The drastic methods adopted by the Nazis to bring about complete “Germanization” of Czech industry and bend the restive people in the Protectorate to their will are spotlighted anew in a booklet published here today under the pen of Dr. Eduard Benes, former president of Czechoslovakia, and in reports seeping through the strict German censorship.
In his booklet, entitled “Nazi Barbarism in Czechoslovakia” and published by George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., Benes assails the terroristic policy pursued by the Germans toward the cultural, economic and other activities of the freedom-loving Czechs.
Publication of the booklet coincided with reports that a new wave of arrests was underway in the Protectorate, indicating that the Czechs had overcome the discouragement caused by the French surrender and had resumed their passive opposition to the Germans. This resistance has continued to such an extent that the Germans have been obliged to maintain permanently in the Protectorate between 250,000 and 400,000 German troops and at least 10,000 Gestapo agents and Blackshirt guards, it was reported.
Benes charges that the Jewish question had been “misused” in Czechoslovakia by the Nazis to bring about a widespread mass Germanization of Czech industrial life.”
“I consider it necessary in this present age of perverted moral ideas to declare with pride that Czechoslvakia for a period of twenty years knew no anti-Semitism,” Benes says. “There were about 350,000 Jews in Czechoslovakia on an equal footing with the rest of the population, holding high public positions and enjoying considerable wealth.”
When the Nazis enforced the Nuremberg anti-Jewish Laws in the Protectorate in Marsh against the Jewfishes of the Czech Government it soon became clear that the aim of the Nazis was wholesale ” Germanization” of the country, Benes pointed out.
“According to the Protector’s decree any concern is considered to be Jewish if there is a single Czech of Jewish origin in the management. As the Jewish participation in Czech industry was very widespread, most of this industry has come into German hands.
“The so-called Aryanization of Jewish property in Czechoslovakia was realized in such a way that no single piece of confiscated or transferred Jewish property could be given to a citizen of Czech nationality. That means that almost the whole of the great Czechoslovak industry is today confiscated by the Germans.”
Reports reaching here from other sources said that approximately 70,000 Czechs were in concentration camps. The dread Gestapo has absolute power in the protectorate and killed or tortured thousands who fell under Nazi displeasure, it was said.
More than 100,000 Czech workers have been sent to Germany for forced labor and have been replaced in industrial plants and other enterprises by native Germans. All men up to 30, including ex-officers and civil servants, can be ordered to the Reich to work on German fortifications, it was said.
Some of the many Czech students arrested after demonstrations earlier this year were recently sent home in a pitiable state, reports said. In some cases their faces were so severely mutilated that their parents could scarcely recognize them.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
