A Jewish Ode to the Czech Republic | Page 8

In March 1939 , the Nazis occupied what were known as the Czech Lands and renamed them the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . Slovakia , declaring its independence , established a pro-Nazi regime under Father Jozef Tiso . The rest of the country was also dismembered — Ruthenia was handed over to Hungary , the Silesian region given to Poland .
In other words , by the time the first shot of the Second World War was fired , when German troops invaded Poland on September 1 , 1939 , what had been Czechoslovakia was already under total Nazi domination .
The war took a terrible toll on the entire nation . One story , perhaps , dramatized the times .
In September 1941 , Reinhard Heydrich was named as the Reichsprotektor , the top Nazi in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . ( Heydrich was also one of the architects of the Nazi Final Solution .) Eight months later , he was assassinated by Czech resistance fighters . In retaliation , Nazi forces wiped out two entire villages — Lidice and Lezaky . In Lidice , 339 men were murdered , the women and children sent to concentration camps . In Lezaky , 54 men , women , and children were killed . In both cases , the villages themselves were destroyed , including churches and cemeteries . And the reprisals didn ’ t stop there ; hundreds of others were arrested and killed .
For the Jewish community , the war exacted a massive cost . There were approximately 118,000 Jews in Bohemia and Moravia , including Jewish refugees who had fled the German-dominated Sudetenland . Of these , 26,000 , mostly those with family members abroad or sufficient financial resources , managed to leave . Eighty thousand of the remaining 90,000 Jews were deported to Terezin , a fortress town an hour ’ s drive from Prague that was built by Emperor Josef II in the late eighteenth century . ( Incidentally , Josef II , the son of Empress Maria Teresa , was considered a hero by Jews , as he allowed them to leave the ghetto , avail themselves of free education , and practice Judaism without interference .) The town itself was turned into a ghetto and transit camp , first for Czech Jews , later for Jews from other countries as well . In Terezin , 30,000 Jews died , mostly of hunger , disease , and exposure . The rest were eventually deported . Only 10,000 Czech Jews returned home from the camps after the war .
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