Light of Peace

According to all records in the period between the two world wars, Prague was the cultural center probably unrepeatable millieu, during which the Czech, German and Jewish culture coexisted in a constructive peace. Writers like Franz Kafka and Max Brod Prague created a circle that frequently met at the Café Arco, where peronalities like Franz Werfel and EE Kisch.used to come often. Franz Werfel and Franz Kafka quickly made inroads into the world of literature, and introduce Hasek's "Good Soldier Schweik" and the music of Leos Janacek to German audiences.

A person having a positive outlook on life in the Masaryk Czechoslovakia was a composer Oskar Morawetz, and recently we have heard about George Brady from two survivors of one hundred Terezín prisoners of war.George Brady was a person who inspired the book and now movie 'Inside Hana's Suitcase ' has also been made on the same subject. Another person John Freund, the author of' Once Again 'and' valley of the shadow of death ' and got fame due to the documentary film' I Will Not Die ' is worth considering.

Jews in Czechoslovakia after the Munich Agreement

If it were true that after the Munich Agreement the anti semitism grew rapidly in Czechoslovakia, it is difficult to explain the reason. At the invitation of the Czechoslovak National Council in London, President Benes called up on the reservists in Allied and neutral countries signed up a large number of Jews for the Czechoslovak Army. That included 2000 Czech Jews in Palestine. Later, some units in the division of Czechoslovakia in the Soviet Union consisted of about 70% Jews.

Punishment of Sudeten Germans after the war

The punishment meted out to the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia after the war was regrettable, though no punishment to which the Sudeten Germans were exposed matched the scale and brutality of Nazi‘s actions against the Jews.: All the men were gunned down in the entire villages and thier honmes were burned. Examples in Czechoslovakia are the villages of Lidice and Lager in some cases the number of Sudeten Germans who suffered equalled the fate of Jewish members of the Czech nation who suffered in Bohemia and Moravia:

A summery of Jews who suffered is as follows:

Number of Jews deported: 80,614

Number of Jews who survived Theresienstadt: 6, 392

Number of Jews murdered in concentration camps: 64 172.

Registered as returnees at the end of war: 10,000 Jews.

The Jews who were deported, 5,201 were either executed or committed suicide or died of natural causes. Only 2208 Jews could survive.

My Opinion

Good days and bad days for a nation or a community do not come at the pleasure and wish of the people concerned. These are subject to the force of history and the good or bad policies made by the people. The Jews suffered in Europe at the hands of Nazis and got a land of their own after the World War II. Without going in to the justification or otherwise of carving out a country on the lands occupied by other people, the fact is that both the nations, the Jews and the Arabs, have to co-exist mutually. There is no going back in the time and history. The global peace has been kept hostage to the self-centered policies of Israelis and their patrons. The onus of promoting peace lies with the Israelis as they are on the giving end and are at present being supported by the sole super power and the world states as well. If the Israelis do not learn lesson from the history and keep doing with Palestinians with impunity what the Nazis had done with them seventy years ago, let them know that bad times may not be very far away. The force of history never excuses anyone, it takes its own course.