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See Town Šternberk "Friedmann-Klimesch-Rohel families (1850-1969)" 120 year history in Šternberk (Sternberg), Moravia, Czech republic or Friedmann Textile or my Geni project Šternberk (Mährisch-Sternberg), Olomouc, Moravia, Czech Republic (history, textile businesses, Jewish families, famous people, source & web site links)
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by Vlasta Hlůzová, Šternberk 2011© more books on worldcat, google images
Introduction
In addition to Czechs, Germans and a few members of other nationalities, Jews also lived in Sternberg in past centuries. All these inhabitants, regardless of nationality or religion, co-created our regional history and influenced economic and cultural life. The history of the Jews in Šternberk has so far received little attention. This work is a contribution to the addition of existing only fragmentary knowledge. Note: A Jew / written with a large Ž / is a member of the Jewish nation, ie a Jew in the ethnic sense; Jew / if written with a small female / is a member of the Jewish religion; So a Jew and a Jew do not always have to be one and the same.)
Who are the Jews
Jews are members of an ancient nation and a follower of the oldest monotheistic religion, belief in one god - Judaism, after the brutal suppression of the anti-Roman uprising expelled from Jerusalem after 70 AD, expelled from their original homeland of Israel and scattered throughout Europe and the Middle East, the world. Since then, they have lived without their own state for almost 2,000 years (in the diaspora). Also in our national history, this important and distinctive ethnic group belonged inseparably to the image of Czech, Moravian and Slovak towns and villages, to their economic, social and cultural life. At the same time, Jews were one of the minorities with the longest history in our territory. At first their language was Czech, only much later German.
Jews in the Czech lands
Although the first reports of Jewish merchants in our country date back to the 10th century, as free foreigners they have settled in our country to a greater extent since the 12th century. (Even from school history textbooks, it is known, for example, to quote one of the first descriptions of Prague / Frága / from about 965, which was left in his travelogue by the learned Jewish merchant Ibrahim ibn Jakub. about the Jewish diaspora / settlement and prayer house in the 12th century / among several older settlements, the connection of which then founded the royal city of Olomouc. they established their own merchant colonies in the shopping centers, and from the 13th century onwards their main occupation became long-distance trade. They imported luxury goods into the country (oriental fabrics, wine, spices, precious metal products, weapons). They exported mainly cattle and raw materials (wood, wax, furs). The experience and business contacts of the Jews significantly contributed to the development of local trade, and thus to the development of cities. At the same time, the Jews were a welcome and reliable source of income for the rulers, especially in paying the regular Jewish tax, which was actually a permanent payment for consent to their settlement. Until the first crusade in 1096, the coexistence of Jews with the local population was peaceful. Then the fate of this historically unfortunate nation, the exiles without a homeland, began to change. From the very beginning of Christianity, and especially after Christianity became the official religion in the emerging European states, efforts to curtail the rights of Jews and subordinate them to the sovereign power in individual states began to intensify. The Christian religion was presented as superior, and so the Catholic Church sought to restrict all Jews. At the so-called 3rd and 4th Lateran Councils (1179 and 1215, the Catholic Church exclusively forbade the coexistence of Christians and Jews. One of the oldest and most significant manifestations of anti-Jewish discrimination was the obligation of Jews to live separately from the rest of the city, only in designated streets, neighborhoods (called ghettos from the 16th century). , often enclosed from other cities by walls with gates or drawbridges or separated by chains, thus for the first time the idea of complete Jewish isolation was fulfilled. Jewish signs differed in different countries, in the form of a yellow or red and white circle or ribbon on the upper part of the garment, as well as special raincoats, a hood, a cap or hat, a tailor, men were obliged wearing a beard, women had to have a special hairstyle with a yellow ribbon, from Italy are also known red apron ry for women or special blue ribbons, in the German lands and the lands of the Austrian crown, a yellow pointed hat has become a typical Jewish sign. The obligation to bear the Jewish sign lasted for several hundred years. It was canceled in our country only by Joseph II. 1781. (During World War II, this medieval church decree returned in the form of a Nazi order to wear the yellow Star of David, sewn visibly on clothing - once his own emblem, awarded to the Jews in 1648 under Ferdinand III. the emblem is supplemented by the inscription Žid / Jude.)
The medieval church also stipulated that Jews were not allowed to own land or work in agriculture, and were banned from most crafts so as not to compete with their Christian neighbors. The only areas they could deal with in Christian society were trade, pawnshops, finance, and usury (lending money at an agreed interest rate, which was forbidden to Christians as an unethical activity). Ever since the Jewish nation was forced to live in the diaspora, it has sometimes experienced more auspicious times, but mostly very difficult. Why was that? The economic prosperity and success of some wealthy members of this national minority, especially able traders, posed an ever-increasing threat to competition for the majority of nationalities, and began to arouse the envy and hostility of those who recklessly borrowed and failed to pay their debts and interest. Christians, on the other hand, longed to avenge the Jews under the principle of collective guilt for Jesus' death on the cross as "Christ's murderers," although Christ was crucified as a rebel by the Romans (crucifixion was a common punishment at the time), and Christ himself was also a Jew. Christians began to spread unfounded accusations about Jews (desecration of the host, ritual murder, the spread of disease and epidemics, espionage, etc.). Based on prejudices and numerous slanders, Christians then committed various acts of violence against Jews (personal attacks by criminal social elements, murders, pogroms, burning ghettos). The aggression of the masses and anti-Jewish sentiment turned against Jews even later, usually always in times of economic, social and political crises. The nonsense of Jewish segregation (= in the spiritual sense) was even recognized and limited by papal decrees in the middle of the 13th century. The document of Přemysl Otakar II established the legal status of the Jewish population of Bohemia and Moravia in our country. of 1254 Statute Iudaeorum. According to him, the Jews became the property of the royal crown, the king's servants, and gained his protection, for which, however, they had to pay him considerable money every year. In addition, the monarchs had considerable income from Jewish business and also received various special payments or loans from the Jews. Under the Jagiellonians, for example, some payments were demanded twice from the Jews, from the cities and the monarch, the debts of Christian debtors to Jewish creditors were repeatedly canceled, and the tax burden on Jews was also extraordinary. No wonder they gradually lost weight. Every monarch had to formally renew the privileges of the Jews, but their observance was not always observed. The townspeople, dissatisfied with the Jewish debt collectors and competitors, took advantage of the weakening of the ruling power in the 15th century and demanded the expulsion of the Jews first from the royal cities, and later from some lordly cities. During the 15th century, therefore, Jews began to move to the countryside and to serf towns under the jurisdiction of the (especially Moravian) nobility, which willingly provided employment and protection to enterprising Jewish families and which could compete more effectively with cities where craft guilds due to their conservatism. they found it difficult to cope with the development of foreign trade and technological progress, while the Jews were not bound by any guild rules.
Of course, it always depended on the monarch how he treated the Jews in his territory, as well as on the lords. However, the Jews reached their greatest prosperity in the Czech lands in the 16th century. during the reign of Emperor Maximilian II. and especially Rudolf II, whose personal banker, bank adviser and provider of "non-repayable loans" was the "court Jew" Mordechai Maisel. This period was historically the "golden age" of Jewish education and culture. Both emperors confirmed to the Jews their former privileges, according to which they were never allowed to be expelled from Prague or the lands of the Czech Crown. However, the rulers always asked the Jews for themselves large financial donations, called in the 18th century. "Tolerance tax". For this subordination, the Jews were referred to as "slaves of the royal chamber." Over time, however, the privileges confirmed by the monarchs were again not taken into account. Although the complete expulsion of Jews did not take place in our countries (such as in Spain and Portugal after 1492), in Moravia, for example, Jews were not allowed to live in royal cities until the 19th century. Therefore, they took refuge in smaller manorial towns, such as Prostějov, Přerov, Lipník nad Bečvou, etc. The 18th century was moved by the tightening of living in existing ghettos (translocation rescript), the family law, which allowed marriage only to the firstborn son, other sons they had to leave the country in case of marriage. The reforms of Emperor Joseph II were welcome changes for the Jewish nationality. after 1781, whose purpose was to make the Jews as useful as possible for society and to use their abilities. It was primarily a tolerance patent and then an ordinance covering the religious, linguistic, economic, educational, judicial and administrative fields. Their obligation to bear a special sign was abolished, in 1848 the ghettos, the tolerance tax and the family law were abolished, and Jews were also given the right to freely choose their residence. Since then, they have started to move a lot. In our country, they also went to the borders and large cities, and because they could now study in all types of schools after centuries of bans, young intelligentsia began to be used in industry, banking, law, medicine, science and the arts. However, the Jews had to attend German schools. They gained civil liberties only after the new constitution was issued in 1867. They also gained the right to vote, but under the Names Act they were forced to accept German names and surnames according to a certain list. Then they integrated into the surrounding nation, in our countries they assimilated to either Czech or German nationality. Some even resigned themselves to their faith. A favorable stage in the history of Jews in our country was the time of the First Republic, when they participated as a national minority in government, economy, science and culture, as well as the German, but more numerous minority. European civilization owes much to Judaism.
However, since Hitler came to power in neighboring Germany in 1933, the situation began to escalate dangerously for Jews from all over Europe. Many Jews from Germany (including some German anti-fascists) had already fled to democratic Czechoslovakia at this time. A number of discriminatory measures were taken in Germany, and in 1935 the so-called Nuremberg Laws, based on racial grounds, came into force. These were some of the worst laws in human history and could not be escaped. They "defined" Jewish nationality and legalized persecution on racial grounds. Thus, they foreshadowed the greatest murder of Jews, the Holocaust (Holocaust) - in Germany and Spain, Ukraine, Russia, Poland and elsewhere. According to Nuremberg law, all Jews with Jewish ancestry, regardless of religion, were considered Jews. On the basis of their monstrous racial laws, the German Nazis murdered 90% of members of this nationality in their extermination camps with gas chambers - 6 million Jews, 1.5 million of them children. Of the 118,000 Jews living in our country, 80,000 perished in this way, and about 20,000 managed to escape. The Holocaust was then extended to the Roma - they, together with Jews, belonged to the "first category" of "subhumans", then to the physically or mentally handicapped, political opponents (communists and social democrats), homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and USSR citizens (11-17 million people), then followed by other Slavs - Poles, Czechs, Yugoslavs, etc.
So far, the fact that many Czech-Slovak Jews have joined the anti-fascist resistance as members of foreign military units is little publicized. They fought not only on all war fronts, but also participated in resistance activities in concentration camps, such as in Treblinka and elsewhere. Of the Jews who survived the "Shoah time" in our country, the Holocaust, which was 10% of the total number of Czech and Slovak Jews in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovak state, some left between 1948 and 1968 for the newly formed state of Israel. A handful of the rest have been exposed to state anti-Semitism in our country since the 1950s, which considered Jews as members of a religious group to be second-class citizens. At that time, it was as if they lived in "ghettos without walls." Only since the 1990s have members of this minority (as well as other churches) been able to resume their activities and free development, both spiritually and culturally. The turbulent history of the Jewish nation and its rich culture (literature, music, fine arts, architecture, traditions, customs, Jewish thought from biblical times to the present) as well as the organization of Jewish communities in our country and many other countries around the world attention of amateur and professional researchers, universities, museums, various associations and movements. At the same time, efforts are being stepped up for dialogue between Christians and Jews, for the preservation and restoration of Jewish cultural monuments and for documenting the fate of important cultural figures, including soldiers of Jewish descent who fought against the Nazis on World and Eastern Front during World War II., victims of the Nazi war frenzy. Since 1 January 2009, the Department of Shoah History has been working at the Jewish Museum in Prague, and students from some cities are participating in the project Disappearing Neighbors in cooperation with the Educational Center of the Jewish Museum in Prague. They also include the Faculty Elementary and Kindergarten Dr. Milady Horáková in Olomouc, who has been searching for the fate of Jews in Olomouc and its surroundings since 2008, and has already managed to present partial results of this project (Tribute to child victims of the Holocaust, fate of Mrs. Edity Šťastné / year 1924 / from Olomouc, etc.).
In 2008, the Endowment Fund for Holocaust Victims was established in our country, and the database of Czechoslovak Jewish members is being supplemented. foreign troops during World War II, etc. As of April 1, 1991, an independent Jewish community of Olomouc with regional jurisdiction for the districts of Olomouc, Šumperk, Jeseník, Bruntál and Přerov was restored in our regional city. For the second year in a row, it publishes its magazine Chajejnu (Hebrew חיינו). in 2005, supplemented by four plates of black Swedish granite with 1,325 names of Olomouc Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The Center for Judaic Studies of Kurt and Ursula Schubert is located at the Faculty of Arts of the Palacky University in Olomouc. Of the former 150 Jewish communities, the Judaic religion is now represented in the Czech Republic by 10 municipalities (3 of them in Moravia). The municipalities are associated in the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic. They take care of the religious and cultural life of their members, they take care of the education of young people and lonely seniors. Sadly, however, there is still a stereotype about the diversity of the Jews, and that they are often spoken of with contempt and some contempt, as if they still bear some sign of Cain's most enduring hatred in human history - anti-Semitism. Manifestations of anti-Semitism can be found, for example, in the movement of skinheads and neo-Nazis (destruction of tombstones in Jewish cemeteries, websites encouraging racial intolerance, etc.). It is up to the state to deal with such manifestations of intolerance.
Jews in Sternberg
The first written mention of the Jewish settlement in Sternberg is from 1387. Unfortunately, there are no archival sources about the fate of the Sternberg Jews, they were probably destroyed during the wars and fires that prosecuted the city. In addition, the Jews were expelled from the town in the 15th and 16th centuries by the owners of the Sternberg estate, first under Jan Berka *geni of Dubá and Lipá in 1492. According to a report by Wilhelm Stief (Illustrierte Geschichte der Stadt Sternberg - Illustrated History of Sternberg) Jew Eleazar bought two guests from the Catholic priest Peter Damm, who got into financial difficulties. Probably in connection with the persecution of Jews in Poland, however, some of their immigrants anchored again in Sternberg, but with the permission of the nobility. In his topographical chronicles of the Sternberg Houses, the regional ethnographic researcher Karel Morav traces the fate of the Sternberg Jews primarily on the basis of their ownership of the houses in the years 1530-1577, until their further expulsion from the city. He found, for example, that while, according to the land register of 1515, there was only a Baruch Jew in the town and only one Jewish family in 1541-1546, the number of Jewish families increased to 22-25 by 1576. These wealthy Jewish burghers and craftsmen owned about 16% of the houses in the inner city since we knew them. They settled along the "water", ie in the area between Růžová street (today's Jaroslavová) and Vodní street. In Vodní street they owned house no. 10, 12, 14 and 16, in Růžová street house no. 13. The houses were mostly new. The Jews also lived in the street leading to the south fort, in today's Pekařská, from which a short path led along the inner side of the walls to the Jewish school behind houses no. 8 and 9 from the square. The school is mentioned in documents from 1563, 1585, 1609, 1620, 1634 and 1660.
Even in Šternberk, according to the valid anti-Jewish regulations, the physical separation of the Jewish street from other parts of the city was observed. In Morav's Chronicles of Houses (Morav 1975, 1977) there is only one name of a Jewish inhabitant living outside the mentioned Jewish street: Martin or Markus Jew cutler, it is registered in 1515 and 1531 to 1546 in Široká street No. 25. K. Morav states, that Martin the Jew cutler pays Jewish tax, in 1562 he no longer lives and his widow Markéta with his sons Petr and Tomáš then sells the house to Šimek wheeler. This house in Široká street (now ČSA) was demolished in 1950. However, K. Morav does not rule out that there were other Jewish families living in the town, but since they had no real estate, their names are not written in the land registers. (In old records, the name of a Jewish settler was always accompanied by the designation Jud, Jüdin or in Czech written documents Jew, Jewish, which expressed their legal status at the time.) Among more than thirty people in the period under review, K. Morav managed to capture abundant family relations , the names of several burghers who also owned two houses and paid Jewish tax. Several local Jews also have a different field of activity than trade - at that time there was a Jewish scribe, a glazier, a butcher, a swordsman, a knife maker, a shoemaker, a furrier and a bag maker (that is, a purifier, a manufacturer of leather purses). As permanent surnames were introduced only in Theresian times, some Jewish citizens are still identified in the land registers by a more specific attribute (Izák Jew water, ie. living by „water“, Izrahel an old Jew, Johel a lame Jew, Samuel a small Jew, Jakub squinting Jew, a Jew Josef Šťastný), or the names of the parents or wife of the person in question are given. Apparently for its poorest, the Sternberg Jewish community (established in 1531 under the spiritual leadership of Rabbi Abraham) bought a house from private Jewish property in 1569 and set up a Jewish poorhouse there, a shelter for the Jewish poor, "so that the poor people of the Nation ’. It was located in the eastern part of Vodní street, between Prostřední (today Střední) and Račí (Partyzánská) streets. In 1577, the Jewish community sold the house. After the Thirty Years' War, the damaged, unsaleable building of its last owner was abandoned and the plot later fell to the village. The name Židovská street was used for Vodní street long after the expulsion of Jews from the town - until 1620, although other names of this street also appear at the same time ("by the water", by the stream, am Stadtgraben, from 1779 Vodní).
In Růžová (today Jaroslavova) street, the Jews also built their own spa - a ritual "bath", because they were not allowed to use the city spa. . the canal was bridged and closed in 1809.) When the Jewish baths were built, we do not know, a note about their existence appears only once, in the purchase contract from 1576, concerning the house in Růžová street No. 13: „.. . (house) with a place where Jews had their baths .. ". Bathing water was taken either from the town spring in the street on the corner of Obertorgasse 11 (U Horní brány) or from the "water", if it was not polluted on the upper stream, the drainage channel from the Jewish spa led between the houses of Vodní street no. 14 and 16. Lázně he established on his land, at the mercy of the nobility, “the Jew Žalman also called David Žalman Jew ”. He also had them under his direction, and therefore he paid a kind of trade tax to the lords every year. The obligation to pay the spa fee of 28 tailors a year was tied to the houses of Žalman the Jew (Vodní no. 10 and 12.) However, the departure of the Jews and the liquidation of their spas did not end the obligation to pay that fee, the payment is recorded in 1802-1824. On the map of the stable cadastre from 1834, these houses are marked with numbers 125 and 126, they correspond to today's (of course rebuilt) houses with descriptive numbers 132 and 133. In the 16th century, these houses formed one house. In 1574, the smaller, northern part of the house without a garden, a Jew Žalman wrote to his daughter Cyprli, married to Grygar Viktorin, a teacher at a local Jewish school. He sold a larger part in 1576 to Pavel Goldmann, a Jew. According to K. Morava, the spa was probably a more northern house. According to land registers, both houses were still an organic part of the town, but from 1627-56 they were damaged and deserted. After the expulsion of the Jews from the city, both houses, structurally marked as spas, were bought by the nobility. Růžová street (today Jaroslavova) was still listed as Jewish in 1585-1707. Jews also lived in today's Pekařská street (entries in the house purchase contracts of 1588, 1589, 1596, 1601 and 1615). It was also called Jewish, in the years 1679-1704 Gassl, in the years 1779-91 "bei dem neuen Pförtl", Pförtelgasse = At the small gate, and only after the demolition of the fort from the turn of the 30s and 40s of the 18th century received from 1787 name Bäckergasse = Bakery.
There was also a Jewish school nearby. The report about it comes from 1563. It was built behind the gardens of houses No. 9 and 10 on Náměstí (today's Hlavní náměstí) and was literally glued to the inside of the city walls. The last rector and cantor of the school was "Greger" or "Grigar-Jew" from Kroměříž. After the expulsion of the Jews in 1577, the building became the property of the dyer Hans Schwerin and was part of the property on the "Square" (now the Main Square). During the Thirty Years' War (1627), both houses were demolished and burned during the imperial attack on the Danish garrison in the city, in 1634 Georg Breuner
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When the new owner of the Sternberg estate, Duke Karel z Minsterberka *wiki, issued a document written in German to the town of Sternberg on March 8, 1577, confirming a number of privileges, there was also the "privilege of deportation of Jews." According to him, no Jew was allowed to live in the city and anywhere in the entire estate, own a house, trade, buy or sell goods (with the exception of annual markets, for a high personal fee, the so-called Leibmut). Jews were also not allowed to enter the city, to spend the night here (only after obtaining the consent of the mayor and in accordance with the regulations of the nobility and the governor). By violating the ban, they were subjected to the penalty of confiscation of goods, a lawsuit or a disciplinary fine. The nobility's document concludes: In this way, our subjects can be rid of their harmful presence and thus have the opportunity to become better and mutually develop.
After 1577, the Jews of Sternberg had to find another place of residence, but they were free to sell their property. They moved mostly to Úsov, Loštice, Mohelnice, Kojetín and Kroměříž. For many years, however, the Sternberg nobility paid fees for their Sternberg property from their new residences. Apparently, the property of the Jewish community (poorhouse and school) was also sold in this way. The Minsterbers sought to establish a unified religion throughout the estate. In 1592, the Unity of Brethren was expelled from Šternberk. As Jewish merchants came to markets and annual markets with their goods, they later suffered silently from overnight stays in inns, but when some stayed with citizens in 1763, (according to a record in the chronicle of W. Stief) in 1764, the ban on overnight stays of Jews in Sternberg. This measure was valid until 1848. After the issuance of the new constitution in 1867, all discriminatory prohibitions within the Habsburg monarchy were lifted. Jews took the opportunity to move freely and sought suitable economic conditions for themselves and their families. Thus, numerous Jewish communities were formed in some Moravian towns in the 19th century, especially in Mikulov, Olomouc, Prostějov and elsewhere. Ideas also settled in rural communities. Sternberg was no exception. In 1880, for example, during the census, 10 inhabitants of Jewish nationality were recorded in the village of Jívová, traces of Jewish settlement also lead to Huzová and Chabičov. It is probable that the ongoing historical research will take us to some other municipalities.
In 1893, 114 Jews lived in Sternberg (official name), in 1920 their number dropped to 69, in 1930 to 62, some converted (changed their faith). The Moravian chronicle of houses documents which of the Israelites acquired larger real estate. He mentions about 20 names between the years 1860-1921, when Jews at some time owned some houses, eg in Oblouková 30, in Široká (now ČSA) 9, 11, 15, 48, 56, in Radniční 4, 8, 13, on Náměstí (Hlavní náměstí) No. 10, in Hvězdná (Bezručova) No. 16, in Cirkusová or Cirkusce (near the school on Svobody Square) No. 11, in Ovčího potoka street (Potoční) No. 6. However, we must not forget that houses were not only bought and sold, but also demolished and rebuilt and renumbered. The Sternberg Israelites no longer created their own independent community from the 19th century, but fell under the Jewish community of Olomouc. In Sternberg, however, they met for common prayers and meditations. The Sternberg prayer house (synagogue) was located near the beginning of today's Opavská street in Jarní street. (According to an official letter from 1945, Troppauerstrasse 10, then Allied class, is now known as Opavská, which is taken from W. Stief's Sternberg Directory from 1905, then printed by Buchdruckerei Carl Auradniczek Sternberg. However, the location of this place cannot be identified with today's Opavská 10, because there was a slight shift in house numbers when renumbering houses.)
The spokesman for the Jews was Max Gessler *geni, the owner of a clothing store in 8 Radniční street. However, after the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, many of them fell into the hands of the Gestapo and were taken to concentration camps. Their property was "Aryanized." The Sternberg Jewish synagogue was burned down by the Germans immediately after the city was occupied. From 15 to 16 March 1939, the beautiful Olomouc synagogue, built in the oriental-Byzantine style in 1895-1897, burned and demolished, designed by the prominent Viennese architect of Jewish German nationality, Jakob Gartner *geni (21.11.1861 Přerov - 18.4.1921 Vienna ) wiki. This architect designed a number of synagogues in Moravia, several dozen residential houses and villas in Olomouc, and a neo-Gothic building of a German savings bank from 1895 in Šternberk, now the seat of Komerční banka; this house is a cultural monument. (The Olomouc Synagogue stood on the site of today's car park on Palach Square near the Terezská Gate, its appearance will be explained on the website of the Jewish community of Olomouc.) The remains of the building were then dismantled for two years. stained glass windows. The benches got to the church in Olšany near Prostějov, they were bought to Krnov in 2004, now three rows of these benches are located in the gradually restored Lostice synagogue, where an exhibition of monuments to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust from Lostice and its surroundings is being built. In addition to the synagogue, a Jewish cemetery has been preserved in Úsov.
No traces of the interwar Jewish community were found in Sternberg. There is a lack of documentation on the pre-war records of the Sternberg population and the Jewish registry. And because we do not know the names of people, their nationalities and faith, but we do not know where the Jews of Sternberg went after Munich in 1938, it is very difficult to determine whether any of them survived the "final solution to the Jewish question" in 1942-45, when they were Jews were sent en masse to the Terezín concentration camp and from there further east to the extermination camps in Sobibor, Majdanek, Chelmno near Łódže or Treblinka, where they were mostly killed by Cyclone B, unless they were suffocated by exhaust fumes in closed cars serving the same purpose.
However, many of Sternberg's Jews (as well as some Czech officials) had already moved out of the city before the evacuation of the population on October 7 and 8, 1938, as anti-Jewish attacks multiplied. They were also met by the young couple Gröger, the painter Kurt Gröger *geni, the son of the Sternberg factoryman Hermann Gröger *sternberk.org, and Kurt's wife Simone Driay, who came from a French Jewish (non-confessive) family. After his marriage on August 6, 1936 and a short stay in Prague, they lived for two years in Šternberk and helped Kurt's father run his company (textile factory Mikulaschek & Gröger *geni), whose production had been declining more and more since the early 1930s. At that time, life was already unbearable for the anti-fascist Gröger family. Kurt and Simone managed to return to Paris at the last moment before the Munich events (September 13, 1938). They broke up with relatives who became members of the NSDAP.
In the archives of the Jewish community of Olomouc, only a list of the names of five citizens living in Šternberk was found in the list of members of the Olomouc synagogue church from the period after 1962. They were: Isidor Bachner *geni (born 30.8. 1895), apartment Lomená 16, Isidor Donath *geni (2.8.1879 Brno -), U střelnice 21, Regina Dresslerová *geni (4.6.1910), Cirkuska 7, František Lustig *geni (15.8. 1905 ), cl. E. Beneše 48, Anna Navrátilíková *geni (9.5.1909), Ořechová 43. We do not know more about these people yet. Otto Z. Eisner *geni (January 12, 1911 Šternberk - July 1, 1975 Bradford, Great Britain) was an important native of Sternberg of Jewish nationality also related to nearby Olomouc. After German troops entered the country in March 1939, Eisner's friend Stephan Körner *geni was warned by his classmate, an SS officer, that life in Moravia was no longer safe for Jewish families. Stephan's parents refused to leave, believing they had nothing to fear unless they were communists. (Later, however, Körner's mother died in Auschwitz, and his father committed suicide on the way to this concentration camp.) Stephan Körner (born 1913 in Ostrava as a teaching family) and two friends, Otto Eisner and Willi Haas, fled to the United Kingdom via Poland, where many refugees have been coming since the beginning of the war. All three of these friends probably served in the Czechoslovak emigrant army, Körner until 1946; then he worked at various universities, achieved a high academic career and a number of titles and honors, and became famous as a prominent British philosopher and professional writer. Otto Z. Eisner, a native of Sternberg, also worked as a university professor in England after the war. He became famous mainly as a translator of Czech poetry into German. In the 1930s, he was one of the young Czech Jewish writers who set out their work to purposefully and patiently "build a bridge" between cultures. Otto Eisner and his friend Hans Schönhof *same as? geni (11/25/1886 Wischau - 1/22/1943 Auschwitz), for example, selected and rewrote three dozen of the most beautiful poems of Vítězslav Nezval wiki (Gedichte Vítězslav Nezval). The collection was published in Leipzig in 1938 as a bibliophile edition of 100 copies and was offered for sale by bookstores in Moravian Ostrava (die Buch-handlung Julius Kittls Nachfolger Mähr.-Ostrau). The translators of the individual poems are marked in the book with their initials. The book is complemented by a sensitive text by both authors about the meaning of poetry and Nezval's bibliography. The text is dated in Prague in April 1938. The pair of Jewish authors O. Eisner - H. Schönhof drew attention to themselves on the very threshold of the war (1939) by translating the romantic lyric-epic poem by Karel Hynek Mácha *wiki May. Shortly afterwards, the two young Jewish writers emigrated. Their translation of Mája also earned praise from the literary critic Ladislav Nezdařil *wiki as the only translation to date. According to him, in the manuscript version of the translation of these authors, sometimes "Mácha spoke another language for the first time, and yet his ..." Hans Schulhof (born 1913 in Brno) fell as a member of the French foreign resistance in the 1940s. Otto Eisner, a native of Sternberg, a university teacher and translator of Czech poetry into German, died in England at the age of 64.
The Lostice civic association Respect and Tolerance deals with the documentation of Jewish monuments and the recording of oral history in Loštice, Mohelnice, Úsov, Police and Litovel. Its chairman, Mr. Luděk Štipl *memoryofnations.eu, searches with his colleagues for the history of Jewish communities and the fate of Jews. They managed to document some of them, including the life story of a Jewish woman from the Sternberg region - Mrs. Edith Carter Knöpflmacher *geni *respectandtolerance.com. She was born on December 17, 1914 in Huzová (formerly the German Huzová), experienced the beginnings of Nazism in the Sudetenland, survived the imprisonment in Terezín and Auschwitz and the death march. After the war, she returned to Olomouc. In 1948, she emigrated to the United States (Cincinnati, Ohio), where she still lives. Luděk Štipl and Jaroslav Dubský presented her troubled lives in a film documentary (DVD - 28 min.), Which won first place in the documentary film category in the Olomouc Region competition (Mohelnice 2009). Within the program of the Respect and Tolerance Association, educational lectures are organized for schoolchildren and the public. L. Štipl's lecture Once Upon a Time - Memories of Edith Carter Knöpflmacher on Life in Mohelnice, Loštice, Huzová and Olomouc is also part of the Forbidden Jewish Stories program.
The German amateur patriotic researcher and Sternberg native Helmut Polaschek *geni from Frankfurt am Main was also interested in the fate of the Sternberg Jews. According to him, questions and inquiries at Jewish communities in Prague, Olomouc, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt am Main have not yet brought enough information to clarify the fate of the Sternberg Jews.
Literature and other sources:
Vlasta Hlůzová, Židé ve Šternberku, Šternberk 2011. Computer typesetting and graphic design Vlasta Hlůzová. The situation map of the Jewish streets in Sternberg (Sternberg 1934) on the back of the cover was taken from an article by H. Polaschek (Sternberg Letters 5/1999). 1st edition. Published by the City of Šternberk 2011
*See also Chronik der Stadt Sternberg von 1241-1865 vervollständigt u. fortges. von Josef Matzner
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