Jan Šinágl angažovaný občan, nezávislý publicista

(excerpts) - publisher Marek Belza

“However, there is one more problem,” enter the debate Štětkář, a personnel man from the Sales. “I observe our Jewish employees are trying hard to get out.” “You bet they do,” Vavrečka let his tongue slip again. “Well, let them go,” cried Landa hatefully. “Anyway, they are a bunch who speak German even today, when the Germans are sending them to concentration camps.” “Wait, wait,” I had to interrupt him, “I don’t know what makes you so angry with them. I am not. I’ve never felt to be less capable than any Jew, and this is why I have never learned to hate them.” “This is not my point,” said Landa almost apologetically, “but let Mr. Staša down here tell you how even Hitler kicking their asses cannot make them give up their German habits. They will go on speaking German here for ever.” He was ablaze with anger again.

Staša stirred in his chair:

“Well, yes. I sat in Jaroněk’s garden last Sunday, planting flowers, and some of the Zlín Jews went past me. All I heard was ‘Herr Weinberg’ and ‘Herr Kupfermann’ and ‘wissen Sie’… So I thought they were incorrigible.” “And that’s what they are,” exploded Landa again. “I have nothing against Jews, but it galls me when I hear them speak German, as they have spoken and have Germanized our country for centuries.” “But this is not true,” protested Veselý, who was always provoked by anything Landa said. I have never figured out why. But this was a futile debate, and therefore, I intervened again:

“Let’s stop this, gentlemen, this kind of debate. We are not trading in nationality, or in religion, but in shoes, and please, let’s go back to this.” “But something should be done about the Jews who are running from us,” said Štětkář again. I do not know what exactly he wanted to say, but I used the opportunity and explained to him that the best thing we could do was to help them get abroad. “Why not send them abroad, if that’s what they want? If we don’t have enough work for them abroad, we have to produce more so that we could employ all of them in our export stores.”

“You’ll be sorry,” whispered Hlavnička across the table reproachfully. But I knew that he hated Jews even more than Landa. “They will betray and sell us, as they crucified Jesus Christ.”

“You will give me a list of all Jews working with our companies, and in cooperation with the heads of export regions, you will propose places where we might send them,” I instructed again. “And it must be finished before the following conference, the next week. If you had any difficulties with this, I want to know it immediately so that it is decided before the next conference.” Hlavnička made some humming soliloquy and Landa nervously poked through his thin hair. “We cannot, even if they were to betray us, as Hlavnička said, we cannot desert any of our people when they are in trouble, for any reason but dishonesty or a crime against the law. They are our colleagues as anyone else and we have to provide them as much assistance as we can when they need it.”

“I wish at least they didn’t bother me and stopped speaking German,” growled Landa. “No more debates about this, please,” I said. “I’ll stop it, but I see that you will eventually earn a title of a Judenfreund,” threatened Hlavnička in low voice. I left him alone. He was incorrigible. He told me about the struggles he fought in his childhood about the Schulverein school the old textile factory owner Mauthner forced Czech weavers to send their children to. It was useless to explain anything to him. It was in him.

Kotva (Anchor)

Kotva, which we established only two years earlier, thanks to that dispersion of the representatives – the Jews – spread around the globe. In two years’ time, it was so strong that it almost caught up with the exports of shoes and machinery. It became a tremendously strong export enterprise. Our aim in doing that was to have as much funds abroad as possible in any form when the war would begin. Kotva was a way to achieve this. It allowed us to export almost any type of goods that had not been able to find its way abroad before because none of these industrialists could organize the export themselves.

Thus we exported pumps, dung carts, wheelbarrows, shovels, helves, axes, hooks, scythes, bolts, batteries, light bulbs, motors, carpets, gloves, plum brandy, poppy-seeds, mushrooms, feathers, pillows, table glasses, utensils, plows, umbrellas, printed stuffs, Virgin Mary statuettes, Infant Jesus of Prague, Jablonec costume jewelry, garnets, woolen cloths, tanned leather, shopping bags, knitting needles – whatever people brought in claiming they did not know how to export it…

When the Sudetenland was occupied and there was lack of glass, we bought a shut glassworks in Slovakia and put it in back operation so that we had goods for Kotva. At first, I was reluctant about the glassworks, but then I allowed them, the Kotva people, to go ahead and buy it. Well, we can sell the glassworks at any time. We could pay easily to the bank within a year, from the revenues of the goods.

However, when the industrialists saw that we had success in doing it, such as no one ever dreamt of, then instead of the small-scale entrepreneurs of earlier times, major businessmen started coming, and finally – around May 1939 – Zlín became a virtual Mecca of all industry, which suddenly understood that we were helping them introduce their goods abroad, which meant the end of unemployment in their businesses once and for all.

Matula and Hlavnička complained that it was a heavy burden for them, because the businessmen were coming at random times, so I proposed that they organize a congress of those interested in exports via Kotva and send out circular invitations. About five hundred of them came to Zlín, and among them the clerks from the National Bank, the presidency of the Export Institute and representatives from the Ministry of Trade. Here we showed them statistics, films about Zlín and our representative offices around the world, explained the conditions under which we would accept goods for sale, and described which goods were sought after in export.

Goods for about five million per week was coming to Kotva for export. From the conference, we had applications for twenty million per week if we needed. But that was not possible. Our organization was not developed enough to handle that much yet. Although we commissioned more people, i.e., more Jews who wished to get out, to the world, and who only then understood clearly how much help the project meant for them, we could not assume such a burden of financing so much trade because we did not have enough funds. Therefore, this was beyond our horizon…

The affair entailed much bitterness.

Škoda, when they saw how successful we were from the very start, organized a similar company named Omnipol, which did well too. However, as soon as it became known in the world that Škoda was owned by Göring, the sales were finished.

Manufacturers in the Czechoslovak Republic were then divided into two camps: those who managed to cooperate with us or who had enough work even without us, and those who did not get to us. Those were angry with us as we did not want to accept their goods…

We did, but we could not do more than what we did. Until August 1939, we created a total of 700 representative offices around the world. Each such office meant at least two Jewish families, some of them even more. I do not believe there was any other organization in the world who would have provided – though itself being non-Jewish – so much effective help to its fellow-citizens in distress. I did not want to boast of it, though I am proud of it.

There was only one reason why I did that. It was loyalty to the people I was working with. If someone wanted to knock their heads because they were born Jewish rather than Christian, I perceived it as an imperative of my own morals to liberate them from that situation, as far as it was within my powers. “Don’t think anyone will be grateful to you,” warned Hlavnička. “A Jew is a Jew, and he is a swindler. They will swindle and abuse you too.”

“Perhaps. I would have to be silly to expect any reward. What I am doing I don’t do for others. I am doing it for myself. No one will be able to tell me or us that we abandoned any person, anybody working with us, when he was in trouble for reasons that were not his fault. And this will always be our strength.” “What you’re saving here is not worth the effort,” scolded me Januštík, the district hetman. “It’s trash.” I gave no answer, I just continued sending those passports to him for issuing so that the representatives and their families could leave, as long as it was possible.

“Your boss really is a stubborn man,” Januštík complained to Čipera. “You will see he’ll pay dearly for supporting the Jews so much. You will see.”

Čipera shrugged his shoulders in reply. He was a minister in a cabinet where being a Judenfreund was undesirable. He could not speak. And in the whole company, people were entertained by the speed with which they got out of Zlín. Young people invented a joke. When two of them met, one asked the other:

“Are you a Jew?” If the other answered that he was not, the former said it was a pity: “Had you said that you are, you would have learned something.” “Well, then – I am a Jew.” “Then go to Kotva,” the other laughed.

But these were mere jokes. In fact, the sales grew miraculously. There was demand for everything.

Kotva’s exports in:

1936      CZK 7,800,000

1937      37,650,000

1938      93,320,000

1939      288,000,000

These were so fabulous jumps that they made one’s head whirl. The National Bank, which had always been very restrained, only now understood the whole of our project. I came there, to the bank, some time in May. Both the bank managers, Malík and Filip, took me aside:

“We are sorry, Mr. Baťa, that we were so blind, so short-sighted… We are sorry we suspected you. Regretfully, you were the only man who could see right…” “Wait, gentlemen… It would be fair for you, nor for me. It is not true that I could see better than you. We all saw equally poorly… if you mean the political outcome,” I resisted. “Why, you observed what your obligation required, and I – or we – did what we considered to be ours…” “But you know very well that we prevented you from doing what you are doing now to the full extent. We could have been much better off, just like you,” said Mr. Malík.

“Let’s not mourn a lost cause,” I stopped him. “Let’s rather discuss what you are going to do and what we are…” But at that time, a servant entered and announced that they were to see Reichskomissar von Wedelstädt immediately. They departed, saying they would come to Zlín. They did. I did not want to give myself away. Vavrečka talked to them and I only greeted them at the coffee. They were in a conference during the lunch and they saw it parading in front of all. For their sake, we prepared everything concerning the export for that Saturday, and screened films, statistics, various things…

“What will you do with that gold?” I asked Malík privately. “I don’t know yet. Perhaps it will work out.” “It must.”

But it did not. On 19 May, he sent a message that things went wrong. The Bank of England surrendered six million pounds of the Czechoslovak golden treasury to the Germans.

“Those international robbers, those rascals…” Malík spitted out. “It is the whole golden treasure of the republic, of our people…”

Jan Šinágl, 14.2.2013

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