Přemysl Pitter

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Přemysl Pitter (born June 21, 1895 in Prague , † February 15, 1976 in Affoltern am Albis ) was a Czech pedagogue , Protestant preacher and humanist .

Life

Pitter was a volunteer of the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War . Under the influence of the war experience, he became a pacifist and began to study Protestant theology in Prague after the end of the war . In the 1920s he was politically active in the international movement of conscientious objectors. a. advocated the right to conscientious objection to military service . Pitter was also oriented towards the idea of non-violence . In 1925 he was an active participant in the international conference of War Resisters' International (WRI) and was elected to the international council of WRI for the years 1925–1927. In 1926 Fr. Pitter met Olga Fierz , a teacher from Switzerland, at a conference of the International Union of Reconciliation and since then she has been at his side for the rest of her life.

Between 1924 and 1941 he was the editor and editor of the magazine Sbratření (Fraternization), a magazine dedicated to the renewal of spirit and society.

As the authorized representative for child welfare in the Žižkov district of Prague , Pitter learned about the life of impoverished families and the difficult living conditions of socially vulnerable children. For this he organized various children's circles with his friends. It was therefore important to secure the construction of a day-care center where the children could be offered a wide range of care in the afternoons after school. The construction of the Milíč house in Žižkov was financed by donations from friends and from voluntary collections. The Milíč House opened on December 24, 1933. The children could spend their time here doing a wide variety of activities (singing, artistic and manual work, dance gymnastics, table and movement games, theater, German and cooking courses). In 1938 the rest home was opened in Mýto near Rokycany.

During the time of the break-up of Czechoslovakia and the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , persecuted Jewish families were secretly supported. That is why Pitter was watched by the Gestapo .

Immediately after the end of World War II , Pitter began building rest homes for orphaned Jewish children who had been freed from the concentration camps . For this purpose, the Czechoslovak state provided him with a total of four castles in May 1945 in the villages of Kamenice u Prahy , Olešovice , Štiřín and Lojovice, southeast of Prague , hence the frequently used name "Akce Zámky" (" Action Castles ", 1945-1947 ). The children received high quality food and medical care here. P. Pitter condemned the arbitrary acts against the German population and criticized the bad treatment of the Germans in the internment camps . In addition to Jewish children, including those from the Theresienstadt concentration camp , Pitter also took German children into his rest homes and saved around 400 German children from death in Czechoslovak internment camps. The search for missing children or their parents was continued in cooperation with the German authorities until 1950.

After the communists came to power in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, Pitter came under increasing pressure. As he himself repeatedly emphasized, he had to flee to West Germany in 1951 because of "persecution by the communists" and initially found a new field of activity in the so-called Valka camp in Nuremberg (1952–1962). In West Germany he also came into contact with the expelled Sudeten Germans. In the spring of 1958 at the Evangelical Academy in Tutzing , together with representatives of the Evangelical Sudeten Germans, he made a declaration on the reconciliation of German and Czech Evangelical Christians.

In 1964, Pitter was awarded a medal by the Israeli government for his rescue operation. At the same time, a tree was planted on the avenue of the righteous in Jerusalem to commemorate him .

In 1973 he received the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class from the German Federal President Gustav Heinemann .

In 1991, President Václav Havel Přemysl Pitter posthumously awarded the Order of T. G. Masaryk III. Class.

  • Children's home Milíčův dům (Militsch House) in Prague- Žižkov

  • Memorial plaque on the Militsch house

  • Bust in front of the south wall of the St. Rupert Church in Nuremberg ( Kettelersiedlung )

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. International of War Resisters: The War Resisters of the World, Report on the Movement in Twenty Countries and on the International Conference in Hoddeston, Herts., England in July 1925 (German version), published by the General Secretariat of War Resisters' International Enfield , England 1925
  2. ↑ 110th birthday of Přemysl Pitter (chapter from Czech history) , Český rozhlas, Radio Prague, online at: radio.cz/ , German
  3. ↑ Přemysl Pitter on the website of Yad Vashem (English)
personal data
SURNAME Pitter, Přemysl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech educator, evangelical preacher and humanist
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH 15th February 1976
Place of death Affoltern am Albis