Zbynek Tarant will discuss the rescue plan for 2,500 Czech Jews by means of a ha‘avara scheme in 1939–1940, negotiated by the Bar Kochba alumnus, Leo Herrmann. Born in Landskron in 1888, Herrmann was truly a renaissance personality—lawyer, diplomat, Zionist, but also peace activist, journalist, editor-in-chief of several newspapers, film producer, and a longtime secretary general of the Keren Ha-Yesod.
Seeing the rapidly deteriorating situation of Czechoslovak Jewry after the 1938 Munich Agreement, Leo Herrmann mobilized all efforts to design a rescue plan akin to the German ha‘avara. Using his unique skills in fundraising and crisis management as well as his excellent contacts within the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, Herrmann designed a scheme that allowed the rescue—often in the last possible moments—of thousands of Czechoslovak Jews, including notable Zionists such as Max Brod, Felix Weltsch, and David Paul Meretz. Without Herrmann, Franz Kafka’s archive, smuggled by Brod from Czechoslovakia, would likely have been lost forever.
Zbynek Tarant’s talk will be introduced by Rabbi Norman Patz, President Emeritus of the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews, and Pavla Niklova, Director of the Jewish Museum in Prague.
Free and open to the public. Suggested donation $15. Seats are limited, on first-come first-served basis. RSVP through Eventbrite.
About
ZBYNEK TARANT, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and African Studies at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic. His research focuses primarily on Holocaust memory, Czech-Israeli relations, and contemporary antisemitism.
The event is organized by the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews in partnership with the Jewish Museum in Prague and the Consulate General of the Czech Republic in New York, with support of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association.