Mitigating Persecution: Intermarried Families and the Significance of Social Networks during the Holocaust in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

Abstract

This article focuses on the wartime experience of an intermarried family in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. It examines the intermarried couple Marie and Jiří Klouda, their daughters, Helena and Mariana, and their closest relatives among the Eisner and Klouda families. Using a microhistorical perspective, this study focuses on the experiences and strategies of particular individuals and their social circles to understand their responses to shifting circumstances. Although I focus on these two families, my questions pertain to the significance of non-Jewish friends and relatives for Jews during the Holocaust. In short, what difference did these social and familial bonds make to Jewish family members? The study shows that familial and social bonds had tangible outcomes in terms of facilitating important, lifesaving contacts and favors within the forced Jewish societies in the Terezín ghetto and Prague. Prewar professional, familial, and cultural networks, and the social capital they embodied, carried over into the lives of Jews forced into Terezín and into the ghettoized society in Prague. Family and friends provided significant material and emotional support for each other. This support was especially important in a family like the Eisners-Kloudas, which experienced multiple forms of victimization during the war. During the Holocaust, non-Jewish relatives and friends could not stop the processes of genocide, but they could mitigate the effects of dispossession, isolation, deprivation, and deportation.