Brügel, Johann Wolfgang, 1905-1986

Czechoslovakia was created in 1918 when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved; it united the territories of Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia. The 1930 census records that over 350,000 Jews were living in Czechoslovakia at the time. In the Munich Pact of 1938, European leaders agreed to allow Hitler to annex Sudetenland, an area along the border of what was then Czechoslovakia. The Jewish population in this area was then subject to National Socialist laws denying them citizenship and basic human rights. In 1941, the Theresienstadt concentration camp was established. While some 26,000 Czechoslovak Jews were able to emigrate before 1941, most of those who remained were transported first to Theresienstadt and then to other concentration camps, where most then perished.

Johann Wolfgang Brügel was born on July 8, 1905 in what is today Hustopeče, Czech Republic (German: Auspitz), then part of the Habsburg empire. He worked in law, journalism, and public service, writing for Social Democratic newspapers, broadcasting on the radio, and eventually serving as a public official under the Social Democrat leader Ludwig Czech. Amid increasing tensions between ethnic Germans and Czechs in Prague, Brügel escaped to Paris, France in April 1938 and then to London, England. There, he worked as a journalist, translator, and interpreter, and starting in the 1950s, Brügel engaged in historical research and scholarship on the history of Czechoslovakia. 1

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