The Holocaust in the Sudetenland resulted in the flight, dispossession, deportation and ultimately death of many of the 24,505 Jews living in the Reichsgau Sudetenland, an administrative region of Nazi Germany established from former Czechoslovak territory annexed after the October 1938 Munich Agreement. Due to harassment and violence, including during (9–10 November 1938), ninety percent of the Jews had already left the Sudetenland by mid-1939. The remaining Jews were subject to property confiscation and eventually deportation. During the later years of the war, tens of thousands of Jews and non-Jews were forced laborers in a network of concentration camps in the Sudetenland.
After the war, Jewish communities in the former Sudetenland suffered losses due to the discrimination against German-speaking Jews under the postwar Czechoslovak government, but were partially replenished by arrivals from Carpathian Ruthenia.
Background
Before 1918, the German-majority parts of the Czech lands were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the nineteenth century, the Czech National Revival agitated for autonomy for the Czech-speaking majority. Following World War I, the border Sudetenland and its German majority were denied a border poll to determine their future. Even though most Germans would have preferred union with Germany, they became part of the new country of Czechoslovakia. The Jewish population of the Sudetenland had been decreasing due to emigration and a low birth rate. In 1930, the Jewish population of the area to be annexed by Germany in 1938 was 29,045, with 24,505 in what would be the Reichsgau Sudetenland Nazi administrative region. The largest Jewish communities were Teplitz-Schönau (3,213 Jews, 10% of the population), Karlsbad (2,115, 9%), and Reichenberg (1,392, 3.6%). Jews of the Sudetenland were small businessmen and professionals; they included wealthy industrialists such as the Petschek family. While some declared Jewish nationality, nearly all spoke German as their main language and most considered themselves Germans.
Unhappy with their minority status despite relatively generous minority rights, Germans in Czechoslovakia started a movement for greater national autonomy. The resurgence of ethnic nationalism based on the idea of ("people's community") led to an increase in antisemitism as Jews were not deemed members of the national community. Economic difficulties in the mid-1930s caused an increase in support for the Sudeten German Party (SdP) of Konrad Henlein. A pro-Nazi party, SdP opposed liberalism, democracy, Slavs and Jews. Funded by the Nazi Party, it won two-thirds of the German vote in the 1935 Czechoslovak parliamentary election and about ninety percent in the 1938 Czechoslovak local elections. Prior to 1938, however, the SdP had emphasized the conflict between Czech and German nationalism rather than antisemitism.
Annexation and flight
In September 1938, Henlein formed the (Sudeten German Free Corps) to conduct guerrilla war against Czechoslovakia. Businesses owned by Jews and Czechs in the Sudetenland, especially Eger, Karlsbad, and Asch, were attacked by demonstrators demanding union with Germany. Heinlein's forces imprisoned 17 Jews in Marienbad, later freed by Czechoslovak forces. Death threats were made against notable Jews such as of Leitmeritz. Many Jews and Czechs fled the violence: Warnsdorf and Komotau, which had hundreds of Jewish residents in the 1930 census, declared themselves "Jew-free" before the end of September. In Karlsbad 2,000 of 3,000 Jews fled to Prague. Due to the violence against Austrian Jews after the German annexation in March 1938, the Jews of the Sudetenland were aware of the dangers of Nazi rule.