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By Root 483 0

and Ruthenia now lay within Soviet borders. Viktor Feuerlicht, a small Ruthenia Jew who had fought his way into Prague with the Czech Army, did not want to live in the Soviet Union. His home town, Khoust, was now part or the Ukraine. After the war Feuerlicht decided to stay in Prague. He went to a technical school and tried to hold a factory job, but one of his arms had been badly mangled during the war, and a constant series of operations made it impossible for him to keep the job. Feuerlicht had no interest in Prague-style Judaism. Any Saturday, you could see this little man with only one good arm clutching a torah that seemed almost as big as he was, determined to go on practicing the village religion of his father, even in Prague. He became one of a small nucleus of Slovak Orthodox Jews that formed around the Old-New Synagogue.

TO MANY in Czechoslovakia, the Soviets were still the heroes who had saved them and made possible the return of Czech democracy. In 1946 there were more than one million registered Czechoslovakian Communists. It was the one country in Central Europe where the Soviets could truthfully claim that Communism was popular. In 1946 the Communist party got 37.9 percent of the vote, more than any other party, and it entered into a coalition government in which it controlled key ministries. It is also true that the Communist Ministry of Information once released a peculiar statement complaining about the presence in important places of “bearded Solomons.” But in general Jews and non-Jews felt comfortable with the Czech Communist party. In the next two years the party's membership doubled to two million. One out of every five adults in the country was a registered Communist. Czechoslovakia seemed close to becoming a Communist democracy.

But the Communists had a ruling majority only in a coalition with the Social Democrats, and their hold on the coalition was not solid. Perhaps they feared losing their edge in the next election. Perhaps they—or more likely, the Soviets—just grew impatient with the power vagaries of a parliamentary system. In 1948, with the help of what appeared to be threats from Czech-based Soviet troops, the Communists simply ousted their partners and took over the government. There was little resistance, even though the foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, son of the national hero, was found dead outside his office building.

The Western Allies had not forgotten their own failure to act the last time Czechoslovakia had been taken over. This time they would respond. Their response was to greatly accelerate what was becoming the cold war by taking a harder line with the Soviets in Germany. But many Czechs took the news calmly.

For Jews, something much more important happened only three months later—the creation of the State of Israel. The new Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, like the democratic leftist coalition before it, was an enthusiastic backer of Israel. It trained pilots, shipped badly needed weapons, and sent volunteers. In addition, Czech and Slovak Jews—including many who had military experience fighting with Slovak partisans during the war—went to fight with the Haganah. One of Viktor Feuerlichf s brothers joined the Haganah and went to Israel. Feuerlichfs other brother, his only other surviving relative, had already emigrated to Israel. But Viktor, with his mangled arm, could not fight, and so he remained in Prague. Brno, where Masaryk Street had now been renamed Victory Street because Masaryk was considered too nationalistic, lost about one hundred of its Jews, which was one in ten. That was a smaller percentage than most communities lost. Whether related to the Communist takeover or not, Jews left by the thousands for Israel.

Those who stayed found themselves living in a very different system. Zuzana Simko's father was told to close his little locksmith shop. Instead, he was placed in a workshop for a state-owned factory. He still could go to synagogue before work and take Saturdays and Jewish holidays off.

For some, it got rougher. About sixty miles from Bratislava was a