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Beyond the “Infamous Concentration Camps of the Old Monarchy”: Jewish Refugee Policy from Wartime Austria-Hungary to Interwar Czechoslovakia1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2014

Rebekah Klein-Pejšová
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Extract

The scholarship on twentieth-century refugee movement highlights the persecution of national, ethnic, and religious minorities arising from state and nation-building. The very structure and function of modern nation-states made specific populations within them vulnerable outsiders. The nation-state limited and defined in new ways those groups for whom the state would take responsibility. “In practically every way we can imagine,” writes Michael Marrus, “the First World War imposed on contemporaries the awesome power of the nation-state.” Refugee movement has also been tied to policies of wartime persecution and the chaos of imperial collapse. Populations in flux mark a regime no longer in control, a state in dissolution and decay.

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Articles
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 45 , April 2014 , pp. 150 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2014 

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Footnotes

1

This article arises from a paper presented at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Historical Association on the panel “Refugee Care and Control: Changing Regimes in 19th and 20th Century Central Europe,” sponsored by the Society for Austrian and Habsburg History. It benefits from comments by G. Daniel Cohen, Jared Manasek, and the anonymous reader at Austrian History Yearbook. I gratefully acknowledge generous research support from the ACLS, the East Central Europe Center, Harriman Institute, and Center for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University, the Európa Intézet of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

References

2 Aristide R. Zolberg, foreword to Marrus, Michael, The Unwanted: European Refugees from the First World War through the Cold War, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 2002)Google Scholar, xii; Zolberg, “The Formation of New States as a Refugee-Generating Process,” Annals, American Academy of Political and Social Science 467 (May 1983): 24–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Skran, Claudena M., Refugees in Interwar Europe: The Emergence of a Regime (New York, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baron, Nick and Gatrell, Peter, Homelands: War Populations and Statehood in Eastern Europe and Russia, 1918–1924 (London, 2004)Google Scholar; and, of course, Arendt, Hannah in her classic The Origins of Totalitarianism (Cleveland, OH, 1958)Google Scholar.

3 Michael Marrus, keynote address to the conference “The Forty Years’ Crisis: Refugees in Europe 1919–1959,” Birkbeck College, University of London, 14–16 September 2010; Siegelberg, Mira, “Report Back,” History Workshop Journal 71 (2011): 279–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 279.

4 Marrus, The Unwanted, 51.

5 Gatrell, Peter, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I (Bloomington, IN, 1999)Google Scholar.

6 An organization established after World War I to aid and regulate Jewish emigration to then Mandate Palestine from Diaspora countries.

7 Slovenský národný archív [Slovak National Archives](SNA), fond Ministerstvo s plnou mocou pre správu Slovenska [Minister Plenipotentiary for Slovakia (MPS), box 394, inv. no. 965, Palestine Office to the MPS in Bratislava, 13 August 1920.

8 Refugee camp conditions are discussed in Rechter, David, The Jews of Vienna and the First World War (London/Portland, OR, 2001)Google Scholar, 78; Rozenblit, Marsha, Reconstructing a National Identity. The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War One (Oxford/New York, 2001)Google Scholar, 66; “Die mährischen Flüchtlingslager,” Jüdische Zeitung (JZ), 30 October 1914; “Die galizischen Flüchtlinge,” JZ, 27 November 1914; “Die Flüchtlingsforsorge des Zion. Zentralkomitees Delegierte des Zionistischen Zentralkomitees in Gaya,” JZ, 1 January 1915; “Ein neues Heim für die Flüchtlinge,” Dr. Bloch's Österreichische Wochenschrift (ÖW), 20 November 1914; “Die Barckenlager in Nikolsburg,” ÖW, 4 December 1914; “Aus jüdische Barackenlager von Bruck a. L.,” ÖW, 30 July 1915.

9 SNA, f. MPS, box 394, inv. no. 965, Palestine Office to the MPS in Bratislava, 13 August 1920.

10 Nick Baron and Peter Gatrell contend that fluctuating “populations … formed a crucial part of the period's experimental and combustible politics of state-building, which laid the foundations of contemporary eastern Europe,” in the introduction to Homelands: War Populations and Statehood in Eastern Europe and Russia, 1918–1924 (London, 2004)Google Scholar, 3.

11 The Czechoslovak administration would have especially sought to distinguish itself from Poland, considering that this was the state from which the refugees were fleeing, and Hungary.

12 Astri Suhrke and Aristide R. Zolberg write that the process of formulating refugee policy “provides a special opportunity for a state seeking to overcome its past and achieve legitimacy in the eyes of its neighbors and the international community, more generally,” in Suhrke, Astri, and Zolberg, Aristide R., “Issues in contemporary refugee policies,” in Migration and refugee policies: An overview, ed. Bernstein, Ann and Weiner, Myron, 143–53 (London, 1999)Google Scholar, at 144. On anti-Jewish violence in Czechoslovakia after the war, see Tomaszewski, Jerzy, “Židovská Otázka na Slovensku v Roku 1919 [The Jewish Question in Slovakia in the Year 1919],” in Historik v čase a priestore: Laudatio Ľubomírovi Liptákovi [The Historian in Time and Space: Laudatio for Ľubomír Lipták], ed. Kamenec, Ivan and Mannová, Elena, 173–86 (Bratislava, 2000)Google Scholar; Jelínek, Ješajahu Andrej, Dávidova Hviezda Pod Tatrami: Židia na Slovensku v 20. Storočí [The Star of David Beneath the Tatras: Jews in Slovakia in the 20th Century] (Prague, 2009)Google Scholar; Nurmi, Ismo, Slovakia: A Playground for Nationalism and National Identity: Manifestations of the National Identity of the Slovaks, 1918–1920 (Helsinki, 1999)Google Scholar; van Duin, Pieter C., Central European Crossroads: Social Democracy and National Revolution in Bratislava (Pressburg), 1867–1921 (New York/Oxford, 2009)Google Scholar.

13 JDC New York archives, New York collection of the years 1919–1921, folder Czechoslovakia January through July 1920, “Czecho-Slovakia: The Relief Work in 1919,” item id no. 217787, 5.

14 Kieval, Hillel, The Making of Czech Jewry (New York/Oxford, 1988), 188–89.Google Scholar

15 The full text of the telegram is reprinted in the appendix to Aharon Moshe Rabinowicz's chap. “The Jewish Minority,” in The Jews of Czechoslovakia, volume I, Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews, 155–265 (Philadelphia, 1968)Google Scholar, 248.

16 Ibid.

17 Jelínek, Ješajahu Andrej, Dávidova Hviezda Pod Tatrami: Židia na Slovensku v 20. Storočí (Prague, 2009)Google Scholar, 123.

18 JDC New York archives, New York collection of the years 1919–1921, folder Czechoslovakia January through July 1920, “Czecho-Slovakia: The Relief Work in 1919,” item id no. 217787, 5.

19 JDC New York archives, New York collection of the years 1919–1921, folder Czechoslovakia 1921, “Letter from Felix Warburg to Dr. Bedrich Stepanek,” item id no. 217892, 14 January 1921.

20 JDC New York archives, New York collection of the years 1919–1921, folder Czechoslovakia, Bogen Report 1922, “Activities of the JDC in Czechoslovakia,” 12–14, item id no. 217915.

21 JDC New York archives, New York collection of the years 1919–1921, folder Czechoslovakia, Wechsler Reports 1920, “Report on Czecho-Slovakia,” 16, item id no. 217861.

22 This paper uses the respective Hungarian and German place names of contemporary usage.

23 Magyar Statisztikai Évkönyv, IX [Hungarian Statistical Yearbook] (Budapest, 1902)Google Scholar, 13. The population of Bártfa was 6,096 in 1900. Chart: A városok népességnek száma és szaporodása 1869-től 1900-ig [Number and Increase of Town Populations from 1869 through 1900].

24 Hungarian National Archives (Magyar Országos Levéltár [MOL]), Ministry of the Interior (Belügyminiszterium) K148, Presidential Files (Elnöki Iratok) 1915, box 493, file 37, inventory number 55. The first telephone call by the Lord Lieutenant of Sáros County to the Ministry of the Interior in Budapest regarding this group of refugees took place on 14 November 1914 at 4:45 in the morning.

25 Borský, Maroš, “Jewish Communities and their Urban Context: A Case Study of Košice, Prešov, and Bardejov,” Architektura a urbanizmus [Architecture and Urbanism] XXXVIII, no. 3–4, (2004): 115–38Google Scholar, at 131–32.

26 Iván, Halász, “A szlovák nemzeti politika és a zsidóság a dualismus idején [Slovak National Politics and the Jews in the Era of Dualism],” Limes 1 (Spring 1999): 43–58Google Scholar, at 44.

27 The boxes containing these telegraph messages and copies of telephone conversation transcripts concerning the daily arrival and movement of the Galician Jewish refugees are located in MOL, fond K148, PF 1915, box 493, file 37, 55; and MOL, fond K148, PF 1915, box 493, file 37, 80.

28 MOL, fond K148, PF 1914, file 37, inv. no. 8488. Although Jewish refugees from this group were sent to Nikolsburg, individuals the state considered suspicious, as well as those under custody, were sent to Kaldorf by Graz. For example, Carpatho-Rusyn and Polish refugees were sent to Kaldorf by Graz for loyalty investigations. Those considered loyal were accommodated in Carinthia.

29 “A Galiciai menekültek támogatása [Support of the Galician Refugees],” Egyenlőség [Equality], 27 September 1914.

30 MOL, fond K148, PF 1914, file 37, inv. nos. 8488, 11780.

31 “A Galiciai menekültek támogatása,” Egyenlőség, 27 September 1914.

32 Reports Received by the Joint Distribution Committee of Funds for Jewish War Sufferers (New York, 1916), 108–09Google Scholar. The AJDC published these reports to inform the American public of how funds raised in America for the relief of Jews suffering throughout the war were being distributed.

33 MOL, fond K148, PF1915, box 493, file 37, 55. Telephone call to Budapest 16 November 1914, 10:35 in the morning.

34 Ibid.

35 MOL, fond K148, PF 1915, box 493, file 37, inv. no. 55. Telephone call on 20 November 1914, 3:00 in the morning.

36 MOL, fond K148, PF 1917, box 600, file 37, inv. no. 22447.

37 MOL, fond K148, PF 1914, file 37, inv. nos. 8488, 8663; and MOL, fond K148, PF 1915, file 37, inv. no. 80.

38 Joint Distribution Committee, Reports Received by the Joint Distribution Committee of Funds for Jewish War Sufferers (New York, 1916), 115–18Google Scholar. The exact number was 89,850.

39 MOL, fond K148, PF 1915, box 493, file 37, inv. no. 55. Report sent to the Ministry of the Interior in Vienna from Budapest, 29 December 1914.

40 MOL, fond K148, PF 1914, file 37, inv. no. 8488. Letter from Galician Jewish refugees in Pozsony to the Minister of the Interior in Budapest dated 10 November 1914. “It is not enough that the Russians beat us out of Galicia away from our possessions and destroyed us so that we are now destitute, that for weeks we were forced to flee until our exhausted bodies finally found rest in Pozsony … we are called into the Pozsony police station nearly every day, where we have to prove that we have enough money and we are able to support ourselves from our own resources so that we would not become a burden to anyone … we go about the famous streets of Pozsony in our Galician dress, and this is precisely what does not please the Lord Lieutenant.”

41 MOL, fond K148, PF 1915, box 493, file 37, inv. no. 55.

42 MOL, fond K148, PF 1916, box 542, file 37, inv. no. 457.

43 MOL, fond K148, PF 1915, box 494, file 37, 80.

44 SNA, f. MPS, box 258, inv. no. 885.

45 MOL, fond K148, PF 1915, box 494, file 37, 80, inv. no. 356.

46 Ibid.

47 MOL, fond K148, PF 1915, box 494, file 37, 80, inv. no. 337. Rabbi Wéber sent his petition to the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior on 19 January 1915.

48 MOL, fond K148, PF 1915, box 494, file 37, 80, inv. no. 373.

49 Samuel (Samu) Bettleheim was a writer born in Pressburg (Bratislava, Pozsony). He founded the first Hungarian Zionist group in 1897, helped organize the first countrywide Zionist congress in Pressburg, and was the president of the Hungarian Zionist organization for three years. He was the Hungarian representative to the international Zionist committee for seven years. Bettelheim founded the weekly Ungarländische Jüdische Zeitung [UJZ] in 1908, published in Budapest. Ujvári, Péter, ed., Magyar Zsidó Lexikon (Budapest, 1929)Google Scholar, 115.

50 “Pöstyén,” UJZ, 24 January 1915.

51 MOL, fond K148, PF 1915, box 501, file 37. Petition from the Orthodox Jewish Community of Stomfa to the Ministry of the Interior in Budapest, 8 February 1915.

52 MOL, fond K148, PF 1915, box 501, file 37, inv. no. 578.

53 MOL, fond K148, PF 1915, box 504, file 37. The order lists the localities to which the refugees were to return. The administration made an exception for Sáros and Zemplén counties where heavy fighting continued.

54 From an article in the Budapest-based Allgemeine Jüdische Zeitung, republished in the Jüdische Zeitung on 15 October 1915 in the “Aus der jüdischen Welt,” sect. 3.

55 Reports Received by the Joint Distribution Committee of Funds for Jewish War Sufferers (New York, 1916)Google Scholar, 117, from the report on Austria-Hungary compiled by the Israelitische Allianz zu Wien. There were about 100,000 refugees without means in Vienna, 84,318 in Bohemia, and 121,099 in Moravia at the close of the year.

56 MOL, fond K148, PF 1916, box 544, file 37. Vienna, 1 August 1916.

57 Bericht der Israelitischen Allianz zu Wien 44 (1916): 10–12Google Scholar, 15; in Rechter, The Jews of Vienna and the First World War, 81.

58 “Die Ausweisung der Fremden aus Budapest,” ÖW, 12 October 17. Quoting Egyenlőség.

59 “Die Frage der galizischen Flüchtlinge im ungarischen Abgeordnetenhause,” ÖW, 16 November 1917.

60 “Budapest weist die Galizianer aus,” ÖW, 26 April 1918.

61 Magocsi, Peter Paul, Historical Atlas of Central Europe, rev. and exp. ed. (Seattle, WA, 2002), 125–27Google Scholar.

62 Marrus, The Unwanted, 65.

63 SNA, f. MPS, box 278, 27 October 1919.

64 SNA, f. MPS, box 392, inv. no. 611, 22 January 1921.

65 SNA, f. MPS, box 392, inv. no. 609, 11 March 1921.

66 Baron and Gatrell, Homelands, 3.

67 Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, 11.

68 The Jewish People's Union for Slovakia (JPU) is the English translation used throughout the text for the Jewish self-defense organization Ľudový zväz židov pre Slovensko/ Volksverband der Juden für die Slovakei, founded on 25 March 1919, Piešťany (Pőstyén) that would become the Slovak section of the Jewish Party before the first parliamentary elections in 1920. SNA, fond MPS, box 258, inv. no. 886.

69 SNA, f. MPS, box 278, inv. no. 578.

70 SNA, f. MPS, box 278, inv. no. 365.

71 SNA, f. MPS, box 400, inv. no. 622, “Příslušníci Polští a Ukrajinští v Č.S.R. [Poles and Ukrainians in Czechoslovakia],” 6 December 1921.

72 SNA, f. MPS, box 400, inv. no. 622, “Příslušníci Polští a Ukrajinští v Č.S.R.,” 6 December 1921.

73 SNA, f. MPS, box 394, inv. No. 950, “Polští uprichlíci, nebezpečenství zavleční skvrniky a neštovic [Polish refugees, danger of contamination by spotted typhus and smallpox]” from the vládní poradce pro zdravotnictví, 5 August 1920.

74 SNA, f. MPS, box 394, inv. no. 950.

75 Reports Received by the Joint Distribution Committee of Funds for Jewish War Sufferers (New York, 1916)Google Scholar, 108.

76 Ibid., 118.

77 Ibid.

78 SNA, f. MPS, box 394, inv. no. 949, letter from the Ústredná kancelária orthodoxných židovských obci na Slovensku v Bratislave [Central Office of Orthodox Jewish Communities in Slovakia in Bratislava] to the Hlavní Policejní Kapitanát v Bratislavě [Office of the Chief of Police in Bratislava], 23 August 1920.

79 SNA, f. MPS, box 394, inv. no. 948, letter from the Hlavní policejní kapitanát v Bratislavě to the MPS: “Židovští úprichlíci z Polska Internování [Jewish refugees from Poland interned],” 28 August 1920.

80 SNA, f. MPS, box 394, inv. no. 943, 30 August 1920.

81 SNA, f. MPS, box 394, inv. no. 958, “Ubytování polských uprchlíků v barákovém táboře na Slamených boudách [Accommodation of Polish Refugees in the camp barracks at the Straw Huts],” 29 September 1920.

82 JDC New York archives, New York collection of the years 1919–1921, folder Czechoslovakia, Bogen Report 1922, “Activities of the JDC in Czechoslovakia,” 25, item id no. 217915.

83 Ibid.

84 SNA, f. MPS, box 394, inv. no. 952, AJDC in Košice to the Militär Commando Sanitäts Chef in Bratislava, 13 August 1920.

85 Archiv mesta Bratislavy (AMB), fond Mesto Bratislava (f. MB), box 2325, inv. no. 99, “Zákaz vstupu dalších židovských utečencov z Polska [Prohibition on further entry of Jewish refugees from Poland],” from zasadnutia bratislavského administratívného výboru [Meeting of the Bratislava Administrative Committee] to the MPS, 21 February 1921.

86 Ibid.

87 JDC New York archives, New York collection of the years 1919–1921, folder Czechoslovakia 1921, “Second Report on Czecho-Slovakia for the Period 1920 up to and including March 1921,” item id no. 217904.

88 Ibid.

89 SNA, f. MPS, box 400, inv. no. 622, “Příslušníci polští a ukrajinští v Č.S.R,” 6 December 1921. Brazil became an important emigration destination when Jewish refugees who were unable to obtain permissions for entry into the United States were nevertheless required to leave Czechoslovakia. The AJDC helped them secure passports from the Brazilian consulate in Prague for the journey. JDC New York archives, New York collection of the years 1919–1921, folder Czechoslovakia 1921, “Second Report on Czecho-Slovakia for the Period 1920 up to and including March 1921,” item id no. 217904.

90 SNA, f. MPS, box 393, inv. no. 482, from the Ministerstvo sociální péče Republiky československé [Ministry of Social Care of the Czechoslovak Republic] in Prague to the MPS in Bratislava, 17 February 1921.

91 SNA, f. MPS, box 393, inv. no. 494.

92 Čapková, Katařina and Frankl, Michal, Nejisté útočiště: Československo a uprchlíci před nacismem, 1933–1938 [Uncertain Refuge: Czechoslovakia and the Refugees from Nazism, 1933–1938] (Prague, 2008)Google Scholar.

93 Katařina Čapková, Češi, Němci, Židé? Národní identita Židů v Čechách, 1918–1938 [Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identities of the Jews in Bohemia, 1918–1938], 259. Čapková's thorough and excellent study has just been published in English translation by Berghahn Books under the title Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia (2012). See also the excellent volume co-authored by Katařina Čapková and Michal Frankl, Nejisté útočiště: Československo a uprchlíci před nacismem, 1933–1938 [Uncertain Refuge: Czechoslovakia and the Refugees from Nazism], which polemicizes the conventional perception of Czechoslovakia as “island of freedom, democracy, and tolerance” in the 1930s.

94 Marrus, The Unwanted, 67.

95 “Building Slovak Jewry: Communal Reorientation in Interwar Czechoslovakia,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 30, no. 4 (Summer 2012): 18–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.