Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/423

according to the census of 1900 over 50,000 Jews gave their language as Czechs, that is to say 55%; in Moravia less than 7,000 and in Silesia only 263.

Anti-Semitic movement aimed against the Jewish element of the citizenship of the Republic is gaining strength since the end of the war. In Slovakia this fact is readily comprehended even by the stranger, because of the comparatively large number of the Jews, their Magyar or German sentiments, and their great strength in industrial life. The powerful Slovak anti-semitism is in addition fanned by clericalism, mainly Catholic, which exerts great influence over the Slovak people.

But the stranger will find it difficult to comprehend Czech anti-semitism, especially in Bohemia, where Catholic clericalism was never strong, principally because in the Czech people and among the educated classes especially there was preserved a memory of Hussitism, Bohemian Brethren and the Protestant Reformation with their great significance for national regeneration. When we further recall the small number of Jews in the Bohemian lands and their beneficial economic activities, we would expect a gradual disappearance of inherited anti-semitism among the Czech people who like the Slovaks are not combative, and strong only in passive resistance to external oppresion.

And yet anti-semitism is no stranger among the Czechs and burst out on several occasions; so after the overthrow of Austrian rule and the birth of our Republic several regrettable manifestations of it occurred, although the outbreaks were never and nowhere near as barbarous as the recent Polish pogroms or the Russian pogroms under the czarist regime. Czech anti-semitism is to be explained principally by the strong national sentiment of the people, not by racial antagonism. Of course the inherited medieval anti-semitism was nurtured during the Austrian era by various influences, above all by Catholic clericalism and by the famous Austrian principle “divide et impera”; for in spite of the hypocritical motto of the late Francis Joseph “viribus unitis” the old regime worked by setting a nation against nation and class against class. And so in the end even German anti-semitism was received in the Bohemian lands and welcomed as authoritative.

Czech national anti-semitism is about half a century old. It made its appearance together with the creation of a political national organization after 1848 and it grew in the days of the worst political persecution of the German-Austrian governments after the introduction of dualism. Sedan added fuel to it. As German hegemony in Austria grew weaker, so did anti-semitism lose strength, but it burst out suddenly in 1897 and 1899 in the so-called Hilsner affair of which more will be said later, and again after the revolution of October 28, 1918. But it has reached the zenith and we may expect a permanent weakening of it.

This national Czech anti-semitism charges the Jews in the Bohemian lands that from times immemorial they stood by the Germans and that they opposed national re-birth. This charge can only partially be supported by proof and in a sweeping form, as generally used by the anti-semites, it is quite untrue.

It is enough to point briefly to the history of the Jews in the Czech lands. The Jews were settled here, and in Slovakia as well, for many centuries; they were here long before German colonists came and even before the Magyars a thousand years ago invaded the Hungarian plain.

In Bohemia and Moravia there were Jews in the very first days of Christianity. The Raffenstetten agreement as to duties and tolls specifies in 904 what duties the Jews have to pay in the markets of the Moravian empire. In Prague Jews were known as early as the pagan days. Ibrahim Ibn Jakub mentions in 965 Jews in Prague who came from the Turkish land (namely Hungary) with Byzantinian and Arabian merchandise.

Their oldest settlements were established under the Prague and Vyšehrad castles, and the wealth of Jewish merchants and money changers was early famous

Later they settled in other places in the Bohemian lands. King Přemysl Otokar II, assigned to them in Prague a permanent settlement which grew into the Jewish quarter with many synagogues, among them the famous gothic old-new synagogue, and the memorable old Jewish cemetery.

Little research has been undertaken so far into the origin of Jews who settled in Czech lands and in Slovakia. The first Jews