Scope and Content Note
The papers of Jan Papánek (1896-1991) span the years 1917-1967 with the bulk of the material dating from 1939 to 1948. During the Nazi occupation of his home country, Papánek served as the representative of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in the United States. The immediate postwar years were dedicated to service at the United Nations. The papers are in Czech, Slovak, English, German, and French and are organized alphabetically by name of person, topic, organization, or type of material. Oversize items are listed together at the end of the container list.
Papánek spent his career working for either the democratic movement or the democratic government of Czechoslovakia. He worked closely with Edvard Beneš and Jan Masaryk, both of whom have papers in this collection, primarily material they left with Papánek after visiting the United States during World War II. The Beneš papers are the more extensive and include correspondence, speeches, reports, examples of anti-Nazi propaganda, including a political tract written by Heinrich Mann to be smuggled into Czechoslovakia in seed packages, and a group of telegrams and correspondence with Franklin D. Roosevelt and other world leaders on the occasion of the German occupation of Prague in March 1939. Jan Masaryk’s papers include secret reports on Czechoslovak political actions and notes and letters, including notes on his 1944 meeting with Roosevelt and correspondence with Dorothy Thompson. The papers also contain correspondence between Tomáš G. Masaryk and Edvard Beneš as well as photographs and an extensive collection of printed matter on T. G. Masaryk.
Papánek, as the representative of the exiled democratic government of Czechoslovakia during World War II, received confidential reports of conditions and actions in the “Protectorate” and Slovakia. Many of these reports are in this collection as are several concerning the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948. His United Nations material primarily concerns communist activities in Czechoslovakia and Papánek’s dismissal from his United Nations position in 1948. A transcript of Papánek’s extensive oral history made in 1951 is located in a biographical file. Prominent correspondents not previously mentioned include Vladimír Clementis, Ladislav Feierabend, Rudolf Firkušný, Josef Lukl Hromádka, Otakar Odložilík, Hubert Ripka, Carlo Sforza, and Emanuel Victor Voska. Of special interest is a confidential report written by Gregory Ignatius Zatkovich and addressed to Edvard Beneš concerning the wartime activities of Carpatho-Ukrainians.