The epilogue of this superbly researched new biography of Arnošt Frischer by Jan Lánícek is aptly titled: “Who was Frischer?” Unless you are a scholar of twentieth century Czech Jews, it is reasonably likely that you do not know. This book does an excellent job of not only answering that question, however, but also making clear why you need to know more about this individual and his political career.
The author's purpose is both to tell Frischer's story and to use the analysis of his life and ideas to explore questions of national, cultural, and political identity for the Jews of the Czech lands in the first half of the twentieth century. Lánícek also examines how they reacted to anti-Semitic discrimination and violence and to the regime changes that swept through that country.
Frischer was born in 1887. His father was a merchant, and he was raised in a culturally German environment, a typical background for Bohemian Jews of his day. He embraced Zionism at university, something far less common at that time. In post-1918 Czechoslovakia, Frischer was a general Zionist who sought compromise and unity among various Zionist factions (socialist, religious, right-wing), and emphasized a practical kind of Zionism, focused on the lives of Jews where they lived at the time.
Not much support for Zionism existed among Jews in Czechoslovakia in the first years of the Republic, and Frischer began to focus more on politics in that state, helping the Jewish community fight for its rights and improve the lives of its members. He argued that Jews in the multiethnic states of central and eastern Europe should be recognized by the state as a nationality, essentially continuing the fight of Jewish nationalists in the Habsburg Monarchy to maintain a layered identity (ethnic, cultural, and civic). Frischer and his fellow Zionists sought to strengthen the Jewish cultural and national identity of Czechoslovak Jews, in opposition to those who advocated assimilation and the adoption of a Czech national identity.
Frischer was elected as chair of the nationalist Jewish Party and served from 1935 until fall 1938, after the Munich agreement essentially ended democracy in Czechoslovakia. He tried to escape when Nazi troops took the rest of the Czech lands in March 1939, but was captured and turned over to the Gestapo, and held for three months. Finally, on December 27, 1939, he was able to leave Nazi-occupied Prague for Trieste and then Palestine. In November 1941, Frischer was appointed by Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš to the government-in-exile, the State Council. He was not an official representative of the Jewish community, but he was generally described as such by the Jewish press. He advocated for Czechoslovak Jews in that capacity throughout the war. Frischer also attempted to organize relief for Jews who were in concentration camps and otherwise under Nazi control.
Lánícek's research led him to push back against what he cited as the false, yet prevailing historical interpretation that the Czechoslovak government-in-exile had strongly pushed the Allies to bomb the camps and the railroad tracks that led to them. Frischer returned to his home country in March 1945, and essentially became the head of the Czechoslovak Jewish community, as the rest of the leadership had died or been killed. One goal of the author is to ensure that historians properly acknowledge the work Frischer and others did in reconstructing Jewish life in post-1945 Czechoslovakia. Frischer was purged from political life after the Communist takeover of the government in 1948, and in June, emigrated with his family to London, where he lived until his death in 1954.
This book aims to fill a gap in the historiography, and put the life and career of Frischer back into the historical record. The author has conducted wide-ranging archival research in the Czech Republic, Canada, Israel, Switzerland, Britain, and the US. The book goes beyond Frischer's biography to offer a life and times history of the Jews in the Czechoslovak lands during the war, albeit from the perspective of the political leadership. This highly informative and well-executed monograph is certainly required reading for anyone studying twentieth century Czech Jews, and is strongly recommended for scholars and students of central and east European Jews, Jewish nationalism, national identity, and Czech politics.
