Ella Baker - May 11, 2011
Anti-Semitism
Yeah, yeah, I hear you, I hear you. Alright, well for the, hist...your history tell, tell me about uh, so the, were you growing up it was anti-Semitic, yeah. Um, when the, when the...
Well it wasn't allowed because the Czechoslav... the best of the Czechoslovakian uh, so they didn't allow what the person ??? but we Jewish kids uh, my, our parents uh, knew Hungarian Franz Josef who was good to Jews.
Mm-hm.
So, they signed us into Hungarian schools. And we all left to the Slovakian school because we couldn't tolerate the harassment there, you know. So, Czechoslovakia then and before the first president was, was uh, uh, couldn't tolerate uh, that was in the 1900s...
Mm-hm.
You recall Masaryk, and I still have his picture there. He was fighting anti-Semitism...
Mm-hm.
And they were right now to be a Jew is an honor there.
Hm.
And during the war and after the war and what they have done after the war. The people from Poland didn't feel have to go to they came there and they were welcome it, whatever. So Czechoslovakia wouldn't, Czech Republic wouldn't allow...
Hm.
This to happen, and what something what you have never heard and never will. There was a dedication of a new schools, Slovak school, we all Jewish kids. And there had a good time but we didn't eat the food, it wasn't kosher.
Mm-hm.
But we didn't make nothing out of it. But, the administration, the school noticed the Jewish kids are not eating, listen to that. And they went and they found out why we didn't eat because it wasn't kosher. 2 days later catered kosher food just for the Jewish kids.
Really?
These are the Czechs, then and now.
Wow.
No. So I have the best, I was born free...
Mm-hm.
As a freed social democratic country and uh, so uh, ??? so the Czech wouldn't allow, but it was like a person with a beard, 'cause here they put the things uh, the beard uh, in the school. The, the...and in those days the teachings about they, they claimed the Jews are responsible for Jesus and they need blood for uh, Easter, things like that.
The blood libel.
This, this teaching ??? about Easter.
They abolished it.
They had abolished it, but there are, there are, you have to see uh, what, what has happened not everything is there but there is a different kind of there.
You're saying they abolished it now, but back then...
Back then that wasn't no Vatican II, yeah, the conference, Vatican II, Vatican I was...
Yeah.
There to the Christian religions and animosity among them.
Mm-hm.
And the Vatican II with the teachings of, of the, uh...
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