Prof. Yeshayahu A. Jelinek Collection

Prof. Yeshayahu A. Jelinek was an historian of East-Central Europe, particularly of Slovakia. He focused primarily on the history of the Jews in Slovakia, autochthonous fascism and antisemitism, the Holocaust, the tensions and overlaps between nationalism and communism, the German-Israeli relations.

Yeshayahu Andrej Jelinek, born in Prievidza, Czechoslovakia, in 1933, was the younger son of Vojtech and Regina Jelinek. Together with his older brother, Jakov Erich (b. 1931), Yeshayahu attended the local Jewish school. Following the deportations of the Jews in Slovakia in 1942, the school continued its activity with a single classroom of eight pupils, one from each grade level. Among the schoolteachers were Arnold Schwartz and Helena Deutelbaum. All students, including the Jelinek brothers, came from families that were not deported because of being deemed essential to the Slovakian economy. According to Jelinek, Jozef Sivak, the Minister of Education at the time and a native of the town, had taken the school under his patronage.

As part of the curriculum the children read texts in Slovakian, Czech, German & Hungarian. They also worked on a bulletin between February 1943 - January 1944 titled “Mogen David”, which issues were handwritten on notebooks. Later on, the material was typewritten by Erna Kohn - Koler.

With the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising (August 1944) the Jelinek family fled to the forest. Yeshayahu, his mother and brother hid in several places until the end of the war. His father, Vojtech Jelinek, separated from his family when he joined the Slovak partisans in December 1944. After the war, the family reunited in Prievidza. Yeshayahu and Jakov joined the HaShomer HaTsair Jewish youth movement and became founding members of the Achdut group in Prievidza. In 1948 they began their journey to Eretz Israel as part of the El-Al training commune (garin aliya), which settled in 1949 in Kibbutz Ma'anit.

Prof. Yeshayahu Jelinek studied history at the Hebrew University. He received his PhD at Indiana University in the United States in 1960s. His dissertation focused on “Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, 1939 - 1945” and was supervised by Prof. Charles Jelavich. Prof. Yeshayahu Jelinek taught in several universities in United States, Germany and Israel. He died in 2016.

The materials from this collection were part of Prof. Yeshayahu A. Jelinek's personal archive. Most of the children bulletins ("Mogen David") written in 1943-1944 at the Prievidza Jewish school were donated directly by Prof. Jelinek in 2015, who provided at the time crucial contextual information. Yeshayahu and Jakov Jelinek studied during those years with: Lili Goldberger, Eva Adler, Daisy Adler, Zana Nagel - Zimmerman, Erika Kats - Kohn, Jakov Kopelo - Nagel. Lili, Eva and Daisy were killed in 1944. Prof. Yeshayahu A. Jelinek also deposited materials concerning his historical research and academic activity (correspondence, newspapers clips, historical materials etc.).

In 2023, the collection was expanded by his family. His wife, Miriam Jelinek, and daughter, Noa Jelinek, donated to the GFH Archives, among others, family documents and photographs, a notebook of the "Mogen David" bulletin from 1943-1944, as well as materials about the She'arit Hapleta (the Surviving Remnant) in Slovakia: HaShomer HaTsair and the Achdut group in Prievidza in 1947, the El-Al training commune and the group immigration to Israel. They also deposited testimonies of Holocaust survivors from Slovakia collected by Prof. Yeshayahu A. Jelinek.

The collection was donated by Prof. Yeshayahu A. Jelinek to the GFH in 2015. Additional materials were deposited by Miriam Jelinek and Noa Jelinek in 2023.