The Holocaust of Czech Roma [antikvár]

PrefaceThe Protectorate of Bohemia and MoraviaAmong the successor states that emerged from the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, the Czechoslovak Republic assumed a particularly important position. This was not due to its size, economy or power ambitions but rather to the fact that the Czechs endeavored to establish a prosperous, democratic state in the center of Europe. It was to fulfill the humanistic ideals of its first president, Tomás Garrigue Masaryk, an advocate of modern civic society. The bold attempt, however, was not even allowed a full twenty years to make the dream come true It was stopped abruptly by the "Czechoslovak crisis" in international relations that came to a head with the Munich Agreement of September 29, 1938, concluded by four European powers, i.e. Germany, Italy, France and Great Britain. The President of the Republic, Dr. Edvard Benes, and the Czechoslovak government could do nothing but accept the Munich dictate because any attempt to defend its independence with arms would place the country in isolation and earn it an odious label of a warmonger. The Munich decisions, enacted without Czechoslovakia or taking into account its position as a sovereign state, forced the country to cede large areas of the Czech and Moravian border regions to Germany. Thus, October 1938 saw a gradual occupation of not only towns and villages with predominant ethnic German settlement but even of those that were purely Czech, for example in Chodovia adjacent to Bavaria. Poland's ultimatum, too, forced territorial gains from Czechoslovakia, annexing the province of Tésín (Teschen) and a small area in northern Slovakia. Furthermore, the Arbitration of the Vienna Award of November 2, 1938, awarded southern Slovakia and a part of Ruthenia to Hungary. With the loss of all of these territories, the size of the Czechoslovak Republic dwindled by 30 per cent. The population shrank by the same rate, becoming11