La destruction des communautés juives des Sudètes. L’exemple de Teplitz-Schönau

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Teplice, a spa town in northern Bohemia, was already widely known under the Austrian empire. During the interwar period, it became an important cultural centre in Czechoslovakia and notably featured the republic’s main playhouse outside of Prague. The town, which was located in the German-speaking Sudeten region, became a strategic area for the Nazis, as did the entire region toward the end of the 1930s. Teplice was home to the largest Jewish population outside the capital. When the town fell into the hands of the pro-Nazi Sudeten-deutsche Partei (SdP) in May 1938, the Jews started to leave. As the date of the Munich conference approached, violence against Jews continued to mount and more and more people joined the exodus. After Germany annexed the region, the persecution of elderly Jews who stayed in Teplice increased and in 1942, they were deported to Theresienstadt. The few Jews and members of the opposition from Teplice who were still alive in 1945 and tried to return home were not welcomed back. They were later expelled, as were other German speakers (per the Beneš decrees). Family correspondence describes the events of this period. The letters of Olga Keller and Rudi Wiechel detail the circumstances surrounding the exodus from Teplice to Prague during the summer of 1938. A letter written by Ilse Löwy explains how certain Teplice residents managed to escape Prague in time in 1939. Viktor Saxl and Moritz Löwy’s correspondence tells what happened to them, two Jews who were still alive in 1945. Lastly, a letter from Karl Kern, who was exiled to Sweden, describes the 1946 expulsion through the story of his friend Schorsch Trapp.