Immigrants and Foreigners in Central and Eastern Europe during the Twentieth Century by Włodzimierz Borodziej Joachim von Puttkamer

Author:Włodzimierz Borodziej, Joachim von Puttkamer [Włodzimierz Borodziej, Joachim von Puttkamer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781000037418
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2020-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

In addition, many refugees in Czechoslovakia (mainly in Prague) had no residency permits. If a refugee was refused a permit to stay and was expelled (in most cases to Austria), he or she then had only a very limited chance legally to cross the borders to another country. This is why, if they were expelled after a police or court decision, they mostly re-entered the country clandestinely.20 The major challenge for the Czechoslovak relief organizations was therefore not only to offer room and board to refugees, but also, indeed primarily, to legalize their stay by negotiating with the police. Most of the illegal refugees to Czechoslovakia were Polish Jews, but there were also dozens of homosexuals who were avoiding imprisonment and other forms of persecution in Germany, but who would end up being criminalized in Czechoslovakia as well. It was also more difficult for Jewish refugees to get residency permits than it was for ‘political refugees’ who had escaped because of their involvement in politics (obviously, there were also many Jews among the ‘political refugees’). The number of Jewish refugees who had fled primarily because of the anti-Semitic discrimination and persecution in Nazi Germany outnumbered those who had fled solely because of their political activities. The Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior often labelled the Jewish refugees ‘economic refugees’, and put pressure on them, and on the Jewish relief organization, to expedite their further emigration.21

Nonetheless, the difference between the daily life of the legal refugees and that of the illegal refugees was not substantial. Financial support offered to refugees had been systematically diminished. Whereas in 1933 most of the committees were offering 15 or 16 crowns a day, by 1937 and 1938 it was no more than 5 crowns.22 Refugees who did not live in collective accommodation could not survive on this amount, for it could cover only about a third of one’s daily expenses.23 The major difference between the legal and illegal refugees therefore tended to be the opportunity for the former to apply to emigrate to another country, preferably overseas.

Many refugees – regardless of whether they had residence permits – were therefore working under the table and risked being exposed. The files of the Prague police contain dozens of letters of denunciation from Czechoslovak citizens.24 The daily misery of refugees who had been upper middle class in Germany, but ended up as beggars or criminals in Czechoslovakia, is bluntly described in Menschlichkeiten – Unmenschlichkeiten: Emigrantenschicksale (Humanity – Inhumanity: The Fate of Emigrants) published by the Jewish relief organization in 1937.25 Based on 20 life stories, the publication informs readers about the misery experienced by these refugees in Czechoslovakia. In contrast to the brochure of the Democratic Relief Organization for Refugees Menschen auf der Flucht, this publication focusses, not on the threat faced by these refugees if they remained in Germany, but on their dire circumstances in exile. Many of the stories are about hunger, illness, survival in cold and damp places and despair and depression. The Social Democrat politician

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