Persecution and Survival

The Story of Esperanto

Course 1 · Chapter 6 · Persecution and Survival (1930s-1945)

A language with no state, members in every country and a Jewish founder was always going to look suspicious to regimes that demanded loyalty to a single nation or party. This chapter covers the 1930s and the Second World War, when Esperantists were watched, banned and, in some places, imprisoned or killed. It is a short chapter on purpose. The subject is serious, the record is partly incomplete, and the aim is to say what the published sources support, no more and no less. It does not describe violence in detail. Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

Why Was It Seen as a Threat?

No state, no master

Dictatorships want people's first loyalty to be the nation or the party. A language and a network that cut across borders, with correspondents abroad, could be read as a rival loyalty, or as a cover for spying (check).

Internationalism and pacifism

Many Esperantists were pacifists, socialists, religious believers or simply internationally minded. That was enough to attract attention from regimes that distrusted all three (check).

A Jewish founder

Zamenhof's Jewish background was used by antisemitic writers to claim that Esperanto served a Jewish plan. Hitler's Mein Kampf is usually cited as mentioning Esperanto in that kind of argument (check the exact passage). The claim is propaganda, not evidence.

Testing the sixth claim Chapter 1 listed the claim "The Nazis banned it because it was a Jewish plot". The published record supports a more careful version. Esperanto societies in Germany were dissolved in the 1930s, and the regime's propaganda did link the language to Jews and to internationalism (check). But historians also describe a mixture of reasons: distrust of anything international, pacifist and socialist members, foreign contacts, and the founder's background. "Banned" is also too simple, because policy varied by period and place and some officials considered using the language (check). A good account gives the documented bans and says that motives were several.

What Happened, Region by Region

Place (check each)	What the sources report
Germany	After 1933 the movement lost its freedom to operate. The German Esperanto Association was dissolved in 1936, and local groups were closed or placed under suspicion (check). Individuals who stayed active, especially if Jewish or on the left, faced persecution.
Soviet Union	After a period of official tolerance in the 1920s, attitudes turned in the 1930s. During the purges of 1937 and 1938 many Esperantists were arrested, the Soviet Esperanto Union was closed, and some were executed or died in camps (check). Contact with foreigners, which Esperanto encouraged, was itself dangerous.
Occupied countries	Esperanto groups were closed in occupied Poland and elsewhere, and members were among those arrested (check). The record is patchy.
Fascist Italy, Spain and Portugal	Movements were restricted or banned at various times (check).
Other places	The picture differs by country and year. Esperanto survived and sometimes grew in places outside these regimes (check).

The Zamenhof Family

The facts. Zamenhof died in 1917, before any of this. His children and many other relatives lived on in Poland, where the Jewish community was murdered in the Holocaust. His son Adam, a doctor, and his daughters Zofia and Lidia are reported to have been killed in 1940 and 1942 (check each).
How to write about it. State the public record briefly and with respect. Avoid detail that the sources do not give, and avoid turning individuals into symbols. Lidia Zamenhof had become a Bahá'í and an Esperanto speaker and teacher, and her story is often told in the movement (check).
Why it belongs here. It shows that the same person's family could stand for the ideal of the language and become victims of the kind of nationalism the language was meant to oppose. It does not show that Esperanto was the reason they were persecuted.

Survival

A movement in many countries

Because no state controlled it, the movement could not be closed down everywhere. Groups continued in neutral countries and in exile (check), and the Universal Esperanto Association in Geneva kept going, though its activities were reduced during the war.

Quiet use

Reports mention Esperanto used in letters between countries, in prisoner and refugee circumstances, and in underground meetings (check). Accounts of individuals using it to communicate under pressure are told in memoirs, which need to be checked against other evidence.

The cost

Many leading figures died, the congresses stopped after 1939 (check), and records and libraries were lost or scattered. The post-war revival (Chapter 7) was rebuilt on what remained.

A British comparison Britain was at war with Germany from 1939 and could not host a congress, but its Esperantists were not persecuted by the state, so the British story is different. It is about keeping a society alive, helping refugees and corresponding where possible (check). A fair comparison is with Scottish and British pacifist and internationalist groups of the time, many of which also lost members to war work or were watched by the authorities. Comparing the British experience with the Soviet and German ones shows how much depended on the political system.

Check the details Figures for people killed or imprisoned vary widely and are incomplete. Dates of bans differ between countries and between sources. Stories of individuals come from memoirs and later retellings. For this chapter in particular, prefer historians' studies (for example Ulrich Lins's work on the "dangerous language", check) to summaries online, and treat any claim that "the Nazis tried to wipe out Esperanto" or that "nothing happened" as too simple.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Give three reasons why dictatorships distrusted Esperanto, and for each say what evidence would show that it was a real reason and not only propaganda.

→ Solution

Exercise 2

Rewrite the claim "The Nazis banned Esperanto because it was a Jewish plot" as a more careful statement that the sources support.

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Explain how a movement with no state and members in many countries could survive, and name two things it lost that it could not replace.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

Why suspected: no state, international contacts, pacifist and left members, a Jewish founder (check)
Germany: societies dissolved, German association closed in 1936 (check)
Soviet Union: tolerance in the 1920s, arrests in 1937 and 1938 (check)
Zamenhof's family: children killed in 1940 and 1942, stated briefly (check)
Method: "banned" is a claim to qualify; separate documented acts from motives