Trudy Gold
Slovaks and Jews
Trudy Gold - Slovaks and Jews
- Okay, what I’m going to do today is to talk about Slovakia and the Jews, as we come to the end of the Habsburg Empire, post-Habsburg and the countries, and as I mentioned last time, after the World War I, new states were created out of old empires, and because of really the rise of nationalism throughout the Habsburg Empire, the Slovak leader, Milan Stefanik, working with the extraordinary Tomas Masaryk and Benes, they persuade the powers that be, they have great prestige with Wilson and people like that, and they persuade under the notion of self-determination of people, and Czechoslovakia comes into being. Now, it’s independent from Austria on the 30th of October, 1918. And before that, and this is very important, the Czech part of the Habsburg Empire had been administered from Vienna, but the Slovak part had been administered from Hungary. The Slovak part was far more developed than the Czech part. Having said that, the Slovak part was still one of the most developed in the whole of Hungary. But you are looking at a huge difference in the economic productivity of both sides of the border. Now, the problem was that Milan Stefanik, who was probably the great hope of Slovakian liberal democracy, because remember, Czechoslovakia emerges as a democratic state. And by the ‘30s, it is the only democratic state in this part of the world, so it’s very important that there was a dream, but tragically, Stefanik died in a plane crash, and there is still a possibility that he was in fact murdered. So what about the story of the Jews of Slovakia?
You know, this is our story. For the past 2,000 years, we have wandered the world, and we live in countries where we can earn a living, where we can bring up our children in peace hopefully, and when it gets too hot, we move on. What you have in the modern world, of course, is that the Jews are tending to settle more, and there’s a great dream, but in Slovakia, it must be said that the majority of Jews, particularly to the East, were religious. They didn’t really integrate. I’m looking at the areas around Munkacs, that whole area. I remember a friend of mine, his family came from there, and he went travelling in the '60 to Munkacs when, of course, it was a communist country, and he said “It was all dirt tracks, you have no idea how primitive it was”, and he found the little village near Munkacs, which was before the war, primarily Jewish. It was really little hovely slums, and he could still see where the had been pulled out of the wars. And I think it’s important to remember that so many of the Jews living in Eastern Slovakia come from a very, very traditional background. So what happened to them under the Habsburgs? Well, I’m not going to repeat myself, because you all know this, they’re living under the Habsburg Empire, and the Habsburgs, of course, create this extraordinary empire, why? Because they make a lot of very sensible marriages. We also know that Bratislava, to give it the German name Pressburg, was always the largest Jewish settlement, and depending on what’s happening in the outside world, the Jews have to react.
Zionist historians always point this out that the problem with the diaspora, even in the modern world, however settled you think you are, you are not masters of your own destiny, as much as any of us ever can be, but what I do believe is true in the modern world, and I think most of you would agree with me, outside of the Jewish state, Jews fare far better under a liberal, stable democracy. Now going back to the Habsburg Empire, of course it was Joseph II with his edict of toleration that gave the Jews certain rights and privileges, but it wasn’t until 1840 that the towns were open to them. Now, by 1785, the area around Bratislava is the largest Jewish settlement. Now, it’s at this stage that some of the great landlords, the Esterhazy Clan for example, actually welcomed the Jews onto their estates. Under Joseph II, into the 19th century, the whole of the Empire is trying to modernise. One of the issues that I looked at when I looked at the Czech part, and you’re going to see it with a Slovak part, the further east you go, the more the Jews are the economic life of any country. Why on Earth do you think it was that families like the Esterhazy who had huge estates, they were Hungarian counts, why did they welcome them into their estates, and offer them protection, and often even build their synagogues? Because they wanted their estates developed. They had peasants on their estates, they had estates the size of English counties. They had peasants on their estates, they need people to gather in the produce, that would be the peasants, but who’s going to sell it? Who’s going to set up the little shops, and they’re not at a higher level amongst the wealthier Jews who’s going to be involved in trade agreements?
So the Jews are fulfilling, if you like, the stereotype niche. But please never forget, this stereotype niche was actually developed because of laws that prevented the Jews from owning land, that prevented the Jews from entering into many trades and professions. So really the stereotype of the international trader, at the higher level, the banker, the little shopkeeper, the middleman, these were the only roots really to enable Jews, and of course, but for your clever, for your really clever son, what did you have for him? And of course, the yeshiva of Pressburg was one of the greatest yeshivas in the world right up until, and that’s of course is the German for Bratislava, right up until the onset of war, the Pressburg yeshiva where many of the brilliant minds of the Habsburg Empire gathered. And it really becomes prominent in the time of Rabbi Moses Sofer, and his descendants are going to officiate for generations as rabbis of Pressburg. And they and Rabbi Moses Sofer, I’m going to give you a little background on him, because he’s a fascinating man, and also he’s going to give you a notion of the problems that face ultra orthodoxy as the world slightly begins to modernise. He was born in Frankfurt from a very important Rabbinic family, his mother was the daughter of the Gaon of Frankfurt, he entered a very important yeshiva when he was nine-years-old, that of Rabbi Nathan Adler, who was also a kabbalist. By the time he’s 13, he’s delivering public discourses, and he studied under all the great rabbis of the time. He was an . He then marries the daughter of Rabbi Moses Jerwitz, following the engagement, he learnt that she’d been married before, was a widow and couldn’t have children, but he married her against the wishes of his family.
He was morally incredibly righteous. He becomes the Rabbi of Straznice in 1794. Rabbi, rabbi, rabbi, he established, from various communities, he then establishes an important yeshiva, which of course in Bratislava, in Pressburg. Now he becomes inundated with students. We know that there were 500 pupils at one time, and hundreds of them are going to become the rabbis of the various Hungarian communities. When his first wife died childless, he married the widowed daughter of Rabbi Akiva Eiger, then the rabbi of Poznan, another very important dynasty, and with her, he had three sons and seven daughters. Every one of his sons became great rabbis. Now he is the rabbi of the community in Pressburg for 39 years, and it was his influence that kept reform and out of the community, because 1839, there is communication, particularly in the Jewish world. You’ve got to remember what is happening over the border. Look, emancipation in France, there’ve been revolutions from 1848 onwards, Jews wanting to take their place in the modern world, and the price, remember what the price was. One of the most interesting ways of teaching Jewish history is to take the Chinese two characters that make up modernity, danger, opportunity. Now, the opportunities appeared to be amazing. What were the dangers that you’d lose what it means to be a Jew? He said, “Anything new is forbidden by the Torah”, and he didn’t allow any secular studies at all in his yeshiva. In fact, the founder of Satmar, one of the great dynasties that survived the war, Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum paid homage to the Chasam Sofer, and its title bounds descendant, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, who was on Kassner’s train, which we talked about before, in the 1830s though, about 30 of his disciples actually settled in Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberius, and Hebron, they are not Zionists, on the contrary, but it is a mitzvah to live in the Holy Land.
But okay, I just told you that as a sort of by the by, because what’s the internal life of the Jewish world is also important, but we have to look now at what happens in the outside world, and the whole area, Slovakia becomes independent from Hungary on the 30th, October, 1918, and it’s ratified by, of course, by the peace conferences, so Czechoslovakia emerges as a sovereign state and a democracy. There’s a certain amount of imbalance between the Czech part and the Slovak part, as I’ve already explained. And the majority of the Jewish population in Slovakia was, as is obvious, they’re engaged in commerce and finance, some of them also are small trades people, they’re also engaged in industry, and there were 217 congregations throughout the whole of that area, and over two-thirds of them are Orthodox. The further east you go, the more Orthodox. And if you cross over the border to Romania, have a look where it is. These are the centres, of course, of some of the great rabbinic dynasties, and of course the '20s under the Czech government, under the Czechoslovak government, with great stability, and it brought prosperity to a wide stratum of the Jewish population, the social and cultural life flourished, there was a lot of focus on Zionism in Slovakia, and on youth movements, about 10% of the population were actually engaged in Zionist activities. WIZO, for example, the Women’s Zionist Organisation, which had been created in London by Vera Weizmann, and a group of other ladies, I knew Carmel Weber, whose mother, Romana Goodman was one of the founders, so I’ve been such a fortunate person, because I’ve sort of bumped into history many times in my life, and so amongst women’s groups, you have a great deal of interest in Zionism, there’s interest in Jewish culture, Hebrew language, and the new generation is quite socialist, and there’s a lot of contact with the land of Israel with the yeshiva in Palestine.
And the new generation, many of them are educated either at Bratislava University, or a Prague University. However, against the backdrop of the '20s and '30s, you have the Slovak People’s Party, placing blame on the Jews, claiming they own two-thirds of the nation’s property, and they openly are going to incite the population against the Jews, and basically these Slovak nationalists, they also agitated for greater autonomy. And then of course, you have the great sellout of Czechoslovakia, the Munich Conference, where the French and the British ceded Sudetenland, and made Slovakia an autonomous region, this is October, 1938, so could we look at the next map please, Judi? Yeah. You see, this is, you see how the Sudeten, I talked about this last time, this is the area of Czechoslovakia with a large German population, and basically the allies gave into that, and of course, Chamberlain coming home with his little piece of paper, “I bring you peace in our time, peace with honour.” That phrase was totally discredited, because it had once been said by Benjamin Disraeli, when he returned from the Congress of Berlin in 1878, when he did bring back peace, and peace with honour. So on the other hand, as William was discussing the other day, what is history? If you were the British Prime Minister, and have no truck for Chamberlain, by the way, but if you were the British Prime Minister, or the French Premier, and you had experienced 20 years earlier an appalling war, where would appeasement stop, where would it start? And of course it’s relevant today. This is the problem with history. And history doesn’t teach us the future, but human behaviour, which keeps applying to historical events, it should teach us a little more. Anyway, so you have a situation, where the Sudetenland is taken away, it’s given away to Germany, and look at the neighbours now.
Look at Slovakia, Czechoslovakia, look what’s happening in Europe in the '30s. You have, and I’ve said this to you many times, you’ve got Stalin over the border in Russia. How much was known about Stalin? It’s a big question, and we’ll be talking about that in a few weeks, when we start looking in great depth at first The Czarist Empire, and then the Soviet Empire. Of course, Mussolini in Italy, the war party in Japan, Hitler in Germany, the Anschluss when Hitler goes home to Austria, William talked brilliantly about that. And now, and Hitler, so, and of course in Spain, Franco. So you have a situation, where Slovakia is made into autonomous region in October, 1938. November '38, the Vienna Award allowed annexation of parts of Slovakia to Hungary. Now we can now look at the Jewish population, and the numbers, because the numbers have been about 120,000 in Slovakia. Now it’s decreased, because some of the land was taken into Hungary. That was Hungary’s price for the Alliance with Germany. And it’s in March the 14th, 1939, when Slovakia becomes a separate state. Of course Hitler invade, can we see the next map, please, Judi? There you go. The Germans produce the new protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, that word, protectorate. And now Slovakia has lost much of the area to Hungary, but in 1939, it is now a separate state. And the party that’s going to take control of the Hlinka party, H-L-I-N-K-A, I hope I have pronounced it correctly, and they are going to take control under a man called Tiso, who is also a cleric. And this is going to be extraordinary, but I’ll talk a bit about that in a minute. Now, what was the ideology?
They were an extremely nationalistic organisation. They were totally anti-democratic, a social order built on Catholicism, they were violently anti-communists, think about who’s on the Papal throne? Pius XII. So you have a reactionary government that sees itself as a Catholic government, it’s violently anti-Jewish, and one of the first acts was to sign a protection, a protection agreement with the German foreign minister, Ribbentrop. Ribbentrop, of course, had been the Ambassador to Britain, and he’d had a very close relationship with Wally Simpson, and Edward VIII. He was also very close to Henry Ford, later on, he’s going to be executed at Nuremberg, but he signs a deal as German foreign minister, and you have a power struggle, who will actually take over control? And there are various factions. You have Tiso himself, then a man called Tuka, who was his rival, who becomes Prime Minister, and then Mach, who’s head of the Hlinka Guard, and later the minister, and Tuka and Mach are even more reactionary than Tiso. So I think, and of course, antisemitism has already escalated in the '30s. And now you have an autonomous Slovak state, a reactionary state, and what you’re going to see, you’re going to see street attacks against the Jews, the Hlinka are a paramilitary organisation, the forced removal of Jews, particularly those who are Hungarian citizens to no man’s land, also, there was a voluntary defence guard made up of ethnic Germans.
Now. Let’s have a look a little at the biography of Tiso, because it is quite extraordinary. Can we see his face please, Judi? Yeah, there you have Tiso. He’s wearing canonicals, and there you see him meeting with a man he really admired, Adolf Hitler. Now he was born in Slovakia, poor, very bright student, but he learned many languages including German and Hebrew. Now you remember I told you that within the Habsburg Empire there was a policy, these were the Teresian schools named for Maria Theresa to educate poor students, to give them a chance. It was also part of the way of industrialising the Habsburg Empire. So in 1906, he too comes to the University of Vienna. That university, as I’ve said to you, some of the greatest minds in the world were there, but also some of the worst monsters. And he graduated with a PhD in theology. He was a man of the people. He was very much a Slovak nationalist, and you know, one of the problems when we are talking about Slovak nationalism, Czech nationalism, dare I say it, Lithuanian nationalism, Ukrainian nationalism, these in many ways are constructs that come out of the decline of the old empires, but they’re very, very vociferous. When he graduates, he becomes a social worker. He goes to Nyitra, which is a town ins Slovakia, and remember, this is before World War I. So before World War I, he’s educated, at the end of the war, where we find him in Nyitra working with poor, with the alcoholics, and who were the innkeepers of the town, who controlled the liquor trade? It was Jews, and who were the people running the food stores, the clothes stores? So basically he blamed the Jews. He said, “These people are corrupting my poor peasants.” He was very paternalistic.
He looked at the poor people, and he said, “These people are being totally corrupted by the evil Jews.” And in World War I, he was a field curator to the Slovak Division, and after the war, he worked as a teacher, and as a journalist. He believed very strongly in military discipline, also as a strong Slovakian patriot, he wanted religious literature translated into Slovakian, he joined the Catholic Slovak People’s Party, which was 70% Catholic, and he ran for parliament in 1920, and he’s going to be in the Czech Parliament between 1920 and 1938. The Vatican appoint him Monsignor in 1921, he’s hugely intelligent, he’s got a lot of energy, he’s charismatic, he’s got large working experience, he’s had an elite education, he has the common touch, he’s a brilliant orator, he’s a journalist, and he is a passionate antisemite, and with all this, he pulls it together, he’s a man that people listen to. This is one of the problem with these charismatics, these authoritarian charismatics which keep on popping up in history. Now, he also was very interested in creating fitness amongst the peasantry, one of his big endeavours was the organisation of gymnastic groups, particularly for the poor, his anti-Jewish rhetoric becomes worse. He is actually up in court for incitement, and he then becomes the Dean of Bonneville, which was another important parish, 1927, though, he has made the Minister of Health in the Czech government.
1930, he publishes the ideology of the Slovak People’s Party, totally authoritarian, and totalitarian, in the party Congress of 1938, he said, “One nation, one party, one leader”, and that the party should cover all aspects of life. And of course, with other Slovak nationalists, he is constantly agitating for Slovak nationalism within the state. We think of the government in Prague, they are democratic, they are inclusive, they want to create a multiethnic country. And at the fringe in Slovakia, you have these violent nationalists. And of course, following the Munich Agreement, they make a huge gain in politics. And it’s in 1938 when Tiso goes to, believe it or not, a Eucharist meeting in Budapest. You know the Eucharist, very important in Catholic ritual, the Eucharist is the taking of the wine and the bread, as not even representative of the body and blood of Jesus, but as the body and blood of Jesus. So he goes to this conference in Budapest, where he had secret meetings with the Hungarian foreign minister. So … When he takes over, the Jewish population of Slovakia is 89,000. Now. So Slovakia is now under Tiso a one-party totalitarian state. Let’s talk a little about his, can we see the next slide, please? Let’s have a look at Tuka. He was a professor, he was his rival, and he became Prime Minister.
He was a frustrated intellectual, he was very much an ideologue, violently anti-Semitic. Let’s have a look the third of the trio. No, can we go to Mach first, and then go back to … Can we go on to Mac? I’m sorry, I’m out of order, Judi. After those two Nazis, have I got … Yeah, Andrej Hlinka, he was the man behind the Hlinka Guard. And Mach was Head of the Hlinka Guard. There’s Alexander Mach, and he, again, a very well-educated individual, and he was the man who was behind the creation of the Hlinka Guard. Now … And later on, he’s going to become the Minister of the Interior. Now the Hlinka Guard was the militia of the Slovak Peoples Party. There you see their Emblem, it’s very Nazi-like. Can we go back to Alexander Mach, Judi? Sorry to drive you crazy. His dates are 1902 to 1980. Again, he was a brilliant rabble-rouser, and he’s going to play a leading role in all the violence that followed the collapse of Czechoslovakia. He’s going to become the Head of the Slovak Office of Propaganda, and then, as I said, the Interior Minister, and it’s he who’s going to draw up the plans to establish concentration camps in Slovakia. Now he’s actually going to survive the war. After the war, he’s going to be arrested, and sentenced by the Czech government for 30 years, he’s released in 1968, he settles in Bratislava, and died on a state pension in 1980. Justice does not always happen. Can we now go back on ourselves, if you don’t mind, Judi, I’m so sorry about this.
I’d like now, if possible, to go back to Tiso for a minute. So you’ve got a really nasty trio … There, okay. So the new Slovak state is obviously recognised by Germany, by Hungary, also by Britain and France, and the minority of the Slovaks, however, there’s a minority, mainly non-Catholics that don’t support the regime. And partisan units are going to come into existence very early on. And they are supporters of Benes in London. There also were some Slovak Communists, and other opponents, and later on, they are going to establish the Slovak National Council. So what happens is, that Slovakia, obviously, allies itself with Hitler, Tiso has huge admiration for Hitler, and they are, not only are they going to collaborate, but in many ways, he’s going to be even more zealous than the Nazis themselves. So what basically happens to the Jews? And of course, once the Slovakian state is proclaimed, you begin to see a terrible number of anti-Jewish laws. Just as we talked about with the Czech, what happens to the Jews under an authoritarian state? It’s now 1939, 1940. And one of the problems is, what were Nazi intentions at this time, what was the intention of Tiso?
Basically they want the Jews, they want Jewish wealth at this stage. They’ve already be expelled Jews with Hungarian passports. The Jews who are living in Slovakia under an authoritarian state, they of course are subjected to intimidation, they are subjected to all sorts of rabble-rousing, there are pogroms, and then the Germans send in a man called Dieter Wisliceny, can we go to his picture, if you don’t mind, Judi? Yeah, to oversee the Jewish issue. And this is with the wanting of the Slovak government. He, again, he’s an interesting character, who comes up time and time again. He came up, of course, when I was talking to you about Hungary, he was the son of a landowner, a failed theology student, he worked briefly in a construction firm, unemployed, and he joins the NSDAP, like so many, he was really a disappointed upper middle class type. The same year he joins the SD, and he’s going to become Eichmann’s Deputy, and becomes one of the experts on the Jews. He serves as an official in the Reich’s central office of immigration, and in September, 1940, he’s sent to Bratislava as an advisor on the Jewish question to the Soviet government. Now, this is what Wistrich had to say about him. “He belonged to the educated stratum of the SS, and was more concerned with money than ideology. He wasn’t as fanatical as Eichmann.” And we’re going to find out that he is going to be able to be bribed.
Now this monster, after he left Slovakia, he’s then sent to Salonica, where he introduces the yellow star and prepares deportations, instrumental in the liquidation of Greek jury, and of course, in March '44, he’s with Eichmann in Budapest. Evidently, he’d like to be addressed as Barron. He was a terrible snob. And particularly with Jews who were involved in bargaining with him. He was a witness for the prosecution at Nuremberg, he was a witness against many of his masters, and he was eventually extradited. He thought he could do a deal with the allies, but he couldn’t. He was eventually extradited to Czechoslovakia, and he stood trial in Bratislava, where he was executed for complicity in mass murder. So … The beginnings of anti-Jewish legislation, the first was such, so evil, to forbid Jews to buy and sell religious artefacts. Remember, particularly in the east of Slovakia, you are dealing with a deeply pious community. Now at the Salzburg Conference of 1940, July the 28th, 1940, in beautiful, glittering Salzburg, where, of course, William spoke so cynically about, now let me take you Salzburg, the festival created by the brilliant Max Reinhart. The music, the Sound of Music. Well in that city, on July the 28th, 1940, Tiso, Mach, Tuka, and a man called Franz Karmasin, who was the leader of the local German minority, they decide to establish a national socialist state. And Dieter Wisliceny is going to help them do it. The Hlinka Guard was now modelled on the SS, they are the people who are going to enforce the anti-Jewish legislation.
They set up a special institute to facilitate it, and it’s attached to the offices of the Prime Minister. And what is the aim? To oust Jews from the economy, and to oversee the Aryanization of all Jewish property. This is going to be accomplished within a year. Remember there are 89,000 Jews now in Slovakia. 11,000 businesses were liquidated, and a further 2,000 were Aryanized. So in a way, it’s a total red herring. Accept, accept, accept. Back to the question I asked you before. Did the Inner Circle always intend to murder the Jews at this stage? Immigration was possible. What are they trying to do? Now, they’re robbing them. It’s also about greed, it’s about envy. And at this stage, of course, right up until Operation Barbarossa, and a little bit after in Austria and Germany, Operation Barbarossa, of course, was the summer of '41, Jews could get out. And then you have to look at Allied responsibility. I think one of the reasons Israel, and we’ll be talking about this a lot of, around Pesach time, one of the reasons Israel had to become militarily strong. It’s the psychology of all of this. Remember what Goldwyn Mayer said at the Evian conference? “The day will come, when no one will ever have to pity us again.” So on September the 26th, 1940, the Jewish Centre is established. It’s also to train Jews for physical work, to promote Jewish immigration from Slovakia, and to also oversee Jewish schools, Jewish charities, and to get as much money as possible out of the Jews.
The main branch, of course, was in Bratislava, but there were branches wherever there were centres of Jewish life. This is modern bureaucracy harnessed to evil. And of course, the other way they did it, they used the Jewish community, they set up, if you like, groups of Jews to oversee it. Heinrich Schwartz, who was Chairman of the Orthodox community, was appointed head of the centre, he was arrested for non-cooperation, and a more compliant person, Arpad Sebastian, who was a former Jewish principal at a school took over, and it’s at this stage though, that an underground working group was established quite early on, and they had been ousted for someone called Asha Neiman. And I’m going to talk more about the Slovak working group, because there is a group of people led by a female Zionist, called Gisi Fleischmann, a wonderful woman, and a rabbi called Rabbi Weisman, who are going to see, they’re going to see what they can do to try and save as many Jews of possible. Now in the summer of '41, with the invasion of Russia, you’ve got to remember, just as Hungary wouldn’t join with Hitler in war, whilst Hitler was allied to Stalin, think Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, now that he’s broken the alliance, Slovakia enters the war, and this is when anti-Jewish legislation escalates, and this is really when the door closes. Jews are forbidden to enter certain public places, they had to wear the yellow star, Jewish apartments had to have a star on them, Jewish male had to have the Star of David, every document had to have the Star of David.
The Star of David, to them, was a badge of shame. To the Jews, it’s going to become a badge of courage. By December, 1941, Jews are forbidden to congregate, there’s a terrible curfew, by March '42, 6,700 Jews are expelled from Bratislava, they’re sent east to Nyitra and right into the East, and all the departing, all the Jewish deporting, remember, is enthusiastically supported by the Slovak government. Now the Germans, on March the 29th, 1941, asked the Slovaks to supply 120,000 workers for Germany. And the Head of the Economics Department suggested, “Why don’t we supply you with Jews?” And it didn’t happen for a while, and at Vanze, when on January the 17th, 1942, 16 members of the Nazi Party, two-thirds of them lawyers, sat down and worked out the euphemistic “Final solution”, it was noted that the Slovaks would cooperate completely. You see, the murders had … Obviously many thousands of people had died in the ghettos, pogroms, starvation, horror, but it’s with the invasion of Russia that it begins in the summer of 1941. And that’s when the killings begin. For example, Babaya. As the German army sweeps east, and this is when of course the Slovaks and the Hungarians are happy to join them, because they’re against the evil Soviets, that’s when the killings begin. But it’s in January '42, that they decide that they’re going to use a more industrialised, as Himmler said in a letter, “A more humane matter.”
And it’s in mid-February '42 that the German Ambassador to Slovakia, a man called Ludin, called for 20,000 young Jews to build Jewish settlements. The Slovaks agreed, but in the correspondence, they were worried that the German plan might leave behind unproductive Jews, and they demanded of Ludin to please deport the whole community. And the Germans agreed. So this is the Slovak government asking for the deportation of the Jewish community. And on the 27th of March, 1942, the first trainload is sent East. The Nazis said, “We want 500 Reichsmarks for each departee to cover euphemistic vocational training.” So you have this extraordinary situation, where the Slovak government is paying 500 Reichsmarks, in the end, by June the 23rd, they paid the equivalent of $1.8 million to the Germans, if the Germans would guarantee that the Jews would never return to Slovakia, and Germany would make no further claim on Jewish property. It’s about greed, and envy, and evil. And remember, the Head of the government is a Catholic priest. Between March and October, 1942, 58,000 Slovakian Jews were transported to their deaths, mainly in Auschwitz and Majdanek. Jewish property was sold at low prices, given to the Slovak people, and sometimes it was distributed free in order to make certain elements of Slovakian society feel good about themselves. So you have this appalling situation, and then something very, very strange happened. I’ve talked about the Slovak Working Committee. They knew of the deportations, they knew what was going on, and what they wanted to do, they did everything they could to use anything they had, any contacts they had with good Catholics, any contacts they had with reasonable officials to try and succeed, to stop the deportations.
They also, this secret committee, the Slovak Working Party was brilliant at obtaining Aryan papers, and a small number of Jews were deemed useful to the economy, and they were granted certificates of exemption. The Slovak party, also this extraordinary group of people, they also would forge these certificates. The working group had a hand in much of the successful rescue. And between October, 1942, and August, 1944, they conducted negotiations to save the remaining Slovak Jews. Now they realised that they could bribe, and the man they bribed was in the main, Dieter Wisliceny. They managed to stop the deportations for a long period of time. They first gave $20,000, that stopped them for a while, because he got no more money, they continued again. But then they raised money, and the deportations actually stopped. Take this in, between October '42 and August '44. And not only that, this group sent reports of what was going on in the West. An extraordinary group of people, it’s known as the Auschwitz Protocol, Rudi Vrba, I’ve talked about him before, an extraordinary man, I had the honour of meeting him, he was a Slovakian Jew who had been sent to Auschwitz, a big, strong man, he had realised what was going on, and he was in a prisoner detail sorting possessions, he found a child’s atlas, he worked out where Auschwitz was, and he escaped with Anton Drexler, and the story of their escape, there’s books written about it, it’s quite extraordinary.
They’ve made their way back to Slovakia with the report. And they also reported that Auschwitz was being prepared for the welcoming of Hungarian Jews. They were building the railway lines right up to the crematorium. Now, they believed that once the news got out, then it would be over. But it didn’t happen like that. All these reports were sent to the West. And you know what happened. In the end, there was so much pressure that the Hungarian deportations were stopped for a while, but then of course, the Arrow Cross takeover. But the point is, this is the disappointment. You see Rudi Vrba, can you imagine he escaped from Auschwitz with all this information, there were other escapees. And he believed that once the world knew they would do something about it, they believed that at least the camps would be bombed. In fact, the Zionists in Palestine begged the Allies to bomb the camps. And one of the most peculiar stories is that Churchill gave the order to bomb a command and it was never received. We know also that the Americans said that it couldn’t be done. So would it have made any difference anyway? But the point is, from a Jewish point of view, saving Jews was certainly not a priority. So going back to what had happened in Slovakia, you’d have this period, the hotting up of the horror. All those nasty little laws setting the Jews apart, the robbing of them, and then the deportations of them, and then the standstill because of bribery. The bribing of Wisliceny, and also of Slovak officials, because I think it’s already illustrated to you that it’s about venality and about greed as much as hatred of the Jews. And then of course, there was an uprising. The uprising was absolutely extraordinary. It was the partisans, there was an independent Jewish partisan group, 200 of them were Jewish officers, there were parachutists that came in from Palestine, three of them unfortunately were killed in the uprising, but it did a lot for morale.
And basically, tragically, Stalin sent people in, but tragically it was not strong enough, and the uprising failed, and after the failure of the uprising, tragically, the deportations began again. And by March, 1945, another 13.500 Jews were deported to their deaths. Now the war comes to an end, Tiso fled to a Capuchin monastery in Bavaria, where of course he was taken in. June '45, he was arrested by the Americans, who returned him to the Czechs. And at his trial, and remember, between '45 and '48, there was a dream of Czech democracy, and I’ll be talking about that, when I talk about the Slansky trial next week. The trial. He was accused of being part responsible for the breakup of the Czech slate, creating a totalitarian fascist regime, for his involvement in the murder of the Jews, for his involvement in the foundation of the Hlinka Guard, and also the Hlinka youth, very much modelled on the SS youth, the destruction of democracy, torturing, imprisoning and killing … Damaging state finances, inciting anti-Jewish hatred, approving the deportation of the Jews, and paying the Nazis for it, and also delivering prisoners of war to their death. He was found guilty of treason, he appealed to Benes, head of the state, for clemency. He didn’t give it, but he insisted on being executed, and wearing his clerical outfit, and he was hanged on April the 18th, 1947. As I said, Tuka was also executed. Now what happened to those Slovak Jews who survived? More tragically, those who went back, there were about thousand of them survived.
Some had been in hiding. There were Slovakian partisans, and there was a Jewish partisan brigade, some of them had managed to hide, some of them had Aryan papers, but when they went home, it wasn’t home anymore. There was a lot of ill treatment, there were pogroms, there were murders, and after the creation of the communist state, which I will talk about, the majority of the survivors of Slovakian Jews actually made it to Israel. So the home of the Chasam Sofer, the home of a vibrant Jewish community is no more. And that’s the story of the Jews, isn’t it? We regroup, but now I think there’s a huge change, and this is something we’re going to really begin to explore over Pesach and after Pesach, you know, the impact of the show on the Jewish world. Because from this terrible, terrible tragedy, which I still believe the impact of it has not fully been felt, either on the Jewish world, or on the outside world. And then of course, three years later, the creation of the Jewish state, which is still … Let’s not talk about the wars and rights or wrong, and yet is still problematic for many sections of the Western world. And so just another tragic episode in the ongoing story of the Jews, according of course to one of my favourite historians of all time, Simon Dubnow, that wonderful man, he said, “We go along, we attract, we repel, we take from civilization, we give to civilization. That is the destiny of the Jewish people.” Thank you very much. Sad to give, again, a very tough lecture in such tough times, but I do believe knowledge is what helps us all. It helps me. Although it was very difficult to give and receive this lecture. So let’s see.
Q&A and Comments:
Stefanik, thank you, Tommy, Uzhhorod is now in the Ukraine. Yes, of course. All these areas change around.
Tim Abrahams “What you were saying about language, that’s what I love about the English language, it’s spoken in lots of countries, and still no one knows what other people are talking about. To make it even more complicated, there’s even Irish English phrases, which are different again.” Yes, what was it Churchill said about “England and America are two great nations divided by a common language.”
This is from Johnny. “I worked with B'nai B'rith for the UK government in Slovakia in 1991. I experienced active antisemitism, and people said our life was better under Father Tiso.” You see, one of the other problems, communism comes very quickly into Slovakia. Under Stalin and under the communists, none of these countries were really denazified, because they had to build a society, who’s going to decide who was a fascist, and who wasn’t a fascist? We’re all one people now. And the other to make a lot of the leadership of these parties, ironically, were people of Jewish birth. The irony of our people, limited constantly, enduring and successful. Yeah. “In the 1920s, were there any denominations other than Orthodox …” Neolog, yes. Which is a sort of … It’s not exactly reform, it’s Orthodox, but it introduced many, for example, the sermons were shorter, and I think the sermons were in the native language, there was an organ, there was a choir. It’s a particularly Hungary thing.
This is Ziggy. “My parents, my father’s parents were secular Jews, very knowledgeable living in Pilsen, members and supporters of B'nai B'rith.” That done came out in '39. His parents died, of course, but that’s to the West, isn’t it, Ziggy? You see, in the Czech part, and in certain parts of Slovakia, there were secular Jews. So the further East you go, the more religious, and of course, yes, parents supporters of the neighbourhood. Yet the Zionist were very active, and I should have stressed this, the Joint was incredibly active in Eastern Europe. One of the problems of raising bribes and money, by the way, is they needed money from the West. The Americans would not allow money to go to occupied Europe. The Joint played all sorts of games, one of the reasons we believe that Wallenberg was arrested, the excuse was that he was working for the Joint. He probably was, but that’s no excuse. The Joint was an extraordinary organisation. And funnily enough, when we were teaching in the Ukraine, ironically in for Ithra, I-T–H-R-A, we worked with the Joint, because we had international money, and the joint was the organisation we found its safest to deposit money with. And they were incredibly active, as is World Jewish Relief in all these countries. For Sudetenland, read Donbas and Crimea, yeah.
Q: This is “Harriet from Toronto, from the Atlas. Does the Sudetenland border around Czechoslovakia, look disturbingly like the Russian border from Donbas to Crimea about Ukraine?”
A: The problem, Harriet, is we haven’t solved the model of the cracking of the Habsburg Empire, the Czarist Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. If you look at the Middle East, for example, the countries that we now know did not exist. They were administrative areas, yes there were cities like Damascus, and Beirut, and Jerusalem, but there were not the countries. Now it’s very complicated. I don’t really want to get into it now, but the creation of nationalisms out of empires, look, it was about 100 years ago, and we’re still living with the problem. Ukrainian nationalism, a created construct, doesn’t mean it isn’t true today.
Q: What ultimately happened to the land, that the Czech Republican and Slovakia lost. Did they get the land back?
A: Well, the problem was, Tim, enter the Soviets, enter Stalin. Stalin played a blinder. He got all the way East, from the East to the West. Think of Germany divided up.
Q: Why on earth did the West allow Austria not to be denazified?
A: Because we need it as a buffer against communism, that doesn’t go away. Fire tablet. “On Thursday night, our synagogue in London is hosting a Zoom session, with the Slovak Jewish Federation, Rabbi Misha Kapustin.
Q: What is happening on the ground breaking supporting Ukrainian refugees?”
A: That’s fascinating, yeah. And we are having a presentation with, of course, Wendy being Wendy is really involved in the Ukraine through IsraAID, and I believe that there’s going to be a lecture on that.
This is from Dagmar. “Chatam Sofer Memorial in Bratislava is Jewish heritage site, remained part of centuries-old Jewish cemetery that was destroyed, 23 restored gravestones surrounding the preserved Chatam Sofer tomb are located in underground memorial.” Yes, that’s very important. It was a very, very important site. A friend of mine, his grandfather went to the Pressburg yeshiva. And for him, that gave him huge honour. It was the special place, the Chatam Sofer was one of the great pillars of orthodoxy. He hated modernity. He thought it would be the end of the Jewish people.
Q: Again, Ted is saying, “Cessation of Donbas Crimea would look much like Sudetenland if Russia offered this price to withdraw from the Ukraine, would you accept it like Chaplain did, or keep struggling to expel Russia, sacrificing Ukrainians and still risk losing? Did you say Tiso was from …”
A: I don’t really want to answer that. It’s too complicated and too deep, and honestly, I don’t know, because … And … I don’t know, I think it’s an extraordinary story. You know what I really think? When the West pulled out of Afghanistan without any real thought, it opened a flashing light for Russia, and also for China.
Did I say Tiso was from Slovakia? Yes, why was he in the Czech Parliament? No, because Czechoslovakia, in 1918, it became one country. And of course in the liberal Czech parliament, you had representatives at the Slovak Nationals Party, in the Austrian parliament before the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, you had every party, you had the Czech party, you had the Serbian. Any group, there were Zionist representatives, yes, Jonathan, under the Tiso regime, Jews became a commodity, bought and sold by Slovaks, and German money actually changing hands. Yes. One of the problems was that though characters like Rudi VBar, when they brought information back to the West, and …
Q: And Rabbi Weissmandl always believed that people could have been bribed, they believed Hungarian jury was betrayed, and the problem was, it was, but by who? Czechoslovakian jury, but by whom? Why do you think we are so hated? Aha. Have you got 25 hours?
A: So I shortcut it for you. It’s theological, mainly, I think, you don’t find anti-Jewish prejudice in China or in Hindu, India, I believe it’s almost mystical. It’s this tiny religion, this monotheism, which is taken on by both Christianity and Islam, they both see themselves as the successors, and that they’ve superseded, and not only that, with Christianity, Jesus was completely dejudaized, and we are guilty of the day aside, the killing of God. Now that I do not believe that every non-Jew, every Christian believes that. However, it’s so deep in the culture. And what it did was to force Jews, because Christianity spread like wildfire for all sorts of reasons, and in fact, Helen Fry gave four brilliant presentations on this, and you can get them if you write in to Lauren, and basically Church law forced the Jews into artificial occupation patterns, like money lending, like merchanting, so you have the double-edged sword, and also we have this huge tradition of learning, so when we become into the modern world, we become too successful. Now there’s normally two reasons for Jew-hatred.
Let’s see what Julian says. “Hatred of God and anything seen as represents Him.” Hitler’s hatred of “Jewish consciousness”, he called it, envy, jealousy, yes. There’s also a milder form, the fear of people who are different, foreign, alien. Yes, I think that’s a very interesting debate. I have lectured a lot, Julian, on antisemitism, and I think you can get it online, and of course you obviously know a lot about it. I’m reading, I will be giving a special set of class on the protocols of the elders of Zion. Yes. Yes, Tiso was selling Jews.
Yes, Tommy. Yes, Marcia, Rebecca Sieff was one of the main founders of WISO. Yes, of course I forgot. And that was very rude of me, particularly as her granddaughter, I hope, is listening. And this is when Vera Weizmanm visited South Africa with her husband, she proposed the creation of WISO in South Africa working. However, the Women’s Zionist Organisation of South Africa was created.
Yes, of course, Rebecca Sieff, and of course her granddaughter is usually online, and I apologise for that. Yes. And of course, Gisi Fleischmann, who was one of the main people in the working group that saved Jews. She was, you know, when they realised, when the partisan revolt failed, they begged her to go into hiding. She actually went on the last train, to Auschwitz and was gassed. She was a member of the Women’s Zionist Organisation, an incredibly brave, passionate woman. Rabbi Weissmandl also was deported, but he managed to jump off the train. He lost his whole family. He broke his leg. He was actually saved on Kassner’s train. He went to America, and he reconstituted his yeshiva. He was an interesting man, Rabbi Weissmandl. He had worked at the body, and he was a great scholar, but very anti-Zionist.
Ah, yes. Dagmar, Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl, and his cousin Gisi Fleischmann established known as the working group. I called it the working group, Dagmar, because I don’t trust my pronunciation. Yes, of course, they smuggled hundreds of children across the border. I have talked about them in the past, and I think at some stage, I want to start giving more presentations with my colleagues on the righteous ones. The righteous and the rescuers. We mentioned them from time to time, but I think the future, as far as I’m concerned, is getting inside their DNA. Now Dov Weissmandl and Gisi Fleischmann were cousins, but politically, and they were so far apart.
Yes, Dagmar is saying “He was the first European leader.” Yes, of course I mentioned that. Yes, now this is it, my … Now. Shesla Mordovich, my father, and Aunt Rosen escaped from Auschwitz, May, oh my goodness, May the 27th, 1944.
Yes, of course, Dagmar, so that is your father. As I said, four people escaped from Auschwitz. That is absolutely extraordinary. Can you get in contact with me, if you don’t mind, through lockdown Dagmar, I’d love to hear from you. Yes, it was sent to everyone. I looked at this when I looked at the Kassler affair. So your father, this group of ours is absolutely mind-blowing. I’m so privileged, I can’t tell you.
This is from Miriam. I escaped from Kosice, Slovakia as a five-year-old with my parents, after he’d escaped from a slave labour camp on the run in hiding through seven countries, headed to Lisbon, Portugal. Dr. Miriam Klein Kassanof, Miami Beach, Florida. Oh my God. Oh, Miriam. We go back, we reconstitute, and we go on.
This is Arlene. “My great-aunt was born in an upper middle class Jewish family in Czechoslovakia. Her sister was transported to England with a kindertransport.” She became a barista after being adopted by wonderful people. My great aunt was younger, and kept by her parents. She was sent to Dr. Mengele, fortunately survived. You see the spirit of these people, I mean, we heard Eva Clarke last night. What an extraordinary woman her mother was. What an extraordinary woman Eva is. They’re the people we should look at, the people who know how to survive, and to make the world a better place. You know what Wistrich used to say to me, only if liberalism becomes militant.
This is from Golden. “Rudi Vbra and my father knew each other from Canada. Of course he was, Canada in Auschwitz was the area, where the Canada, because it’s the place of dreams, it’s where they sorted possessions, it was seen as a good place to work. They reunited here in Toronto. He was like an uncle to me. Truly lovely, intelligent man.” If you would get in touch, I don’t know your first name, I’d love to know more about Rudi Vrba, as I said, I had the honour of meeting him, I’ve read his book. He was a very, very angry man. Wouldn’t you have been?
This is from Veronica. “My parents survived in hiding in Slovakia. I live in London and present to schools and adult organisations, their story and the survival, and merger of other close family members.” Veronica’s saying, “My parents were helped by rescuers.”
And this is Tommy. “My mother, Tanya, was one of the Jewish parliament … Pregnant with … My mother, Tanya was one of the Jewish parliaments, pregnant, she did get a medal for being with the partisans. My grandmother and 30 members of my family were murdered in Auschwitz. I only have one relative left in Slovakia.” That’s from Nadia.
Sylvia, “In Bratislava, the number four bus was the destination board in the front of the bus showing Chatam Sofer, when I was there, three-years-old.” Oh, that is so amusing. I wonder if the people who get on the bus know what they’d mean when they’re going to Chatam Sofer. “I saw a number of yeshiva students in Bratislava on Shabbat in October. We survive in you.” Sure. Uman in the Ukraine. “I remember going out there one year, and we were teaching and we had dinner at the rabbi’s house. He ran the Joint, but we on the plane were all these rabbonim going to Uman to worship at the tomb of the Dead Rabbi. They call him the Dead Rabbi, because he had no descendants, and he had no sons, rather.
Oh, this is from Dagmar "I grew up in the presence of the four Auschwitz escapees, for Vbra, Mitzvah, Rosen and Sheslha Mordovich, my father, I remember Rudi Vbra visited our apartment in Bratislava to say goodbye, before he left for Israel. In '89, I had the honour of visiting Vbra’s mother, Helena Eisfeld, actually known as Tante Hella in Bratislava. Dr. Tatiana Vetzler was a dear childhood friend. I left Bratislava in 1965.” Dagmar, please get in touch with me with more information. This is priceless. Thank you so much.
Yes, this is from JL Slander, “Sub-Carpathia was the centre of Hasidic publishing, yet produced many Manhattan project physicists.” Yes, I know. Isn’t it extraordinary? We go on, we repel, and we attract, we repel, and we attract.
This is from Nanette. “I didn’t learn much about eastern countries when I went to school, born a few years after World War II, our history lesson stopped at the World War II. History teacher didn’t know how to address it. I grew up in Switzerland.” I’m not surprised they don’t know how to address it in Switzerland. Switzerland has an awful lot to answer for.
“When I was about eight or nine, my grandfather had a boarder from Czechoslovakia. She explained the number on her arm was a lucky number, because it kept her alive. She eventually moved to California, where she lived a good life.”
Now, Tony, I would like to address the phrase “Churchill gave the order to bomb Auschwitz, but the order was never received.” Now this is really, really complicated. I know about this, because Martin Gilbert and Rex Bloomstein, who presents on our programme, Martin Gilbert wrote a book called “Auschwitz and the Allies.” He was also Churchill’s official biographer. And Rex made the film “Auschwitz and the Allies”, and there is a letter that Churchill sent to Eden, where he tells him to bomb the camp, all right? Churchill never followed it up. But the letter exists. And Rex interviewed the head of the formal command, fascinating interview, and it’s in the book, and it’s also on film. Of course, they’re all dead now. This film was made in the '80s, and he said, “I never received the order.”
Now, could we dig deeper? Well, we know a lot about the foreign office, and saving Jews was certainly not a priority, but we do know that Churchill gave the order, which he didn’t follow up, okay? It’s a complicated story, because it detracts from the perpetrators, but on the other hand, the Allies do have, they have many questions to answer, which I am trying, going to try and deal with, when I look at post-liberation and the creation of Israel.
So Tony, it’s a very important phrase it’s very important, your story, what you’re asking about. “Auschwitz and the Allies” by Martin Gilbert and also Richard Rubenstein, the question or his book, not Richard Rubenstein, sorry, can’t remember the story, and I think it’s Rubenstein, but not Rich. Look it up online. There’s quite a few books on it now. Could the camp have been bombed, would it have made any difference is another point. But we know that the Allies were constantly being asked to bomb. And after Vbra got out with Vexra, and as we’ve just found out, one of our listeners, her father, they did beg, letters and letters were sent to the West, knowledge was pouring through. And it’s interesting 'cause Wendy said the other night, when she was in conversation with Eli Visso’s son, Eli Visso always said, he never knew. Now Hungarian jury didn’t know, or did they? Who knew? And would you believe it anyway? We know the Slovakian working group knew, because they acted on it, and they did manage to bribe people.
Q: “So when the Jews returned from the county, where did they live since their properties were taken?”
A: Well, that was the problems.
Susanna, they were greeted so hostilely, that many of them just got out. And once the Communists came in, you know, I mean, they put up at hotels, there’s a terrible story in Kielce, where they put up in a hostel, because, and they were murdered. That was in Poland.
Q: Why do people say Ukraine?
A: Yes, you are right. That is very irritating of me. I will say Ukraine. Not me.
Marion’s being very sweet. “However hard it is to pass on such shocking history, please keep up the work.” Yeah, I must tell you, because we’re a family now, if you knew the headache I get when I’m preparing this work, I just think, you know, I’m a grandmother too, and we have a duty to try and make it a better place, don’t we? And on that note, I know that Rabbi Rosen is speaking at seven, and you’re all going to need a cup of tea, so those of you who’ve got this important information, please send it to me, because once the website is up, and it will be up in the summer, with your permission, we want to think of ways of using all this information, so it’s there for people. I was lecturing to a group of 16 to 18-year-olds the other night, and for friends of mine, 30 kids, they don’t know any of this, and it’s so important they know who they are, and who they come from. So on that note, I wish you all a good night, I’m not lecturing on Thursday, but you’ve got a superb presentation from Eli Rosenbaum, who was a Nazi hunter. And he’s going to, he wrote the book on the Waldheim affair. And we’re very lucky to have him, because he now works for the US Justice Department, and I know how busy he is. So he’s lecturing on Thursday, but I’ll be back next Tuesday, talking about the Slansky trial, which will kind of round off Czechoslovakia for us. So I wish you all safety, and Judi, thank you again for the slides, I’m so sorry I got you in a muddle again, or I got me in the muddle.
That’s okay, Trudy.
All right, no problem.
Thank you, thank you to everybody, bye-bye, stay safe. Bye-bye.
Bye.