Metadata: Documents of Persecution
Collection
- Country:
- Czechia
- Holding institution:
- Archives of the Jewish Museum in Prague
- Holding institution (official language):
- Archiv Židovského muzea v Praze
- Postal address:
- Stroupežnického 32, Praha 5, 150 00
- Phone number:
- 00420222749111
- Web address:
- http://www.jewishmuseum.cz/
- Email:
- office@jewishmuseum.cz
- Reference number:
- 316
- Title:
- Documents of Persecution
- Title (official language):
- Dokumenty perzekuce
- Creator/accumulator:
- Jewish Museum in Prague
- Date(s):
- 1928/2001
- Language:
- Czech
- German
- Hebrew
- Extent:
- 9.79 linear metres
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
- This collection originated as a documentation of the persecution and genocide of Jews in the Czech lands excluding the archival materials relating to the history of the Terezín ghetto, which forms a separate collection. The content of the collection comprises originals, copies and transcripts of and personal estates, as well as prints, newspaper clippings, maps, memoirs and a small amount of non-written material. The Documents of Persecution collection is a source of information on Holocaust history of Bohemian and Moravia Jews, and to a lesser extent also Slovakian Jews. Due to the manner by which it was created, the Documents of Persecution collection is relatively inhomogeneous; its documents have varying value, are often fragmentary and thus lack the context of a broader classification unit. Yet the collection represents a valuable supplement to work with coherent archival fonds and collections from the period of the Holocaust. The first major file comprises laws and regulations that directly or indirectly concerned the Jews in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Some of them are original copies, but most of them are mimeographed or typewritten copies. Aside from complete files containing laws and regulations from a whole range of sources sorted according to the original lists, there are also chronologically sorted files broken down by issuer. Another file comprises documents relating to the Treuhandstelle, which administered property confiscated from Jews in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which was also sorted, catalogued and placed in storage. This division of the Jewish Religious Community in Prague was more of an independent institution and was established 13 October 1941 at the order of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration and was only formally subordinate to the Jewish Religious Community in Prague. Following small files of documents from the Reich ministry of economy and Reich labour services in the Protectorate is the file "Jewish Emigration", which contains fragments of documents concerning this issue-from the conference in Evian, through documents of the travel division of the Prague Jewish Religious Community, instructions for emigration, the activities of Hechalutz, various lists and reports, to writings related to child emigration transports. In the file "Anti-Jewish Measures" are official and private written documents related to anti-Jewish speeches and measures. The file "Central Office for Jewish Emigration" contains only a few individual documents. Also included in the collection are statistics and some small factual files and a highly diverse set of individual documents (some of them not related to Jews). These are followed by a larger and more complete file "Concentration Camps", which includes documents concerning concentration camps as a whole as well as documents concerning individual concentration camps and correspondence from concentration camps. An independent file is made up of documents concerning Slovakian Jews. Other separate factual units are personal estates of individuals, literary work and a large file of memoirs, along with post-war literary and academic work devoted to the period of the Holocaust by Bohemian and Moravian Jews. After the writings from the activities of the post-war documentation efforts are fragments of documents on the validity of marriages made in the Terezín ghetto and on war crimes and collaborators. The collection is closed out by a small file of non-written material (e.g. Jewish stars), various items and forms. Some of the aforementioned files were processed in more detail in the inventory appendix. These comprise the following units: list of concentration camps, correspondence from concentration camps, jails and ghettos, personal estates, literary work and memoirs. The data are sorted alphabetically by author, deceased person or location (concentration camp). In addition, for the memoirs an index of concentration camps that the witnesses mention in their recollections was made, as were a name, location and subject index. Source of collection: The documents of this collection are of various provenance and originated primarily from the activities of individual Protectorate authorities or from the activities of individuals. The oldest part of the collection comes from the documentation efforts in Prague , with smaller parts of the acquired material (or copies) having remained in Prague and the greater part having been taken to what was then Palestine. The collection was gradually added to over the course of time in the form of donations, purchases, and the transcription or copying of loaned originals and attests to the documentation activity of the State Jewish Museum in Prague and the Jewish Museum in Prague. Scope of collection: The collection contains 90 boxes of documents (9.79 bm) organised into 79 groups and cannot be considered closed, being added to with new acquisitions. New groups could also gradually be added. Organisation of collection: When organising and cataloguing the Documents of Persecution into individual files, the guiding principle was the attempt to make it easy to orient oneself. For this reason a number of files were created by type (e.g. laws and regulations, memoirs) or by context (e.g. concentration camps). Larger material files were, if it seemed expedient, broken down into further items. In some cases they are not files, but merely an individual document that could not be assigned to any of the major files. Based on the nature of the material the documents are then organised under individual inventory numbers chronologically, by source or alphabetically. The source signatures that occur in certain official files are not listed in the inventory. Archival aids: There is an inventory available in Czech, English and German for the Documents of Persecution collection, which is gradually added to. Access: The Documents of Persecution collection is accessible in the archive of the Shoah History Department of the Jewish Museum in Prague. It has been completely digitised. On-line access is planned.
- Archival history:
- The documents came to the archives of the Jewish Museum in Prague during an extended period of time after 1945 in the form of donations, purchases or transcripts/copies of the original documents on loan.
- Access points: locations:
- Prague
- Subject terms:
- Antisemitism
- Antisemitism--Antisemitic measures
- Children
- Correspondence
- Historical research
- Holocaust
- Holocaust--Collaboration
- Holocaust--Concentration camps
- Holocaust--Ghettos
- Holocaust--Yellow star
- Jewish community
- Literature
- Maps
- Marriage and divorce
- Mass murder
- Memoirs
- Migration
- Migration--Emigration
- Newspaper clippings
- Personal records
- Plunder
- Statistics
- War crimes
- Zionism
- Zionism--Zionist youth movements
- Finding aids:
- Franková A: Dokumenty perzekuce, Inventář, 2004, 121 s., AP č. 310
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Museum Prague
- Author of the description:
- JMP Survey, 2015.
