STRÁNSKÝ, JAROSLAV

STRÁNSKÝ, JAROSLAV (1884–1973), Czech politician. Stránský was born in Brno, the son of Adolf Stránský (1855–1931), one of the leading Jews in the National Democratic Party, who was a member of the Austro-Hungarian Parliament before World War i and became the first minister of commerce in Czechoslovakia when it became an independent state in 1918. He had abandoned Judaism, however, and his son was raised as a Christian. Jaroslav Stránský played a leading role in the Czech National Socialist Party (founded before, and having no connection with, the National Socialist Party of Hitler) and, on the outbreak of World War ii, went into exile in England with the president of Czechoslovakia, Edvard Beneš. He served in the cabinet of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London and was deputy prime minister, minister of education, and minister of justice in the postwar government of the country. In 1948, he returned to Great Britain, and later settled in the United States, but again returned to England, where he died. Stránský was conscious of his Jewish origin. In 1922, he took over the ownership of the Czech-language daily Lidové Noviny in Brno, which had been founded by his father, and transformed it into a liberal daily of international standard. It was one of the few Czech newspapers to support Jewish aims in Ereẓ Israel under the Mandate and to defend Jews against antisemitism both in the pre-Hitler era and the period preceding the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia after the Munich agreement.

bibliography:

J.W. Bruegel, in: The Jews of Czechoslovakia, 2 (1971); K. Baum, in: Jewish Chronicle (Aug. 24, 1973).