germans. Immediately after the incursion of German troops, there were eruptions of violence against Jews. Of the 25,000 to 28,000 Jews living in the area, thousands were driven to flee. On October 25, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports on the catastrophic material effects of the mass flight: the losses were estimated at 7 billion crowns at least in wages and property left behind. To make things worse, since Munich, open expressions of antisemitism had also proliferated on the Czech side—both by the populace and those representing the government.
Driven to suicide | OCTOBER 11
Since 1876, the Prager Tagblatt was known as a bastion of liberal- democratic positions. Over time, it acquired a staff of first-rate writers, including greats such as Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Kurt Tucholsky, Egon Erwin Kisch and Alfred Döblin – to name but a few. The paper was valued for its excellent reporting, its outstanding feuilleton and its unique style: even the political reporting was not devoid of humor. As a liberal-democratic paper with a predominantly Jewish staff, the Tagblatt had unequivocally positioned itself against the Nazi regime. Several of the roughly 20,000 political adversaries of the Nazis who had escaped to Czechoslovakia joined the ranks of the publication’s contributors. After the entry of the German Army to the Sudetenland in early October of 1938, the situation of German-speaking democrats came to a head in Czechoslovakia, too: according to this report from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, dated October 11, the editor-in-chief of the Prager Tagblatt, Rudolf Thomas, and his wife committed suicide out of despair over the situation.
Desecration and devastation | OCTOBER 1
During the night of September 30th going into October 1st, the synagogue of Mellrichstadt in Lower Franconia was completely devastated. In fact, the mob had it in for the congregants: Sudeten German refugees had incited the public to ambush worshippers on their way to the synagogue. However, the Jewish congregation had been warned with sufficient time and services canceled. Now the angry mob of Sudeten Germans and residents of Mellrichstadt stood before the door of the synagogue. Stones were thrown, the door was broken open and the interior destroyed. The mob did not spare the Torah scrolls and other ritual items. After that night, the synagogue could no longer be used.
Mass exodus | SEPTEMBER 29
When on September 29th the so-called “Munich Agreement” between Hitler, the British Premier Chamberlain, the French Premier Daladier, and the Italian dictator Mussolini was concluded, over 20,000 Jews had already fled from the regions of the Sudetenland. This was reported by the Jewish Telegraph Agency on the day of the Agreement. With a months-long propaganda campaign by the Nazis and raucous threats that the Wehrmacht would invade Czechoslovakia, it had already been clear to many Jews for weeks that they would have no future in the Sudetenland. With the Agreement, the Czech regions, in which the Sudeten German minority lived, would be surrendered to the German Reich. Czechoslovakia did not sit at the bargaining table in Munich.
Vacation idyll | AUGUST 15
Hitler’s plans for Czechoslovakia could not have been clearer: on May 30th, 1938, he declared to the Wehrmacht (German army) that it was his “immutable resolve” to shatter the country “in the foreseeable future.” Already months before, he had incited the leader of the Sudeten German Party, which was partly bankrolled by Nazi Germany, to conjure up a confrontation by making unreasonable demands on behalf of the German minority in the country. Under the influence of events in Germany, anti-Semitism had increased. But, so far, it had only led to boycotts and physical violence in the border areas of Northern and Western Bohemia, which were predominantly inhabited by Germans. While this crisis was brewing in the background, the psychiatrist and writer Josef Weiner, his wife, Hanka, and their two young daughters were on vacation in the central Bohemian town of Nespeky. Hanka’s letter (in Czech) to her father, the renowned Prague lawyer Oskar Taussig, smacks of a perfectly idyllic holiday atmosphere and spares its reconvalescent recipient anything unpleasant.