RE: [Cz-L] Jewish WWI refugees in Bohemia

Annie...in WW2 a Czech armored train came into Czernowitz and stayed for a while(1944). Many of the Czechoslovak troops were Jewish and we welcomed them....and my mum fell in love with one of them..and when the train left we were on it..and so were some others. There were Czechs and Slovaks...it was one country. No Slovenians!! Cornel

-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-118258705-8441035_at_list.cornell.edu [mailto:bounce-118258705-8441035_at_list.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Jim Wald
Sent: Monday, October 20, 2014 5:56 PM
To: Anny Matar; Czernowitz-L_at_cornell.edu
Subject: Re: [Cz-L] Jewish WWI refugees in Bohemia

For what it's worth, my father never spoke of experiencing direct antisemitism as such during this time.

Ironically, when the refugees were in Hungary around the time of the High Holidays, he said, soldiers from Tirol and Vorarlberg were very friendly, showed him pictures of their children, gave him chocolate, etc. By contrast, the strictly observant Jews, angry that a train had been allowed to travel over Rosh Hashanah and would not let the refugees leave the train to get food and housing.

He did experience something perhaps related to antisemitism when going to school in Bohemia: because middle-class Jewish refugees were German-speaking, some of the Czech nationalist teachers tended to harass them, associating them with the Empire. I gather that a lot of the overtly antisemitic action was directed at the "unassimilated," very pious, Yiddish-speaking rural Jews one sees in the photos on the exhibit web site.

Jim

On 20/10/2014 12:37, Anny Matar wrote:
> What a moment to recall these horrors?!
> We were never liked, wherever we lived, it was an illusion and
> pipedream of safety during the K&K reign.
> I understand that during WWII Czeck soldiers saved some girls from
> Czernowitz to Prague. As far as I know the Czecks, not Slovanians,
> were much friendlier, was it so?
> Thanks for your mail, anny
>
> On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 11:39 AM, Jim Wald <jwald_at_hampshire.edu
> <mailto:jwald_at_hampshire.edu>> wrote:
>
> [Please remember to choose Plain Text before sending . . . ]
>
> Hi all.
>
> To my total surprise (after Shemini Atzeret yizkor today, of all
> times),
> I came across this.
>
> To be sure, by that time (already 1913), my father's family had
> left the
> Bukovina and moved to Galicia (the other relatives stayed in
> Bukovina),
> but it is still part of the general picture of the fate of the
> Bukovinian Jews under the Habsburg Empire.
>
> Jim
>
>
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Received on 2014-10-20 19:12:05