Czechoslovakia was a landlocked state in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland became part of Nazi Germany, while the country lost further territories to Hungary and Poland. Between 1939 and 1945, the state ceased to exist, as Slovakia proclaimed its independence and Carpathian Ruthenia became part of Hungary, while in the remainder of the Czech Lands, the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was proclaimed. In 1939, after the outbreak of World War II, former Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš formed a government-in-exile and sought recognition from the Allies.
Jan Garrigue Masaryk was a Czech diplomat and politician who served as the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia from 1940 to 1948. American journalist John Gunther described Masaryk as "a brave, honest, turbulent, and impulsive man".
The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was a partially-annexed territory of Nazi Germany that was established on 16 March 1939 after the German occupation of the Czech lands. The protectorate's population was mostly ethnic Czech.
Emil Dominik Josef Hácha was a Czech lawyer, the president of Czechoslovakia from November 1938 to March 1939. In March 1939, after the breakup of Czechoslovakia, Hácha was the nominal president of the newly proclaimed German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
Alois Eliáš was a Czech general and politician. He served as prime minister of the puppet government of the German-occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia from 27 April 1939 to 27 September 1941 but maintained contact with the government-in-exile. Because of his participation in the anti-Nazi resistance, he was the only head of government who was murdered by the Nazis during World War II.
Jaroslav Krejčí was a Czech lawyer and Nazi collaborator. He served as the prime minister of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia from 28 September 1941 to 19 January 1945.
Emanuel Moravec was a Czech army officer and writer who served as the collaborationist Minister of Education of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia between 1942 and 1945. He was also chair of the Board of Trustees for the Education of Youth, a fascist youth organisation in the protectorate.
The First Czechoslovak Republic, often colloquially referred to as the First Republic, was the first Czechoslovak state that existed from 1918 to 1938, a union of ethnic Czechs and Slovaks. The country was commonly called Czechoslovakia, a compound of Czech and Slovak; which gradually became the most widely used name for its successor states. It was composed of former territories of Austria-Hungary, inheriting different systems of administration from the formerly Austrian and Hungarian territories.
The history of the Jews in Slovakia goes back to the 11th century, when the first Jews settled in the area.
The history of the Jews in the Czech lands, historically the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, including the modern Czech Republic, goes back many centuries. There is evidence that Jews have lived in Moravia and Bohemia since as early as the 10th century. Jewish communities flourished here specifically in the 16th and 17th centuries, and again in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Local Jews were mostly murdered in the Holocaust, or exiled at various points. As of 2021, there were only about 2,300 Jews estimated to be living in the Czech Republic.
Český národně socialistický tábor — Vlajka was a small Czech fascist, antisemitic and nationalist movement. Vlajka's eponymous newspaper was founded in 1928, its first editor being Miloš Maixner. During the time of German occupation, the organisation collaborated with the Nazis for which it was banned and its members were punished after the liberation.
Czechoslovak resistance to the German occupation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia during World War II began after the occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia and the formation of the protectorate on 15 March 1939. German policy deterred acts of resistance and annihilated organizations of resistance. In the early days of the war, the Czech population participated in boycotts of public transport and large-scale demonstrations. Later on, armed communist partisan groups participated in sabotage and skirmishes with German police forces. The most well-known act of resistance was the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. Resistance culminated in the so-called Prague uprising of May 1945; with Allied armies approaching, about 30,000 Czechs seized weapons. Four days of bloody street fighting ensued before the Soviet Red Army entered the nearly liberated city.
Alois Kříž was a Czechoslovak journalist and Nazi collaborator. He was accused of collaboration and hanged in March 1947.
The Curatorium for the Education of Youth was an organization in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia that provided athletic and cultural activities for youth ages ten to 18. Though created at the impetus of officials in the German-backed Protectorate government, it evolved to promote a distinctive form of "Reich-loyal" Czech nationalism that was viewed with concern by some quarters of the Nazi Party. Following World War II, it was banned as a fascist organization and its principal leaders put on trial.
Karel František Koch was a Czech doctor known for rescuing Jews in Bratislava during the Holocaust. After the Communist takeover, he was jailed, but managed to escape the country shortly after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and settled in Canada.
The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia resulted in the deportation, dispossession, and murder of most of the pre-World War II population of Jews in the Czech lands that were annexed by Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945.
The Holocaust in the Sudetenland resulted in the flight, dispossession, deportation and ultimately death of many of the 24,505 Jews living in the Reichsgau Sudetenland, an administrative region of Nazi Germany established from former Czechoslovak territory annexed after the October 1938 Munich Agreement. Due to harassment and violence, including during Kristallnacht, ninety percent of the Jews had already left the Sudetenland by mid-1939. The remaining Jews were subject to property confiscation and eventually deportation. During the later years of the war, tens of thousands of Jews and non-Jews were forced laborers in a network of concentration camps in the Sudetenland.
The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia: Czech Initiatives, German Policies, Jewish Responses is a book by the German historian Wolf Gruner on the Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia, the Czech-majority parts of Czechoslovakia partially annexed into Nazi Germany during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Beginning before the Munich Agreement, Gruner's book covers the various stages of persecution of Jews which led to their deportation and murder. He argues that the role of Czech collaboration and local initiatives was greater than has been conventionally assumed, and also that Jewish resistance to persecution was substantial. The book has received mixed reviews; some Czech historians have disagreed with Gruner's conclusions while other reviewers generally praised the book with some reservations. The book was published in German in 2016 and in English and Czech in 2019. It received the 2017 Sybil Halpern Milton Memorial Book Prize of the German Studies Association.
Marie Schmolka was a Czechoslovak Jewish activist and social worker who helped political refugees and Jewish adults and children escape the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in the lead-up to World War II. She was a member of WIZO and WILPF. She had previously helped refugees from Germany who fled to Czechoslovakia after the Nazi rise to power. Schmolka headed the newly founded Czechoslovak Refugee Committee, and also chaired local HICEM. In July 1938, she represented Czechoslovakia at the Évian conference.
The Czechoslovak myth is a narrative that Czechoslovakia between 1918 and 1938 was a tolerant and liberal democratic country, oriented towards Western Europe, and free of antisemitism compared to other countries in Central Europe and Eastern Europe. For example, the country was described as "a welcoming and tolerant place for Jews," and an "island of democracy in Eastern Europe".
