This Week in Texas Methodist History  June 20, 2021

 

Czech-Texas Pastor Repatriated, June 1942

Joseph Paul Bartak, superintendent of the Methodist Mission in Prague, returned to New York City in June, 1942 on the diplomatic ship, Drottingholm.  His 900 fellow passengers were other Americans who had endured months of detention in Nazi camps. 

 

Bartak first came to the USA in 1907 as a nineteen year old from Bohemia which was then part of the Austrian Empire.  He went first to Chicago, and although he knew no English, he was hired by the Chicago Tract Society to distribute religious literature among his countrymen living in Chicago.  After attaining English fluency, he enrolled in Southwestern University.  One of the attractions of Southwestern University was that Williamson and Bell Counties had numerous Czech-speaking residents, and Bartak preached to them.  At different times he was affiliated with both the Central Texas and Texas Conferences.  While in the Texas Conference, he lived in Marlin and served congregations in the Brazos Valley.  After Southwestern, he enrolled in Vanderbilt where he earned a B.D. and the University of Chicago where he earned an M. A.  In 1925 Southwestern conferred an honorary doctorate.

 

When Czechoslovakia was formed after World War I, Bartak volunteered for missionary service there and, with his wife Marian, started building the Methodist Church in his homeland.   

 

In December 1941 when war was declared between Germany and the United States, the Gestapo arrested Bartak and imprisoned him in a Prague.  After several weeks he was transferred to a castle at Laufen, Germany, near the Austrian border.  The Germans had commandeered the castle to hold internees. 

 

While at the castle, Bartak acted as Chaplain to his fellow internees including fellow Methodist missionary G. P. Warfield who had been captured in Warsaw, Poland.  (My Uncle Charles Hardt had been a missionary to Poland, but when missionary donations decreased during the Depression, Charles and Ruby returned to Texas.  If they had been in Poland, they would have also been interned.)  In gratitude for his daily worship services, his fellows presented him with a “diploma” signed by his “congregation>”    He was able to bring that document back to the US.  He also brought back a Czech Bible printed in 1488, possibly the only surviving copy and possibly the oldest Czech Bible in existence. 

 

Bartak came to Houston in November, 1942 to attend the Texas Annual Conference and returned to preaching to Czech speaking congregations.  He went back to Czechoslovakia after the war, but returned to the US fairly frequently.  Marian Bartak was a popular speaker at various Schools of Mission.  She related her experiences in organizing  the first Epworth League and the first Wesleyan Service Guild in Czechoslovakia.  The Communist takeover and subsequent suppression of Christianity forced them to relocate to Vienna.  Jospeh died in 1964.   .

 

 This Week in Texas Methodist History August 9

Bishop Selecman Reports on European Trip on Eve of World War II

 

The All European Methodist Conference was scheduled for Copenhagen Aug. 2-6, 1939, and many Methodists from the states decided to attend the conference and include an extended tour of Europe.  Bishop Arthur Moore took a large group of clergy and laity and so did Bishop C. C. Selecman, former pastor of First Methodist Dallas and President of SMU.  Included in the group were others with Texas ties, Bishop Paul Kern, Ivan Lee Holt, Frank Richardson and H. I. Robinson, and Mrs. W. W. Fondren who took her granddaughter Doris.  Mr. Fondren had died the previous January.   They sailed from New York on June 28 for a six day crossing of the Atlantic.  They toured Normandy on their way to Paris.  They toured the usual sites in Paris and Versailles, and then went to Brussels, Waterloo, Berlin, and Potsdam.   Yes, the party was in Berlin just before the invasion of Poland on September 1.   Selecman and the rest of the party could not escape the pernicious Nazi grip on the city.   Krystalnacht had occurred the previous November, and the suppression of the Jews was apparent even though their tour guide tried to steer them away from Jewish neighborhoods.  Jewish merchants were required to post Stars of David in their windows and could sell only to other Jews.  Selecman did bring up the name of Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984) who by this time had already spent 2 years in a concentration camp.  The tour guide replied, “Oh, he got involved in politics.”  

 

While in Berlin the tour group could not escape the pervasiveness of the Hitler Youth who seemed to be everywhere.  They also noted the food rationing in place.  We know now that Hitler was stockpiling food rations for his military.

 

The party then went to Hamburg and boarded another liner for a three week cruise that took them to Iceland, Spitzbergen and the Norwegian coast.    They arrived in Copenhagen on Aug. 2 for the conference which included delegates from Germany, Spain, Moravia, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, North Africa, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, the Madeira Islands, Lithuania, Norway, Italy, Jugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, France, Bulgaria, Finland, and Denmark.  The total Methodist membership in all those countries at the time was 122,000. 

 

One of the speakers who received a standing ovation was Josef Bartak  (1887-1964) of Prague.  Bartak had entered the ministry in Texas and was alum of Southwestern University.  See previous post  https://txmethhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=bartak

 

The Conference reported 1600 deaconesses, 910 church buildings, and 80,000 members on the youth roll.   The total value of the property of churches, publishing concerns, etc. was $40,000,000.

 

The Selecman party docked in New York on August 28----three days before the invasion of Poland and the onset of terrible times for both the world and the Methodist church in Europe. 

 

I usually don’t play “What if?” but this story invites the question of what if Mrs. Fondren and Bishops, Moore,Selecman, Kern, and Holt had been in Berlin when the invasion of Poland was ordered?   Thank goodness we will never know.

 

 

 

This Week in Texas Methodist History July 7

Josef Dobes Informs Texas Methodists about Conditions in Czechoslovakia   July 1939

In 1938 and 1939 Hitler’s aggressions increased, and the small nations of Czechoslovakia and Austria paid the price for those aggressions.  In 1938 Hitler had incorporated both the Sudetenland and Austria into his empire, and on March 15 1939 the rest of Czechoslovakia surrendered.    Although England had promised to protect the integrity of  Czechoslovakia, the British sold them out.  Hitler was emboldened, and in a few months the invasion of Poland ushered in the most destructive 6 years Europe had ever seen.

Texas Methodists had a personal connection to the tiny nation of Czechoslovakia in the form of missionaries who had received their education at Southwestern University, Josef Dobes (1876-1960) and Joseph Paul Bartak (1887-1964) about 1910.  They both became Methodist preachers and were appointed as missionaries to Czech Texans.  Dobes entered the Texas Conference by transfer from the Central Texas Conference in 1912 and lived in Marlin where he could work among the Bohemian farmers of the Brazos Valley.  

After World War I the nation of Czechoslovakia was created from the wreckage of the Austrian Empire.  One of the emphases of the fund raising Centenary Campaign was to provide missionaries to Europe.   Dobes and Bartak volunteered and arrived in Europe in 1920.  They first provided humanitarian relief, but when that effort ended after five years, they continued to establish churches.   They continued corresponding with their Texas Methodist friends, and in 1925 Advocate editor, A. J. Weeks went to Europe and visited them in the company of Bishop Darlington.  

Their job was not particularly easy in either Europe or Texas.  Most Czechs were Roman Catholic, and those who weren’t were mainly Brethren.  

Nazi occupation made their task even more difficult.  Bartak had become a naturalized American citizen, so he was interned the day Germany declared war on the US.  He was later exchanged in a prisoner swap.  He served Texas appointments in Texas during the war but returned to Prague after the war, but then Communist regime forced him out.  He moved to Vienna. 

Dobes became a major interpreter of the war years 1939-1940 through letters to the Advocate.  In 1940 he returned to Texas and preached in many Texas Methodist churches, taught at Schools of Mission, and always found a ready audience.  Among the pulpits he filled were First Fort Worth, First Temple, First Houston, and Tyler Street, Dallas.   In one Advocate article he concluded his remarks thus:  Let us not forget our young daughters—Poland, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia—in your prayers.  Let their burdens also be our burdens and their joy will also be our joy. 

Dobes spent his final years in Houston where he attended First Methodist.  He died in 1960 and is buried at Forest Park Cemetery.