zlom 2 cast AJ_Sestava 1 12.11.2014 14:49 Stránka 24
Emigration of German Jews to Czechoslovakia
and consequences of the Munich Agreement
Nazi promotional postcard with the motif of an
expulsion of Jews and capitalists
With the Hitler’s appointment as the German Chancellor on 30 January 1933 the discrimination of Jews in Germany began. The first public action directed against them
was the boycott of Jewish businesses, banks, physicians, and lawyers, declared on 1 April
1933. On 7 April 1933, “racial cleansing” of the state administration was conducted. The
persecution measures continued in the form of two acts passed by the Reichstag in
Nuremberg on 15 September 1935.
The Nuremberg Laws provided for German citizenship and the protection of German
blood and honour. They included regulations specifying persecution tools against a “racially
inferior population” and promoting “healthy” marriages. Further regulations followed, the
first of which, on 14 November 1935, determined who was to be considered of the Jewish
or mixed Jewish race for the purpose of the law. Apart from being affected by these legislative acts, the Jewish population of Germany was also attacked physically by members of
the SA storm troopers, and their shops and homes were plundered with impunity. Waves
of refugees heading to neighbouring countries, as well as overseas, soon followed.
It has been estimated that about 20,000 persons emigrated from Nazi Germany (from
1933) and Austria (from 1938) to Czechoslovakia, with only half of them having been registered by the authorities. The Czechoslovak authorities adopted a forthcoming approach
first, but after the Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935 and immigration to Palestine restricted, the number of temporary residence permits granted significantly decreased.
The conclusion of the Munich Agreement on 30 September 1938 was followed by
a huge refuge wave when a total of 171,401 persons, 18,673 of whom were Jews, fled from
the borderlands annexed by Germany to inland to Czechoslovakia. Refugees arrived in
several flows, the first of them during the May crisis, another followed in mid-September,
and then after the violence of the “Crystal Night”, which burst out on 9 November 1938
Jews of Břeclav, removed to the state border, November 1938
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Nazi promotional postcard – resettlement of Jews from the Sudetenland