Czechoslovakia Fights Back

A Document of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs Published by American Council on Public Affairs Washington, D. C., 1943 [Pages 110, 111, and 114]

On December 2, 1942, a special order issued by the "Protectorate" Ministry of Agriculture excluded the Jews not only from buying unrationed foods, but even from receiving them as a gift from any private citizen. The same order has left it to the discretion of the Ministry of Agriculture to exclude Jews entirely or partially from obtaining rationed food, thus exposing the remnants of the Jewish community to death by starvation.

One hour on five days a week has been allowed for shopping, this hour being fixed at a time when after, first the Germans and then the Czechs, have done their buying, the small stocks are mostly exhausted.

After the occupation of Poland, Hitler designated Lublin and its immediate district as a reservation in which all Jews from the occupied countries were to be concentrated. Some 2,000 Jews of Moravska Ostrava were the first to be sent there. A year later, at the end of October 1941, 48,000 Czech Jews were already picked out for deportation. Men between the ages of sixteen to fifty were sent to labor camps, while their womenfolk and children were taken to special settlements in Eastern Poland.

At the end of June, 1942, deportation to Poland began on a large scale. The Gestapo was instructed to prepare by every Monday and Thursday contingents of a thousand Jews each. Those to leave were given a day or two's notice. The Nazi records of the Jewish registration were out of date and it often happened that the call-up cards were addressed to persons who had died years ago, had left the country or had already been deported. In such cases the daily quota of a thousand was made up by people simply picked up from the streets or dragged from their beds at night-time. The Gestapo took a delight in so selecting the deportees that families were split, wives separated from their husbands, and even small children from their mothers. Those left at home were never allowed to bid farewell to their relatives or friends. But sometimes, on early summer mornings, their Czech friends could watch those gloomy processions of the outlawed marching to the railway station and passing for the last time through the streets of Prague.

At the end of 1942, no Jewish life in Bohemia and Moravia was left. Out of the 90,000 Czech Jews more than 72,000 have been deported.

Although the deportations went on, leaving at the end of August, 1942, only some 20,000 Jews in Slovakia, most of them in ghettos the Nazis were still not satisfied. At the end of November, 1942, a special committee was set up to consider the final expulsion of the remainder of the Jews. By then, out of the 95,000 Jews, 76,000 had already been deported.