The Exiles and the Situation in Nazi Europe

Abstract

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.