Archiv Josef Fišera

Josef Fǐsera was active in the Czech organization "Relief Committee for Republican Spain," which sent fully equipped hospitals with doctors and nurses to help those fighting against Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Fišera volunteered in Spain for several months and traveled about Czechoslovakia and other countries raising support for Republican Spain. After the 1938 Munich Pact, the Czech government confiscated his passport because of his association with Jan Masaryk. Escaping to France, Fišera enrolled in the Sorbonne where he met some of the professors who would help him in his resistance activities during World War II. With the aid of the Czech government in exile in London, the Œuvre de Sécours des Enfants, the Joint Distribution Committee, antifascist prelates and, notably, Donald Lowrie of the Young Men's Christian Association, he formed Maison d'Accueil Chrétienne pour Enfants (MACE), which aided the many refugee children pouring into France. In Oct. 1943 he was arrested by the S.S. He was beaten and interrogated in connection with his activities in occupied France. When released, he went into hiding and joined the Rossi resistance group in Gascogne, where he stayed until the liberation of Paris in Aug. 1944. From Sept. 1944 to late 1945, Fišera worked for the Czech Consulate of the government in exile in Paris and continued his aid to refugee children in France.