Otto Heilig papers

Otto Heilig, a Czech Jew, was an employee of the Bata Shoe Company in Zlín, Czechoslovakia, prior to 30 Sept. 1938. Heilig also was a reserve officer in the Czechoslovak Army. He later resided in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Collection consists of one typescript text, 10 pages, written by Otto Heilig in 1972, describing the history of the Bata shoe company of Zlin, Czech Republic, and the efforts of the company’s owner, Jan Bata, to help Jewish employees emigrate after the annexation of the Sudetenland by Germany in 1938. Heilig was one of the Jewish employees of Bata who was sent abroad in 1938 as a company representative, in order to enable him to emigrate. The typescript was sent as an unsolicited article for publication in the National Jewish Monthly in 1972, along with photographs of Thomas and Jan Bata, a copy of a letter (1938) that Heilig received from company manager Josef Hlavnicka, referring to the plans to emigrate, two letters from Heilig to Charles Fenyvesi, the editor of the National Jewish Monthly (1972), and a tourist pamphlet about Zlin, circa late 1930s.