The scholarship on twentieth-century refugee movement highlights the persecution of national, ethnic, and religious minorities arising from state and nation-building.Footnote 2 The very structure and function of modern nation-states made specific populations within them vulnerable outsiders. The nation-state limited and defined in new ways those groups for whom the state would take responsibility.Footnote 3 “In practically every way we can imagine,” writes Michael Marrus, “the First World War imposed on contemporaries the awesome power of the nation-state.”Footnote 4 Refugee movement has also been tied to policies of wartime persecution and the chaos of imperial collapse. Populations in flux mark a regime no longer in control, a state in dissolution and decay.Footnote 5
Less attention, however, has been paid to refugee policy itself as a tool of state building. The interwar Czechoslovak case reveals how refugee policy formation and execution may have contributed to state consolidation by fortifying state legitimacy, demonstrating good will, and positively distinguishing the state from its predecessor. This article's narrative centers on the territory of Slovakia as a point of refugee entry into the state—both wartime Hungary and interwar Czechoslovakia—and as the site where the shift in geopolitical conditions was most evident. It compares wartime Austro-Hungarian and interwar Czechoslovak refugee policy with regard to conditions of refugee arrival, sojourn, and departure. It asks: To what extent was real policy change evident in the movement from Austria-Hungary to Czechoslovakia? How effective was that change for state consolidation and reorientation away from the monarchy? How much of that change can be attributed simply to the shift from wartime to postwar conditions? To what extent were funds and pressure from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the AJDC or Joint) responsible for improvements in refugee care in interwar Czechoslovakia?
As Jewish refugees fleeing the Polish-Ukrainian War arrived in Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1920, the Palestine OfficeFootnote 6 explicitly demanded greater humanity in the refugee camps organized by the newly established state than that which was obtained in the “infamous concentration camps of the old Monarchy.”Footnote 7 Refugee accommodations had been deplorable during the war, the Palestine Office emphasized in its correspondence with the Czechoslovak administration. The wartime refugee camps in western Austria were dangerously overcrowded, dirty, and cold, often improvised from wet barns or dilapidated school buildings, and neglectful of Jewish social and religious needs, including kosher food provisions.Footnote 8 The critical housing shortage in Slovakia after the war, however, threatened similar hardships for the estimated 1,200 to 1,500 refugees already sojourning in Slovakia by mid August 1920, and the refugee inflows showed no sign of abating. In this number the Palestine Office did not include those refugees who remained in Bratislava for fewer than three days to pick up their visas before continuing on to British Mandate Palestine. Facilitating that immigration was the Palestine Office's primary responsibility. Yet, it felt a responsibility toward the Jewish displaced more broadly. It assured the Czechoslovak administration that the AJDC would cover most refugee care expenses, especially kosher food provisions. The Palestine Office acknowledged that the issue placed Czechoslovakia in a difficult position. Nevertheless it insisted a solution be found that took refugee health, hygiene, documentation, and safety in the new state into consideration within the broader postwar context. In its communications with the Czechoslovak administration, the Palestine Office urged the new state to do better than its predecessor in matters of Jewish refugee aid.Footnote 9
Correct handling of the ongoing Jewish refugee crisis in the eyes of the international community went hand in hand with Jewish citizenship and minority protections as part of the overall larger process of consolidating Czechoslovak state legitimacy.Footnote 10 The wartime plight of East European Jewish refugees had drawn international attention to the need for minority protections external to the state. In the aftermath of the war, the new question was how Jewish individual and communal rights would be protected in the emerging East Central European state system. Czechoslovakia was the lynchpin of that system. The Czechoslovak administration took the opportunity to use its handling of the post-World War I Jewish refugee issue to positively distinguish the state from its Austro-Hungarian predecessor and from its current neighbors,Footnote 11 and secure the reputation of the new state in the view of the international community and supportive Jewish organizations. In doing so, it reassured the international community of its good intentions toward the state's Jewish population and acted to balance out the damaging anti-Jewish violence that accompanied the change of regimes.Footnote 12 By 1920, the AJDC concluded that a considerable improvement in the political and socioeconomic situation of the Jews of Czechoslovakia had taken place. “The attitude of the Masarik [sic] government toward the Jews,” declared the AJDC with satisfaction, “was recently manifested at the National Assembly, which granted the Jews the same national rights that are enjoyed by the other minority nationalities.”Footnote 13
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Czechoslovakia's first president, had a sterling international reputation as a moderate Western-oriented nationalist who opposed anti-Semitism and supported Jewish national rights. In exile in England and the United States for most of the war, Masaryk had gained considerable support for the Czechoslovak state building project from important figures in the Jewish community, including Bohemian Jews. He later acknowledged Western Jewry's decisive backing of his national work during the war. The Zionist Organization of America congratulated him in September 1918 after President Wilson assured him in conversation that the “Czechoslovak nation” would enjoy independence after the war.Footnote 14
The seriousness of the postwar excesses against the Jewish population in Czechoslovakia threatened to upend the support of international Jewish organizations for the state. “We have learned to our sad surprise that anti-Jewish riots are occurring even in the new Czechoslovak state,” wired Chaim Weizmann, then president of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), to the first Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia, Karel Kramář, in December 1918.Footnote 15 Weizmann and the WZO followed the developments in Czechoslovakia closely, pointedly reminding Kramář that protection of the Jewish population was essential for continued international Jewish support of the state.Footnote 16 Anti-Jewish activity was characteristic of the immediate postwar period across East Central Europe. In Czechoslovakia, where Slovakia saw the greatest number of violent outbreaks, this activity consisted mainly of looting and attacks on Jewish property (stores and inns).Footnote 17 The AJDC estimated the material loss caused by the anti-Jewish outbreaks in Slovakia in November 1918, the worst period of the violence, at 150 million Czechoslovak crowns (about 4,411,764 USD in 1920). In Bohemia and Moravia, it “was not safe for a Jew to be seen in the streets,” the AJDC reported. Mobs beat and robbed Jews who had been driven out of cafés and restaurants.Footnote 18
In its fragile infancy, threatened by revisionist neighbors, Czechoslovakia could not afford to lose the support of international Jewish organizations. Above all else, Czechoslovakia was a state in formation. It struggled to consolidate itself politically and territorially. This included incorporating the newly defined territory of Slovakia, formerly the northern counties of the prewar Kingdom of Hungary, into its freshly fixed borders. Slovakia was crucial to the Czechoslovak state-building project. Without the Slovaks, the Czechs simply could not form the Slavic majority needed to offset the large German and Hungarian minorities and form an independent state. The security and legitimacy of that newly independent state was at stake in all interwar Czechoslovak state policy.
The AJDC made Czechoslovak state consolidation a priority in its own aid operations. Felix Warburg, Chairman of the AJDC, impressed upon the Czechoslovak Ambassador Bedřich Štěpánek that it had always been that organization's goal “to help those who have not reached the state of self-respecting, self-supporting, and enthusiastic citizenship to take pride in the development of the country which they naturally consider their own and to which they have and should make the same sacrifices as other good citizens.”Footnote 19 The broad scope of post-World War I AJDC aid to Czechoslovakia included, above all, refugee relief for Jewish refugees throughout the country arriving from Galicia, for students fleeing from Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland to Prague, and for prisoners of war captured by the former Hungarian army and housed in Bohemia. AJDC relief also took the form of economic reconstruction, public kitchens, shelter, medical relief (particularly in Subcarpathian Ruthenia), assistance to the unemployed, care of orphans, and maintenance of prewar philanthropic organizations.Footnote 20 Although the AJDC understood that transportation would be its chief problem in Subcarpathian Ruthenia—the region in most dire need of its aid—it quickly came to realize that cooperation from the government and from other relief organizations (like the American Relief Administration, or ARA) would be forthcoming for reaching village Jews because of political reasons. Wrote Leon Wechsler of the AJDC administration in Central Europe:
In Užhorod we had two talks with the Governer Žalkovič, an American citizen and a Ruthenian of this region by birth,who seemed most eager to further our work for reasons which, however remote from the purpose of our organization will nevertheless stimulate him to act on our behalf. He believes that our work among the Jews will create a more contented spirit among that element of the population and that therefore his political work will be made easier. He further states that he would give all of our activities the greatest possible newspaper publicity and in every way support us and help us with the transportation of our goods.Footnote 21
Jewish Refugee Policy in Wartime Austria-Hungary
In mid November 1914 at the outset of the war, more than 10,000 Galician Jewish refugees had arrived within seventy-two hours to Bártfa (Bartfeld, Bardejov),Footnote 22 a town of then approximately 6,100 inhabitantsFootnote 23 located close to the border of Austrian Galicia with Hungary. They had entered on foot and by wagon, pulling their children along in carts. The refugees had been on the move since September, when they fled from the invading Russian troops. Upon their arrival, the Lord Lieutenant (főispán) of Sáros County, where Bártfa was located, noted that they were indeed in a state of great privation. Contagious diseases had broken out among them, including numerous cases of scarlet fever among the children.Footnote 24
Bártfa was an important gathering point of Galician Jewish refugees, the first administrative center of significance on the other side of the Carpathian Mountains. Bártfa had a venerable past: it had been made a royal free town in 1376 and rose to importance during the fifteenth century as a commercial center because of its monopoly on linen bleaching. It was distinguished by its monumental gothic cathedral and town hall on its elongated square, as well as for its curative mineral springs. The Jewish population of Bártfa, numbering approximately 1,500 and whose settlement dated from 1808, was traditionally Orthodox with a strong Hasidic element that tended to dominate communal affairs. Many of the Jewish families of Bártfa had come from Galicia and maintained ties to Jewish communities there,Footnote 25 a common pattern among the Jews of this northeastern border region.Footnote 26 Throughout the first months of the war, hundreds of communications arrived in Budapest from Bártfa to describe daily refugee movement and conditions and to confer on policy.Footnote 27
By the time of the mass arrival of Galician Jewish refugees in mid November, the Hungarian authorities in Bártfa were equipped with an official policy for handling the influx. The main aspects of that policy had been hewn out in the first weeks of the war. At the outset, local Hungarian authorities had improvised provisions and temporary accommodations out of the Hungarian state budget for refugees without financial means. The first wave of refugees entering Hungary in September was provided for out of the Hungarian state treasury by the office of the Lord Lieutenant of Zemplén County in Sátoraljaujhely, who sent them on to Szatmár County in Transylvania for temporary accommodation. From the camp in Szatmárnémeti, 6,000 Jewish refugees were sent to Nikolsburg (Mikolov) in Moravia,Footnote 28 where the Israelitische Allianz zu Wien had organized provisions and begun construction on barracks.Footnote 29 Afterward, they sent the Jewish refugees on as soon as possible elsewhere in Moravia for temporary resettlement and the receipt of Austrian state aid.Footnote 30
The Israelitische Allianz zu Wien (Allianz) facilitated refugee relocation to Moravia. The Allianz organized and distributed funds for the construction of barracks to accommodate them and to provide kosher meals.Footnote 31 With regional committees designated for western Austria (Vienna, Bohemia, and Moravia), Eastern Austria (Galicia, Bukowina, and Russian-Poland) and Hungary, the Allianz worked with the AJDC, until the United States entered the war, and local Jewish communities to provide the bulk of aid for Jewish refugees in Austria-Hungary. Their relief work included distributing funds for the establishment and upkeep of soup kitchens, warm rooms, tea rooms, the founding of homes for orphaned children, the elderly, and the sick, building barracks for refugee accommodation, providing clothing and linen and one krone daily toward food.Footnote 32 During and after the war, East Central European states counted on funds from Jewish organizations to provide relief for Jewish refugees.
With the arrival of the 10,000 refugees in Bártfa, the military commander assigned to the town ordered that immediate arrangements be made for their transport to the interior of the monarchy. He separated those with financial means and those he considered to be the “more intelligent ones” from the mass and sent them to Kassa (Košice, Kaschau) and Budapest in Hungary, Graz and Vienna in Austria. He then ordered those without means on to the newly constructed barracks at Ungarisch Hradisch (Uherské Hradiště) in Moravia. Few of the refugees could make this trip by train, as the six trains assigned to Bártfa were dedicated to the transporting of munitions, wounded soldiers, and supplies. Some of the remaining refugees left the town in wagons, but the majority set off on foot, shouldering their burdens. “In this way,” observed the chief of the border police, “they completely inundated the countryside.”Footnote 33
Refugee travel by foot was not desirable to the state, which strongly preferred to send them by train. By train they would remain grouped and not disperse. They would be easier to account for and control. Grouped and contained, they would be less likely to come into contact with the local population. The state also wished to supply the refugees with temporary accommodation and provision, especially for the ill.Footnote 34 Carrying out policy decisions and desires, however, depended on local conditions and available equipment. Scarce wartime resources were allocated on the basis of importance to the war effort. The Lord Lieutenant of Sáros County attempted to arrange for the interception of the refugees along the Kassa-Odenberg train route, so that they might be able to continue their journey to Ungarisch Hradisch by train.Footnote 35
The influx of this group of refugees in Bártfa, while exceptional in number, was handled in typical fashion. In organizing the further movement of Jewish refugees arriving in Hungary, the state was primarily concerned with citizenship, wealth, and health. Austro-Hungarian policy toward the Galician Jewish refugees on the territory of Hungary depended on their classification as citizens of Austria. As Austrian citizens, the refugees were entitled to receive state aid from the Austrian treasury.Footnote 36 Austrian citizens were, however, to receive this aid while on Austrian territory, with the exception of limited Austrian state aid to refugees sojourning in Budapest. This proviso required that Galician Jewish refugees without means leave Hungarian territory for Austria. In Austria, refugees were temporarily resettled in barracks or other accommodations in Moravia and Bohemia until repatriation became possible.
The state divided the refugees into two main categories according to wealth: those with means to provide for themselves who would not require aid from the state and those without. The majority of the refugees belonged to the latter group. Starting in October 1914, Hungary sent newly arriving refugees without means directly to Austria and began to transport those sojourning in Budapest to Vienna. Once in Austria, incoming Jewish refugees were redirected to Moravia. They then passed through the refugee camp at Ungarisch Hradisch in Moravia, which served as a way station for redirecting the refugees to tens of smaller camps and other means of accommodation in Moravia and Bohemia.Footnote 37 The camp at Ungarisch Hradisch was by far the largest of these. According to the count of the AJDC, approximately 90,000 refugees were located in the camp at Ungarisch Hradisch at the end of 1916.Footnote 38 This figure reflects the height of the camp's occupancy levels, following the near total removal of Austrian Jewish refugees from Budapest and the Hungarian countryside in the summer and fall of 1916.
Refugees with means, who were able to provide for themselves and did not require aid from the state, were sent to the urban centers of the monarchy. By the end of 1914, Galician Jewish refugees with means were sojourning in nearly every city in Hungary.Footnote 39 There, local police regularly checked to make sure these refugees with means still had enough resources to support themselves and their families.Footnote 40 Health was a central factor in determining the movement of refugees without means. Individuals suffering from serious illness were often permitted an extended stay in Hungarian communities. Chaim Rozenfeld, for example, was allowed to remain in Kassa during February and March of 1915 because of his advanced age and ill health. After that he was required to leave Hungary for Ungarisch Hradisch.Footnote 41 The local Jewish community leadership confirmed the departure of refugees whose sojourn had been extended for Ungarisch Hradisch.Footnote 42
State aid is linked to state belonging. Because wartime refugee relief policy in Austria-Hungary allowed for aid distribution from the Austrian treasury to Austrian citizens on Austrian territory, and likewise for Hungarian citizens, a significant wartime aid strategy among northern Hungarian Jewish communities had been to find ways to connect location and aid. They worked to convince the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior in Budapest to allow Austrian (Galician Jewish) refugees to receive Austrian state aid while sojourning on Hungarian territory (Slovakia), so that they would not have to make the treacherous winter journey to refugee camps on Austrian territory (Moravia and Bohemia).
The northern Hungarian Jewish communities that experienced the influx of Galician Jewish refugees into their towns in late 1914 were loathe to allow them to be sent directly to the camps in Moravia as winter set in, especially because the arriving refugee population consisted chiefly of women, children, and the elderly. Instead, they provided for the refugees out of private Jewish community resources. The amount of aid required to handle the numbers of refugees passing through the countryside throughout the war, however, was financially devastating. Provincial communities sought state aid from Budapest in 1914 and 1915 to mitigate the financial burden they faced in providing for the refugees.Footnote 43 By the end of the war, they were drained of all resources.Footnote 44
Virtually all local Hungarian Jewish attempts to direct Austrian state aid to the refugees within their communities failed. This was true except for the work of Rabbi Koloman Wéber of the Orthodox Jewish community in Pőstyén (Piešťany). In late November 1914, Rabbi Wéber urged the Ministry of the Interior in Vienna to allow Galician Jewish refugees to receive state aid in their current location. “1500 Jewish refugees from Galicia remain here in Pőstyén,” he wrote, “the majority of which are in need of financial support. The Jewish community is unable to handle this mass distress. I implore the honorable Ministry to grant the aid that has been given to the refugees in Vienna and elsewhere to those sojourning in Pőstyén as well. Without this aid, their situation is untenable.”Footnote 45 The Austrian Ministry of the Interior granted his request, with the proviso that if this means of aid should become unworkable, the refugees sojourning in Pőstyén would be sent to Ungarisch Hradisch and handled there in the usual way.Footnote 46
Following a delay of several weeks in the disbursement of the Austrian funds to Pőstyén, Rabbi Wéber resolutely petitioned the Hungarian Minister of the Interior in mid January 1915 to comply with the approval of his request by the Austrian Ministry of the Interior.Footnote 47 He did so one month later, allowing the distribution of Austrian monies to the refugee aid committee of the Jewish community in Pőstyén for the approximately 800–1,000 Galician Jewish refugees still sojourning there.Footnote 48 The Ungarländische Jüdische Zeitung, founded and edited by the Zionist Samuel Bettelheim,Footnote 49 cheered Rabbi Wéber's success in its war updates column.Footnote 50
The Orthodox Jewish communities of Pozsony (Bratislava, Pressburg) and Stomfa (Štupava) soon followed suit, requesting that Austrian state aid be directed to them to provide for hundreds of refugee families. “After much wandering,” the petition from the Stomfa community asserted, “[the refugees] have found refuge and a place of calm in the bosom of our community.”Footnote 51 Why, then, was it necessary to force them further on a treacherous winter trek? The Galician-born Dr. Joseph Samuel Bloch, former parliamentary deputy, editor of the Vienna-based Österreichische Wochenschrift and staunch defender of Jewish rights, sent a telegram to the Hungarian Prime Minister Count István Tisza on behalf of the Galician Jewish refugees sojourning in Galanta, reminding Tisza that the sons of the refugees were off fighting the enemy in the Carpathians.Footnote 52
During the war, the Austro-Hungarian administration pursued a repatriation policy following the Central Powers’ reconquest of Galicia and the Bukovina in 1915. The Hungarian Minister of the Interior ordered the remaining Austrian Jewish refugees sojourning in Hungary to return to their original residences by August 15. Most of Galicia was back under Austrian control since June. Thousands of refugees passed back through Budapest and crossed the Hungarian countryside on foot in their trek northward to Galicia.Footnote 53
According to the Jüdische Zeitung, Hungarian police enforcement of repatriation orders became increasingly draconian in the fall of 1915. One evening in early October, the Budapest police removed a refugee family from the apartment in which they had lived for nearly a year and sent them to a house of detention (Schubhaus).Footnote 54 Thousands of Jewish refugees remained on the territory of Hungary after the October deadline, however. The Israelitische Allianz zu Wien calculated that by the end of 1915, there were 30,000 Jewish refugees concentrated in Nagyvard (Grossvardein) Transylvania, but did not have numbers for Budapest or northern Hungary.Footnote 55
In the summer of 1916, approximately 1,500 of an earlier count of 25,000 Austrian Jewish refugees remained in Budapest. The majority of them were elderly and infirm. The rest of the refugee population consisted of Galician rabbis who received permission not to be resettled in Bohemian and Moravian locales that lacked a Jewish community, and children ready to be enrolled in schools for the coming academic year.Footnote 56 But by the end of the summer, another wave of Austrian and Hungarian Jewish refugees had arrived in the interior of the monarchy following the success of the Brusilov offensive and the Romanian invasion of Transylvania. At the end of 1916, some 20,000 Jewish refugees were located in Budapest and the Hungarian provinces.Footnote 57
According to a telegram sent to the Emperor/King Francis Joseph from concerned Budapest Jews, the Hungarian authorities began to “round up [the refugees] like dogs on the street” in September and send them away.Footnote 58 In November, the Hungarian Minister of the Interior announced that his efforts had led to the removal of more than 9,000 refugees out of an estimated 25,000, and the other 16,000 would be removed as soon as possible.Footnote 59 The final wartime attempt at total refugee repatriation came in April 1918. The few hundred Austrian Jewish refugees sojourning in the provinces and in Budapest, regardless of whether they were with or without means, were ordered to report to the police in the capital and depart for their original residences from assigned transport centers.Footnote 60
Jewish Refugee Policy in Interwar Czechoslovakia
The Jewish refugee crisis remained a pressing issue for Czechoslovakia through 1921, even after fixing the state's borders. The wartime legacy of mass population displacement demanded continuing attention, while fresh refugee flows crossed into the state after 1918 as a result of the Polish-Ukrainian War. Postwar population displacement continued until Galician-Ukrainian forces were driven out of Galicia in summer 1919.Footnote 61 Displaced Jews came to Czechoslovakia often directly from Eastern Galicia, headed toward Prague. Within three months in mid 1921, Jewish relief organizations based in Czechoslovakia recorded 10,000 Jews on the move. In contrast to earlier Jewish migration flows, the United States was no longer a primary destination option. The American government steadily restricted its immigration policy and cut off most transatlantic migration with the Johnson Act of 1924. Canadian legislation in 1923 functioned in a similar way. Displaced Jews chiefly remained in Europe.Footnote 62 Czechoslovakia gradually brought refugee sojourn on its territory to a close by December 1921, largely through immigration policy. Many Jewish refugees also found destinations in Palestine and Brazil.
The continuing refugee presence and the accompanying strain on scarce resources exacerbated existing Slovak grievances against the local Jewish population. Reported the overwhelmed chief of police:
In Bardejov (Bártfa) eighty years ago there were only three poor Jewish families. Today there are 2402 of them. That is 38.5% of the whole population, comparatively the greatest [percentage] in the whole republic, with the exception of Užhorod. They are Orthodox, not one family makes a living doing productive work, they are all only kšeftárí [hawkers], racketeering, smuggling across the border to Poland. The town is in an impoverished state because of them; all business is in their hands. During the war, more than 1000 of them flooded into the town from surrounding communities.Footnote 63
During the anti-Jewish violence that had accompanied the change of regimes, even the Jewish refugees in Bardejov were robbed and state provisions intended for them often stolen from refugee camp storehouses.Footnote 64 This impoverished refugee population depended on aid from the state and the Jewish community. The Bardejov municipality distributed that aid to eligible recipients in its constituency. Local administrators granted residency, defined as the right to remain in the town and receive aid there, only with the greatest reluctance.
Jewish refugees who sojourned in Slovakia during the first three years of the republic fell into two overlapping categories. There were wartime refugees from Galicia and the Bukovina who remained on the territory of Slovakia since their arrival in late 1914 or early 1915, and there were those who were forced to flee Galicia after 1918. Most of the latter group had already been refugees during the world war, repatriated after 1916. This group constituted the majority of postwar Jewish refugees. Wartime Austro-Hungarian refugee policy had required Austrian citizens, largely meaning Jews from Galicia and the Bukovina, to be accommodated in Austria and Hungarian citizens in Hungary. As a result, Jewish refugees from Galicia and the Bukovina were transported to the then Austrian provinces of Moravia and Bohemia to refugee camps or similar accommodations. This process had fulfilled the policy of clearing the vast majority of refugees from Hungary. There were no refugee camps in Slovakia, but some refugees did settle down in various communities on an individual basis, in small numbers.Footnote 65
The ongoing population displacement in the aftermath of the war, however, pushed the Czechoslovak administration to rapidly define the new state in terms of territory, population, and citizenship. It added urgency to the problem of “fixing” population to territory and building new homelands in the post-imperial successor state.Footnote 66 The Jewish refugee presence strained the cohesiveness of the state the administration sought to create. It sharpened already tense ethnic relations, strained already overextended scarce resources, and added to the sense of moral panic and civic crisis.Footnote 67
Bardejov (Bártfa), close to the Polish border, had been the point of entry into Hungary for Galician Jewish refugees during the world war. Now it was their gateway to Czechoslovakia. How would the new administration handle the influx? What wartime lessons would Jewish communities and organizations apply to the current circumstances? How would their activities shape their relationships to each other and to the new state? The refugee crisis formed a bridge between former Austria-Hungary and the new Czechoslovak Republic. It offers a useful perspective for examining the evolving orientation of the Jews in Slovakia within the changed circumstances of the new state. How Jews in northern Hungary handled the crisis during the war had been critical to defining their relationship with the Hungarian Jewish leadership in Budapest. Their responses to it following the war acted to differentiate their positions in relation to each other, as well as formulate methods of interaction with the Czechoslovak state. The Jewish People's Union (JPU)Footnote 68 and the Central Office of Orthodox Jewish Communities in Slovakia (Central Office) dominated refugee aid activities in Slovakia. Although the JPU acted on the basis of Jewish national minority protections in Czechoslovakia, the second applied traditional methods of communal self-help and government intervention in their work.
The Bardejov chief of police found himself in a similar position as his predecessor in fall 1914. He waited for orders now from Prague rather than Budapest on how to handle the thousands of Jewish refugees in the border town. Would they be permitted to sojourn in the town, with or without right of residency, or would they be transferred elsewhere?
In a shift from wartime aid conditions, Czechoslovakia worked in conjunction with Jewish religious communities to provide for the remaining sojourn of the Galician Jewish refugees, who were now Polish citizens, in approved cases. Where their sojourn was permitted, the state granted refugees temporary legal status, and the Jewish communities provided for their material needs. Two cases, both from Nitra in western Slovakia, demonstrate how this policy functioned. In the first, the Minister Plenipotentiary for Slovakia (hereafter, MPS) allowed residency to Abraham Widder through the end of the month in 1919, with the proviso that the Jewish community take care of him.Footnote 69 In the second, Jozef Weisz was permitted to remain in Czechoslovakia until 20 November 1919, as long as the Jewish community took responsibility for him.Footnote 70
Where refugee sojourn was not permitted, the Czechoslovak administration provided for their transportation by wagon. This again contrasted with the usual though disliked practice of sending refugees off on foot during the war. The county administrator of Gemer-Malohont handled the removal of Galician Jewish refugees and other “unreliable elements” from Rimavská Sobota in central Slovakia in October 1919. The action was postponed because of difficulties in providing wagons for their transport. The county administrator urged the MPS to make the vehicles available quickly, so that the refugees could travel before the onset of winter.
From summer 1920, the focus of Jewish refugee aid efforts shifted from the small number of remaining war refugees to the incoming stream fleeing the Polish-Ukrainian War. Overall, Czechoslovak policy toward arriving refugees can be characterized by the collaborative efforts between the Jewish community, both locally and internationally, and the Czechoslovak government. Reports from Bratislava show that the Jewish religious community was responsible for refugee care upon arrival. Afterward, the state offered them regular material aid, as well as the right to apply for asylum in Czechoslovakia. With the agreement of the MPS, the refugees were confined to quarantined refugee camps to prevent the spread of contagious diseases.Footnote 71 By December 1921, the majority of the refugees had emigrated to Brazil and to Palestine, while the remainder left Czechoslovakia for other destinations.Footnote 72
Between June and August 1920, when the first report explaining the new refugee situation arrived on the MPS's desk from the Governmental Health Advisor, nearly 700 Galician Jewish refugees had arrived in Czechoslovakia. Of the 700, only 250 were accommodated in Bratislava. These were the refugees who possessed travel papers. The remaining 450 refugees crossed the border without papers, unsuccessful in their attempts to avoid the border guards.Footnote 73 If there were other undocumented refugees who managed to get across the border without detection, they are not recorded, so the precise number of refugees entering Czechoslovakia in 1920 through 1921 is not known.
The 450 refugees without papers were taken into police custody in northern border police stations, primarily in Bardejov and Hummené. The local administration sent the refugees down to Bratislava by train in stages. There is no record that the administration provided for medical exams or considered other refugee health issues. When asked where they were going, the majority of the refugees answered that they were on the way to Palestine. The 250 refugees with papers were sent down to Bratislava immediately. There, local Jewish organizations provided accommodations in five locations: the old Pálffy barracks that had been turned into the workers’ hostel of the Poalezion Socialist Zionist organization, the gymnasium of the Orthodox Jewish school on Telocvičná/Torna street, the elementary school of the Reform Jewish community on Telocvičná/Torna street, the hospital of the Merciful Brothers on the Square of the Republic, and dispersal among private homes in the Jewish Quarter. Refugees who had not been disinfected upon arrival, a group that included the majority of refugees without travel papers, were to be disinfected in the municipal station on Rastislav street. The station was open every day except Sunday from five to six in the afternoon, able to handle about 30 people a day.Footnote 74
Incoming refugees underwent health exams and disinfection because of their living conditions in Galicia, malnutrition, the long journey, and exposure to the elements and contagious diseases. Housing conditions had been deplorable throughout Galicia since the first months of the world war. Hundreds of villages along the Eastern Front were destroyed by the invading Russian troops and in subsequent battles. When the vast majority of world war refugees were repatriated beginning in 1916, they often had no homes left to which to return. In a February 1916 report, the AJDC described the desperate housing situation prevalent in Galicia: vast portions of the population were “obliged to pass the winter in damp and cold earth-holes, with foul straw for their beds and bare of all clothing. Cholera, spotted typhus and dysentery daily cause[d] large gaps among them.”Footnote 75
“Why not house the refugees in the Mikulov (Moravia) barracks?” wrote Rabbi Koloman Wéber to the Czechoslovak administration in Bratislava. Rabbi Wéber now headed The Central Office of Orthodox Jewish Communities in Slovakia.Footnote 76 He urged the administration to allow the refugees housed throughout the Jewish Quarter in Bratislava to move to the Mikulov barracks as soon as possible. The barracks in Mikulov had been constructed for refugee accommodation in Moravia in 1914 and 1915. The largest compound in Moravia lay in Uherské Hradište (Moravia), which had held nearly 90,000 refugees in the winter 1916 before their repatriation. Eight thousand refugees had been housed in Mikulov.Footnote 77 There in Mikulov, Wéber proposed, the state would provide foodstuffs to the Central Office, which would then prepare it according the rules of kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws.Footnote 78
The Bratislava Chief of Police agreed to the plan. He wrote to the MPS explaining Rabbi Wéber's proposal. The accommodations would indeed be suitable, he concurred, but the state would have to arrange the paperwork and decide how to handle questions of health and hygiene.Footnote 79 After some consideration, the MPS forwarded the proposal, with his approval and the approval of the Bratislava Chief of Police, to the Ministry of National Defense in Prague.Footnote 80 By the end of September, the paperwork and details of accommodating the Jewish refugees in the camp at Slámený boudy/Strohhütte, located in the Koliba section of Bratislava, were completed. It appeared that although the government found the proposal of the Central Office workable, the available barracks in Koliba were more convenient for the present need. Each refugee would be required to undergo a health exam and disinfection before given permission to intern at the refugee camp. None would be allowed to leave the camp and freedom of movement within it would be limited. The refugees, however, would be accommodated in functional facilities and provided with kosher meals. The AJDC headquarters in Košice, in conjunction with local Jewish organizations, agreed to take full responsibility for the refugees, and for carrying out the rules governing their accommodation laid out by the authorities.Footnote 81 The AJDC later described the barrack refugee camp as a “veritable Jewish life-saving station … affording much relief, including medical help, to thousands of needy refugees … at any one time as many as 4000 refugees were sheltered, fed, and cared for.”Footnote 82 The Czechoslovak administration, noted the AJDC, “promoted the good cause even to the extent of advancing a carload of flour.”Footnote 83
Not all proposals for refugee accommodation worked out so successfully and rapidly. Not all unoccupied barracks would be made available for refugee housing. In August 1920, the AJDC in Košice wrote to the Chief Medical Officer in Bratislava, proposing that Polish Jewish refugees be accommodated in the military barracks there no longer in use. There were many barracks available, and other types of housing were nearly impossible to secure. They requested two barracks, promising again that the AJDC would take full responsibility for the refugees for the duration of their sojourn on the territory of Czechoslovakia. The suggestion was rejected. The Polish Jewish refugees would not be interned at the military barracks on Raktár street because these had to be left available to serve as a quarantine station.Footnote 84
Despite the fact that this proposal was not realized, the method, form, and tone of communication shows a willingness to find workable, mutually agreeable solutions. The AJDC and the Central Office sought to better the lot of the Jewish refugees by linking their resources with those of the Czechoslovak state. They submitted proposals that they hoped took into account state concerns for the health of the general population and the overall housing shortage. They took responsibility for the refugees, assuring that state protocols would be followed, and thus acted as an intermediary between the refugees and the state administration. The state authorities in Bratislava and Prague listened to the proposals of the Jewish organizations and responded in keeping with their main priority of protecting the health and well-being of the general population. When the state felt it no longer possible to care for the refugees without putting the general population in jeopardy, then it would cease cooperation with local and international Jewish organizations for refugee provision in Czechoslovakia.
The Czechoslovak administration closed the borders to further refugee influx, citing concern for the health of the general public in February 1921. The case of Róza Reizer was crucial to that decision. The Bratislava Administrative Council presented Reizer's case in a summary report toward the end of February 1921. Briefly, Reizer was diagnosed with typhus and therefore forbidden continued sojourn at the Koliba refugee camp in January 1921. She apparently contracted the disease during her circuitous journey from Stanislav, Galicia, to Bratislava after she fled her home in December 1920. Her route included stays of varying length in Lwov, Těšín, and Prague. After reviewing refugee accommodations in Bratislava, the report came to the main area of complaint concerning continued refugee sojourn on the territory. The refugees had come from regions “swimming in epidemics,” many in need of immediate medical care, the report stated. Before the beginning of the school year, they were housed at the former military barracks at Koliba, Slamené boudy (Strohhütte), where after disinfection they were placed under continual medical supervision. Although the majority of the refugees emigrated to Palestine and to other places after receiving their travel papers, more refugees entered the state replacing them, so that their number remained close to 400. Even in February 1921, approximately 400 refugees remained in the city, though their extended residency had expired in mid December. As a result of permanent medical control, careful disinfection, and removal of lice, the medical supervisors reported that they successfully managed to rid the new refugees of disease and epidemics.Footnote 85 According to the report's conclusion, Róza's case demonstrated that “all of the efforts to secure the health of the refugees and the general population could be in vain if just one or two refugees from Poland wandered into the city carrying an infectious disease.” That disease could easily become a dangerous epidemic. Therefore, they asked the MPS to dissolve the camp. The Bratislava Administrative Council reminded the MPS that the extended residency permission for the refugees had expired on 15 December 1920, and the refugees should be sent elsewhere.Footnote 86
Emigration then became the primary means by which the Czechoslovak state dealt with the Jewish refugee situation. On 5 March 1921, The Czechoslovak administration ordered the evacuation of all refugees from state territory by the end of the month. “The authorities immediately began to carry out this order without mercy,” reported the AJDC.Footnote 87 Refugee evacuations were delayed, however, through AJDC intercession with the authorities. The AJDC's successful intervention with the administration on behalf of the refugees gained a residency extension for refugees from Poland until April 15 and for licensed mechanics, real estate owners, and merchants until 31 May 1921. The AJDC had further success in obtaining funds from the Czechoslovak government to pay for the transportation of all refugees without means who were not classified as “undesirable aliens” to the country's border. Local Jewish communities footed the bill for this last category of refugees sojourning on Czechoslovak territory.Footnote 88
By December 1921 the majority of refugees who had sojourned on the territory of Czechoslovakia had emigrated to Brazil, Palestine, or other destinations.Footnote 89 Propertyless Jewish refugees from Poland who sojourned on the territory of Slovakia in the Koliba refugee camp close to Bratislava, where they were provided for by the AJDC, were sent gradually to Prague, where the Jewish Town Hall handled their emigration. Refugees underwent a medical examination before leaving Bratislava for their journey to Prague. They were examined once again at an immigration station in Libeň on the outskirts of Prague before continuing on to the Jewish Town Hall.Footnote 90 The first group of twenty refugees from the Koliba camp in Bratislava left Prague for Brazil on 28 February 1921.Footnote 91
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Did a real change in refugee policy take place in the movement from Austria-Hungary to Czechoslovakia? Did the refugee camps organized by the newly established Czechoslovak state indeed offer greater humanity than those the Palestine Office deemed the “infamous concentration camps of the old Monarchy?” Recent scholarship on refugee policy in interwar Czechoslovakia polemicizes the conventional, overstated perception of Czechoslovakia as an “island of freedom, democracy, and tolerance” in the 1930s.Footnote 92 Yet, it is important to remember that despite the nostalgic or political origins that conditioned these perceptions, as well as the ever-increasing flow of refugees from Nazi Germany to Czechoslovakia after 1933, that symbolized the difference between the neighboring political regimes,Footnote 93 Czechoslovakia demonstrated its goodwill even earlier. The Czechoslovak administration would not jeopardize the humanist reputation Masaryk had gained for the state through his earlier activity. In its refugee policy at the outset of the state, Czechoslovakia appeared to focus its attention on those areas of wartime Austro-Hungarian policy most sharply criticized by international Jewish organizations, namely accommodation and provision.
The greatest shift in Jewish refugee policy from Austria-Hungary to Czechoslovakia nevertheless lay in implementing that policy under conditions of war in the Dual Monarchy versus implementation under peacetime conditions of national state building. The strain of scarce wartime resources and problems of aid distribution in the dualist state, military priority over train and wagon transportation and provisions, compounded by the fact that American Jewish resources could not reach the Central Powers after the United States entered the war, produced conditions of even greater deprivation for wartime refugees. Wartime refugee numbers within Austria-Hungary also stood nearly ten times higher than those in Czechoslovakia at the peak of refugee inflows. The wartime Jewish experience led the AJDC to launch the Department for Refugees and Repatriates in 1920, with offices in Poland, Romania, the Baltic States, and Central Europe, including Eastern Czechoslovakia. The AJDC channeled aid from America, stimulated self-help projects, and aided local Jewish organizations in their intercession with state authorities.Footnote 94
The fact that AJDC aid facilitated the Czechoslovak administration's handling of the crisis under postwar conditions, however, does not on its own explain the Czechoslovak administration's ongoing cooperation with local and international Jewish organizations, and even its displays of timely goodwill, such as advancing a life-saving wagonload of flour to the Koliba refugee camp in Bratislava. Nor does the shift from war to peacetime conditions discount those efforts. Even if the Czechoslovak administration's actions were tied to political motivations only distantly related to local and international Jewish organizations’ refugee relief goals—like the governor in Užhorod—it still meant that the state worked on behalf of those goals. Local Jews took note. Czechoslovak state cooperation with their aid efforts, alongside its policies of Jewish minority protections, formed an integral part of their own political reorientation process, reassured international Jewish organizations, and lent further support to Czechoslovak state consolidation.Footnote 95
