Ministerstvo vnitra I, Praha

This large collection is divided into seven subdivisions: 1. presidium, 2. old registry 1918-1944, 3. new registry 1936-1953, 4. boundary files, 5. reference L, 6. appendices, and 7. photographs. The documents of the subdivisions illustrate the broad scope of the Ministry of the Interior's agenda, which included, in addition to security and administrative matters, minority and language issues, citizenship, population registration, press and censorship matters, and, in part, the social welfare agenda. The documents on the history of the Holocaust are mainly found in the files of the Presidium, the old and new registers, and also in the appendices, and include the issues of emigration, Jewish associations, Jewish refugees from the Sudetenland, the appropriation of Jewish property, and the establishment of ghettos. From the post-1945 period, they also cover the return of survivors from concentration camps and their integration into society, including the issue of citizenship. The legal basis for the Ministry of the Interior was provided by Act No. 2/1918 Coll. of 2 November 2018, which established the highest administrative offices in the Czechoslovak Republic. The Ministry of the Interior continued the official agenda of the former Czech governorate; its remit included, in particular, the organisation of political administration and security services, the affairs of civil servants, the organisation of provincial, district and municipal self-government, and questions of citizenship and home rule, including emigration. It consisted of two essentially separate units - the Presidium and four departments, which were further subdivided into 18 and 16 divisions respectively, and this organisational division remained in force, with minor variations, until 1945. At the time of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the German population was excluded from its jurisdiction and fell under the newly established offices of the German occupation administration headed by the Office of the Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia. After the administrative reform in 1942, some of the powers of the German offices were transferred back to the Protectorate's network of district and provincial offices (headed by the Ministry of the Interior), and the leading positions in many offices were taken over by German officials. After the war, the Ministry was restored to its pre-war Czechoslovakia form.