English Translation

Czech emigration and world Jewry. When the former Czech-Slovak senator Vojta Benes landed in New York on the morning of September 26, 1938 from the Polish ship "Pil- sudski", his home was in the most severe state crisis. He had travelled to the United States on behalf of the National Council in Prague in order to create sympathy for Czech Slovakia in the country he was familiar with from his 20 years of war work in the USA. A few days later, as a result of the Munich agreement, the old borders of the Republic fell, he threw his previous intentions overboard and, like once, began his political-conspiratorial activity. This was the birth of the new Czech emigration work. At its cradle was a statement by Vojta Beneê, which was published in the "New York Times" on 1 November 1938. "The reports of the growing tide of anti-Semitism in Czechoslovakia were denied yesterday by Vojta Beneß, the elder brother of the former President of Czechoslovakia, with the assurance that "it is not possible to transform a nation like Czechoslovakia from a model democratic republic into a fascist, anti-Semitic people only by a stroke of a feather."* The former Czech-Slovak senator, here as an inofficial emissary of good will, makes this statement in a telegram which he sent from Chicago to the closing session of the American-Jewish Congress at the Hotel Bilt- more. Delegates of the three-day meeting, having heard the reports on the development of intensive propaganda and a growing economic suspicion of the Jews in the United States, decided to set up a committee to combat such propaganda and slander. Mr. Beneß asked the American Jews "to adopt a calm and sympathetic attitude and to maintain understanding of the regrets of the Czech people and to be certain that most of the developments of the last four weeks have been the result of violence and coercion." He urged the Jews and the Czechs and all the freedom-loving democratic peoples to remain united by the common bond of friendship and understanding." Subsequently, Vojta Beneß also sent the invitation to other Jewish clubs in the USA to support the Czecho-Slovak cause. A little later also the then Czech-- Cho-Slovak envoy appeared in London, Jan Masaryk, in the USA, to - 2 -