Title: “Every Jew is a Zionist, and every Zionist is a spy!” The story of Jewish social assistance networks in Communist Czechoslovakia
Abstract: AbstractThis article explores some of the major operations of the Czechoslovak secret police (State Security Forces, StB) against individuals involved in organising Jewish social assistance networks during the 1950s, as documented by fragments of case files preserved in the Security Services Archive in Prague. While there is much focus on victims of the Prague show trial of the so-called "Conspiracy Centre," all of whom were members of the top echelons of the Communist Party, the individuals who tried to revive Jewish life and secure the well-being of the needy in a country swept by anti-Jewish sentiment raked up by that trial remain largely unknown. In this work, we learn who these people were and what they did, and how the Communist regime punished them for their involvement. As an original contribution, the article details the search for safe methods of delivering humanitarian aid to Czechoslovak Holocaust survivors after the expulsion of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in 1950, from the initial attempts to use Israeli channels to the gradual legalisation of JDC aid under Swiss cover organisations.Keywords: CommunismCzechoslovakiaAmerican Jewish Joint Distribution CommitteeCold WarJewish communal organisationsantisemitism Notes on contributorMartin Šmok is currently Senior International Program Consultant at the USC Shoah Foundation, the Institute for Visual History and Education at the University of Southern California. He has researched and scripted two documentary film trilogies: Among Blind Fools (1993–9), chronicling the Second World War rescue work of the Bratislava Working Group, and Between a Star and a Crescent (1999–2003) about the role of Communist Czechoslovakia in the Middle East. His other credits include the films Andre's Lives (1997) and Lost Neighbours (2003), and exhibitions: 105 (2005), which used the 105th birthday of Stalin's favourite cartoonist as a pretext to present the power of visual propaganda; Hagibor – the Place, the People, and Their Fate (2008), which documented the twisted history of a sports field turned into a Nazi concentration camp and, subsequently, into an internment camp for ethnic Germans; Jewish Community of Prague since 1945 until the Present Time (2011); and Traces of Jewish Presence in Vinohrady (2013). Šmok's comprehensive biography of Charles Jordan, one of the leaders of the JDC, is slated for publication in 2016.Notes1. The Prague show trial of the so-called Conspiracy Centre was followed by dozens of sub-trials of members of the lower Communist apparatus. On the pattern of Soviet show trials of alleged enemies within the party, the accusations amalgamated all kinds of treason, sabotage, espionage, and even murder. Besides the purely racist label "of Jewish origin," reminiscent of the Nuremberg laws of the Nazi regime, a hereditary class-struggle label was also created and added to the descriptions of the accused: Rudolf Slánský was thus described as a person "of Jewish origin, from a family of businessmen;" Bedřich Geminder, the Chief of the International Section of the Communist Party Secretariat, was described as being "of Jewish origin, son of a businessman and a pub owner." Bedřich Reicin, the Deputy Minister of National Defence, was described as being "of Jewish origin from a bourgeois family." Vavro Hajdů, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, was "of Jewish origin, son of the Smrdáky Spa owner." Deputy Ministers of Foreign Trade Evžen Löbl and Rudolf Margolius were both presented as "of Jewish origin, son of a wholesale merchant," while Otto Šling, a regional Communist Party secretary, and André Simone (born Otto Katz), editor of Rudé právo, the Communist Party daily, were both listed as "of Jewish origin, son of a factory owner." Karel Šváb, Deputy Minister of State Security, Josef Frank, Deputy General Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and Vladimír Clementis, the Czechoslovak Minister of Foreign Affairs, were executed without being labelled as persons "of Jewish origin." For more on the Slánský trial, see in particular the numerous works of Karel Kaplan: Kaplan, Report on the Murder of the Secretary General; Kaplan and Paleček, Komunistický režim a politické procesy v Československu; Kaplan, Kronika komunistického Československa.2. "Every Jew Is a Zionist, and Every Zionist Is A Spy!" – statement of Vladimir A. Bojarsky, one of the Soviet advisers sent to Czechoslovakia, made at an Interior Ministry staff-training seminar, and recorded by Šimon Čermák, a secret police operative, in his unpublished memoirs. Documentary evidence of this approach appears in witness statements throughout materials examining the construction of the Prague show trial, popularly known as Commission I, Commission II, and Commission III. National Archive of the Czech Republic, record group Archiv ÚV KSČ, Politické procesy, Komise pro prošetření politických procesů I–III. The Stalinist approach applied in Soviet satellites defined a Zionist as anyone with any kind of Jewish lineage or in frequent contact with Jews. This racist interpretation superseded the true meaning of Zionism as a Jewish national movement.3. As in other organisations, so in Jewish administrative bodies, the so-called action committees, delegated and directly controlled by the Communist Party, were formed on or after 25 February 1948. After "out-actioning" (a Communist neologism used to describe a political purge) all the inconveniently independent figures from any positions of power, and after securing Communist dominance, the committees were gradually dissolved. The most dramatic takeover occurred at the Jewish community of Prague, where the action committee was led by Laura Šimková, a devout Stalinist appointed by the Central Committee of the Party. Within hours of the February coup, she orchestrated a hysterical hunt for "enemies of progress" and "American spies," demanding the arrest and trial of all functionaries involved in humanitarian work or attempts to return Jews' property that had been confiscated during the German occupation and never returned. For more on this, see Wehle, "The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia," 499–530.4. Another special group comprised people whose citizenship was not yet determined, and the so-called "optants," migrants from Ruthenia, the easternmost province of Czechoslovakia, annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945.5. Founded in 1914 to alleviate the suffering of the Jewish poor in Palestine and on the fronts of the First World War, this leading Jewish humanitarian institution continues to provide assistance to people in need worldwide. For more information see http://www.jdc.org6. Comrade Laura Šimková, leader of the Communist Action Committee at the Jewish Community of Prague, described the JDC as "a spy agency of the American imperialists," and demanded its immediate expulsion from the country despite its importance – or rather the key importance of the US dollars it brought into and spent in Czechoslovakia – for the state budget. For more, see National Archives of the Czech Republic, record group Archiv ÚV KSČ, Komise pro prošetření politických procesů I., file 7, archival unit 113: 202.7. The change of attitude is captured in the July–September report of the Prague JDC office: "It will be remembered that in the first quarterly report for 1948 it was indicated that the sweeping political changes which took place in February 1948 would leave in their wake repercussions on the future program of the Joint, its subventioned agencies, and the entire Jewish population. The impact of these changes began to be felt in concrete forms during these last three months. First there was an increase and wide-spread desire on the part of the Jews to leave Czechoslovakia and second, there was a change in the relationship between the Joint and the Council of Jewish Communities in the Czech lands … It cannot be denied that this has undergone a change for the worse."8. Material confiscated from the JDC offices in Prague and Bratislava today forms a considerable part of the "Jewish Organizations 1945–1953" archival record group (425) in the Security Services Archive (ABS), Prague. Besides correspondence and accounting matters, the boxes also contain a case file register of emigration applicants.9. "Agencies subventioned by the JDC may suffer now from lack of local funds and it will be difficult to keep them all open, unless they are nationalized as have been the Jewish sanatorium and hospital, the former with good results but not so the latter which is in antisemitic Slovakia," reported the Prague office representative, Helen Kohn, at a staff meeting of the European JDC headquarters in Paris. Meeting minutes dated 20 March 1948, JDC archives Jerusalem, C36.040/14B; various copies can also be found in ABS, record group 425.10. The Czechoslovak currency was the koruna, the "crown." One US dollar could at the time be exchanged at a rate of 49.85 crowns officially, and up to 500 crowns on the black market. The funds remaining on these accounts were wiped out during the 1953 monetary reform.11. Terezínská podstata in Czech was basically all the assets of Terezín (Theresienstadt) ghetto which had not been stolen after the liberation. The ghetto assets were a fraction of the confiscated Jewish bank accounts and other property confiscated by the Nazis and allotted for the construction and daily upkeep of the ghetto.12. According to the witnesses I have interviewed, these were mostly private funds sent by relatives, often with the help of the JDC or other philanthropic organisations.13. The address index was used mostly for sending food packages and medicine, following the routine the JDC developed during the Second World War: as in that time, when packages were sent to ghettos and concentration camps, these were mailed from neutral countries, Switzerland and Sweden.14. According to the testimonies of multiple witnesses, three men were instrumental in the creation of this organisation: Shaul Avigur (Saul Meyeroff, 1899–1978), former head of Aliah Bet and one of the fathers of Israeli intelligence; Shaike Dan (Yashayahu Trachtenberg, 1909–94), a wartime hero of the Jewish resistance and an expert on illegal emigration from Eastern Europe; and Charles Jordan (1908–67), from 1951 the Assistant Director-General of the JDC. For the most comprehensive data on Nativ published so far, see Beizer, "I Don't Know Whom To Thank," 111–36.15. The campaign against the JDC peaked in the propaganda related to the so-called "Doctors' Plot," when the Joint was accused of organising an attempt on the life of Generalissimus Stalin himself: "The majority of members of this terrorist group … were bought by American intelligence. They were recruited by a branch-office of American intelligence – namely, the international Jewish bourgeois-nationalist organisation Joint. The filthy face of this Zionist spy organisation, concealing its vicious actions under the mask of charity, is now completely revealed," wrote the Soviet daily Pravda on 13 January 1953. For more information, see Naumov and Brent, Stalin's Last Crime.16. The same name was already used for a programme of social assistance to transient refugees from Poland, Hungary, Romania, and the USSR, which ended in 1950. The quotations come from copies of Jordan's memoranda donated to me by Daniel Lack, Jordan's personal counsel. Similar information appears in Shachtman, I Seek My Brethren.17. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, established in 1951, represents world Jewry in negotiating for compensation and restitution for victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs. It administers compensation funds and allocates them to institutions that provide social welfare. Though the use of West German funds behind the Iron Curtain was not strictly legal at the time, it was tolerated.18. The Shaoul organisation was Shaul Avigur, that is, Nativ. Dated 2 June 1954.19. Agents of the Czechoslovak secret police described the mood at the Israeli legation and the reactions of the then resident Israeli operatives to the arrest of Slánský: "Argof stated that he views the Slánský affair from three viewpoints. On a personal level, he feels pity for the man as a Jew. Secondly, it is good that he was removed, because he will not be able to do harm to the Jews anymore and it will be impossible to claim that the Jews control the [Communist] government. Thirdly, for the Communists this is a very sad event, because the Party had to settle accounts with such a close colleague." Report of the agent codenamed "Rosa," 21 December 1951. ABS, record group Svazky kontrarozvědného rozpracování – Centrála (MV-KR), personal file No. 15657: 73. "What's unpleasant about the whole affair is that Jews are involved, which will definitely lead to an increase of antisemitism in Communist circles. He also raised the question of the possible reactions of the reactionaries, who should in fact be grateful to the Jews [for allegedly undermining Communist rule in Czechoslovakia]." Report of the agent codenamed "Rosa," on a conversation with an Israeli legation employee, Fried, on 30 November 1951. ABS, record group Historický fond MV, archival number H-314: 12.20. Aryeh Leon Kubovy, born Kubowitzki (1896–1966) served as Israel's minister to both Poland and Czechoslovakia. At the beginning of December 1952 both countries declared him persona non grata.21. ABS, record group MV-KR, assessment of the archived personal file on Jakub Gazit, archival number 15597 MV: 90.22. ABS, record group MV-KR, assessment of the archived personal file on Jakub Gazit, archival number 15597 MV, report of the agent code-named "Dana," 8 September 1953: 164–5.23. A prisoner workforce was used to mine uranium ore in the Jáchymov region. ABS, record group MV-KR, assessment of the archived personal file on Jakub Gazit, archival number 15597 MV, report of the agent codenamed "Marie," 5 December 1953: 136–7.24. Ibid., report of the agent codenamed "Dana," 29 October 1953: 168–9.25. The same system of financing operations in Czechoslovakia had apparently already been used by Gazit's predecessor, Yehoshua Argof. "He brought various goods into Czechoslovakia, which, using other people as middlemen, he sold on the black market. During the interrogations of the arrested Zionists Dicker, Ornstein, Reich, and others, information about Argof's enemy activity was obtained, but he was not arrested and he left Czechoslovakia in early 1952." ABS, record group MV-KR, explanation of the decision to archive permanently the personal file number 15657 MV: 96. Most members of foreign missions in Prague used the same kind of black-market dealings to obtain cash in local currency. According to the StB records, several diplomats (Italian, Argentinean, Iranian, and at least one British) were expelled from the country at this time for having smuggled Western goods by diplomatic pouch and reselling them on the black market.26. These forgotten heroes are Salamon Velkes (born in 1897 in Stuposiany, Poland), Samuel Veselý (born in 1911 in Lackovce near Humenné) and his wife Jolana (born in 1924 in Velké Berezno, Ruthenia), Jakub Grün (born in 1901 in Crăciunes¸ti, Romania) and his wife Růžena (born in 1906 in Zboj, Ruthenia), Julian Šorban (born in 1910 in Ruthenia) and his wife Lydie (born in 1929 in Bytča, Slovakia), Mořic Herzog (born in 1895 in Velké Kostoĺany, Slovakia) and his brother Adolf Herzog (born in 1899), Lazar Beck (born in 1899 in Modra, Slovakia), Ferdinand Kalina (born in 1916 in Vienna, Austria) and his wife Livie (born in 1926 in Vyšný Svidník, Slovakia), Abraham Polák (born in 1908 in Velký Bočkov, Ruthenia), Ludvík Štark (born in 1916 in Velké Loučky, Ruthenia), Moritz Fiala (born in 1908 in Bardejov, Slovakia), Salamon Weisz (born in 1911 in Petrov nad Tisou, Ruthenia), and Mór Jakubovič (born in 1916 in Maly Tarkáň, Slovakia). Fragments of documentation of Operation Golden Goose are in the ABS, record group MV-KR, group file archival number 8424 MV. I am listing the places of birth here in order to illustrate the gradual change in Czech Jewish community membership: by early 1950s, survivors from Slovakia and the so-called optants, immigrants from Ruthenia, constituted the majority of those still active.27. The other immediate effect was Gazit's being recalled from Czechoslovakia. During the trial, not only did his name feature prominently, but so too did a detailed description of his work methods. After some time, the StB boasted that "Jakub Gazit, who left Czechoslovakia during Operation 'Golden Goose' in 1954, was arrested after his return to Israel because of his failures here." Rumours of Gazit's admonishment and trouble with the Israeli intelligence community upon his return from Czechoslovakia were believed by many of his former Czechoslovak associates. The author of this article met with Gazit several times, only to be shocked by his repeated claims that he had left Czechoslovakia as early as 1952, and that the StB "had never known anything about his work, because those Czechs were utterly incompetent."28. ABS, record group MV-KR, decision to archive the file following its assessment, group file archival number 8424 MV, no page number.29. ABS, record group MV-KR, group file archival number 8424 MV, text of the charges filed with the High Court in Prague: 86.30. ABS, record group MV-KR, group file archival number 8424 MV, memoranda of Sub-lieutenant František Vrátný, 8 January 1953. Two independently numbered fragments from an older investigation case file: 2.31. ABS, record group MV-KR, group file archival number 8424 MV, record of the Zalman Fixler interrogation, 5 December 1953: 46–8.32. CIC was synonymous with "the enemy" during the early years of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. Few who used them knew that the initials actually stood for the US Counter Intelligence Corps33. ABS, record group MV-KR, group file archival number 8424 MV, record of the Zalman Fixler interrogation, 5 December 1953: 46–8.34. Bernard Mann was born in 1899 in the village of Krivany and died on September 1954 in Prague.35. ABS, record group Vyšetřovací spisy – Centrála (MV-V), investigation file archival number V-1583 MV, record of statements by Malvína Reinigerová, 30 April 1955: 76.36. Ibid., record of statements by the accused, Herman Šmulevič, 8 April 1955: 57.37. Codename for long-term installation of covert listening devices.38. Codename for telephone tapping.39. For example, Marek Herškovič testified, on 26 April 1955, about the group's efforts to prevent the StB from finding records hidden in the Jubilee synagogue, Prague. "In the box brought from the synagogue cellar by Braunstein and my brother Vojtěch there was a list with … some accounting of Šmulevič's watches and dollars. I know nothing more about this." ABS, record group MV-V, investigation case file archival number V-1583 MV: 30.40. ABS, record group MV-V, investigation case file archival number V-1583 MV: 20, record titled "Zpráva č. 3, týká se Kateřiny Schärfové č. 775," 18 April 1955.41. The correct spelling of the name is "Haymann." Erwin Haymann (1907–92) was the Director of the SSE in Geneva, a proxy organisation of the JDC.42. The correct spelling of the name is "Sicher."43. ABS, record group MV-V, investigation file archival number V-989 MV, record of the interrogation of Rabbi Bernard Farkaš, 3 April 1957: 41.44. It seems that the first such case was the wife of Štěpán Szobel, a former employee of the Israeli legation. She was recruited after her husband's arrest in 1953 and his accusation of espionage in connection with the Slánský trial. The last case that I have been able to discover was the suicide of a social welfare officer of the Jewish Community in Brno, Kateřina Ehrenreichová, in 1957.45. Ctirad and Josef Mašín were part of an armed anti-Communist resistance cell. They killed several policemen and a civilian before their spectacular escape to the West in 1953, during which they crossed through East German territory, killing three more policemen in the process.46. The mother, Zdena Mašínová, Sr, was arrested on 26 November 1953. She was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 1955 for alleged high treason and espionage, and died in a prison camp in 1956. Two prison informers, "Šťastná" and "Olga," recorded her statements that Emil Neumann was only managing the sale of property she had deposited with him. Yet the StB insisted that Neumann was part of the Mašín conspiracy and had "obtained several items for the Mašín terrorist group." ABS, record group MV-KR, personal file archival number 37822 MV and group file archived in MV-H under archival number H-419: 140–1.47. "Bricha" was a name given to the underground network that helped Jews leave Europe and reach Palestine. Bricha used Czechoslovakia, in 1946–7, as a bridge by which to transfer almost 250,000 Jewish refugees from Eastern and Central Europe to displaced person camps in the West. The legal flow of refugees continued, though with far fewer refugees, even after the Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia and the establishment of the State of Israel.48. In the Czechoslovak context, this term denotes the official military assistance to the just established State of Israel, paid for in much wanted dollars. It consisted of the sale of decommissioned weapons of all kinds, specialist military training, and the forming of a volunteer brigade under Communist leadership.49. The proper Czech spelling is "Magbit Jehudit Meuchedet" – financial collection for the State of Israel.50. This illogical statement illustrating the authorities' lack of knowledge what Zionism stood for could be found in ABS, record group MV-V, investigation file archival number V 1101 MV, "statements of the arrested Zionist Guttmann" copied from the shredded file of Operation Krym (Crimea) during the assessment of the file on 5 April 1957: 38, part of the operative sub-file "Rychnovská."51. The archival records containing details of Operation Dana are quite extensive. See, for example, ABS, investigation files archival number V-989 MV, V-1101 MV, V-2772 MV, V-673 MV, V-1583 MV, V-1323 MV.52. The directors of the Jewish old age home in Mariánské Lázně, Kateřina Rychnovská (born in 1902 in Jihlava) and Růžena Hoffeová (born in 1895 in Brtnice near Jihlava), were sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison, as was Viliam Friedmann (born in 1914 in Velka Oros, Ruthenia). Isidor Braverman (born in 1908 in Svaljava, Ruthenia) and Max Goldberger (born in 1897 in Ostrava) were sentenced to one-and-a-half years in prison, and Rabbi Bernard Farkaš (born in 1902 in Jasina, Ruthenia) to two years, of which he served 14 months. Pavel Porges (born in 1886 in Prague) was sentenced to 15 months in prison and died there. Vojtěch Lustig (born in 1888 in Zeleč near Tábor) was sentenced to one year in prison, Alexandr Fried (born in 1895 in Bratislava, Slovakia) to eight months, Zikmund Semmel (born in 1896 in Krasno, Ruthenia) got three months, and Marek Spiegel (born in 1909 in Iršava, Ruthenia) five-and-a-half years. In Slovakia, Jan Berenfeld in Bratislava, František Gescheid in Banská Bystrica, and Pavel Sendrey with Armin Strauss in Žilina were arrested. The wives of most of the accused were also arrested and charged with "failing to inform the authorities about the criminal activities of their husbands."53. The detailed lists of people receiving support, which were kept by Pavel Porges and were confiscated by the police, probably played a role in their being given comparatively light sentences. Some of the elderly were receiving no state pension at all; the majority lived on between 108 and 192 crowns a month, which even the police investigators had to admit was below the poverty line.54. Tuzex operated a network of shops in which customers could use special vouchers to purchase otherwise unavailable goods. Its predecessor, operating from 1949 till 1953, was called Darex.55. The Rudé Právo Communist daily exclaimed, "The Czechoslovak police authorities have recently uncovered a large group of people who, besides other criminal machinations, have been involved in supplying intelligence to a representative of a foreign country … It has been discovered and proven by documentary evidence that Mr. Moshe Shatz has associated with these people for quite some time and given them large sums of money, in return for which he received intelligence-type information." "Pracovník diplomatického úřadu ve spojení se špiony" (Member of a diplomatic mission in contact with the spies), Rudé právo, 31 March 1957, 1.56. National Archives of the Czech Republic, record group Ministerstvo školství a kultury, církevní odbor (Ministry of Education and Culture, Department of Religious Affairs), box 56.57. Ibid.
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-01-02
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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