The Czechoslovak Exiles and Anti-Semitism in Occupied Europe During the Second World War

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The Czechoslovak Exiles and Anti-Semitism in Occupied Europe During the Second World War WALKING ON EGG-SHELLS: THE CZECHOSLOVAK EXILES AND ANTI-SEMITISM IN OCCUPIED EUROPE DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR JAN LÁNÍČEK In late June 1942, at the peak of the deportations of the Czech and Slovak Jews from the Protectorate and Slovakia to ghettos and death camps, Josef Kodíček addressed the issue of Nazi anti-Semitism over the air waves of the Czechoslovak BBC Service in London: “It is obvious that Nazi anti-Semitism which originally was only a coldly calculated weapon of agitation, has in the course of time become complete madness, an attempt to throw the guilt for all the unhappiness into which Hitler has led the world on to someone visible and powerless.”2 Wartime BBC broadcasts from Britain to occupied Europe should not be viewed as normal radio speeches commenting on events of the war.3 The radio waves were one of the “other” weapons of the war — a tactical propaganda weapon to support the ideology and politics of each side in the conflict, with the intention of influencing the population living under Nazi rule as well as in the Allied countries. Nazi anti-Jewish policies were an inseparable part of that conflict because the destruction of European Jewry was one of the main objectives of the Nazi political and military campaign.4 This, however, does not mean that the Allies ascribed the same importance to the persecution of Jews as did the Nazis and thus the BBC’s broadcasting of information about the massacres needs to be seen in relation to the propaganda aims of the 1 This article was written as part of the grant project GAČR 13–15989P “The Czechs, Slovaks and Jews: Together but Apart, 1938–1989.” An earlier version of this article was published as Jan Láníček, “The Czechoslovak Service of the BBC and the Jews during World War II,” in Yad Vashem Studies, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2010), pp. 123–153. This version was significantly refined and supplemen- ted. The author would like to thankYad Vashem Studies for permission to reprint parts of the original article in this volume. 2 Archiv Českého rozhlasu [Archive of the Czech Radio] (henceforth AČR), BBC 1939–1945, box 14, broadcast on 26 June 1942, read by Josef Kodíček. 3 For the way the BBC treated Jewish themes during the war see: Jeremy D. Harris, “Broadcast- ing the Massacres. An Analysis of the BBC’s Contemporary Coverage of the Holocaust,” in Yad Vashem Studies, Vol. XXV (1996), pp. 65–98; Jean Seaton, “The BBC and the Holocaust,” in European Journal of Communication, Vol. 2 (1987), pp. 53–80. 4 See Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust (Cam- bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Gerhard Weinberg, Germany, Hitler and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 217–244; David Welch, The Third Reich. Politics and Propaganda (London – New York: Rout- ledge, 1993). Exile_in_London_2017100.indd 227 16.10.17 14:48 228 WALKING ON EGG-SHELLS Allies, including those of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, officially established in London on 21 July 1940.5 As part of the Czechoslovak exiles’ struggle against the German occupier, and Czech and Slovak collaborators, they were allowed by the British government to address the people in their homeland via the BBC. One of the topics that inevitably came up was German harassment of the population, including Jews, and also the issue of local anti- Semitism, or rather the non-existence of indigenous anti-Semitism. When analyzing the content of Czechoslovak broadcasting on the BBC, one becomes aware of the instrumentalization of the situation in occupied Europe. This chapter examines wartime speeches dealing with the persecution of Jews aired by Czechoslovak politicians in exile. However, other issues also need to be addressed here. The exiles’ use of the BBC services calls for inves- tigation in the light of various complex factors that had an influence on the decision-making process of the émigré politicians. The study also moves on to an examination of the broadcasts themselves. The complex situation the poli- ticians faced during their British exile is explained and also why broadcasts dealing with the Holocaust took the final form in which they were aired.6 The BBC broadcasts were the main means the Czechoslovak exiles had for communication with the broad masses at home, with men and women who very often risked their own and their family members’ lives to listen to the radio. These broadcasts emanated from a political élite without a country, and without regular contact with the people they purported to represent. They were shaped by a mix of mutually competing pressures. The government-in- exile’s intention was to influence the population at home. Simultaneously, the broadcasts themselves were inspired by reports coming from there. These reports were meant to reveal the actual mood and demands of the popula- tion, but necessarily represented those of the resistance leaders who were in charge of informing the exiles. To put it simply, the government’s efforts to mould public opinion at home reflected the content and tone of the messages forwarded to them by the Czechoslovak underground movement. 5 There were also other governments-in-exile, including the Belgian, Czechoslovak, Dutch, French (National Committee), Greek, Luxembourg, Norwegian, Polish, and Yugoslav. See also Jan Láníček, “Governments-in-exile and the Jews during and after the Second World War,” in Jan Láníček, James Jordan, eds., Governments-in-Exile and the Jews during the Second World War (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2013), pp. 69–88. 6 Transcripts of the BBC Czechoslovak Service between the summer of 1940 and the end of the war are used as the main source in this article. In all probability the first months from the begi- nning of the war are missing. However, the indications we have show that the broadcasts before late 1940 did not deal in any significant manner with Jewish issues (consult the Daily News Bulle- tin and archival sources of exiled Jewish politicians). We also have no recordings of the speeches dealing with Jewish matters; unfortunately, this deprives us of one dimension that is significant for an evaluation of the broadcasts, the tone of the speeches. Exile_in_London_2017100.indd 228 16.10.17 14:48 WALKING ON EGG-SHELLS 229 The information broadcast usually became public knowledge in London as well.7 Various activists and journalists in Britain and the United States of- ten drew on the broadcasts dealing with Jewish issues. Also, the Czechoslovak exiles occasionally published the radio talks in their official publications.8 It cannot be ruled out that some of these were intended not only to inform peo- ple at home, but also to enhance the exiles’ image in the West. The minor Al- lies wished to be seen as adherents to the democratic tradition, to democratic ideals, and as an integral part of the war between the forces of light, as the Allies wanted to be identified, and of darkness, the evil power of the Nazis. In addition, since the BBC was a British government agency, British censorship and the Corporation’s own unwritten laws inevitably affected its European Service, too.9 The Czechoslovak government consequently had to carefully weigh every broadcast. They needed to comply with British demands as well as to stay in line with their policy towards the people at home, whilst, at the same time, keeping in mind their own ideological precepts. A JEWISH THREAT? Anti-Semitism was a major theme in Nazi and collaborationist propaganda across the whole of occupied Europe. Accusations that the Jews had been ruling the world and were seeking to re-establish their mastery with the help of their Bolshevik and plutocratic allies, or slaves, regularly appeared in speeches by Nazi ideologues, among others Josef Goebbels, Alfred Rosen- berg and Julius Streicher.10 Similarly, throughout the war these widely shared tropes concerning Jewish world domination were employed against the rep- resentatives of the Czechoslovak exiles in London. The German authorities assumed total control of the public media in the Protectorate and used their grip to spread Nazi ideology, including anti- Semitism, among Czechs. The collaborationist press played a key role in those efforts. In the first two years, an influential grouping of activist journalists (Vladimír Krychtálek, Karel Lažnovký, Emanuel Vajtauer, contributors to the vitriolic anti-Semitic weekly “Aryan Struggle,” Rudolf Novák, and oth- 7 For example, a broadcast by Juraj Slávik on 9 February 1944, was published by Arnošt (Ernest) Frischer, a member of the State Council. See London Metropolitan Archives (henceforth LMA), Board of Deputies (henceforth BoD), Acc3121/E/03/510. For the reaction of British Jewish orga- nizations to Ripka’s broadcast on 18 September 1941, see We Think of You (London: HaMacabbi, 1941). 8 “The Fate of European Jews: Oswieczim and Birkenau, a Document,” in Central European Observ- er, 21 July 1944, p. 226. 9 Láníček, “The Czechoslovak Service of the BBC and the Jews during World War II,” pp. 131–133. 10 For further details see Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holo- caust. Exile_in_London_2017100.indd 229 16.10.17 14:48 230 WALKING ON EGG-SHELLS ers) adopted a strongly pro-German slant in their writings and colluded in- tensively with the Nazi authorities.11 The collaborationist wing became even more prominent when in January 1942 the leader of the group, the former colonel of the Czechoslovak army, Emanuel Moravec, was appointed Minister of Education and National Enlightenment.12 During the war, topics deemed suitable for publication in the Protectorate press were discussed at regular meetings of Czech journalists with officials from the Reichsprotektor’s office.
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