Jan Láníček

The Jew in Czech and Slovak Imagination, 1938-89

This volume analyses the image of ‘the Jew’ as it developed and transformed in both Czech and Slovak society under the nondemocratic regimes of the twentieth century. It is the first serious attempt to offer a comparative analysis of anti-Jewish prejudices in the Czech and Slovak mindset between 1938 and 1989.

After the Whirlwind: Jewish Absence in Postwar Czechoslovakia

This article analyses absences encountered by Jews in postwar Czechoslovakia. Based on two first-hand accounts (by Leo Herrmann and Joseph Wechsberg), the author offers insights into how Jewish exiles, who visited Czechoslovakia in the first postwar months, perceived the absences caused by the Shoah and by the efforts of postwar societies to create ethnically and linguistically homogeneous countries, without any distinct minority cultures. In postwar Czechoslovakia, the survivors had to cope with the physical absence of those murdered during the war, but also with the loss of multi-culturalism, and ethnic and linguistic diversity of the population. It was expected that the Jews, who decided to stay in postwar Czechoslovakia, would undergo a complete assimilation and would become part of the Czech or Slovak nation. The Jews – a distinct group made absent by the Nazi policies – were further absented from their societies by the postwar reconstruction of their homeland. Although some of the survivors accepted the new rules of the game and attempted to adjust to the new conditions, a majority of those who returned to Czechoslovakia after 1945 soon left the country forever.

Vanished history: the Holocaust in Czech and Slovak historical culture

exploration into this complex subject matter. Baron’s essay on teaching about the Holocaust through film is also commendable for the breadth of research and examples that it employs. While the discussion of what films should and should not be included is both sound and helpful, it might have been expedient to have developed the discussion of how they should be used and the rationale for their use at all, which is rather limited in scope. Baron talks about a wide range of film in this essay, including newsreels, Nazi propaganda and Allied footage shot at the liberation of the camps. While he offers some moderate warnings about their use, I struggle to see any real pedagogic value to adolescents in showing “gory images, nudity, and racist dialogue,” which Baron suggests “should be kept to a minimum.” This chapter also contains a great number of long hyperlinks, which are not particularly useful to those reading the print edition. In the penultimate chapter, Shawn suggests some different approaches to teaching about the Holocaust through the prism of story, which are possibly less of a “radical innovation” than the chapter title implies. However, the adjective could aptly be used to describe her approach to curriculum design where students are simply taught small parts of the Holocaust each year and where various teachers specialize in educating about different countries. Shawn puts forward some robust reasoning for these ideas although it might not be easy to apply this to a whole school setting. In recent years, there has been an increasing call to include a study of other genocides, either as part of a Holocaust curriculum or – perhaps more appropriately – in their own right as a standalone unit. Totten powerfully refers to the null curriculum, that what schools do not teach is as significant as what they do. He puts forward a compelling case for “other” genocides to be studied in depth and lays out practical ways of achieving this as well as useful resources to supplement teaching. The annotated bibliography accompanying this chapter is also most helpful. In his introduction to this volume, John K. Roth describes the publication as a sequel, rather than a second edition of Teaching and Studying the Holocaust, which was published in 2001 and also edited by Totten and Feinberg. The field has moved on considerably in these 15 years and there is certainly a need for up-to-date publications if Holocaust pedagogy is going to accurately reflect the latest academic research and make use of modern technology and resources. Having read both publications, Roth is correct to describe it as a sequel and few would feel short-changed if they owned a copy of both. This is a valuable contribution to the field; it is a practical and beneficial aid for teachers of the Holocaust, which will encourage them to think upon a number of important issues, guide them in their decision-making processes, and help them to teach powerful and thought-provoking lessons.

How to teach the Holocaust

Anxious Histories is a micro-historical analysis of the ways in which teachers in Jewish day schools in two major urban centres in the western world approach the subject of the Holocaust history in their curricula. Focussing on five schools in Melbourne, Australia, and seven schools in New York City, Jordana Silverstein analyses how teachers pass the ‘knowledge’ of the history of the Holocaust on the children and young students. As the author explains, this is not ‘a longitudinal study of Holocaust education: this is more a snapshot, or a glimpse at an archive captured at one year [2006] in time’ (p. 5). Anchored in comprehensive theoretical discussions and evaluations of up-to-date Holocaust historiography, the analysis offers a close reading of supplied curricula (from seven schools) and interviews with teachers, conducted by the author. In the main argument, Silverstein posits that the development of the teaching approaches is shaped and reshaped by the Jews’ anxieties about their current position in non-Jewish societies worldwide, but also by their relations with Zionism, which is often understood in very broad and unclear terms, such as support for the State of Israel (101). Silverstein covers a whole range of topics throughout the book, including but not limited to the structure of the individual curricula, the use of survivors’ testimonies and survivors’ visits in the classroom, the question of memory and ‘deep memory’ in the curriculum and Holocaust historiography at large, the settler-colonial (US and Australia) and Zionist influences on the teaching, and the question of gender and the representation of women. As she consistently argues, the particular modes in which the teachers narrate these topics are all shaped by the underlining efforts to manage their own anxieties about the Jews’ position in the society and ‘to determine identity formations in a situation which requires the negotiation of feeling of displacement and the accompanying anxieties’ (87). The teachers desperately want to be part of the cultures and nations they live in (and they wish the same for their students), but in their classes dealing with violence and the Jewish genocide, they are continuously reminded about the uncertain position of the Jews in the world and thus – perhaps unconsciously as Silverstein posits – vent their anxieties in the ways in which they construct the courses on Holocaust histories (208). The whole monograph is nicely written and is engaging, though I could not avoid the feeling that many of the conclusions and interpretations of the primary sources offered by Silverstein are often speculative. Silverstein is, for example, critical of the chronological

The power(lessness) of Czechoslovak Jews during the Second World War

The article evaluates the perceptions of Jewish power among the Czechoslovak exiles in Britain during the Second World War. The analysis documents the apparent persistence of prejudices against the Jewish minority among the Czechoslovak non-Jewish authorities that eventually formed the government-in-exile (1940–5), under the presidency of Edvard Beneš (1884–1948). The Czechoslovak exiles believed that the Jewish minority, in particular the Jewish nationalists (Zionists), had vehement supporters within Jewish circles in Western countries. Furthermore, they believed that the Jewish press played a significant role in the formation of public opinion in Britain and especially in the United States. In the early 1940s, the government-in-exile embarked on a policy of national homogenisation of post-war Czechoslovakia and was anxious to give concessions to the political representatives of the ethnic minority groups in exile, in particular the Germans, Hungarians and Jews. Yet the concerns about Jewish influence in liberal democracies granted several political concessions to the Jewish minority, in particular the appointment of a Zionist representative, Arnošt Frischer (1887–1954), to the exile parliament. This notwithstanding, by analysing the internal situation among the Czechoslovak Jewish groups in London, the article documents the internal weakness and disputes among the Jewish groups which gradually revealed the utter powerlessness of the Jewish exiles during their negotiations with the Czechoslovak authorities. The Jewish groups (the assimilationists, Orthodox and secular nationalists) were divided by mutual as well as internal disputes which were not concealed from outside observers and were utilised by the exile government. What emerges from the analysis is an impression of quarrelling groups that could not agree on any of the fundamental issues and whose only power was the ability to court the support of Western Jewish groups, which were perceived by the non-Jewish exiles as influential actors in US and British society.

Defending the Democratic ‘Myth’

The main body of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, including President Benes, left London for liberated Czechoslovak territories on 11 March 1945. Their journey led first to Moscow, for political negotiations with the Communists. Both parties discussed the formation of the new government and its political programme up to the first post-war elections. The negotiations proved that the Communists intended to play a decisive role in the new Republic.1 Benes’s position as President was not questioned, but Zdeněk Fierlinger, the Czechoslovak Ambassador to Moscow, a Social Democrat and admirer of the Soviet system, became Prime Minister. Only four parties in Bohemia and Moravia and four in Slovakia were allowed to function and they formed the National Front, a coalition government ruling without opposition. The Communists were allocated two of the five deputy Prime Minister posts plus other important government portfolios, including the Ministry of the Interior. The new government was sworn into office at the beginning of April and moved to Kosice, in Eastern Slovakia, as its provisional seat.

The Exiles and the Situation in Nazi Europe

On 13 December 1938, the newly appointed Prime Minister of the Second Czechoslovak Republic, Rudolf Beran, presented the programme of his government to the National Assembly. The document reflected the changed nature of life in post-Munich Czechoslovakia, with the perceived need to find a modus vivendi with the neighbouring German Reich, now the indisputable ruler in Central Europe. In his address, Beran declared that the new government would ‘solve the Jewish question’ in Czechoslovakia. He added that the state’s attitude towards Jews, who had been settled in Czechoslovakia for a long time and had a positive attitude to the needs of the state and of its nation, would ‘not be hostile’.1 The programme was vague about what solving the Jewish question might mean and Beran’s words are unlikely to have been perceived as a threat to those Jews who had been living in Czechoslovakia for decades. Yet it clearly reflected the changed environment of post-Masaryk Czechoslovakia, with its growing right-wing and authoritarian sentiments of exclusion towards any entity perceived as foreign to the interests of the nation, as identified by the ruling right-wing establishment.2 The Second Republic lasted less than six months. Nevertheless its existence witnessed gradual exclusion of the Jews from Czech and Slovak societies. Additionally, following Nazi precepts, racial anti-Semitism was partly introduced, with limits set on Jewish employment in certain professions, like doctors or lawyers.

The Meaning of Loyalty: The Exiles and the Jews, 1939–41

In the summer of 1941, the exiled President of Czechoslovakia, Edvard Benes, sent a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the President of the USA. Benes, already officially recognised by the British government, tried to attain similar recognition by the American government. In the letter, he summarised his main arguments for the justification of the exiles’ political claims: In agreement with my country we have created a new Czechoslovak army on British soil and organized our Air Force, which has now been fighting for a full year with the R.A.F. in repelling German attacks on England. We have unified our political emigration and we are working in close collaboration with our country, with the political leaders of the nation at home, with the intelligentsia and with the other classes of people. […] Our state and people were a true democratic state; […] and had it not been for the events of Munich our land would still be the home of one of the finest democracies in Europe.1

The Jewish Minority and Post-War Czechoslovakia

Early in 1944, Arnost Frischer, official National-Jewish representative in the Czechoslovak State Council, presented President Benes with his carefully prepared Memorial Treatise — highlighting the most pressing themes — about issues affecting Czechoslovak Jews with the coming liberation of the Republic.1 The Treatise aimed to initiate a discussion about the position of Jews in post-war Czechoslovakia. Frischer, however, was a kind of a maverick among the exiles whose political relations with his home organisation, the National-Jewish Council, were tense.2 Frischer and Zelmanovits, the head of the Council, differed especially in their perception of how Jews might fit into liberated Czechoslovakia.3 Frischer expressed more understanding for the new Czechoslovak minority policy. The Treatise, prepared personally by Frischer, ought to be considered his individual initiative. Yet its importance was emphasised by Frischer’s status as the official representative of Jews in the Czechoslovak parliament during the war. Additionally, in September 1945, he became chairman of the Council of Jewish Religious Communities in Bohemia and Moravia, an umbrella organisation of the Jews in the post-war Czech lands.4 As Frischer was the only person who presented such an elaborate analysis of the Jewish position in Czechoslovakia his views should thus be at the centre of our analysis of Czechoslovak policy towards the Jews.

Conclusion: Beyond Idealisation and Condemnation

Antony Polonsky asks us to go beyond ‘condemnation, apologetics and apologies’ when studying Polish-Jewish relations in the first half of the twentieth century.1 He rejects any simplifications in presenting historical research and stresses the complexities of Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust. There have been several intensive debates on the theme, especially in relation to books by Jan T. Gross. Similar debates have further stimulated historical research and modern Polish-Jewish history belongs to well-documented areas of Jewish studies. This is particularly clear in comparison with modern Czechoslovak-Jewish history, and especially Czech historiography. The lack of any scholarly debate has contributed to the superficiality of our understanding of the pre-1948 Czechoslovak attitude towards the Jews. The truth is that in comparison with the Communist anti-Zionist, in reality anti-Semitic campaign in the early 1950s (the Slanský trial), the situation in Masaryk’s and Benes’s Czechoslovakia from the Jewish perspective must appear much brighter. We can indeed argue that besides radical pro-Zionist historiography that condemns the situation in Europe as such, Czechoslovakia is still presented as an ideal country that respected the Jews. When the Czechoslovak pre-1948 record is questioned, the situation is explained in terms of the general moral decadence of the Second World War and as a bitter legacy of Nazi rule in Europe.