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Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Restricted Thesis: Campus only access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

First Advisor

Dr. Eric S. Yellin

Abstract

During Czechoslovakia’s First Republic (1918–1938), the country was the only healthy democracy in Central Eastern Europe, and antisemitism was not state-sponsored. These conditions furthered a Czechoslovak myth of democratic exceptionalism that originated earlier. Despite the rupture and genocide of the Holocaust and the collapse of democracy, this myth was preserved and adapted by many Holocaust survivors themselves. Between 1945 and 1965, a few thousand Czechoslovak Jewish Holocaust Survivors immigrated to the United States at the height of American global influence. There, decades later, they told their stories through Holocaust testimonial projects.

This thesis explores how Czechoslovak Holocaust survivors navigated and negotiated between two myths, or what I call double exceptionalism: one of Czechoslovak exceptionalism before the Holocaust in interwar Czechoslovakia, and one of American exceptionalism after the Holocaust in their new home. I argue that survivors’ religious and Jewish identities, along with their understanding of democracy, were inherently transnational, shaped by both interwar Czechoslovakia and postwar America, each informing how they understood the other.

The first two chapters focus on interwar Czechoslovakia. Chapter one explores how Czechoslovak Jews from each region understood religion and their Jewish identity, while chapter two describes how Czechoslovak Jews understood democracy. Chapter three examines the Czechoslovak myths' relationship with America by exploring how the myth was adapted during the Holocaust. This chapter also highlights survivors’ experiences as Nazism spread into their regions and in its immediate aftermath. The final two chapters follow these survivors after immigrating to the United States, with chapter four highlighting how they understood religion and Jewish identity, and chapter five, how they now understood democracy in America.

This project utilizes approximately seventy testimonies, largely recorded between 1980 and 2008, the majority from the USC Shoah Foundation, Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive, and the Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive. The project also incorporates wartime correspondence, rare books, and other documents largely from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Prague to contextualize the Czechoslovak myth during the Holocaust.

This thesis reveals the specificity of the Czechoslovak Jewish Holocaust experience. By breaking down the monolithic “survivor,” we can see myth, history, and experience more clearly. Antisemitism is just one part of the story; it also includes what democracy has meant to Jews and how and why they have embraced it, even in imperfect forms.

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