Abstract
Abstract: The article includes a sample of 20 Czechoslovak Jewish emigrants who left their homes in Czechoslovakia in order to find better living conditions abroad. The historical research is based on the life stories of Jews who were officially registered by Luxembourg administration and the Luxembourg Foreign Police in the 1930s.
The research in the depositaries of the National Luxembourg Archives explored a number of invaluable folders containing family portraits of Jewish people who disappeared during the war. Thanks to these folders and the precise work of the Luxembourg Foreign Police, we can look into the portrays of very interesting people who came to Luxembourg for a variety of reasons.
Unfortunately, their postwar destiny is unknown in most cases, but based on the genuine stored material, we can at least predict their fate. The individual folders of the Czechoslovak Jews together with live testimonies offer new insights into this segment of Luxembourgish Jewish prewar history and allows historians view to treat this historical problem in more complex way.
The archival data explore how personal documents, photos, letters, and police reports maintain and save the portrays of lost people who were tracked and pursued more than 10 years. My paper illustrates unbelievable military precision applied on applicants who wanted to get an identity card or the residence permission allowing them to work in Luxembourg before the war.
It is evident that as the war conflict was approaching, the bureaucratic screws tightened and the applicant's demands were considerably increasing. The case study aims to answer the following research questions: Who all was engaged in the approval process? How Luxembourg authorities deal with Jewish emigrants from the East? Who played the most active role and provided the most controversial materials about Jewish immigrants? What was the status of the Administrative Commission? What way did Luxembourg administration reacted on the reports sent by the Luxembourg Foreign Police?