List of Czech and Slovak Jews

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There was a large and thriving community of Jews, both religious and secular, in Czechoslovakia before World War II. Many perished during the Holocaust. Today, nearly all of the survivors inter-married and assimilated into the Czech and Slovak society.

Contents

Academics and scientists

Arts/Entertainment

Athletes

Music

Politicians

Psychologists and psychiatrists

Religious leaders

Writers

Other

See also

References

Footnotes

  1. ^ ADL website Accessed 9 Feb 2006
  2. ^ Review of his book, "The Cosmic Book: On the Mechanics of Creation" Biblio.com booksellers calls him "a Jewish scientist and inventor, who was born in Prague". Accessed 20 Oct 2006
  3. ^ Jewish Agency for Israel; The Hugo Bergmann family Papers; both accessed 11 March 2007
  4. ^ Encyclopaedia Judaica, article "Historians", list of "Prominent Jewish General Historians".
  5. ^ "Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori". Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/cori.html. Retrieved 8 November 2011. 
  6. ^ [1]: "Birthplace: Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia ... Religion: Jewish" accessed 8 Feb 2007
  7. ^ [2] "Vilém Flusser was born on the 12th of May 1920 in Prague into a family of Jewish intellectuals"
  8. ^ Obituary, by John Davis, Warden of All Souls College London School of Economics, "Ernest Gellner, who has died a few days short of his 70th birthday, was brought up in Prague, in an urban intellectual Jewish family." Accessed 10 Nov 2006.
  9. ^ Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., art. "Koller, Carl": "born in Bohemia"
  10. ^ (Jewish Year Book 2005 p215, in List of Jewish Fellows of the British Academy; born Czechoslovakia; see Who was Who)
  11. ^ List of Jewish philosophers; born in Prague Biography Research Guide 10 March 2008
  12. ^ Encyclopedia Judaica, article "Historians", list of "Prominent Jewish General Historians".
  13. ^ [3] "Political tensions arose around this time, and like many other Jewish intellectuals, she left Germany"
  14. ^ Ruth Linn. "Obituary: Rudolf Vrba | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited". Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,,1752845,00.html. Retrieved 8 November 2011. 
  15. ^ [4] Noted in "Prague Jewish Architecture"
  16. ^ Web biographies that indicate Forman's father, who died in a concentration camp, was Jewish are incorrect. Neither one of his parents was Jewish. However, according to [5], Forman's biological father was Jewish, something he found out only after WWII: "About this time Miloš received word from a woman who befriended Anna in Auschwitz. What she had to say would come as quite a shock. It seems Rudolf was in fact not Miloš's father and that his real father was an architect who had worked for Anna. He too disappeared before the war but was Jewish thereby making Miloš half Jewish. Miloš would learn that this man was in fact alive and a professor at a university in Ecuador. They would never meet."
  17. ^ Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed, art. "Goldflam, Arnošt": "Czech playwright, writer, director, screenwriter, and actor. Born to Holocaust survivors in Brno (Moravia)"
  18. ^ Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed, art. "Haas, Hugo": "Czechoslovakian actor and film director"
  19. ^ Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed, art. "Lederer, Francis": "Czech actor"
  20. ^ International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies – Cemetery Project: he is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Znojmo, Czech Republic; accessed 18 May 2007
  21. ^ Martin Harry Greenberg. The Jewish lists: physicists and .... http://books.google.com/books?id=1K4UAQAAIAAJ&q=herbert+lom+jewish&dq=herbert+lom+jewish&hl=en&ei=W7e1TuKlA-jt0gGT6v3RBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA. Retrieved 8 November 2011. 
  22. ^ "Robert Maxwell: Overview". Ketupa.net. http://www.ketupa.net/maxwell.htm. Retrieved 8 November 2011. 
  23. ^ [6] "important Jewish graphic artist and painter, Emil Orlik"
  24. ^ [7] described Radok as "half Jewish"
  25. ^ [8] "Reisz arrived in Britain in 1939 as one of more than 600 Jewish children, who escaped the horrific fate of their parents thanks to Sir Nicholas Winton, who arranged for them to escape Czechoslovakia"
  26. ^ [9] "in spite of the fact that due to his wartime experience as an enduring Jewish child"
  27. ^ [10] noted in an essay on "Jewish artists"
  28. ^ "A Jewish Athlete". Mehrpatrick1.web.officelive.com. http://mehrpatrick1.web.officelive.com/AJewishAthlete.aspx. Retrieved 8 November 2011. 
  29. ^ "NEWSLETTER 2004/3". Jewishmuseum.cz. http://www.jewishmuseum.cz/en/a043.htm. Retrieved 8 November 2011. 
  30. ^ Canadian Encyclopedia, art. Jewish music and musicians "Post-war Jewish immigration has related less to persecution than to professional appointments or opportunities (eg, Karel Ančerl" Accessed 23 October 2006.
  31. ^ The concentration camp for Jews – the Terezín Ghetto lists Berman as among the Jews sent there; Accessed 3 November 2006
    Jewish Theological Seminary: "Czech opera star Karel Berman" Accessed 3 November 2006
  32. ^ Jewish: "Contemporary Review, June, 1999 by Anthony Paterson" [11] "the Nazi ban on his compositions – he was Jewish" Accessed 6 Nov 2006.
    born Moravia: "Composers of Classical Music" [12] "Brull, Ignaz 1846–1907 Moravia, Prossnitz – Austria, Vienna" Accessed 6 November 2006.
  33. ^ Jewish Encyclopedia; "born at Prague" Accessed 28 Nov 2006.
  34. ^ "Classical Composers Database" [13] "Born: 21 June 1899, Brno (Czechoslovakia) ... Being Jewish, at the time of the Nazi invasion he divorced his Christian wife to save his family" Accessed 6 Nov 2006.
  35. ^ Avins, Styra "Brahms and the German Spirit (review)" Music and Letters – Volume 87, Number 1, 2006, pp. 136–141 online at [14] or [15] "three other Jews, Julius Epstein, Anton Door, and Eduard Hanslick" (Needs subscription, but found with this search: [16] Accessed 6 Nov 2006.)
    Born in Prague: Encyclopædia Britannica Accessed 6 Nov 2006.
  36. ^ a b Czech Jewish Museum "The life and work of the Czech Jewish composers Gideon Klein and Egon Ledeč" Accessed 10 Nov 2006.
  37. ^ The Gideon Klein Foundation "The Gideon Klein Foundation is a non-profit organization founded by Eliška Kleinová, Gideon Klein’s sister" Accessed 15 Jun 2007.
  38. ^ Korngold Society: "he got thrown out of Vienna because he was Jewish" Jessica Duchen, author of E. Korngold's biography); Korngold Society: "BRNO, where the composer was born"; accessed 6 Feb 2007.
  39. ^ Berkeley Repertory Theater "Krása, who was Jewish" Accessed 23 November 2006
    Minnesota Public Radio "Krása was a gifted Czech composer" Accessed 23 November 2006
  40. ^ IMDB database "Mahler's Jewish faith stood in the way of his career goal" Accessed 28 Nov 2006.
    Sony Essentials of Music "Czech-born Austrian composer and conductor" Accessed 28 Nov 2006.
  41. ^ Art. on Moscheles in Encyclopædia Britannica "Czech pianist, one of the outstanding virtuosos of his era"; Art. on Moscheles in Columbia Encyclopedia "Prague -born Jewish virtuoso Ignaz Moscheles" Both accessed 29 Nov 2006.
  42. ^ Radio Praha "She was born in Pilsen in 1927 into an upper class Jewish family"; Goldberg the early-music portal "France honours Czech harpsichordist Zuzana Ruzickova" Both accessed 29 Nov 2006.
  43. ^ School of Oriental and African Studies, Newsletter of the Jewish Music Institute "Erwin Schulhoff, a Czech Jew executed by the Nazis..." Accessed 8 Dec 2006.
  44. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, 2nd ed., art. "Schulhoff, Julius": "Born in Prague"
  45. ^ Bach cantatas site "The distinguished Czech-born English conductor" Lake Placid Film Forum "Walter Susskind, a German Jew" Both accessed 4 Jan 2007
  46. ^ [17] "Raised a German-Czech until a 1909 move to Austria" [18] "Viktor Ullmann, composer, pianist, choirmaster, conductor and music critic, was one of the victims from among the Prague German Jewish musicians in World War II."
  47. ^ [19] noted as one of "Jews prominent in music"
  48. ^ Encyclopedia of Austria born Prague (accessed 20 March 2008); "Jews and the American Soul: Human Nature in the Twentieth Century" by Andrew R. Heinze; Published 2004 Princeton University Press ISBN 0-691-11755-1, p.69 (includes him in list of notable Jews in Vienna)
  49. ^ [20] "When born Jews like Madeleine Albright leave Judaism to participate in new secular religions a la Karl Marx with Marxism" [21] "The Washington Post reported Feb. 4 that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's parents were Jewish converts to Catholicism and that her grandparents died in the Holocaust."
  50. ^ 15. dubna 2009. "Manžel tak nevypadá, ale je vtipný, říká žena nového premiéra". Ona.idnes.cz. http://ona.idnes.cz/manzel-tak-nevypada-ale-je-vtipny-rika-zena-noveho-premiera-poh-/ona_ony.asp?c=A090414_143412_ona_ony_jup. Retrieved 8 November 2011. 
  51. ^ [22] Accessed 20 March 2008.
  52. ^ [23] "The film tells the story of Artur London, a Czech Jewish communist who survived Nazi concentration camps"
  53. ^ [24] "Articles and books about the life of Rudolf Margolius and his international economic agreements."
  54. ^ [25] "The Czech Jewish party leader Rudolf Slansky"
  55. ^ Jewish News Weekly Michael Zantovsky, a leading Czech political figure who is of Jewish background"; Accessed 5 Feb 2007
  56. ^ [26] "Sigmund Freud was born of Jewish parentage in Freiburg, Moravia, Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic)"
  57. ^ Memoir by his son [27] "there were also two other Jewish teachers at the Gymnasium school apart from my father" Autobiography on genealogy web site (He and his brother) "were born in the small village of Drenice in Bohemia". Both accessed 29 Nov 2006.
  58. ^ Jinfo list of Jewish psychologists, Czech-born Encyclopædia Britannica Online Both accessed 28 May 2008
  59. ^ Jewish News Weekly of Northern California "A chance meeting 13 years ago changed the course of Rabbi Samuel Abramson's life... He left his homeland, Czechoslovakia, in 1988" Accessed 8 Dec 2006.
  60. ^ Jewish Encyclopedia, "Rabbi and scholar of varied attainments; born March 16, 1843, at Neu-Raussnitz, Moravia" Accessed 10 Nov 2006.
  61. ^ "Historical survey of Jewish settlement in Brno", Centropa Quarterly, Summer 2006, "Rabbi Israel ben Chajim, also known as Israel Bruna (born in Brno early 15th century, died after 1475) was the first important Hebrew scholar in the Czech lands." Accessed 30 Oct 2006.
  62. ^ Jewish Encyclopedia "rabbi; born at Weisskirchen, Moravia" Accessed 7 Nov 2006.
  63. ^ [28] "Joseph Herman Hertz was born in Slovakia in 1872"
  64. ^ Chabad.org Jewish History "Rabbi Judah ben Bezalel Lowe was born about the year 5285, probably in Posen. He became famous as a great Talmudic scholar at an early age. In his late twenties, he was invited to become the Rabbi in Nikolsburg, Moravia, a position which he held for about twenty years. His greatest fame, however, came to him as the spiritual head of the Jewish community in Prague" Accessed 22 May 2007.
  65. ^ Jewish Encyclopedia: [29] Bohemian; [30] tosafist
  66. ^ Jewish Encyclopedia: "born at Prague 1528; died there March 13, 1601. The persecution of the Jews of Prague by the fanatical Ferdinand I. occurred while Mordecai was a youth. In 1542 and 1561 his family, with the other Jewish inhabitants, was forced to leave the city" Accessed 22 May 2007.
  67. ^ Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., art. "Blowitz, Henri
  68. ^ [31] "Czech-born, German-language novelist" [32] "Brod was a Czech Jew, or more precisely a Prague Jew, and a member of the famous Prager Kreis-that is to say, a Jew inhabiting a special cultural enclave"
  69. ^ "All About Jewish Theatre – The Court – Jesters in Jerusalem". Jewish-theatre.com. http://www.jewish-theatre.com/visitor/article_display.aspx?articleID=1855. Retrieved 8 November 2011. 
  70. ^ Egon Hostovsky
  71. ^ "KAFKA, Franz (1883–1924): Czech novelist.": Hutchinson 20th Century Encyclopedia (7th ed, 1986), p. 702.
  72. ^ "KAFKA, FRANZ (1883–1924): Czech author.": The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia (fifth ed, 1977, ed. Geoffrey Wigoder), p. 1101.
  73. ^ [33] "Czech writer"
  74. ^ "The Jewish cemeteries of Prague" (in (French)). Porges.net. http://www.porges.net/JewishCemeteriesPrague.html. Retrieved 8 November 2011. 
  75. ^ [34] "You might say that the Czech novelist, Ivan Klima, has been the victim of the famous Chinese curse, 'may you live in interesting times'. Born in 1931 he was a boy when Czech independence was in effect handed over to Nazi Germany in 1938. As a Jew he and his family were interned in the Terezinstadt Concentration Camp during the Second World War"
  76. ^ Jewish Encyclopedia, "born at Münchengrätz, Bohemia" Accessed 8 Dec 2006.
  77. ^ [35] "Lustig was one of the few out of fifteen thousand Jewish children"
  78. ^ Cultural Amnesia (book) "Included in Clive James's book Cultural Amnesia."[36]"List of her books and translations."
  79. ^ Terezín Memorial – The concentration camp for Jews – the Terezín Ghetto
  80. ^ [37] "At 68, he is still discovering himself. When he was a boy, his mother drew a veil over the family's past. There had been a Jewish grandmother, she said, and this was why they had to leave Czechoslovakia. Only relatively recently did he learn the full story. His whole family was Jewish. Most of his relatives had been murdered in the death camps. His father, once the house doctor at the Bata shoe factory in Zlin, had been killed in a Japanese air raid."
  81. ^ [38] "Hermann Ungar was born on April 20, 1893 to a comfortable Jewish family in the small Moravian town of Boskovice, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Formerly the Jewish ghetto, the Jewish Town of Boskovice had the unusual distinction of having been established as its own municipality in 1848 (one of only two such instances, this status lasted until 1919) after the Habsburg's emancipation of the Jews in the Czech Lands... Ungar grew up speaking German and Czech..."
  82. ^ [39] "Jiri Weil, a Czech Jewish writer"
  83. ^ Feuchtwanger memorial Library: "The Czech-born, Austrian-Jewish writer Franz Werfel" accessed 27 Mar 08
  84. ^ [40] "This provides an overview of the history of the Jews in the Czech Lands... Jacob Bassevi, the first Jew to be raised to the nobility"
  85. ^ [41] "Alternating chapters tell not only of the Jewish Hana Brady's deportation..."
  86. ^ [42] "The Bradys were Jewish. They weren't a religious family. But Mother and Father wanted their children to know about their heritage. Once a week, while their playmates were at church, Hana and George sat with a special teacher who taught them about Jewish holidays and Jewish history."
  87. ^ [43] "Since his family was Jewish, they were in great danger"
  88. ^ [44] "Recalling the diaries of another teenage victim of the Holocaust, Anne Frank, they reveal a budding Czech literary and artistic genius whose life was cut short by the Nazis... Moon Landscape connects the dream of one Jewish boy who is a symbol of the talent lost in the Holocaust"
  89. ^ Jewish Encyclopedia "born June 10, 1759, at Prostiebor, near Kladrau, in the district of Pilsen, Bohemia" accessed 23 Jun 2008
  90. ^ Australian Graduate School of Management "Czechoslavakian-born Lowy"
    Australian Jewish Times "In Forbes magazine's second annual Top 10 rich list for Australia and New Zealand, four Jewish businessmen feature prominently. Frank Lowy (second), Richard Pratt (Third), John Gandel (sixth) and Harry Triguboff (eighth) all had reported wealth of over $1 billion; both accessed 3 Dec 2006.
  91. ^ ".". Chessgames.com. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1004505. Retrieved 8 November 2011. 
  92. ^ "Steinitz, Wilhelm". JewishEncyclopedia.com. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=1070&letter=S. Retrieved 8 November 2011. 
  93. ^ "Encyclopaedia of Jewish communities, Slovakia". Jewishgen.org. http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/pinkas_slovakia/slo495.html. Retrieved 8 November 2011. 
  94. ^ "World Center for Holocaust Research, Education, Documentation and Commemoration". Yad Vashem. http://yadvashem.org. Retrieved 8 November 2011. 
  95. ^ Alan Sidransky (a grandnephew of Zoli Grinfeld)
  96. ^ Contributor for "Yoshua Rusnak", a descendant of Yoshua's brother Jakub's son Andrej Stef "Andrew Stephen" Rusnak.