Úřad říšského protektora v Čechách a na Moravě, Praha

Together with two other fonds - the State Secretary to the Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia and the German State Ministry for Bohemia and Moravia - the fonds is a vital source for research into the history of the Protectorate. It contains many documents on the Jewish Holocaust, including the status of the Jewish population in the Protectorate, restrictions on the disposition of their property, and even the Aryanization. Most of the property is real estate, commercial and industrial enterprises and trades, agricultural land, etc. Also valuable are documents relating to the establishment of the treuhänder. Documents relating to the transfer of securities are also worth mentioning. There are also documents documenting the occupation of Jewish flats. For example. in the basic fonds of the Central Office of the Office of the Treasury, boxes 165-176: reports of monetary institutions on the transfer of Jewish securities to tied deposits (1941), boxes 387-393: the racial question, legal status and nationality of Jews (1939-1944), boxes 581-586: reports on audits in former Jewish enterprises (1940-1943), boxes 713-722: inventory of Jewish agricultural and forestry property (1939), boxes 739-758: Aryanization of production and commercial enterprises in the food industry (1939-1944); boxes 767-773: Aryanization of timber enterprises (1939-1945); in the ÚŘP-Appendices I, boxes 96-100: individual cases of confiscation of property of Protectorate officers prosecuted by the Gestapo and Jews (1940-1945); in the ÚŘP-Appendices II, boxes 24-27: questionnaires with property declarations of Jews applying for eviction (1939) The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington has digital copies of selected documents from the collection (http://collections.ushmm.org/findingaids/RG-48.005M.pdf), unfortunately without sufficient citations to locate the originals. The majority of the originators of this archive file are the highest authorities of the German occupation administration in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. From April 1939, shortly after the occupation of the Czech lands, this was the Office of the Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia, whose powers and organisational structure were taken over by the German State Ministry for Bohemia and Moravia in August 1943. The decree of the Führer and the Reich Chancellor on the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia of 16 March 1939 defined the territory of the Protectorate and its position within the German Reich and determined the competences of the Reich Protector as the supreme representative of the Protectorate occupation administration. Konstantin von Neurath was appointed Reich Protector, who was replaced in office by Reinhard Heydrich from 27 September 1941. The second most influential man in the Protectorate was a Sudeten German, Karl Hermann Frank, who combined in his person the functions of State Secretary to the Reich Protector and Senior SS and Police Commander for Bohemia and Moravia. After the assassination of Heydrich, Kurt Daluege and Wilhelm Frick succeeded him as Reich Protector. A. Hitler's decree of 20 August 1943 establishing the post of German Minister of State for Bohemia and Moravia, which was to continue to be the official title of State Secretary to the Reich Protector, confirmed the decisive power of K. H. Frank's authority in the Protectorate and meant the creation of a new office called the German State Ministry for Bohemia and Moravia. Only the office of the Reich Protector was left to the Protector himself, and the exercise of his functions was limited to representation.