Grosse Politik in einer kleinen Gemeinde. Der Skandal um den Rabbiner Karl Blan aus Neu-Oderberg
Major Politics in a Small Community: The Scandal Surrounding Rabbi Karl Blan of Nový Bohumín (Neu-Oderberg)

Summary/Abstract: The enormous politicization of public life in the interwar period did not spare Czechoslovakia or the Jewish religious communities in that country, as evidenced by, among other things, the involvement of many rabbis in political activities. Zionists were gaining more and more importance within the communities – including the religious community in Nový Bohumín on the border with Germany and Poland, despite the fact that the majority of its members were Orthodox Jewish families who had come from Galicia before 1914. Between 1936 and 1938, an intense conflict arose there between the community board, which was dominated by the General Zionists, and Karl Blan, a supporter of Revisionist Zionism who had been appointed Rabbi of Bohumín a year earlier. The board unsuccessfully tried several times to dismiss the rabbi, citing the fact that he lacked the full rabbinical qualifications. Blan’s supporters, however, succeeded in bringing about the dissolution of the board in 1937. Ultimately, the rabbi was accused, without proof, of collaborating with the Gestapo and the Third Reich to the detriment of the Czechoslovak Republic. The dispute was covered in the domestic and foreign press and served to foster a negative image of the Jewish community in the tense period before the outbreak of World War II.

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