Special offer Prague
The special action Prague was the name chosen by the German Nazi occupation organs of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia for an action to occupy, close and confiscate Czech institutions of higher education on November 17, 1939. The German universities in Prague and Brno were not affected.
occasion
The political situation at the beginning of November 1939 was tense because on October 28, 1939, the anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia , there had been demonstrations, work stoppages and a boycott of lectures among students in Prague . Thousands of workers streamed from the working-class neighborhoods towards the city center. There were “large gatherings of people, especially on Wenceslas Square in front of the Secret State Police Office building and in front of the Palace Hotel, in which the members of the Secret State Police are accommodated. Around 200 people had to be arrested by 5 p.m. ”On the evening of October 28, when the demonstrations reached their peak, there were clashes with the German police, who were under the command of Karl Hermann Frank .
During the police operation, the young worker and Sokol turner Václav Sedláček was shot dead on the street in Prague and the medical student at Charles University in Prague, Jan Opletal , was shot and died on November 11, 1939. On November 15, 1939, he was laid out and driven through Prague. Hundreds of students and followed his coffin. When his coffin was brought to his home town of Náklo in Moravia for transport , the crowd, which had now grown to thousands, sang the Czech national anthem .
Police action
This was the signal for the German occupation forces to intervene with all severity. The next day, Adolf Hitler received a personal report on the events in Prague. He was furious at the resistance shown by the population and used expressions such as “drown in blood”, “lock up”, “use all weapons”, “I will not shy away from setting up cannons in the streets ... and in every crowd with machine guns to have them shot ... I'll have Prague razed to the ground. "
This created the prerequisites for the German occupation forces to act from the perspective of the Nazi rulers. Shortly before midnight on November 16, 1939, the Gestapo raided the rooms of the student union, where a meeting of the student committee was taking place at that time. Nine representatives of the student union were arrested and taken to the former barracks in Prague- Ruzyně . Without any trial, they were shot dead that night.
When Karl Hermann Frank was interrogated about this shooting after the war, he said u. a. in addition from:
“I knew that nine people were going to be shot, I didn't care about these people, just as I never paid any attention to any other detail relating to the execution of the order, the identification of the names and the fate of the victims. For me, the Fuehrer's order was an order. When asked whether this execution was murder, I must admit that, according to human judgment and human law, it must be called murder. "
In the early morning hours of November 17, the SS special commandos began the special action at the student dormitories in Prague. In the “Hlávkova kolej” student residence in Prague, doors were broken into or broken into at around four o'clock. Students, some of whom were barefoot and still poorly dressed in pajamas, were beaten out of their accommodations with clubs. In the interior, these had to be placed tightly against the walls. Similar scenes took place in other student residences in Prague. If students showed themselves at the windows, they were even fired from rifles. After the student dormitories were stormed, hundreds of students were arrested and taken to the barracks in Prague-Ruzyně. Of the 15,000 affected students, 1,200 to 1,300 were deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp without a trial . Nine leaders of student organizations were executed without trial : Josef Adamec , Jan Černý , Marek Frauwirth , Jaroslav Klíma , Bedřich Koula , Josef Matoušek , František Skorkovský , Václav Šaffránek and Jan Weinert . The basis for this action was given by Hitler on November 16, 1939: "Closure of the universities in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ..."
Closure of the Czech universities
The aim of the campaign was to wipe out first the higher education and later also the middle school system. A total of ten universities, including Charles University in Prague , the Czech Technical University , the theological faculties in Prague and Olomouc , the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and the Masaryk University in Brno , were closed. The buildings of the higher education institutions were confiscated. The Kaunitz dormitory in Brno has been converted into a prison with execution and torture facilities.
The Czech universities and colleges were initially closed for three years. However, they were not reopened until the end of the war in 1945. The German Karl Ferdinand University in Prague and the German Technical University in Brno remained open. The closed Czech Technical University in Prague continued as the Technical University of Prague .
The libraries were closed and many professors suffered the same fate as their students. The property of the Czech universities was confiscated. Some of the scientifically valuable collections were destroyed. The events met with rejection worldwide. There was a spontaneous solidarity event in London . Two years later, November 17th was declared International Student Day.
responsible
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The main people responsible for the action were Reich Protector Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath and Karl Hermann Frank. Frank was sentenced to death in Prague , von Neurath was sentenced to 15 years in prison in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals , but was released in 1954. The German State Secretary Kurt von Burgsdorff was sentenced to three years in prison in Poland for his administrative involvement in crimes committed there. The responsible Gestapo chief in Prague, Hans-Ulrich Geschke , went into hiding after the war and was declared dead, as was his superior Horst Böhme , commander of the Gestapo in the entire Protectorate.
See also
literature
- Detlef Brandes : The Czechs under German protectorate. Part I. Occupation policy, collaboration and resistance in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia until Heydrich's death (1939–1942) . Oldenbourg, Munich / Vienna 1969, ISBN 3-486-43041-6 , pp. 89-95.
- Gustav von Schmoller : The German retaliatory measures after the Czech student demonstrations in Prague in October and November 1939. In: Bohemia . Volume 20, 1979, pp. 156-174 (digitized version ) .
- Slavomír Horský: Crimes that do not expire. Orbis press agency, Prague 1984, DNB 870620045 .
- Heinz Boberach (Ed.): Reports from the Reich 1938–1945: The secret situation reports of the SS security service. Pawlak, Herrsching 1984, ISBN 3-88199-158-1 ( On the history of the closure of Czech universities on November 17, 1939 ) .
- Volume 2: Annual management report 1938 of the Central Security Office, 1st quarterly management report 1939 of the Central Security Office, reports on the domestic political situation No. 1 of October 9, 1939 - No. 14 of November 10, 1939. P. 91, 409 f.
- Volume 3: Report on the domestic political situation: No. 15 of November 13, 1939 - No. 25 of December 6, 1939, No. 26 of December 8, 1939 - No. 65 of March 13, 1940. p. 474.
- Zdeněk Vyhlídal: Jan Opletal - osudný podzim 1939 . Unipress 2007, ISBN 978-80-85089-02-8 ( Czech ).
- Patrick Crowhurst: Hitler and Czechoslovakia in World War II: Domination and Retaliation . Tauris, London 2013, ISBN 978-1-78076-110-7 (= International Library of Twentieth Century History , Volume 52, English ).
- Matthias Blazek: Letters from the youth during the Nazi era. Ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart 2020, ISBN 978-3-8382-1507-5 .
Web links
- Gerd Simon (Hrsg.): Science Policy in National Socialism and the University of Prague. PDF ( Memento from September 21, 2003 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ With the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Slovakia had been independent since March 14, 1939.
- ↑ Reports from the Reich .
- ↑ a b Persecution of Czech students during the occupation, Prague 1945 (Czech)
- ^ Protocol to the interrogation of Karl Hermann Frank, October 5, 1945 in the prison of the District Court in Prague- Pankrác (Czech)