We are pleased to publish this obituary sent to us by Alexander Korb (Associate Professor in Modern European History, University of Leicester) and which will be published in the journal Yad Vashem Studies.
To the memory of Yeshayahu Andrej “Andy” Jelinek is dedicated the latest book published by Massari editore, Vaticano, Olocausto e fascismi (edited by Daniele Barbieri and Peter Gorenflos), mentioned by Korb at the end of this article. [Red Utopia]
On December 21, 2016, Yeshayahu Andrej “Andy” Jelinek passed away. He was one of the finest scholars of Central Eastern Europe, with a focus on autochthonous fascism, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, the Catholic Church, inter-ethnic relations and the tensions and overlaps between nationalism and communism. He has published several books and articles in five languages (if not more), always eager to engage with the most recent scholarship in his field and to apply comparative methods.
The last time I visited Andy Jelinek at his home in Beer-Sheva was in May 2016. For the trip, I was supposed to borrow the car of a Holocaust survivor who had promised to stop driving that year. Shortly before my planned departure, I got a call that the car insurance had expired. Instead, I took the train from Jerusalem to Beer-Sheva. It was Friday, so I was well aware that I had only a limited amount of time in order to catch the last train back before Shabbat would start. Yet, I got the math wrong. When I got to Beer-Sheva, I had less than two hours to see Andy. I had brought my bicycle on the train, so I rushed to Andy’s house, right at the edge of the desert, in a street called Iris of the Negev. He was frail but sharp as ever, and it characterizes his fresh mind how admirably and humorously he dealt with the young scholar storming his house on a Friday afternoon. I spoke to him my native language, Czech, and our Czechoslovak mixture of languages would always cheer him up.
Weeks before, I had mailed him a book on the historiography of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia (I had checked it out from the Yad Vashem Library and I now urgently needed to bring it back). It was not easy to get the book back from him; in fact, he hid it from me. He still was not finished with some sections, and he was curious to learn everything about the recent scholarship. The episode reveals another aspect, too. The book praises Jelinek’s academic contributions, so the book embodied recognition for his scholarship more generally. We all are eager to receive such recognition, but in his case he seemed to find that recognition rather internationally than in his own country.
Jelinek was born on July 16, 1933 in a Slovak small town, Prievidza. During the years of the independent Hlinka State, a Nazi ally since 1939, the family survived the first rounds of deportations to Auschwitz. Slovakia was the first independent state to deport their Jewish citizens to death camps, but stopped deporting towards the end of 1942. During the Slovak national uprising in August 1944, Prievidza was free for more than a month. Once the uprising collapsed, Andy, together with his older brother Erik and his mother Regina, fled to the forest where they survived the German onslaught. His father Vojtěch fought with the Slovak partisans and survived as well, whereas Andy’s grandparents were amongst to last Slovakian Jews to be deported to Auschwitz and murdered after the Germans resumed the deportations in 1944. After liberation, the family reunited in Prievidza. In 1949, Andy and Erik embarked for the kibbutz Ma’anit with Hashomer Hatzair. They served their country as kibbutzniks and soldiers for more than four years. In 1977, Jelinek married his wife Mirjam and settled in Beer-Sheva, where Andy taught at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. They got three children – their son Ori tragically drowned in the Ganges in 2002 during a journey to India. Andy made many donations in the memory of Ori Jelinek.
