EXHIBITING REFUGEEDOM ORIENT IN BOHEMIA? JEWISH REFUGEES DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR
EXHIBITING REFUGEEDOM ORIENT IN BOHEMIA? JEWISH REFUGEES DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Summary/Abstract: After the outbreak of the First World War, hundreds of thousands of people fled from destroyed and occupied towns and villages to the inner regions of the Habsburg monarchy out of fear of violence in the Front areas. Others near the war front were evacuated against their will by the army. As a result of the rapid progress of the Russian army, civilians were already fleeing to Galicia and Bukovina in the first weeks of war. Later, they also fled or were displaced from other regions, especially from the Italian Front. It is estimated that more than one million people were on the move within the Habsburg monarchy in the first year of the war. Approximately half of the Jews from Galicia and Bukovina had to leave their homes in a hurry. Most of them went to the Bohemian and Austrian lands – part of Cisleithania, the western area of Austria-Hungary. Although some districts were re-opened for the return of refugees after the reconquest of large parts of Galicia in 1915, there may still have been up to half a million or more refugees in the inner regions of the monarchy, and about a hundred thousand at the end of the war. They were the first large group of refugees in the modern history of the Bohemian lands.

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