Unexpectedly, following the dismantling of the State of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, the movement in the 'Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia' was not immediately banned, though the Czech Esperanto Association, which had replaced the earlier Esperanto Association of the Czechoslovak Republic, was obliged to limit itself to activities only among Czechs.[444] In March 1940 it had to close its office, and in a meeting on 3 November 1940 the association decided, in compliance with an order received from the Gestapo, to disband itself.[445] The Prague Esperanto Club continued a clandestine existence until 1944. In the Protectorate, whose leader became, in September 1941, Reinhard Heydrich,[446] many Esperantists were also among the victims of cruel persecution.[447]
Following the Nazi Model
Shortly after the Nazi occupation of territory in western Europe, the RSHA noted that Heroldo de Esperanto had published an article about the Nazi advance in Europe and its consequences for the Esperanto movement. It particularly remarked its introductory sentence: 'The Monster Leaps Ahead' ('La monstro faras saltojn').[448]
The occupying forces in the Netherlands did not bother the Esperanto movement at first, even allowing the use of Esperanto in correspondence with neutral countries. But the RSHA was secretly preparing its liqui- dation: the RSHA archives contain detailed lists of Esperanto organiza- tions and individual Esperantists in the Netherlands.1 01 Soon, in June 1940, Kunze, the RSHA officer in charge of Esperanto, paid an offi- cial visit to the Netherlands to gather information on materials sched- uled for confiscation.[449] While there, he also turned his attention to the International Esperanto League (IEL), which he described as an orga- nization 'absolutely hostile to Germany' and therefore to be banned. Kunze further suggested that Teo Jung, publisher of the 'anti-German' newspaper Heroldo de Esperanto, be arrested.[450] While the arrest did not take place,[451] on 20 March 1941 the Dutch Esperanto organizations were dissolved by a decree from the Commandant of the Secret Police and the Security Service.[452] Responsibility for carrying out the decree fell to Werner Schwier, head of the International Organizations Section of the Reich Commissariat for the Occupied Dutch Territories. Professionally, Schwier was a horse butcher but wished to be called 'Doctor'; he had a reputation for brutality.[453] According to a report by Andras Cseh on the closing of the International Cseh Institute of Esperanto in the Hague (closed as an 'organization affiliated with freemasonry lodges'), Schwier, a 'fanatical enemy of Esperanto', boasted 'that he had already annihi- lated the Esperanto movement in Germany and Poland, and he threat- ened us with arrest and concentration camp if we continued to argue for Esperanto', because 'pacifism and humanism are the greatest crimes against the life of the people'.[454] Parts of the book collection of the Dutch Esperanto organizations—two crates—were sent by Schwier in August 1942 to Berlin, where they were assigned to the library of the planned Advanced School of the NSDAP (an establishment to be opened after the war)—to serve as study material on the conspiratorial activities of the Jews.[455]
In other countries occupied during the war, Nazi policies concerning Esperanto were not unified; in general, Nazi suppression in Scandinavia and Western Europe was less severe than the suppression in the East. In France, no system-wide measures were undertaken; Esperanto courses were sometimes permitted, sometimes not, and in any case were almost everywhere carried on in secret.[456] Similarly, in Norway[457] and Denmark[458]the movement was never banned. In 1942 the Workers Esperanto Club in Copenhagen even dared to publish a book with the highly significant title Tra densa mallumo (Through Deepest Darkness), in which Chinese Esperantists were praised for 'working diligently to employ Esperanto in the service of their struggle against the Japanese invaders' and the German Esperantists were criticized for their 'fevered behavior' when they 'apparently to save the movement, declared themselves ready to serve Nazism'.[459]
9n Belgium, in January 1941, the Flemish Esperantists published (without permission), five issues of Mededelingen voor den Vlaamschen Esperantist. When the sixth issue was in press, the Gestapo appeared and, after a search and interrogation, disallowed further activities by the Flemish Esperantist League. In December 1941, however, the local group in Bruges began secret publication of a monthly mimeographed bulletin whose title was itself a program: Paco kaj Justeco (Peace and Justice).[460]
During the war, Austrian Esperantists met secretly in private homes. At one of these meetings, at the end of June 1944, in the home of Gustav Weber, the former head delegate of IEL and a collaborator with the Esperanto Museum, members of the Gestapo suddenly appeared and arrested everyone present. Weber was sent to the Mauthausen concen- tration camp, where even the SS officers had difficulty believing that he was arrested simply because of Esperanto. Weber was later transported to the nearby Gusen camp and put to hard labor in a stone quarry. One day, shortly before the liberation, an SS guard, made nervous by Weber's constant smiles, symptoms of incipient mental disorder, seized the shovel from his hands and battered him on the head until he died.[461]
Even before the Nazis embraced the countries bordering on Germany, these countries took measures unfavorable to the spread of Esperanto. Next to anti-Communism, the primary cause was anti-Semitism, more or less latently prevalent in many countries of Europe, even the democra- cies. Anti-Semitism reinforced among the broad spectrum of people an antipathy toward Esperanto as a Jewish creation, and was a factor that the Esperantists had to take into consideration even in countries with relatively 'Esperanto-friendly' governments. In May 1934, an Esperanto teacher in a high school in Bydgoszcz, Poland, carried out a survey among those pupils who refused to accept Esperanto as their subject of study. In explaining their motives, the children showed that they were fatally infected with anti-Jewish feelings:
because it's a Jewish jargon, which we must hate [.]
Esperanto serves anti-religious propaganda. Esperantists are most often Jews or atheists. Esperanto must be leveled with the ground. [...]
I am a big anti-Semite and for this reason I do not like Esperanto, [.] because in my opinion it is a Zionist discovery to make it easy to spread communism, freemasonry and other hindrances.[462]
A few years after this survey, Esperantists across the world became wit- nesses to the nightmarish force of nationalism and anti-Semitism in a country that soon became a victim itself. When the government, prob- ably wishing to enhance the international reputation of Poland, gave permission to organize the Jubilee Esperanto Congress, marking the 50th anniversary of Esperanto's publication, in Warsaw, birthplace of Esperanto, the far-right and fascist press sharply attacked the govern- ment for allowing the organization of a 'Jewish-communist' congress.[463]During the congress week the absurd allegations and 'unashamedly cyni- cal attacks' of the far-right press created such a fraught atmosphere 'that the Congress participants, or at least a large part of them, felt themselves almost terrorized'.[464]
In Poland, the enemies of Esperanto did not succeed in influencing the essential viewpoint of the government, but, through the example of the Nazi regime, which led the way in systematically opposing not only troublesome elements in the Esperanto movement but the entire move- ment and the language itself, several other right-wing and fascist regimes were stimulated to increase their surveillance of Esperantists and to step up their persecutions. In the process, they often dispensed with the earlier practice of differentiating between neutral and workers' movements.