Abstract: Rozsáhlá monografie odborníků z pražské právnické fakulty pod vedením Jana Kuklíka a Reného Petráše se věnuje problému majetkových ztrát židovského obyvatelstva za druhé světové války a různým metodám odškodnění. Publikace má široký historický a komparativní záběr, obsahuje podrobnou analýzu právních aspektů a zabývá se i dodnes nedořešenými otázkami. Nejpodrobněji je v knize zastoupeno území bývalého Československa, ale pozornost je věnována i vývoji v dalších státech: Německu, Rakousku, Polsku, ale také v zemích s velmi odlišnou situací, jako jsou Velká Británie, Bulharsko či Švýcarsko. Výklad u jednotlivých států obvykle zahrnuje nástin vývoje postavení Židů v daném regionu v posledních desetiletích před holocaustem, jsou však naznačeny i starší, středověké tradice. Jádrem práce je zachycení často až pozoruhodně různorodých metod záborů židovského majetku zejména v době druhé světové války a jeho restitucí nebo různých odškodňovacích akcí, které probíhají až do současnosti.
Abstract: The study analyzes the problem of anti-Semitism in Czecho-Slovakia, with special emphasis on Slovakia, where the manifestations of anti-Semitism after the Velvet revolution" have been more numerous. It perceives these manifestations as the tip of an iceberg of historicaly accumulated prejudices against Jews rooted in the culture. Issuing from the findings of several representative surveys, the study proves the higher wariness towards the Jews among the population of Slovakia in comparison with the Czech lands. Similar to other countries, this wariness has features of an "anti-Semitism without Jews", as, due to the holocaust and several waves of emigration, the number of members of the Jewish community in Slovakia has rapidly decreased. The revived anti-Semitism in Slovakia is interpreted within the context of the "post-Communist panic" accompanying the intricate process of transition. Following the description of the specific features of traditional Slovak anti-Semitism, as well as empirical analysis of the value background of the present anti-Jewish prejudices, the conclusion is formulated that in the anatomy of Slovak anti-Semitism there have not been, despite the passing of decades, substantial changes. Anti-Jewish attitudes can be seen as a metaphorical and condensed expression of an anti-liberal orientation, lying behind which there are social and political insecurity, frustration, authoritarianism, cultural isolation, as well as general national intolerance. In order to come to terms with anti-Semitism in Slovakia, it is necessary to re-assess the period of the Slovak State (1939-1945) in view of the share of responsibility of Slovak political representatives and the general public for the tragedy of the Slovak Jews. Issuing from the empirical findings, the study shows the unsatisfactory state of the critical historical consciousness of the Slovak population.
Abstract: Kolektivní monografie o podobách antisemitismu v Čechách a na Slovensku analyzuje diskursivní a vizuální formy obrazu Žida v české a slovenské většinové společnosti. Příspěvky se zabývají otázkou, jak se v průběhu 20. a 21. století utvářel pojem „Žid“ nebo „židovský“ a jak se v souvislosti s tímto „cizím“ obrazem utvářel obraz „nás“ samotných. Autoři jednotlivých studií se ve svých analýzách tematicky obrací k otázce kontinuity a transformace těchto zrcadlových obrazů a zároveň zkoumají vztah identity a (politické) moci. Badatelé na příkladu Protektorátu Čechy a Morava, válečného slovenského státu, komunistického Československa, ale také soudobých reálií přesvědčivě ukazují, že antisemitismus není vázaný na skutečného nebo domnělého nepřítele, nýbrž na (sebe)legitimizační konstrukty. Předkládaná kniha je založena na využití dobového tisku, orálněhistorických životopisných rozhovorů, pamětí a archivních dokumentů. Také proto je publikace určena nejenom akademické obci a učitelské veřejnosti, ale všem zájemcům o fenomén antisemitismu, jeho projevy a vývoj ve 20. století a v současnosti.
Abstract: Using historical data, material from relevant Internet forums and websites, as well as personal experiences and observations, this article examines 12 Czech/Slovak Jewish reunions that have taken place since Communism collapsed and the country split into two separate states. Many of the participants have known each other since they were adolescents or young adults in the 1960s when, as part of their search for a Jewish identity, they joined several Jewish youth groups then in existence. The reunions have involved both those who emigrated (after the August 1968 Soviet invasion) and those who remained. They have entailed memorial journeys both in time and space. The reunions are analysed as case studies of autobiographical occasion, commemoration, reflective nostalgia and diasporic practice, addressing questions of identity, memory and group dynamics. Since the transnational generational community of Czech and Slovak Jews of the first post‐Holocaust generation is essentially a latent community based on shared experiences unique to that group, the reunions have played an important role in resurrecting the past, both historical and biographical. Neither the memory nor the strong emotion surrounding the generational experience can be successfully transmitted trans‐generationally. Thus, as the group members age and die off, this generational community is bound to disappear. In the meantime, however, it serves its current members rather well.
Abstract: When traumatic historical events and transformations coincide with one’s entry into young adulthood, the personal and historical significance of life-course transitions interact and intensify. In this volume, Alena Heitlinger examines identity formation among a generation of Czech and Slovak Jews who grew up under communism, coming of age during the de-Stalinization period of 1962-1968. Heitlinger’s main focus is on the differences and similarities within and between generations, and on the changing historical and political circumstances of state socialism/communism that have shaped an individual’s consciousness and identity—as a Jew, assimilated Czech, Slovak, Czechoslovak and, where relevant, as an émigré or an immigrant. The book addresses a larger set of questions about the formation of Jewish identity in the midst of political upheavals, secularization, assimilation, and modernity: Who is a Jew? How is Jewish identity defined? How does Jewish identity change based on different historical contexts? How is Jewish identity transmitted from one generation to the next? What do the Czech and Slovak cases tell us about similar experiences in other former communist countries, or in established liberal democracies? Heitlinger explores the official and unofficial transmission of Holocaust remembering (and non-remembering), the role of Jewish youth groups, attitudes toward Israel and Zionism, and the impact of the collapse of communism. This volume is rich in both statistical and archival data and in its analysis of historical, institutional, and social factors. Heitlinger’s wide-ranging approach shows how history, generational, and individual biography intertwine in the formation of ethnic identity and its ambiguities.
Author(s): Bauer, Yehuda; Benz, Wolfgang; Cała, Alina; Jelinek, Yeshayahu A.; Krzeminski, Ireneusz; Lerman, Antony; Löwe, Heinz-Dietrich; Pulzer, Peter; Vago, Raphael; Yukhneva, Natalia; Karady, Viktor
Abstract: Following the collapse of the Soviet empire, the Jews of Eastern Europe--nearly obliterated by the Nazis, then persecuted by Communist regimes--are rediscovering their culture and religion. Texas-born Hoffman, a former staff writer for the Jerusalem Post , made 10 trips to Eastern Europe in 1989 and 1990 to produce this searching, alert portrait of a people poised between hope and despair. In Czechoslovakia and Poland, he found, small "caretaker communities" of Jews, non-Jews and part-Jews have united around the mission of preserving their countries' Jewish heritage. In contrast, Romania and Bulgaria have seen their Jewish populations depleted by the younger generation's mass exodus to Israel. In East Berlin, reports Hoffman, the tiny Jewish community has been fragmented by the swift, sudden reunion of East and West Germany. He discerningly looks at Eastern European Jews' responses to resurgent anti-Semitism and at their ambivalence toward the older Jewish leadership that accommodated itself to Communist rulers.
Abstract: The Czech Jewish community exercised an influence on modern European culture quite disproportionate to its tiny size. Franz Kafka has become emblematic for a vanished world, but he was by no means the only Jew from the Czech lands who helped to shape modernity. Others included Gustav Mahler, Karl Kraus and Sigmund Freud, who unlike Kafka left their homeland, and grew to prominence in Vienna, the capital of the Habsburg Monarchy. At the turn of the century, Prague fostered a unique and complex symbiosis comprising Czech, German and Jewish culture, in which values promoted by one group, such as the protestant Jan Hus's belief in the power of Truth, still echoed by Václav Havel in 1989, came to be shared by others. The pluralist symbiosis that produced this achievement has been decimated. The destruction began in 1939-45 when the Germans destroyed the Jews, and was completed after 1945 when the Czechs expelled the Germans. What was lost? Before the Shoah, in 1936, the Prague Jewish community boasted 35,425 members. Today, that number has dwindled to around fifteen hundred souls. In other words, Prague Jewry has shrunk to under 5 percent of its pre-war total. The city now has four Orthodox Rabbis, who minister to about twenty devout Jews. The larger liberal reform movement does not even own a synagogue.
