Jirmejahu Oskar Neumann (1894–1981), also known as Oscar Neumann, was a Czech lawyer and writer in

Bratislava Bratislava (German: ''Pressburg'', Hungarian: ''Pozsony'') is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the Slovakia, Slovak Republic and the fourth largest of all List of cities and towns on the river Danube, cities on the river Danube. ...

Slovak Republic Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's ...

. From December 1943, during

the Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

, he served as president of the Slovak

Judenrat A ''Judenrat'' (, ) was an administrative body, established in any zone of German-occupied Europe during World War II, purporting to represent its Jewish community in dealings with the Nazi authorities. The Germans required Jews to form ''J ...

(Jewish Council or

Ústredňa Židov The Ústredňa Židov (ÚŽ; English: Jewish Center) was the '' Judenrat'' in Bratislava that was imposed on the Jewish community of the Axis-aligned state of Slovakia to implement Nazi orders during the Holocaust. It was formed on the advice o ...

Activism

Initially the Judenrat's head of retraining, Neumann used his position to help the country's Zionist youth movement, according to

Yehuda Bauer Yehuda Bauer (; 6 April 1926 – 18 October 2024) was a Czech-born Israeli historian and scholar of the The Holocaust, Holocaust. He was a professor of Holocaust studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew Univer ...

. He became part of the Judenrat's underground resistance, the

Working Group A working group is a group of experts working together to achieve specified goals. Such groups are domain-specific and focus on discussion or activity around a specific subject area. The term can sometimes refer to an interdisciplinary collab ...

, and when that was disbanded, in the sense that its work was merged with that of the Judenrat in general, he served as the Judenrat's president. In April 1944 Neumann was one of the Judenrat leaders who interviewed

Rudolf Vrba Rudolf Vrba (born Walter Rosenberg; 11 September 1924 – 27 March 2006) was a Slovak-Jewish biochemist who, as a teenager in 1942, was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), German-occupied Pol ...

and

Alfred Wetzler Alfred may refer to: Arts and entertainment *''Alfred J. Kwak'', Dutch-German-Japanese anime television series * ''Alfred'' (Arne opera), a 1740 masque by Thomas Arne * ''Alfred'' (Dvořák), an 1870 opera by Antonín Dvořák *"Alfred (Interlu ...

, Slovakian Jews who escaped to Bratislava from the

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) d ...

in occupied Poland. The men carried with them detailed information about the gas chambers and mass murders in the camp. The report compiled by the escapees and the Judenrat became known as the

Vrba–Wetzler report The Vrba–Wetzler report is one of three documents that comprise what is known as the '' Auschwitz Protocols'', otherwise known as the Auschwitz Report or the Auschwitz notebook. It is a 33-page eye-witness account of the Auschwitz concentrati ...

. Neumann himself was sent to the

Theresienstadt concentration camp Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ( German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination c ...

; he was released in May 1945.

''Im Schatten des Todes''

Neumann was the author of a postwar memoir, ''Im Schatten des Todes: Ein Tatsachenbericht vom Schicksalskampf des slovakischen Judentums'' ("In the shadow of death: A report on Slovak Jewry's battle with fate"), which was published in German and Hebrew in Israel in 1956. He dedicated the book to his mother, Friederike Neumann; his in-laws, Isidor and Julie Knoepfelmacher;

Gisi Fleischmann Gisi Fleischmann (; 21 January 1892 – 18 October 1944) was a Zionist activist and the leader of the Bratislava Working Group, one of the best known Jewish rescue groups during the Holocaust. Fleischmann was arrested on 15 October 1944 and was mur ...

, leader of the Bratislava Working Group; and the 70,000 martyrs of Slovak Jewry who died in the camps and gas chambers. The Holocaust historian

Raul Hilberg Raul Hilberg (June 2, 1926 – August 4, 2007) was a Jewish Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the preeminent scholar on the Holocaust. Christopher R. Browning has called him the founding f ...

alleged that the failure to translate Neumann's book into English could be traced to the taboo of examining the activity of Jewish Councils during the Holocaust. Hilberg argued that they "became a German tool". He wrote of Neumann's book: "Take another taboo: Jewish Councils. In Israel, a publisher in Tel Aviv had in his possession a memoir, four hundred pages long, written by Oskar Neumann. The only such memoir that exists—to my knowledge—of one of the chiefs of the Slovak ''Judenrat'', the ''Ústredňa Židov''. That book was published in German. It was published in Hebrew. But never in English. English-language publishers refused the request to translate and publish this book."

After the war

After the war, Neumann became the chair of the

Histadrut Histadrut, fully the New General Workers' Federation () and until 1994 the General Federation of Labour in the Land of Israel (, ''HaHistadrut HaKlalit shel HaOvdim B'Eretz Yisrael''), is Israel's national trade union center and represents the m ...

(the socialist

Zionist Zionism is an Ethnic nationalism, ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in History of Europe#From revolution to imperialism (1789–1914), Europe in the late 19th century that aimed to establish and maintain a national home for the ...

labour movement) in Czechoslovakia. He emigrated to Palestine in 1946, where he led the Association of Czechoslovak Immigrants. He died in Israel in 1981.

Selected works

*(1956). ''Im Schatten des Todes: Ein Tatsachenbericht vom Schicksalskampf des slovakischen Judentums''. Tel Aviv: Edition 'Olamenu'. *(1970). ''Gisi Fleishmann: The Story of a Heroic Woman''. Tel Aviv: World (WIZO) Department of Organization and Education.

References

Citations Sources * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Neumann, Oskar 1892 births 1981 deaths Bratislava Working Group members Czech resistance members Writers from Bratislava Slovak Jews Slovak Zionists Ústredňa Židov employees Czechoslovak emigrants to Mandatory Palestine