The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 3/The Jewish Question

Jews in the Czechoslovak Republic constitute a class of citizens whose relation to the Christian majority still lacks much of being satisfactory.

Jews residing in the lands of our Republic do not get along with their Christian neighbors as well as they do in the West of Europe, in England and America; there persist misunderstandings and quarrels between adherents of the Christian and Jewish faiths, disagreements that gave rise to the so-called Czech-Jewish question in the lands of the former Bohemian crown; now, after the reunion of Slovakia, we have with us also the Slovak-Jewish question, more difficult still.

The Jewish element in the Czechoslovak Republic is an influential factor, not only because of the large number of Jews, but especially because of their powerful social and economic position.

This will be made clear by a few figures; they make no pretension to scientific exactness, for the war and the great changes consequent upon it, destroying some states and creating others, affecting not only political, but social and economic questions as well, make themselves felt in the composition of the citizenship of our Republic. This naturally includes the relation of Jews and Christians, both with regards to numbers and to their respective economic strength. It will, however, give us a basis of figuring, if we use data from the census of 1900 and 1910.

In all Cisleithania, that is to say, the western half of the former Dual Monarchy, there lived in 1900 a Jewish population of approximately 1,225,000, or 4.68% of the entire population. In Bohemia there were 93,000, or 1.47% in 1900 (in 1910 less than 86,000); in Moravia about 45,000, or 1.82%, and in former Austrian Silesia about 12,000, or 1.76% of the total population.

As to the number of Jews in Slovakia before the war I have no data, nor will it be easy to determine their number at the close of the war, for the union of Slovakia with the Czechoslovak Republic induced many Jewish citizens of the former Hungarian state to migrate into the present Magyar state.

The total number of Jews in the former kingdom of Hungary was, according to the census of 1910, over 850,000, or 4% of the population. Between two hundred and two hundred and fifty thousand of them have become citizens of our Republic, so that the total number of Jews living in the Czechoslovak Republic is from 350,000 to 400,000.

For a proper appreciation of their significance in the state we must pay attention to their social and economic position.

Jewish proletariat, in the sense in which it is found in Galicia and in all Polish and Russian countries, is non-existent in our Republic. Here the Jews are found almost exclusively among the middle classes, and they even hold a position of importance in great industry and high finance. For the most part they live in cities.

For many years the Jews have been migrating from the villages to large cities, or at least country towns; their reasons have been both economic and social. Thus they numbered in Prague in 1910 about 19,000, and in the suburbs over 8,000, in Brno about 5,500; out of some 12,000 Silessian Jews, a great majority live in Těšín, Fryštát and Bílsko.

The percentage of Jews making their living in agriculture was 4.97% in Bohemia and 4.55% in Moravia. In 1900, 4,600 Jews in Bohemia followed agriculture, 19,319 industry, 47,543 commerce and 21,275 the professions. The percentage of Jews among agricultural workers was only 0.2 in Bohemia, 0.5 in Moravia, 1 in all Austria; among industrial workers, 0.7 in Bohemia, 1.3 in Moravia, 5 in all Austria; among commercial workers, 7% in Bohemia, almost 10 in Moravia and 20.5 in all Austria. These figures bring out well the great importance of the Jewish element in commerce.

Engaged in independent enterprise were 59.16% of the Jews in Bohemia, 58.51% in Moravia and 52.9 in Austria (Cisleithania). Among the higher state officials the percentage of Jews was 15.71 in Bohemia, 14.69 in Moravia and 9.6 in Austria.

​In Slovakia economic and social conditions were still more favorable for the Jews, for there, as in all Hungary, the Jews were the vanguard of Magyarization, a fate which only a man well versed in the complicated internal politics of the defunct monarchy can understand.

At any rate, the Magyar government is sued liquor licenses almost exclusively to the Jews and backed their candidates for autonomous corporations and parliament.

Karel Kálal, the best informed man in Bohemia on Slovak things and a man who cannot be called prejudiced against the Jews, charges them with evil economic influences, especially usury, practiced by the innkeepers or liquor dealers.

Jews in Slovakia controlled the money market, for in 1905 there were only 21 Slovak financial institutions as against 133 Jewish-Magyar. In Magyar journalism there were in 1905 about 90 Jews active in Budapest; out of 40 book publishers, 30 were Jews; out of 60 book sellers, 40 Jews; out of 38 second-hand book stores, 32 Jewish. The proportion has not changed since.

In agriculture the Jews have the upper hand in Slovakia, both as owners and as renters of large estates. Commerce and industry has been and still is almost exclusively in their hands. The Slovaks, who are largely small farmers and agricultural laborers, were compelled before the world war to migrate across the ocean by reason of lack of land and work. As against that native-born Jews in Slovakia were strengthened in numbers by heavy immigration of Galician Jews, whose low cultural lever exerted an evil influence.

In big industry and commerce Jews to some extent made up for their noxious influence in other respects by giving employment in their factories and shops to the laborer. As dealer and manufacturer, the Jew in Slovakia has never been, and is not now, a worse employer than the Christian; but he is a better expert, with greater patience and courtesy for his customers, with a better knowledge of their psychology. What the anti-semites call Jewish immorality is merely commercial efficiency, which we so greatly praise in Americans.

Kálal in his instructive book “Slovakia and the Slovaks”, written in 1905, places the blame for the decadence of the Slovak nation on Jews, Magyrization and country squires who turned Magyars and received as a reward official posts. Some of the blame should go to the educated Slovaks who to some extent abandoned their people. They did not furnish an example of national pride and self-sacrifice to the Jews of Slovakia. It is, of course, necessary in this connection to keep in mind Magyar oppression of which a stranger can form no adequate conception.

If the Jews in Slovakia as a whole have not furthered Slovak interests, in the Bohemian lands their economic activity has helped the Czechs in spite of claims to the contrary; it furnished employment to the workingmen, prevented emigration and played a fair game even where the Jews politically sided with the Germans. It is true, however, that Jewish employers since the eighth decade of the last century no longer served German denationalizing efforts.

They were also good instructors of their Christian neighbors in commercial and industrial enterprise; their modern agricultural methods, especially in Southern Bohemia, have been a real blessing to Czech farmers, in the judgment of Dr. Alfred Mayer, a young expert in political economy.

Statistics as to the number and increase of Jews in the Bohemian lands are of considerable interest. In Silesia their number has tripled in the course of half a century, just as in the entire Austrian half of the former Dual Monarchy. But in Bohemia and Moravia it has not kept pace with the growth of the population ever since the middle of the last century, and in the last two decades their number has actually decreased.

In 1857 they formed 1.82% of the population of Bohemia, in 1900 only 1.47%; in Moravia 2.21% in 1857 and only 1.82% in 1910. After 1910 the decrease was even more startling. Even in Silesia the increase of Jews is below the general increase of the population. This is to some small extent acounted for by change of religion, to a much larger extent by migration to other parts of the former empire, especially Vienna, and by smaller birth rate, a phenomenon general among families of the middle classes.

From the national or language point of view figures on the Jewish population are as follows: In Slovakia only about 12,000 Jews adhered to the Slovaks. In Bohemia ​according to the census of 1900 over 50,000 Jews gave their language as Czechs, that is to say 55%; in Moravia less than 7,000 and in Silesia only 263.

Anti-Semitic movement aimed against the Jewish element of the citizenship of the Republic is gaining strength since the end of the war. In Slovakia this fact is readily comprehended even by the stranger, because of the comparatively large number of the Jews, their Magyar or German sentiments, and their great strength in industrial life. The powerful Slovak anti-semitism is in addition fanned by clericalism, mainly Catholic, which exerts great influence over the Slovak people.

But the stranger will find it difficult to comprehend Czech anti-semitism, especially in Bohemia, where Catholic clericalism was never strong, principally because in the Czech people and among the educated classes especially there was preserved a memory of Hussitism, Bohemian Brethren and the Protestant Reformation with their great significance for national regeneration. When we further recall the small number of Jews in the Bohemian lands and their beneficial economic activities, we would expect a gradual disappearance of inherited anti-semitism among the Czech people who like the Slovaks are not combative, and strong only in passive resistance to external oppresion.

And yet anti-semitism is no stranger among the Czechs and burst out on several occasions; so after the overthrow of Austrian rule and the birth of our Republic several regrettable manifestations of it occurred, although the outbreaks were never and nowhere near as barbarous as the recent Polish pogroms or the Russian pogroms under the czarist regime. Czech anti-semitism is to be explained principally by the strong national sentiment of the people, not by racial antagonism. Of course the inherited medieval anti-semitism was nurtured during the Austrian era by various influences, above all by Catholic clericalism and by the famous Austrian principle “divide et impera”; for in spite of the hypocritical motto of the late Francis Joseph “viribus unitis” the old regime worked by setting a nation against nation and class against class. And so in the end even German anti-semitism was received in the Bohemian lands and welcomed as authoritative.

Czech national anti-semitism is about half a century old. It made its appearance together with the creation of a political national organization after 1848 and it grew in the days of the worst political persecution of the German-Austrian governments after the introduction of dualism. Sedan added fuel to it. As German hegemony in Austria grew weaker, so did anti-semitism lose strength, but it burst out suddenly in 1897 and 1899 in the so-called Hilsner affair of which more will be said later, and again after the revolution of October 28, 1918. But it has reached the zenith and we may expect a permanent weakening of it.

This national Czech anti-semitism charges the Jews in the Bohemian lands that from times immemorial they stood by the Germans and that they opposed national re-birth. This charge can only partially be supported by proof and in a sweeping form, as generally used by the anti-semites, it is quite untrue.

It is enough to point briefly to the history of the Jews in the Czech lands. The Jews were settled here, and in Slovakia as well, for many centuries; they were here long before German colonists came and even before the Magyars a thousand years ago invaded the Hungarian plain.

In Bohemia and Moravia there were Jews in the very first days of Christianity. The Raffenstetten agreement as to duties and tolls specifies in 904 what duties the Jews have to pay in the markets of the Moravian empire. In Prague Jews were known as early as the pagan days. Ibrahim Ibn Jakub mentions in 965 Jews in Prague who came from the Turkish land (namely Hungary) with Byzantinian and Arabian merchandise.

Their oldest settlements were established under the Prague and Vyšehrad castles, and the wealth of Jewish merchants and money changers was early famous

Later they settled in other places in the Bohemian lands. King Přemysl Otokar II, assigned to them in Prague a permanent settlement which grew into the Jewish quarter with many synagogues, among them the famous gothic old-new synagogue, and the memorable old Jewish cemetery.

Little research has been undertaken so far into the origin of Jews who settled in Czech lands and in Slovakia. The first Jews ​of which some knowledge has come down from the days of the Bohemian princes came to these parts apparently from Byzance and from Italy. It is pretty certain that they were southeastern Jews, “Sephardim”. Later Jewish immigrants were men who had been driven from Spain and Portugal and settled in Holland, also “Sephardim”; then came the Jews from Germany and in the later days mostly from Poland, racially different from the first, the so-called “Ashkenazim”. They are hardly true descendants of the Palestinian Jews. The further we go east into Slovakia, the more evident is the kinship of the Jews now living in the Republic, with the Polish Jews.

What the mother-togue of the “Sephardim” was it is now impossible to say. But the “Ashkenazim” brought with them undoubtedly the German-Hebrew dialect; but that was of course in the 14th century.

In the earlier times the Jews settled here adhered strongly to the Czech culture, if not socially, at least as far as language was concerned. In the old Prague Jewish cemetery we find on the tomb stones many Czech names down to the 16th century. The chronicle of the Prague Jewish congregation, writen by Rabbi Moses Ramschak in the 17th century, tells among other things of an audience of the Jewish elders before one of the Czech kings, perhaps Vladislav II.; it appears that the elders of all the congregations could not attend, as they knew only Czech, while the audience was held in German.

Through the generosity of the late Boh. Bondy, president of the Prague Chamber of Commerce, the court archive keeper published in 1906 sources for the history of the Jews in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia from 906 to 1620.

This work contains 1346 documents and reports which throw much light on the history of the Jews in the Bohemian lands. When the Czech nationality was flourishing, the Jews too became assimilated to their Czech environment and used the Czech language as their mother tongue. The downfall of the nation of course affected the use of Czech among the Jews. Germanization which was most successful in the cities was bound to influence the Jews who lived mostly in the cities, the more so, as German colonists gradually took over many Czech cities and at the same time Jews immigrating from Germany and Poland brough with them their common German- Yiddish dialect; gradually the old-stock Jews adopted it also. Joseph II. who extended many economic measures of relief to the Jews was also a fervent champion of Germanization. Against Jewish opposition he introduced the German language into their schools as the language of instruction; in his reign, too, Jewish family names were Germanized—forced upon them.

But Germanization of the Jews was only external. When the Napoleonic period created the idea of nationality, even the Jews felt its influence. It came to them in the guise of toleration from France by way of Germany, where Moses Mendelsohn in spite of indignation of the orthodox translated the Bible into German. The German Bible, then Hebrew-German prayer books, the humanitarian influence of Herder, the works of German poets and philosophers completed the internal Germanization of Jews in the Bohemian lands.

The era of Joseph marked the beginning of liberation for the Jews. His enlightenment became in their minds identified with his Germanizing efforts, and as a result the German culture which was then free of nationalistic superiority and imperrialistic jingoism was adopted completely by Jews in Bohemia. This process was so much simpler, because the 6ld Czech culture stunned by the catastrophe of the White Mountain was then just beginning to revive.

When the constitutional era came, Jewish energy held down for centuries was freed of all restrictions and was employed naturally along the lines most fitted to Jewish Ghetto education, namely commerce, industry and learned professions—journalism, medicine, law, etc. All these lines were ruled by German language and German spirit. When the Bach absolutist regime collapsed in 1859, German liberalism came to the helm. The leaders of it realized, what an efficient help they could have in Jews against the growing Czech national opposition; through favors extended the Jews were actually won.

After the realization of dualism Magyar oligarchy in Hungary adopted the same procedure toward the Jews. In both German and Magyar journalism Jews acquired an ever-growing influence, and with true ​Jewish thoroughness they became the most devoted advocates of Germanization and Magyarization. They established the notorious financial German-Jewish and Magyar-Jewish press which for so long controlled public opinion in the Hapsburg empire.

Czech journalism, on the other hand, having realized the weight of this Jewish activity poured out its hatred against all Jewry, often quite unfairly; this is so to some extent even today.

The fact that the Czechs demanded the re-establisment of their historical rights with the help of feudal nobility and Catholic hierarchy tended to add strength to the Czech anti-semitism. Not till the state rights hopes of Czech politicians had suffered disappointment and a spirit of liberalism and progress made itself felt in national politics, was there a change in the sentiments of Bohemian Jews; those living in Czech districts began to favor the Czech cause, and a movement arose favoring assimilation and known as Czech Judaism.

The first herald of this tendency was the poet and physician Siegfried Kapper (1821–1879) who wrote both Czech and German. Even German-Jewish authors born in Bohemia, Moric Hartman and Otto Frankl, were favorable, at least in the earlier days of their literary activity, to Czech national renaissance.

But a firm direction to the Czech-Jewish movement was given by the foundation of the Society of Czech Jewish Academical Students forty years ago. The work of the society was done by personal propaganda of Czech culture in Jewish families, by social contact; other organizations with a similar aim were founded, a weekly paper was started under the name of Czech-Jewish Gazette, and an annual was regularly published by the students’ society with valuable literary contributions. Even the best known Christian authors have been contributors to this annual from its foundation down to the present 38th volume.

Leaders of the Czech-Jewish movement undertook a campaign against German-Jewish confessional (private) schools with such success that in Bohemia at least it ended in complete victory.

The Czech-Jewish movement made itself felt significtantly in political struggles; through the help of the Jewish votes the Czechs captured three decades ago three chambers of commerce and industry, corporations of great economic significance. In Moravia, too, this movement exerted a powerful influence, although here the close neighborhood of Vienna and the lack of strong national positions in the Moravian capital made fight with Germanization more difficult.

If the Czech-Jewish movement cannot show even greater results during the last forty years, the blame must be laid at the door of that part of Czech journalism that could not get rid of its demagogic anti-semitism. These anti-semitic papers are headed by the clerical press. But in spite of attacks Czech-Jewish work gained new successes every year, especially after Prof. Masaryk, now the president, by his indefatigable and noble work began to impress his personality upon the life of the nation, and after he had founded the progressive party, small in numbers, but great in influence.

The Czech-Jewish movement thus saw the fruits of its long labors ripening, when suddenly a new wave of unreasoning anti-semitism swept over the country.

In 1897, after a brief period of a regime somewhat more just to the Austrian Slavs, Germans supported by Magyar and Prussian influences got the upper hand again, and the Czechs were driven into bitter opposition. This anger of the Czech nation manifested itself in anti-Jewish riots. But in 1899 a much more serious calamity overtook the Jews in the Czech lands. Near the small city of Polna in Bohemia, close by the Moravian boundary line, a young girl Anezka Hruzova was found dead. Soon a man named Leopold Hilzner, Jew, without education and almost a tramp, was arrested charged with murdering the girl. Immediately the tale of ritual murder appeared, and so heated became the public opinion in Bohemia about this case that with few exceptions all Czech newspapers sided with those who believed in ritual murder.