Czech language

Czech (/tʃɛk/; Czech čeština ), historically also Bohemian (/boʊˈhiːmiən, bə-/; lingua Bohemica in Latin), is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group, written in Latin script. Spoken by over 10 million people, it serves as the official language of the Czech Republic. Czech is closely related to Slovak, to the point of high mutual intelligibility, as well as to Polish to a lesser degree. Czech is a fusional language with a rich system of morphology and relatively flexible word order. Its vocabulary has been extensively influenced by Latin and German.

The Czech–Slovak group developed within West Slavic in the high medieval period, and the standardization of Czech and Slovak within the Czech–Slovak dialect continuum emerged in the early modern period. In the later 18th to mid-19th century, the modern written standard became codified in the context of the Czech National Revival. The main non-standard variety, known as Common Czech, is based on the vernacular of Prague, but is now spoken as an interdialect throughout most of the Czech Republic. The Moravian dialects spoken in the eastern part of the country are also classified as Czech, although some of their eastern variants are closer to Slovak.

Czech has a moderately-sized phoneme inventory, comprising ten monophthongs, three diphthongs and 25 consonants (divided into "hard", "neutral" and "soft" categories). Words may contain complicated consonant clusters or lack vowels altogether. Czech has a raised alveolar trill, which is known to occur as a phoneme in only a few other languages, represented by the grapheme ř.

## Classification

Czech is a member of the West Slavic sub-branch of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. This branch includes Polish, Kashubian, Upper and Lower Sorbian and Slovak. Slovak is the most closely related language to Czech, followed by Polish and Silesian.

The West Slavic languages are spoken in Central Europe. Czech is distinguished from other West Slavic languages by a more-restricted distinction between "hard" and "soft" consonants (see Phonology below).

## History

### Medieval/Old Czech

The term "Old Czech" is applied to the period predating the 16th century, with the earliest records of the high medieval period also classified as "early Old Czech", but the term "Medieval Czech" is also used. The function of the written language was initially performed by Old Slavonic written in Glagolitic, later by Latin written in Latin script.

Around the 7th century, the Slavic expansion reached Central Europe, settling on the eastern fringes of the Frankish Empire. The West Slavic polity of Great Moravia formed by the 9th century. The Christianization of Bohemia took place during the 9th and 10th centuries. The diversification of the Czech-Slovak group within West Slavic began around that time, marked among other things by its use of the voiced velar fricative consonant (/ɣ/) and consistent stress on the first syllable.

The Bohemian (Czech) language is first recorded in writing in glosses and short notes during the 12th to 13th centuries. Literary works written in Czech appear in the late 13th and early 14th century and administrative documents first appear towards the late 14th century. The first complete Bible translation, the Leskovec-Dresden Bible, also dates to this period. Old Czech texts, including poetry and cookbooks, were also produced outside universities.

Literary activity becomes widespread in the early 15th century in the context of the Bohemian Reformation. Jan Hus contributed significantly to the standardization of Czech orthography, advocated for widespread literacy among Czech commoners (particularly in religion) and made early efforts to model written Czech after the spoken language.

### Early Modern Czech

There was no standardization distinguishing between Czech and Slovak prior to the 15th century. In the 16th century, the division between Czech and Slovak becomes apparent, marking the confessional division between Lutheran Protestants in Slovakia using Czech orthography and Catholics, especially Slovak Jesuits, beginning to use a separate Slovak orthography based on Western Slovak dialects.

The publication of the Kralice Bible between 1579 and 1593 (the first complete Czech translation of the Bible from the original languages) became very important for standardization of the Czech language in the following centuries as it was used as a model for the standard language.

In 1615, the Bohemian diet tried to declare Czech to be the only official language of the kingdom. After the Bohemian Revolt (of predominantly Protestant aristocracy) which was defeated by the Habsburgs in 1620, the Protestant intellectuals had to leave the country. This emigration together with other consequences of the Thirty Years' War had a negative impact on the further use of the Czech language. In 1627, Czech and German became official languages of the Kingdom of Bohemia and in the 18th century German became dominant in Bohemia and Moravia, especially among the upper classes.

### Modern Czech

The modern standard Czech language originates in standardization efforts of the 18th century. By then the language had developed a literary tradition, and since then it has changed little; journals from that period have no substantial differences from modern standard Czech, and contemporary Czechs can understand them with little difficulty. Sometime before the 18th century, the Czech language abandoned a distinction between phonemic /l/ and /ʎ/ which survives in Slovak.

With the beginning of the national revival of the mid-18th century, Czech historians began to emphasize their people's accomplishments from the 15th through the 17th centuries, rebelling against the Counter-Reformation (the Habsburg re-catholization efforts which had denigrated Czech and other non-Latin languages). Czech philologists studied sixteenth-century texts, advocating the return of the language to high culture. This period is known as the Czech National Revival (or Renaissance).

During the national revival, in 1809 linguist and historian Josef Dobrovský released a German-language grammar of Old Czech entitled Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der böhmischen Sprache (Comprehensive Doctrine of the Bohemian Language). Dobrovský had intended his book to be descriptive, and did not think Czech had a realistic chance of returning as a major language. However, Josef Jungmann and other revivalists used Dobrovský's book to advocate for a Czech linguistic revival. Changes during this time included spelling reform (notably, í in place of the former j and j in place of g), the use of t (rather than ti) to end infinitive verbs and the non-capitalization of nouns (which had been a late borrowing from German). These changes differentiated Czech from Slovak. Modern scholars disagree about whether the conservative revivalists were motivated by nationalism or considered contemporary spoken Czech unsuitable for formal, widespread use.

Adherence to historical patterns was later relaxed and standard Czech adopted a number of features from Common Czech (a widespread, informally used interdialectal variety), such as leaving some proper nouns undeclined. This has resulted in a relatively high level of homogeneity among all varieties of the language.

## Geographic distribution

Czech is spoken by about 10 million residents of the Czech Republic. A Eurobarometer survey conducted from January to March 2012 found that the first language of 98 percent of Czech citizens was Czech, the third-highest proportion of a population in the European Union (behind Greece and Hungary).

As the official language of the Czech Republic (a member of the European Union since 2004), Czech is one of the EU's official languages and the 2012 Eurobarometer survey found that Czech was the foreign language most often used in Slovakia. Economist Jonathan van Parys collected data on language knowledge in Europe for the 2012 European Day of Languages. The five countries with the greatest use of Czech were the Czech Republic (98.77 percent), Slovakia (24.86 percent), Portugal (1.93 percent), Poland (0.98 percent) and Germany (0.47 percent).

Czech speakers in Slovakia primarily live in cities. Since it is a recognized minority language in Slovakia, Slovak citizens who speak only Czech may communicate with the government in their language to the extent that Slovak speakers in the Czech Republic may do so.

### United States

Immigration of Czechs from Europe to the United States occurred primarily from 1848 to 1914. Czech is a Less Commonly Taught Language in U.S. schools, and is taught at Czech heritage centers. Large communities of Czech Americans live in the states of Texas, Nebraska and Wisconsin. In the 2000 United States Census, Czech was reported as the commonest language spoken at home (besides English) in Valley, Butler and Saunders Counties, Nebraska and Republic County, Kansas. With the exception of Spanish (the non-English language most commonly spoken at home nationwide), Czech was the most common home language in more than a dozen additional counties in Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, North Dakota and Minnesota. As of 2009, 70,500 Americans spoke Czech as their first language (49th place nationwide, after Turkish and before Swedish).

## Phonology

### Vowels

Standard Czech contains ten basic vowel phonemes, and three diphthongs. The vowels are , and their long counterparts . The diphthongs are ; the last two are found only in loanwords such as auto "car" and euro "euro".

In Czech orthography, the vowels are spelled as follows:

- Short: a, e/ě, i/y, o, u
- Long: á, é, í/ý, ó, ú/ů
- Diphthongs: ou, au, eu

The letter indicates that the previous consonant is palatalised (e.g. něco ). After a labial it represents (e.g. běs ); but is pronounced /mɲɛ/, cf. měkký ().

### Consonants

The consonant phonemes of Czech and their equivalent letters in Czech orthography are as follows:

Czech consonants are categorized as "hard", "neutral", or "soft":

- Hard:
- Neutral:
- Soft:

Hard consonants may not be followed by i or í in writing, or soft ones by y or ý (except in loanwords such as kilogram). Neutral consonants may take either character. Hard consonants are sometimes known as "strong", and soft ones as "weak". This distinction is also relevant to the declension patterns of nouns, which vary according to whether the final consonant of the noun stem is hard or soft.

Voiced consonants with unvoiced counterparts are unvoiced at the end of a word before a pause, and in consonant clusters voicing assimilation occurs, which matches voicing to the following consonant. The unvoiced counterpart of /ɦ/ is /x/.

The phoneme represented by the letter ř (capital Ř) is very rare among languages and often claimed to be unique to Czech, though it also occurs in some dialects of Kashubian, and formerly occurred in Polish. It represents the raised alveolar non-sonorant trill (IPA: ), a sound somewhere between Czech r and ž (example: ), and is present in Dvořák. In unvoiced environments, /r̝/ is realized as its voiceless allophone [r̝̊], a sound somewhere between Czech r and š.

The consonants can be syllabic, acting as syllable nuclei in place of a vowel. Strč prst skrz krk ("Stick [your] finger through [your] throat") is a well-known Czech tongue twister using syllabic consonants but no vowels.

### Stress

Each word has primary stress on its first syllable, except for enclitics (minor, monosyllabic, unstressed syllables). In all words of more than two syllables, every odd-numbered syllable receives secondary stress. Stress is unrelated to vowel length; both long and short vowels can be stressed or unstressed. Vowels are never reduced in tone (e.g. to schwa sounds) when unstressed. When a noun is preceded by a monosyllabic preposition, the stress usually moves to the preposition, e.g. do Prahy "to Prague".

## Grammar

Czech grammar, like that of other Slavic languages, is fusional; its nouns, verbs, and adjectives are inflected by phonological processes to modify their meanings and grammatical functions, and the easily separable affixes characteristic of agglutinative languages are limited. Czech inflects for case, gender and number in nouns and tense, aspect, mood, person and subject number and gender in verbs.

Parts of speech include adjectives, adverbs, numbers, interrogative words, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. Adverbs are primarily formed from adjectives by taking the final ý or í of the base form and replacing it with e, ě, y, or o. Negative statements are formed by adding the affix ne- to the main verb of a clause, with one exception: je (he, she or it is) becomes není.

### Sentence and clause structure

Because Czech uses grammatical case to convey word function in a sentence (instead of relying on word order, as English does), its word order is flexible. As a pro-drop language, in Czech an intransitive sentence can consist of only a verb; information about its subject is encoded in the verb. Enclitics (primarily auxiliary verbs and pronouns) appear in the second syntactic slot of a sentence, after the first stressed unit. The first slot can contain a subject or object, a main form of a verb, an adverb, or a conjunction (except for the light conjunctions a, "and", i, "and even" or ale, "but").

Czech syntax has a subject–verb–object sentence structure. In practice, however, word order is flexible and used to distinguish topic and focus, with the topic or theme (known referents) preceding the focus or rheme (new information) in a sentence; Czech has therefore been described as a topic-prominent language. Although Czech has a periphrastic passive construction (like English), in colloquial style, word-order changes frequently replace the passive voice. For example, to change "Peter killed Paul" to "Paul was killed by Peter" the order of subject and object is inverted: Petr zabil Pavla ("Peter killed Paul") becomes "Paul, Peter killed" (Pavla zabil Petr). Pavla is in the accusative case, the grammatical object of the verb.

A word at the end of a clause is typically emphasized, unless an upward intonation indicates that the sentence is a question:

- Pes jí bagetu. – The dog eats the baguette (rather than eating something else).
- Bagetu jí pes. – The dog eats the baguette (rather than someone else doing so).
- Pes bagetu jí. – The dog eats the baguette (rather than doing something else to it).
- Jí pes bagetu? – Does the dog eat the baguette? (emphasis ambiguous)

In parts of Bohemia (including Prague), questions such as Jí pes bagetu? without an interrogative word (such as co, "what" or kdo, "who") are intoned in a slow rise from low to high, quickly dropping to low on the last word or phrase.

In modern Czech syntax, adjectives precede nouns, with few exceptions. Relative clauses are introduced by relativizers such as the adjective který, analogous to the English relative pronouns "which", "that" and "who"/"whom". As with other adjectives, it agrees with its associated noun in gender, number and case. Relative clauses follow the noun they modify. The following is a glossed example:

### Declension

In Czech, nouns and adjectives are declined into one of seven grammatical cases which indicate their function in a sentence, two numbers (singular and plural) and three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter). The masculine gender is further divided into animate and inanimate classes.

#### Case

A nominative–accusative language, Czech marks subject nouns of transitive and intransitive verbs in the nominative case, which is the form found in dictionaries, and direct objects of transitive verbs are declined in the accusative case. The vocative case is used to address people. The remaining cases (genitive, dative, locative and instrumental) indicate semantic relationships, such as noun adjuncts (genitive), indirect objects (dative), or agents in passive constructions (instrumental). Additionally prepositions and some verbs require their complements to be declined in a certain case. The locative case is only used after prepositions. An adjective's case agrees with that of the noun it modifies. When Czech children learn their language's declension patterns, the cases are referred to by number:

Some prepositions require the nouns they modify to take a particular case. The cases assigned by each preposition are based on the physical (or metaphorical) direction, or location, conveyed by it. For example, od (from, away from) and z (out of, off) assign the genitive case. Other prepositions take one of several cases, with their meaning dependent on the case; na means "onto" or "for" with the accusative case, but "on" with the locative.

This is a glossed example of a sentence using several cases:

#### Gender

Czech distinguishes three genders—masculine, feminine, and neuter—and the masculine gender is subdivided into animate and inanimate. With few exceptions, feminine nouns in the nominative case end in -a, -e, or a consonant; neuter nouns in -o, -e, or -í, and masculine nouns in a consonant. Adjectives, participles, most pronouns, and the numbers "one" and "two" are marked for gender and agree with the gender of the noun they modify or refer to. Past tense verbs are also marked for gender, agreeing with the gender of the subject, e.g. dělal (he did, or made); dělala (she did, or made) and dělalo (it did, or made). Gender also plays a semantic role; most nouns that describe people and animals, including personal names, have separate masculine and feminine forms which are normally formed by adding a suffix to the stem, for example Čech (Czech man) has the feminine form Češka (Czech woman).

Nouns of different genders follow different declension patterns. Examples of declension patterns for noun phrases of various genders follow:

#### Number

Nouns are also inflected for number, distinguishing between singular and plural. Typical of a Slavic language, Czech cardinal numbers one through four allow the nouns and adjectives they modify to take any case, but numbers over five require subject and direct object noun phrases to be declined in the genitive plural instead of the nominative or accusative, and when used as subjects these phrases take singular verbs. For example:

Numbers decline for case, and the numbers one and two are also inflected for gender. Numbers one through five are shown below as examples. The number one has declension patterns identical to those of the demonstrative pronoun ten.

Although Czech's grammatical numbers are singular and plural, several residuals of dual forms remain, such as the words dva ("two") and oba ("both"), which decline the same way. Some nouns for paired body parts use a historical dual form to express plural in some cases: ruka (hand)—ruce (nominative); noha (leg)—nohama (instrumental), nohou (genitive/locative); oko (eye)—oči, and ucho (ear)—uši. While two of these nouns are neuter in their singular forms, all plural forms are considered feminine; their gender is relevant to their associated adjectives and verbs. These forms are plural semantically, used for any non-singular count, as in mezi čtyřma očima (face to face, lit. among four eyes). The plural number paradigms of these nouns are a mixture of historical dual and plural forms. For example, nohy (legs; nominative/accusative) is a standard plural form of this type of noun.

### Verb conjugation

Czech verbs agree with their subjects in person (first, second or third), number (singular or plural), and in constructions involving participles, which includes the past tense, also in gender. They are conjugated for tense (past, present or future) and mood (indicative, imperative or conditional). For example, the conjugated verb mluvíme (we speak) is in the present tense and first-person plural; it is distinguished from other conjugations of the infinitive mluvit by its ending, -íme. The infinitive form of Czech verbs ends in -t (archaically, -ti or -ci). It is the form found in dictionaries and the form that follows auxiliary verbs (for example, můžu tě slyšet—"I can hear you").

#### Aspect

Typical of Slavic languages, Czech marks its verbs for one of two grammatical aspects: perfective and imperfective. Most verbs are part of inflected aspect pairs—for example, koupit (perfective) and kupovat (imperfective). Although the verbs' meaning is similar, in perfective verbs the action is completed and in imperfective verbs it is ongoing or repeated. This is distinct from past and present tense. Any verb of either aspect can be conjugated into either the past or present tense, but the future tense is only used with imperfective verbs. Aspect describes the state of the action at the time specified by the tense.

The verbs of most aspect pairs differ in one of two ways: by prefix or by suffix. In prefix pairs, the perfective verb has an added prefix—for example, the imperfective psát (to write, to be writing) compared with the perfective napsat (to write down). The most common prefixes are na-, o-, po-, s-, u-, vy-, z- and za-. In suffix pairs, a different infinitive ending is added to the perfective stem; for example, the perfective verbs koupit (to buy) and prodat (to sell) have the imperfective forms kupovat and prodávat. Imperfective verbs may undergo further morphology to make other imperfective verbs (iterative and frequentative forms), denoting repeated or regular action. The verb jít (to go) has the iterative form chodit (to go regularly) and the frequentative form chodívat (to go occasionally; to tend to go).

Many verbs have only one aspect, and verbs describing continual states of being—být (to be), chtít (to want), moct (to be able to), ležet (to lie down, to be lying down)—have no perfective form. Conversely, verbs describing immediate states of change—for example, otěhotnět (to become pregnant) and nadchnout se (to become enthusiastic)—have no imperfective aspect.

#### Tense

The present tense in Czech is formed by adding an ending that agrees with the person and number of the subject at the end of the verb stem. As Czech is a null-subject language, the subject pronoun can be omitted unless it is needed for clarity. The past tense is formed using a participle which ends in -l and a further ending which agrees with the gender and number of the subject. For the first and second persons, the auxiliary verb být conjugated in the present tense is added.

In some contexts, the present tense of perfective verbs (which differs from the English present perfect) implies future action; in others, it connotes habitual action. The perfective present is used to refer to completion of actions in the future and is distinguished from the imperfective future tense, which refers to actions that will be ongoing in the future. The future tense is regularly formed using the future conjugation of být (as shown in the table on the left) and the infinitive of an imperfective verb, for example, budu jíst—"I will eat" or "I will be eating". Where budu has a noun or adjective complement it means "I will be", for example, budu šťastný (I will be happy). Some verbs of movement form their future tense by adding the prefix po- to the present tense forms instead, e.g. jedu ("I go") \> pojedu ("I will go").

#### Mood

Czech verbs have three grammatical moods: indicative, imperative and conditional. The imperative mood is formed by adding specific endings for each of three person–number categories: -Ø/-i/-ej for second-person singular, -te/-ete/-ejte for second-person plural and -me/-eme/-ejme for first-person plural. Imperatives are usually expressed using perfective verbs if positive and imperfective verbs if negative. The conditional mood is formed with a conditional auxiliary verb after the participle ending in -l which is used to form the past tense. This mood indicates hypothetical events and can also be used to express wishes.

#### Verb classes

Most Czech verbs fall into one of five classes, which determine their conjugation patterns. The future tense of být would be classified as a Class I verb because of its endings. Examples of the present tense of each class and some common irregular verbs follow in the tables below:

## Orthography

Czech has one of the most phonemic orthographies of all European languages. Its alphabet contains 42 graphemes, most of which correspond to individual phonemes, and only contains only one digraph: ch, which follows h in the alphabet. The characters q, w and x appear only in foreign words. The háček (ˇ) is used with certain letters to form new characters: š, ž, and č, as well as ň, ě, ř, ť, and ď (the latter five uncommon outside Czech). The last two letters are sometimes written with a comma above (ʼ, an abbreviated háček) because of their height. Czech orthography has influenced the orthographies of other Balto-Slavic languages and some of its characters have been adopted for transliteration of Cyrillic.

Czech orthography reflects vowel length; long vowels are indicated by an acute accent or, in the case of the character ů, a ring. Long u is usually written ú at the beginning of a word or morpheme (úroda, neúrodný) and ů elsewhere, except for loanwords (skútr) or onomatopoeia (bú). Long vowels and ě are not considered separate letters in the alphabetical order. The character ó exists only in loanwords and onomatopoeia.

Czech typographical features not associated with phonetics generally resemble those of most European languages that use the Latin script, including English. Proper nouns, honorifics, and the first letters of quotations are capitalized, and punctuation is typical of other Latin European languages. Ordinal numbers (1st) use a point, as in German (1.). The Czech language uses a decimal comma instead of a decimal point. When writing a long number, spaces between every three digits, including those in decimal places, may be used for better orientation in handwritten texts. The number 1,234,567.89101 may be written as 1234567,89101 or 1 234 567,891 01. In proper noun phrases (except personal and settlement names), only the first word and proper nouns inside such phrases are capitalized (Pražský hrad, Prague Castle).

## Varieties

The modern literary standard and prestige variety, known as "Standard Czech" (spisovná čeština) is based on the standardization during the Czech National Revival in the 1830s, significantly influenced by Josef Jungmann's Czech–German dictionary published during 1834–1839. Jungmann used vocabulary of the Bible of Kralice (1579–1613) period and of the language used by his contemporaries. He borrowed words not present in Czech from other Slavic languages or created neologisms. Standard Czech is the formal register of the language which is used in official documents, formal literature, newspaper articles, education and occasionally public speeches. It is codified by the Czech Language Institute, who publish occasional reforms to the codification. The most recent reform took place in 1993. The term hovorová čeština (lit. "Colloquial Czech") is sometimes used to refer to the spoken variety of standard Czech.

The most widely spoken vernacular form of the language is called "Common Czech" (obecná čeština), an interdialect influenced by spoken Standard Czech and the Central Bohemian dialects of the Prague region. Other Bohemian regional dialects have become marginalized, while Moravian dialects remain more widespread and diverse, with a political movement for Moravian linguistic revival active since the 1990s.

These varieties of the language (Standard Czech, spoken/colloquial Standard Czech, Common Czech, and regional dialects) form a stylistic continuum, in which contact between varieties of a similar prestige influences change within them.

### Common Czech

The main Czech vernacular, spoken primarily in Bohemia including the capital Prague, is known as Common Czech (obecná čeština). This is an academic distinction; most Czechs are unaware of the term or associate it with deformed or "incorrect" Czech. Compared to Standard Czech, Common Czech is characterized by simpler inflection patterns and differences in sound distribution.

Common Czech is distinguished from spoken/colloquial Standard Czech (hovorová čeština), which is a stylistic variety within standard Czech. Tomasz Kamusella defines the spoken variety of Standard Czech as a compromise between Common Czech and the written standard, while Miroslav Komárek calls Common Czech an intersection of spoken Standard Czech and regional dialects.

Common Czech has become ubiquitous in most parts of the Czech Republic since the later 20th century. It is usually defined as an interdialect used in common speech in Bohemia and western parts of Moravia (by about two thirds of all inhabitants of the Czech Republic). Common Czech is not codified, but some of its elements have become adopted in the written standard. Since the second half of the 20th century, Common Czech elements have also been spreading to regions previously unaffected, as a consequence of media influence. Standard Czech is still the norm for politicians, businesspeople and other Czechs in formal situations, but Common Czech is gaining ground in journalism and the mass media. The colloquial form of Standard Czech finds limited use in daily communication due to the expansion of the Common Czech interdialect. It is sometimes defined as a theoretical construct rather than an actual tool of colloquial communication, since in casual contexts, the non-standard interdialect is preferred.

Common Czech phonology is based on that of the Central Bohemian dialect group, which has a slightly different set of vowel phonemes to Standard Czech. The phoneme /ɛː/ is peripheral and usually merges with /iː/, e.g. in malý město (small town), plamínek (little flame) and lítat (to fly), and a second native diphthong /ɛɪ̯/ occurs, usually in places where Standard Czech has /iː/, e.g. malej dům (small house), mlejn (mill), plejtvat (to waste), bejt (to be). In addition, a prothetic v- is added to most words beginning o-, such as votevřít vokno (to open the window).

Non-standard morphological features that are more or less common among all Common Czech speakers include:

- unified plural endings of adjectives: malý lidi (small people), malý ženy (small women), malý města (small towns) – standard: malí lidé, malé ženy, malá města;
- unified instrumental ending -ma in plural: s těma dobrejma lidma, ženama, chlapama, městama (with the good people, women, guys, towns) – standard: s těmi dobrými lidmi, ženami, chlapy, městy. In essence, this form resembles the form of the dual, which was once a productive form, but now is almost extinct and retained in a lexically specific set of words. In Common Czech the ending became productive again around the 17th century, but used as a substitute for a regular plural form.
- omission of the syllabic -l in the masculine ending of past tense verbs: řek (he said), moh (he could), pích (he pricked) – standard: řekl, mohl, píchl.
- tendency of merging the locative singular masculine/neuter for adjectives with the instrumental by changing the locative ending -ém to -ým and then shortening the vowel: mladém (standard locative), mladým (standard instrumental) \> mladým (Common Czech locative), mladym (Common Czech instrumental) \> mladym (Common Czech locative/instrumental with shortening).

Examples of declension (Standard Czech is added in italics for comparison):

mladý člověk – young man/person, mladí lidé – young people, mladý stát – young state, mladá žena – young woman, mladé zvíře – young animal

### Bohemian dialects

Apart from the Common Czech vernacular, there remain a variety of other Bohemian dialects, mostly in marginal rural areas. Dialect use began to weaken in the second half of the 20th century, and by the early 1990s regional dialect use was stigmatized, associated with the shrinking lower class and used in literature or other media for comedic effect. Increased travel and media availability to dialect-speaking populations has encouraged them to shift to (or add to their own dialect) Standard Czech.

The Czech Statistical Office in 2003 recognized the following Bohemian dialects:

- Nářečí středočeská (Central Bohemian dialects)
- Nářečí jihozápadočeská (Southwestern Bohemian dialects)

\*Podskupina chodská (Chod subgroup)

\*Podskupina doudlebská (Doudleby subgroup)

- Nářečí severovýchodočeská (Northeastern Bohemian dialects)

\*Podskupina podkrknošská (Krkonoše subgroup)

### Moravian dialects

The Czech dialects spoken in Moravia and Silesia are known as Moravian (moravština). In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, "Bohemian-Moravian-Slovak" was a language citizens could register as speaking (with German, Polish and several others). In the 2011 census, where respondents could optionally specify up to two first languages, 62,908 Czech citizens specified Moravian as their first language and 45,561 specified both Moravian and Czech.

Beginning in the sixteenth century, some varieties of Czech resembled Slovak; the southeastern Moravian dialects, in particular, are sometimes considered dialects of Slovak rather than Czech. These dialects form a continuum between the Czech and Slovak languages, using the same declension patterns for nouns and pronouns and the same verb conjugations as Slovak.

The Czech Statistical Office in 2003 recognized the following Moravian dialects:

- Nářečí českomoravská (Bohemian–Moravian dialects)
- Nářečí středomoravská (Central Moravian dialects)

\*Podskupina tišnovská (Tišnov subgroup)

- Nářečí východomoravská (Eastern Moravian dialects)

\*Podskupina slovácká (Moravian Slovak subgroup)

\*Podskupina valašská (Moravian Wallachian subgroup)

- Nářečí slezská (Silesian dialects)

### Sample

In a 1964 textbook on Czech dialectology, Břetislav Koudela used the following sentence to highlight phonetic differences between dialects:

### Mutual intelligibility with Slovak

Czech and Slovak have been considered mutually intelligible; speakers of either language can communicate with greater ease than those of any other pair of West Slavic languages. Following the 1993 dissolution of Czechoslovakia, mutual intelligibility declined for younger speakers, probably because Czech speakers began to experience less exposure to Slovak and vice versa. A 2015 study involving participants with a mean age of around 23 nonetheless concluded that there remained a high degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages. Grammatically, both languages share a common syntax.

One study showed that Czech and Slovak lexicons differed by 80 percent, but this high percentage was found to stem primarily from differing orthographies and slight inconsistencies in morphological formation; Slovak morphology is more regular (when changing from the nominative to the locative case, Praha becomes Praze in Czech and Prahe in Slovak). The two lexicons are generally considered similar, with most differences found in colloquial vocabulary and some scientific terminology. Slovak has slightly more borrowed words than Czech.

The similarities between Czech and Slovak led to the languages being considered a single language by a group of 19th-century scholars who called themselves "Czechoslavs" (Čechoslované), believing that the peoples were connected in a way which excluded German Bohemians and (to a lesser extent) Hungarians and other Slavs. During the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938), although "Czechoslovak" was designated as the republic's official language, both Czech and Slovak written standards were used. Standard written Slovak was partially modeled on literary Czech, and Czech was preferred for some official functions in the Slovak half of the republic. Czech influence on Slovak was protested by Slovak scholars, and when Slovakia broke off from Czechoslovakia in 1938 as the Slovak State (which then aligned with Nazi Germany in World War II), literary Slovak was deliberately distanced from Czech. When the Axis powers lost the war and Czechoslovakia reformed, Slovak developed somewhat on its own (with Czech influence); during the Prague Spring of 1968, Slovak gained independence from (and equality with) Czech, due to the transformation of Czechoslovakia from a unitary state to a federation. Since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, "Czechoslovak" has referred to improvised pidgins of the languages which have arisen from the decrease in mutual intelligibility.

## Vocabulary

Czech vocabulary derives primarily from Slavic, Baltic and other Indo-European roots. Although most verbs have Balto-Slavic origins, pronouns, prepositions and some verbs have wider, Indo-European roots. Some loanwords have been restructured by folk etymology to resemble native Czech words (e.g. hřbitov, "graveyard" and listina, "list").

Most Czech loanwords originated in one of two time periods. Earlier loanwords, primarily from German, Greek and Latin, arrived before the Czech National Revival. More recent loanwords derive primarily from English and French, and also from Hebrew, Arabic and Persian. Many Russian loanwords, principally animal names and naval terms, also exist in Czech.

Although older German loanwords were colloquial, recent borrowings from other languages are associated with high culture. During the nineteenth century, words with Greek and Latin roots were rejected in favor of those based on older Czech words and common Slavic roots; "music" is muzyka in Polish and музыка (muzyka) in Russian, but in Czech it is hudba. Some Czech words have been borrowed as loanwords into English and other languages—for example, robot (from robota, "labor") and polka (from polka, "Polish woman" or from "půlka" "half").

## Example text

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Czech:

Všichni lidé rodí se svobodní a sobě rovní co do důstojnosti a práv. Jsou nadáni rozumem a svědomím a mají spolu jednat v duchu bratrství.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

## See also

- Czech Centers
- Czech name
- Czech Sign Language
- Swadesh list of Slavic words

West Slavic language

Slavic languages written in Latin script


Nuremberg Laws

The Nuremberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households; and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens. The remainder were classed as state subjects without any citizenship rights. A supplementary decree outlining the definition of who was Jewish was passed on 14 November, and the Reich Citizenship Law officially came into force on that date. The laws were expanded on 26 November 1935 to include Romani and Black people. This supplementary decree defined Romanis as "enemies of the race-based state", the same category as Jews.

Out of foreign policy concerns, prosecutions under the two laws did not commence until after the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin. After Hitler rose to power in 1933, the Nazis began to implement antisemitic policies, which included the formation of a Volksgemeinschaft (people's community) based on race. Chancellor and Führer (leader) of the Nazi Party Adolf Hitler declared a national boycott of Jewish businesses on 1 April 1933, and the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed on 7 April, excluded the so-called non-Aryans from the legal profession, the civil service, and from teaching in secondary schools and universities. Books considered un-German, including those by Jewish authors, were destroyed in a nationwide book burning on 10 May. Jewish citizens were harassed and subjected to violent attacks. They were actively suppressed, stripped of their citizenship and civil rights, and eventually completely removed from German society.

The Nuremberg Laws had a crippling economic and social impact on the Jewish community. Persons convicted of violating the marriage laws were imprisoned, and (subsequent to 8 March 1938) upon completing their sentences were re-arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Nazi concentration camps. Non-Jews gradually stopped socialising with Jews or shopping in Jewish-owned stores, many of which closed due to a lack of customers. As Jews were no longer permitted to work in the civil service or government-regulated professions such as medicine and education, many middle-class business owners and professionals were forced to take menial employment. Emigration was problematic, as Jews were required to remit up to 90% of their wealth as a tax upon leaving the country. By 1938 it was almost impossible for potential Jewish emigrants to find a country willing to take them. Mass deportation schemes such as the Madagascar Plan proved to be impossible for the Nazis to carry out, and starting in mid-1941, the German government started mass exterminations of the Jews of Europe.

## Background

The Nazi Party was one of several far-right political parties active in Germany after the end of the First World War. The party platform included removal of the Weimar Republic, rejection of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, radical antisemitism, and anti-Bolshevism. They promised a strong central government, increased Lebensraum (living space) for Germanic peoples, formation of a Volksgemeinschaft (people's community) based on race, and racial cleansing via the active suppression of Jews, who would be stripped of their citizenship and civil rights.

While imprisoned in 1924 after the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler dictated Mein Kampf to his deputy, Rudolf Hess. The book is an autobiography and exposition of Hitler's ideology in which he laid out his plans for transforming German society into one based on race. In it, he outlined his belief in Jewish Bolshevism, a conspiracy theory that posited the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy for world domination in which the Jews were the mortal enemy of the German people. Throughout his life, Hitler never wavered in his world view as expounded in Mein Kampf. The Nazi Party advocated the concept of a Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community") with the aim of uniting all Germans as national comrades, whilst excluding those deemed either to be community aliens or of a foreign race (Fremdvölkische).

## Nazi Germany

Discrimination against Jews intensified after the Nazis came into power; a month-long series of attacks by members of the Sturmabteilung (SA; paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party) on Jewish businesses, synagogues, and members of the legal profession followed. On 21 March 1933, former US congressman William W. Cohen, at a meeting of the executive advisory committee of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States, urged a strict boycott against all German goods. On 24 March, a worldwide Jewish boycott of German goods was declared, with the support of several international Jewish organisations. In response, Hitler declared a national boycott of Jewish businesses on 1 April 1933. By that time, many people who were not Nazi Party members were advocating for segregating Jews from the rest of German society. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed on 7 April 1933, forced all non-Aryans to retire from the legal profession and civil service. Similar legislation soon deprived Jewish members of other professions of their right to practice. It also barred Jews from teaching at universities. In 1934, the Nazi Party published a pamphlet titled "Warum Arierparagraph?" ("Why the Aryan Law?"), which summarised the perceived need for the law. As part of the drive to remove what the Nazis called "Jewish influence" from cultural life, members of the National Socialist Student League removed from libraries any books considered un-German, and a nationwide book burning was held on 10 May. Violence and economic pressure were used by the regime to encourage Jews to voluntarily leave the country. Legislation passed in July 1933 stripped naturalised German Jews of their citizenship, creating a legal basis for recent immigrants (particularly Eastern European Jews) to be deported. Many towns posted signs forbidding entry to Jews. Throughout 1933 and 1934, Jewish businesses were denied access to markets, forbidden to advertise in newspapers, and deprived of access to government contracts. Citizens were harassed and subjected to violent attacks.

Other laws promulgated in this period included the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (passed on 14 July 1933), which called for the compulsory sterilisation of people with a range of hereditary, physical, and mental illnesses. Under the Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals (passed 24 November 1933), habitual criminals were forced to undergo sterilisation as well. This law was also used to force the incarceration in prison or Nazi concentration camps of "social misfits" such as the chronically unemployed, prostitutes, beggars, alcoholics, homeless vagrants, black people and Romani (referred to as "Gypsies").

### Reich Gypsy Law

The Central Office for Combatting Gypsies was established in 1929, under the Weimar Republic. In December 1938 Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler issued an order for "combatting the Gypsy plague". Romanis were to be categorised in terms of their Roma ancestry as a racial characteristic, rather than in terms of their previous characterisation as an 'anti-social' element of society. This work was advanced by Robert Ritter of the Racial Hygiene and Population unit of the Ministry of Health, who by 1942, had produced a scale of ZM+, ZM of the first and second degree, and ZM- to reflect an individual's decreasing level of Romani ancestry. This classification meant that one could be classified as Roma and subject to anti-Roma legislation based on having two Roma great-great-grandparents. According to the Ministry of the Interior, the "Gypsy problem" could not be dealt with by forced resettlement or imprisonment within Germany, so they prepared a draft of a Reich "Gypsy Law" intended to supplement and accompany the Nuremberg Laws. The draft recommended identification and registration of all Roma, followed by sterilisation and deportation. In 1938, public health authorities were ordered to register all Roma and Roma Mischlinge. Despite Himmler's interest in enacting such legislation, which he said would prevent "further intermingling of blood, and which regulates all the most pressing questions which go together with the existences of Gypsies in the living space of the German nation", the regime never promulgated the "Gypsy Law". In December 1942, Himmler ordered that all Roma were to be sent to Nazi concentration camps.

### "The Jewish problem"

Disenchanted with the unfulfilled promise of Nazi Party leaders to eliminate Jews from German society, SA members were eager to lash out against the Jewish minority as a way of expressing their frustrations. A Gestapo report from early 1935 stated that the rank and file of the Nazi Party would set in motion a solution to the "Jewish problem ... from below that the government would then have to follow". Assaults, vandalism, and boycotts against Jews, which the Nazi government had temporarily curbed in 1934, increased again in 1935 amidst a propaganda campaign authorised at the highest levels of government. Most non-party members ignored the boycotts and objected to the violence out of concern for their own safety. The Israeli historian Otto Dov Kulka argues that there was a disparity between the views of the Alte Kämpfer (longtime party members) and the general public, but that even those Germans who were not politically active favoured bringing in tougher new antisemitic laws in 1935. The matter was raised to the forefront of the state agenda as a result of this antisemitic agitation.

The Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick announced on 25 July that a law forbidding marriages between Jews and non-Jews would shortly be promulgated, and recommended that registrars should avoid issuing licences for such marriages for the time being. The draft law also called for a ban on marriage for persons with hereditary illnesses.

Hjalmar Schacht, the Economics Minister and Reichsbank president, criticised the violent behaviour of the Alte Kämpfer and SA because of its negative impact on the economy. The violence also had a negative impact on Germany's reputation in the international community. For these reasons, Hitler ordered a stop to "individual actions" against German Jews on 8 August 1935, and the Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick threatened to take legal action against Nazi Party members who ignored the order. From Hitler's perspective, it was imperative to quickly bring in new antisemitic laws to appease the radical elements in the party who persisted in attempting to remove the Jews from German society by violent means. A conference of ministers was held on 20 August 1935 to discuss the question. Hitler argued against violent methods because of the damage being done to the economy and insisted the matter must be settled through legislation. The focus of the new laws would be marriage laws to prevent "racial defilement", stripping Jews of their German citizenship, and laws to prevent Jews from participating freely in the economy.

### Events in Nuremberg

The seventh annual Nazi Party Rally, held in Nuremberg from 10 to 16 September 1935, featured the only Reichstag session held outside Berlin during the Nazi regime. Hitler decided that the rally would be a good opportunity to introduce the long-awaited anti-Jewish laws. In a speech on 12 September, leading Nazi physician Gerhard Wagner announced that the government would soon introduce a "law for the protection of German blood". The next day, Hitler summoned the Reichstag to meet in session at Nuremberg on 15 September, the last day of the rally. He then spoke with Hans Pfundtner, State Secretary in the Reich Interior Ministry, and Wilhelm Stuckart, a Ministerial Counselor, instructing them to draft a law forbidding sexual relations or marriages between Jews and non-Jews. They, in turn, summoned Franz Albrecht Medicus [de] and Bernhard Lösener of the Interior Ministry to Nuremberg to assist with the hurried drafting of the legislation. The two men arrived on 14 September. That evening, Hitler ordered them to also have ready by morning a draft of the Reich citizenship law. Hitler found the initial drafts of the Blood Law to be too lenient, so at around midnight Interior Minister Frick brought him four new drafts that differed mainly in the severity of the penalties they imposed. Hitler chose the most lenient version but left vague the definition of who was a Jew. Hitler stated at the rally that the laws were "an attempt at the legal settlement of a problem, which, if this proved a failure, would have to be entrusted by law to the National Socialist Party for a definitive solution". Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had the radio broadcast of the passing of the laws cut short, and ordered the German media to not mention them until a decision was made as to how they would be implemented.

## Text of the laws

The two Nuremberg Laws were unanimously passed by the Reichstag on 15 September 1935. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour prohibited marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans, and forbade the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households. The Reich Citizenship Law declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens; the remainder were classed as state subjects, without citizenship rights. The wording in the Citizenship Law that a person must prove "by his conduct that he is willing and fit to faithfully serve the German people and Reich" meant that political opponents could also be stripped of their German citizenship. This law was effectively a means of stripping Jews, Roma, and other "undesirables" of their legal rights, and their citizenship.

Over the coming years, an additional 13 supplementary laws were promulgated that further marginalised the Jewish community in Germany. For example, Jewish families were not permitted to submit claims for subsidies for large families and were forbidden to transact business with Aryans.

### Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour

Moved by the understanding that purity of German blood is the essential condition for the continued existence of the German people, and inspired by the inflexible determination to ensure the existence of the German nation for all time, the Reichstag has unanimously adopted the following law, which is promulgated herewith:

Article 1

1. Marriages between Jews and citizens of German or related blood are forbidden. Marriages nevertheless concluded are invalid, even if concluded abroad to circumvent this law.
2. Annulment proceedings can be initiated only by the state prosecutor.

Article 2

Extramarital relations between Jews and citizens of German or related blood are forbidden.

Article 3

Jews may not employ in their households female citizens of German or related blood who are under 45 years old.

Article 4

1. Jews are forbidden to fly the Reich or national flag or display Reich colours.
2. They are, on the other hand, permitted to display the Jewish colours. The exercise of this right is protected by the state.

Article 5

1. Any person who violates the prohibition under Article 1 will be punished with prison with hard labour [Zuchthaus].
2. A male who violates the prohibition under Article 2 will be punished with prison [Gefängnis] or prison with hard labour.
3. Any person violating the provisions under Articles 3 or 4 will be punished with prison with hard labour for up to one year and a fine, or with one or the other of these penalties.

Article 6

The Reich Minister of the Interior, in co-ordination with the Deputy of the Führer and the Reich Minister of Justice, will issue the legal and administrative regulations required to implement and complete this law.

Article 7

The law takes effect on the day following promulgation, except for Article 3, which goes into force on 1 January 1936.

### Reich Citizenship Law

The Reichstag has unanimously enacted the following law, which is promulgated herewith:

Article 1

1. A subject of the state is a person who enjoys the protection of the German Reich and who in consequence has specific obligations toward it.
2. The status of subject of the state is acquired in accordance with the provisions of the Reich and the Reich Citizenship Law.

Article 2

1. A Reich citizen is a subject of the state who is of German or related blood, and proves by his conduct that he is willing and fit to faithfully serve the German people and Reich.
2. Reich citizenship is acquired through the granting of a Reich citizenship certificate.
3. The Reich citizen is the sole bearer of full political rights in accordance with the law.

Article 3

The Reich Minister of the Interior, in co-ordination with the Deputy of the Führer, will issue the legal and administrative orders required to implement and complete this law.

## Classifications under the laws

## Impact

While both the Interior Ministry and the Nazi Party agreed that persons with three or more Jewish grandparents would be classed as being Jewish and those with only one (Mischlinge of the second degree) would not, a debate arose as to the status of persons with two Jewish grandparents (Mischlinge of the first degree). The Nazi Party, especially its more radical elements, wanted the laws to apply to Mischlinge of both the first and second degree. For this reason Hitler continued to stall, and did not make a decision until early November 1935. His final ruling was that persons with three Jewish grandparents were classed as Jewish; those with two Jewish grandparents would be considered Jewish only if they practised the faith or had a Jewish spouse. The supplementary decree outlining the definition of who was Jewish was passed on 14 November, and the Reich Citizenship Law came into force on that date. Jews were no longer German citizens and did not have the right to vote. Jews and Gypsies were not allowed to vote in Reichstag elections or the 1938 Austrian Anschluss referendum. Civil servants who had been granted an exemption to the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service because of their status as war veterans were forced out of their jobs on this date. A supplementary decree issued on 21 December ordered the dismissal of Jewish veterans from other state-regulated professions such as medicine and education.

While Interior Minister Frick's suggestion that a citizenship tribunal before which every German would have to prove that they were Aryan was not acted upon, proving one's racial heritage became a necessary part of daily life. Non-government employers were authorised to include in their statutes an Aryan paragraph excluding both Mischlinge and Jews from employment. Proof of Aryan descent was achieved by obtaining an Aryan certificate. One form was to acquire an Ahnenpass, which could be obtained by providing birth or baptismal certificates that all four grandparents were of Aryan descent. The Ahnenpass could also be acquired by citizens of other countries, as long as they were of "German or related blood".

Under the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour (15 September 1935), marriages were forbidden between Jews and Germans; between Mischlinge of the first degree and Germans; between Jews and Mischlinge of the second degree; and between two Mischlinge of the second degree. Mischlinge of the first degree were permitted to marry Jews, but they would henceforth be classed as Jewish themselves. All marriages undertaken between half-Jews and Germans required the approval of a Committee for the Protection of German Blood. Few such permissions were granted. A supplementary decree issued on 26 November 1935 extended the law to "Gypsies, Negroes, and their bastards".

Persons suspected of having sexual relations with non-Aryans were charged with Rassenschande (racial defilement) and tried in the regular courts. Evidence provided to the Gestapo for such cases was largely provided by ordinary citizens such as neighbours, co-workers, or other informants. Persons accused of race defilement were publicly humiliated by being paraded through the streets with a placard around their necks detailing their crime. Those convicted were typically sentenced to prison terms, and (subsequent to 8 March 1938) upon completing their sentences were re-arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Nazi concentration camps. As the law did not permit capital punishment for racial defilement, special courts were convened to allow the death penalty for some cases. From the end of 1935 through 1940, 1,911 people were convicted of Rassenschande. Over time, the law was extended to include non-sexual forms of physical contact such as greeting someone with a kiss or an embrace.

For the most part, Germans accepted the Nuremberg Laws, partly because Nazi propaganda had successfully swayed public opinion towards the general belief that Jews were a separate race, but also because to oppose the regime meant leaving oneself open to harassment or arrest by the Gestapo. Citizens were relieved that the antisemitic violence ceased after the laws were passed. Non-Jews gradually stopped socialising with Jews or shopping in Jewish-owned stores. Wholesalers who continued to serve Jewish merchants were marched through the streets with placards around their necks proclaiming them as traitors. The Communist party and some elements of the Catholic Church were critical of the laws. Concerned that international opinion would be adversely swayed by the new laws, the Interior Ministry did not actively enforce them until after the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin that August.

The Interior Ministry estimated there were 750,000 Mischlinge as of April 1935 (studies done after the war put the number of Mischlinge at around 200,000). As Jews became more and more excluded from German society, they organised social events, schools, and activities of their own. Economic problems were not so easily solved, however; many Jewish firms went out of business due to lack of customers. This was part of the ongoing Aryanization process (the transfer of Jewish firms to non-Jewish owners, usually at prices far below market value) that the regime had initiated in 1933, which intensified after the Nuremberg Laws were passed. Former middle-class or wealthy business owners were forced to take employment in menial jobs to support their families, and many were unable to find work at all.

Although a stated goal of the Nazis was that all Jews should leave the country, emigration was problematic, as Jews were required to remit up to 90 per cent of their wealth as a tax upon leaving the country. Anyone caught transferring their money overseas was sentenced to lengthy terms in prison as "economic saboteurs". An exception was money sent to Palestine under the terms of the Haavara Agreement, whereby Jews could transfer some of their assets and emigrate to that country. Around 52,000 Jews emigrated to Palestine under the terms of this agreement between 1933 and 1939.

By the start of the Second World War in 1939, around 250,000 of Germany's 437,000 Jews had emigrated to the United States, Palestine, Great Britain, and other countries. By 1938 it was becoming almost impossible for potential Jewish emigrants to find a country that would take them. After the 1936–39 Arab revolt, the British were disinclined to accept any more Jews into Palestine for fear it would further destabilise the region. Nationalistic and xenophobic people in other countries pressured their governments not to accept waves of Jewish immigrants, especially poverty-stricken ones. The Madagascar Plan, a proposed mass deportation of European Jews to Madagascar, proved to be impossible to carry out. Starting in mid-1941, the German government started mass exterminations of the Jews of Europe. The total number of Jews murdered during the resulting Holocaust is estimated at 5.5 to 6 million people. Estimates of the death toll of Romanis in the Porajmos range from 150,000 to 1,500,000.

## Legislation in other countries

Some of the other Axis powers passed their own versions of the Nuremberg Laws.

- In 1938, Fascist Italy passed the Italian racial laws and Manifesto of Race which stripped Jews of their citizenship and forbade sexual relations and marriages between Jewish and non-Jewish Italians.
- Hungary passed laws on 28 May 1938 and 5 May 1939 banning Jews from various professions. A third law, added in August 1941, defined Jews as anyone with at least two Jewish grandparents, and forbade sexual relations or marriages between Jews and non-Jews.
- In 1940 the ruling Iron Guard in Romania passed the Law Defining the Legal Status of Romanian Jews.
- In 1941 the Codex Judaicus was enacted in Slovakia.
- In 1941 Bulgaria passed the Law for Protection of the Nation.
- In 1941, the Ustaše in Croatia passed legislation defining who was a Jew and restricting contact with them.
- While the Empire of Japan did not draft or pass any legislation, they implemented policies targeting Jews in some occupied countries, like Indonesia and Singapore.

## Existing copies

An original typescript of the laws signed by Hitler was found by the US Army's Counterintelligence Corps in 1945. It ended up in the possession of General George S. Patton, who kept it, in violation of orders that such finds should be turned over to the government. During a visit to Los Angeles in 1945, he handed it over to the Huntington Library, where it was stored in a bomb-proof vault. The library revealed the existence of the document in 1999, and sent it on permanent loan to the Skirball Cultural Center, which placed it on public display. The document was transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington in August 2010.

## See also

- Nazism and race
- Wannsee Conference

Nazi antisemitic and racist laws enacted in 1935


New London Union Station

New London Union Station is a railroad station on the Northeast Corridor located in downtown New London, Connecticut, United States. Union Station is a station stop for most Amtrak Northeast Regional trains and all CTrail Shore Line East commuter rail trains, making it the primary railroad station in southeastern Connecticut. It serves as the centerpiece of the Regional Intermodal Transit Center, with connections to local and intercity buses as well as ferries to Long Island and Fishers Island, New York, and Block Island, Rhode Island. The station has one side platform and one island platform serving the two-track Northeast Corridor; the latter platform also serves a siding track that connects to the New England Central Railroad mainline.

Rail service to New London began with the New London, Willimantic, and Palmer Railroad in 1848 and the New Haven and New London Railroad in 1852. The original stations were each replaced in the 1860s; after several consolidations, they were served by the Central Vermont Railway (CV) and New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad (New Haven) by the 1870s. After one of the stations burned in 1885, a new three-story brick union station was erected in 1887. It was the last and largest railroad station designed by famed architect H. H. Richardson, and his best according to biographer Henry-Russell Hitchcock.

Passenger service declined in the 20th century; all CV passenger service to New London ended in 1949. The New London Redevelopment Agency began planning in 1961 to demolish the station as part of urban renewal. Amtrak took over passenger service in May 1971; Union Station was added to the National Register of Historic Places the next month following a local effort. After several years of controversy over whether to demolish or preserve the structure, it was purchased by architect George M. Notter in 1975. Notter's firm renovated the station for combined use by Amtrak and commercial tenants; it was the first station to be restored for Amtrak's use, and one of the earliest cases of adaptive reuse of an industrial-age building in New England.

Shore Line East commuter service joined Amtrak intercity service at the station in 1996. High-level platforms were added in 2001 to serve the new Acela Express service. A second renovation in 2002–03 restored the exterior and returned the waiting room to its original configuration. The planned National Coast Guard Museum, which will be located across the tracks from the station, will include a long-planned footbridge over the tracks.

## History and design

### Early stations

Union Station is the sixth railroad station to serve New London. When the New London, Willimantic, and Palmer Railroad opened in 1848, an existing building on Water Street a block east of Federal Street was converted into a station. A two-story Greek Revival depot was built near the modern location in 1852 with the arrival of the New Haven and New London Railroad (NH&NL). The New London, Willimantic, and Palmer continued to use its older station for some time, although a track was built to join the two railroads.

In 1854, a connecting track was opened through downtown Norwich, allowing trains from the Norwich and Worcester Railroad to connect with steamships at New London rather than Allyn's Point. Use of the connection stopped in November 1855, but was continuous after April 1859. After the completion of the New London and Stonington Railroad to Groton Wharf in 1858, ferry service ran from New London to Groton to allow through railroad service. The NH&NL station was soon too small to handle large passenger loads, and the Bureau of Railroad Commissioners was petitioned for a new station as early as 1859.

The New Haven and New London Railroad merged with the New London and Stonington in 1857 to form the New Haven, New London and Stonington Railroad. The line was leased by the New York, Providence and Boston Railroad (NYP&B) in 1859. The NYP&B bought the section east of Groton outright in 1864; the section from New London westward was spun off as the Shore Line Railway. In 1870, the Shore Line was leased by the New York and New Haven Railroad, which itself became part of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad in 1872. At some point during this series of events, the 1852-built station was replaced by a larger, two-story structure, which was also used by some through trains from the north.

In 1861, the New London Northern Railroad succeeded the New London, Willimantic, and Palmer. That year, the railroad constructed a freight depot and steamboat wharf (likely also used for passenger trains) along Water Street. The depot burned on May 8, 1864, but was rebuilt on the same site.

The NYP&B-era station was highly unpopular; the Bureau was petitioned for a replacement not long after it was built, and local newspapers took up the issue in 1874 and 1875. In 1877, the commissioners referred to the "wholly insufficient and inconvenient accommodations" at the station. When the building burned on February 5, 1885, one newspaper remarked "few New London people are sorry, as the ancient structure had long since outlived its usefulness." It was torn down in April 1886.

### H.H. Richardson station

After the previous depot was destroyed, the Central Vermont Railroad (which then leased the New London Northern) began making plans for a larger replacement station. The Central Vermont and the New Haven Railroad (which had bought the Shore Line in 1870) bought the east end of the Parade from New London for the unusually low price of \$15,000, with the understanding that the railroads would build a structure more suitable for the bustling city.

Noted American architect Henry Hobson Richardson, known for his public buildings including several Boston and Albany Railroad depots, was hired by the Central Vermont in September 1885 to design the new station. Richardson likely obtained the commission through his friend and former classmate James A. Rumrill, who was a director of the railroad. New London was the last of many railroad stations worked on by Richardson before his death in 1886, though numerous others were designed by his students (including the nearby New London Public Library designed by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge). Many of Richardson's later attributed works were designed primarily by his office staff, but the quality of the design indicates that it was closely supervised by Richardson. Richardson's biographer, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, considered New London to be his best station design.

Union Station is particularly large for a Richardson train station, and stands out as the only of his stations not built in the Richardsonian Romanesque style of Trinity Church in Boston. Instead, it is a "severe, compact brick box", with significant Colonial influence taken from other buildings in New London. Its design is heavily based on Sever Hall at Harvard University, which Richardson designed in 1878. The station has a similar profile, brick color and patterns, and arched entryway, but lacks the ornamentation of Sever. Richardson originally designed Union Station with rough stone walls and Longmeadow trim like his other stations, but the material was changed to less expensive brick shortly before construction; the ornamentation was also likely eliminated at this time. The strict symmetry is atypical of Richardson's designs and may have been a later change by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge after Richardson's death.

Although different from his other stations, the 2+1⁄2-story structure features many of Richardson's characteristic motifs, including its multi-faceted roof, prominent arched entrance, and elegant brickwork. Like many of his stations, the roofline is dominant and contrasts the monochrome walls. The bricks are arranged in a mixture of Flemish bond and two different herringbone styles, broken by details around windows and doors, to create visual interest. A projecting central section tempers the roofline on the east and west facades, while the dormers shown a slight Asian influence common in his designs. The rear bay window – the lone circular element save for the matching arched front doorway – served as the ticket booth. The ceiling and third floor are suspended from the roof trusses using an array of 2-inch (51 mm)-diameter iron rods, which allowed for a large two-story waiting room without interior columns. The platform canopy was notable for matching the broad curve of the tracks; it originally extended further south, with a raised "eyebrow" section over State Street.

The new station began construction in September 1886 and opened in 1887, with a total cost of \$76,300. It was designated a union station as it connected two railroads – the Central Vermont Railroad which succeeded the New London, Willimantic, and Palmer, and the Shore Line which would merge into the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad in 1897. The Thames River Bridge was opened in October 1889, connecting the station to the New York, Providence and Boston Railroad and completing the Shore Line rail link from New York to Boston. The southern end of the Norwich and Worcester Railroad was completed through Gales Ferry in June 1899, allowing traffic from Worcester to reach New London via the bridge rather than through Norwich.

Around 1912, New London citizens successfully petitioned the Public Utilities Commission for the installation of a footbridge connecting the station to the ferry docks in order to improve pedestrian safety. At the time, with no bridge crossing the river below Norwich, the ferries were heavily used. The footbridge, constructed of steel with a canopy to keep out rain, was constructed soon after.

### Decline and revival

Central Vermont passenger service running north ended in 1949, but service running east and west along the Shore Line has remained continuous since the station was built. In the latter days of the New Haven Railroad, infrastructure was not maintained in order to cut costs, and stations like New London suffered for it. In 1953, the railroad asked the Public Utilities Commission for permission to remove the footbridge, but the request was denied. The railroad petitioned again in 1961, seeking to spend \$1,250 to remove the bridge rather than \$15,000 repairing it. Of the average 132 people using the bridge daily (versus 612 crossing the tracks on the street), most were reportedly using it as an "observation post" to view the harbor.

In 1961, the New London Redevelopment Agency called for the station to be demolished to make room for a shopping mall or department store as an "urban renewal" project. This began a fifteen-year fight over the station building, pitting the Redevelopment Agency against a small group of private citizens who wished to have the building restored for further use. The city paid \$120,000 to buy the station; demolition costs were estimated at \$55,000. The New Haven Railroad folded into Penn Central in 1969; continually beset with financial problems, Penn Central had no interest in investing in the station. The station by this time was "a dust-covered derelict with urine-soaked floors and peeling ceilings." Amtrak took over intercity passenger service on May 1, 1971; Penn Central continued to operate a limited amount of local service that was discontinued over the rest of the decade. After a local effort, Union Station was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in June 1971 over the lobbying efforts of former mayor Richard Martin. Martin claimed that ninety percent of the city agreed with the redevelopment plans. Under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the addition to the NRHP prevented local authorities from using federal funds for demolition, although the law did not provide for enforcement or punishment.

The conflict was generally seen locally as outside "meddlers" – state officials, rich "out-of-state bleeding hearts", and historians – interfering with local plans that would improve the city. Robert P. Turk, director of the Redevelopment Agency, wrote a letter accusing preservationists of dealing in "pure academic nonsense". Frank Scheetz, a Groton local and former submariner, attempted to buy the station for use as a submarine museum, with plans to berth a decommissioned submarine nearby. The Redevelopment Agency rejected Scheetz's offer, claiming he was a speculator; Scheetz alleged that the city duplicitously changed prices in order to refuse the legitimate offer. (Scheetz later funded the display of the USS Croaker in Groton from 1977 to 1987, and was "instrumental" in bringing the USS Nautilus to permanent display at Submarine Force Library and Museum at the Naval Submarine Base New London in the 1980s.) In September 1973, the City Council voted to allow demolition. Amtrak responded with a letter stating that the company wanted to discuss the possibility of preservation and would be willing to contribute financially. That year, a number of the same local activists formed the Union Railroad Station Trust, intending to restore the station.

On February 20, 1975, the Redevelopment Agency voted to demolish the building. Union Railroad Station Trust asked the Boston architectural firm Anderson Notter Associates to prepare a study of adding office and restaurant space. George M. Notter, one of the firm's principals (and later president of the American Institute of Architects), was an early advocate of adaptive reuse. Surprised that no developers were pursuing what he saw as a sure profit, Notter formed Union Station Associates as a subsidiary of Anderson Notter and invested a substantial sum of his own money into the station. Notter convinced Amtrak to agree to a 20-year lease for part of the station at \$45,000 annually, thus giving the group a stronger negotiating point. After eighteen months of negotiations, Union Station Associates purchased the building on July 24, 1975, effectively saving the station. The group paid only the cost of the underlying land, \$11,400 – the same figure Scheetz initially offered two years before.

Union Station Associates spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a full renovation of the building for combined use by Amtrak and commercial tenants. The exterior was restored to the original 1885 specifications. However, some of the interior work modified the station far from its original configuration. A mezzanine was built over half the waiting area to provide restaurant seating, and the floor of the rest was cut out to create an atrium. The basement became the passenger waiting area, with a newsstand and a plant shop occupying additional space. New, wider platforms were built to improve the boarding experience. The renovated station was celebrated and rededicated in July 1976. The New London Day, which five years before called the station an "eyesore", ran their coverage under the headline "We were wrong!" New London Union Station was the first station in the country to be restored for Amtrak use. It represented a "watershed" in historic preservation as one of the first industrial age structures in New England to be reused – a shift away from the previous attitude that valued only Colonial buildings – as well as the recognition of the historic value of the old downtowns of New England's port cities.

### Turn of the century

As Notter predicted, the renovated station initially proved attractive to commercial tenants. When an engineering firm moved into the "Crow's Nest" of the attic space in the late 1980s, the building was fully occupied for the first time since the heyday of the New Haven railroad. However, Notter and others involved in the 1975 purchase were approaching retirement age. In the late 1990s, the city offered to buy the station for use as a maritime museum detailing the history of the adjacent Thames River. No longer worried about the safety of the building, the developers sold, and the tenants moved elsewhere.

In 1996, the well-connected owners of Cross Sound Ferry proposed a footbridge from the Water Street parking garage to the ferry slips so that ferry passengers would not have to cross Water Street and the tracks at grade. Amtrak saw the project as an opportunity to build a new elevated station nearby and contributed \$1 million to the design of the bridge. However, Amtrak reversed course in 1999 and decided to keep using Union Station; in 2001, the railroad declined to fund the footbridge. Also in 2001, Amtrak built a pair of high-level platforms to serve the new Acela high-speed service, thus adapting the 19th-century station for 21st-century usage. Catenary wires were installed over the tracks as part of the introduction of the Acela. Late that year or early in 2002, the 1899-built freight house on the east side of the tracks was torn down as part of redevelopment sponsored by the New London Development Corporation. The freight house had previously been used by Amtrak maintenance-of-way crews, and before that by the Fishers Island Ferry District.

By this time, many of the 1970s repairs were beginning to wear down, and the city put aside its plans for the maritime museum. The New London Railroad Company, fronted by historian Barbara Timken and local businessman Todd O'Donnell, bought the station from the city as the New London Railroad Company in 2002. The pair organized a second full restoration of the station, including a new slate roof, restored brickwork, and restoration of the waiting room to its original configuration. The mezzanine level and basement atrium created in the 1976 renovation were removed. Additionally, mechanical systems were upgraded and various accessibility concerns addressed. The baggage room was restored for Greyhound use. Amtrak and Greyhound rent space from the company for offices and passenger waiting areas.

Despite Amtrak's disinterest in the project, Cross Sound continued to pursue construction of the footbridge. Standing as high as 73 feet (22 m) (higher than the station itself), the bridge was to cost \$10 million, paid by public funds. In 2003, the city used eminent domain to take portions of the station property in order to build a footbridge from the Water Street parking garage to the ferry slips on the east side of the tracks. The city only wished to pay for the small area taken up by the footprints, but O'Donnell wanted more compensation because the large footbridge would detract from the aesthetics of the historic station. With no agreement reached, the issue went to court. Meanwhile, O'Donnell was in a financial conundrum: the taxi and auto traffic generated by the bus, rail, and ferry traffic was limiting his ability to lease space in the station. He abandoned renovations to the upper floors, and was forced to consider ending the leases with Amtrak and Greyhound and seek alternate tenants. In 2007, the city abandoned the eminent domain case and scrapped the footbridge plans, although O'Donnell was still considering selling the building.

### Shore Line East

In February 1996, a single Shore Line East weekday round trip was extended from to New London. An additional round trip was extended in February 2010, and 3 more in May 2010 for a total of 5 daily round trips between New London and New Haven. Weekend Shore Line East service between Old Saybrook and New Haven Union Station began in 2008, but no regular weekend trains ran to New London.

In July 2012, Governor Dannel Malloy announced that 5 weekend round trips would be extended to New London beginning in April 2013. However, the extension was dependent on ongoing negotiations with the marine industry over mandated closings of the Old Saybrook – Old Lyme bridge. Two weekday midday trips were added in May 2013, while weekend service began on June 1, 2013, after the application for additional bridge closings was approved by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Because Shore Line East service to New London is limited, Amtrak honors monthly Shore Line East passes on select intercity trains between New London and New Haven.

### Upgrades and Coast Guard Museum

In 2006, the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments (SCCOG) began a study of how to improve the Regional Intermodal Transportation Center (RITC), including Union Station. The study analyzed problems with the RITC – including poor pedestrian connections, minimal bus facilities, and a lack of food vendors – and considered but rejected a move to a Fort Trumbull site. The proposed alternative released in 2010, which would cost around \$20 million, would relocate Water Street slightly to the west. The bus terminal would be expanded, with a new building adding onto the existing former baggage office. A pedestrian bridge was to be constructed connecting the Water Street Garage, the main station area, the northbound Amtrak platform, and the ferry terminal – a design that served station passengers as well as the ferries. Other pedestrian improvements were to include wayfinding signs, pedestrian-scale lighting, and expanded sidewalks.

Beginning in 2010, Union Station was considered a possible site for the National Coast Guard Museum, which would have added a glass atrium north of the main station building as well as a pedestrian bridge over the tracks to a second waterfront building. The Coast Guard removed the site from consideration in May 2012 due to opposition from Cross Sound Ferry over use of its property. The station's private owners stated that they would consider other uses for the space.

However, after further consideration, the Coast Guard announced in April 2013 that the museum was to be located at Union Station. The main portion of the museum is to be located east of the tracks, with a new 500-passenger ferry terminal likely integrated into the four-story, 54,300-square-foot glass-faced building. A pedestrian bridge will connect the museum to the station and the northbound platform, as well as to the Water Street garage.

In July 2013, the station owners sent a letter of concern to the state, seeking that the Environmental Impact Report for the museum and footbridge consider a breadth of possible impacts, particularly from the footbridge. The museum itself received a Finding Of No Significant Impact in March 2014. The Environmental Impact Evaluation for the footbridge, released in July 2014, analyzed seven alternatives for the footbridge location. Alternative 5a, located east of the baggage building and including a section to the garage, was the preferred alternative. The state committed \$20 million towards the cost of the potential footbridge.

In 2014, O'Donnell and Timken began talks with the Coast Guard Museum Association about selling the station to a third-party investor associated with the Association. The sale was originally to be effective at the end of 2014, but was delayed because the Redevelopment Agency never issued a formal certificate of completion for the 1975 sale and renovations. Since the Agency was dissolved in 2008, the City Council issued the certificate in early January 2015, allowing the sale the proceed. On January 12, the Council released the station from the 1960s urban renewal plan as part of an agreement with O'Donnell and Timken to ease the sale process. The new agreement also included stipulations for historic preservation of the building, and allowed – but did not require – its continued use as a train station. On January 29, 2015, Union Station Development sold the station to the New London RR Company – a holding company owned by James Coleman Jr., chairman of the Association – for \$3 million. Coleman brought in a restaurant serving locally sourced food for the first floor, and intended to renovate the second floor for use by museum-related tenants.

Electrification and track work on Track 6, necessary to allow use of M8 electric railcars on Shore Line East, took place from November 2021 to April 2022. The cars entered service for Shore Line East that May. In June 2023, the US Department of Transportation awarded \$17 million for transportation improvements in downtown New London, including the footbridge and station renovations.

## Layout

New London has an unconventional platform layout due to the State Street grade crossing and its location on a sharp curve. The two Northeast Corridor tracks (Tracks 1 and 2) are next to the station, while the New England Central Railroad (formerly Central Vermont) freight track (Track 6) is further away.

Both NEC tracks have high-level platforms, which were added in 2001 for use by Acela trains, which cannot use low platforms. The southbound NEC track is served by a low platform behind the station, which leads to a short high-level platform south of State Street. The northbound NEC track is served by a high-level platform behind the station building; the low platform south of State Street is generally only used for deboarding passengers from busy trains. Because of the sharp curve, the high-level platforms are set slightly back from the tracks to avoid scraping the ends of train cars, and thus bridge plates are needed to span the gap between platform and car.

The northbound platform, currently a side platform, can serve as an island platform should passenger service return to the NECR track. The 2010 SCCOG report indicated that Amtrak wished Shore Line East to move its operations to Track 6, freeing the mainline tracks for through trains. In 2013, most Shore Line East trains began using Track 6. Most passengers use the low-level section of the platform south of State Street, but a short metal spur on the high-level platform provides handicapped accessible boarding for trains using the track. A low-level section of the northbound platform also remains north of the high-level section; it has not been used since the high-level section was constructed.

The southbound platform is adjacent to the station building, and its high-level section requires crossing only a lightly used spur of State Street. However, access to the northbound platform requires crossing both Northeast Corridor tracks. The footbridge to the planned Coast Guard Museum will allow access to the northbound platform without crossing tracks, which will improve safety and prevent passengers from being trapped on the platform by stopped trains.

## Service

All Amtrak Northeast Regional trains that run on the Northeast Corridor east of New Haven (about 9 trains each direction daily) stop at New London.

The station was previously also served by a small number of Acela trains: one southbound train in the morning, and northbound trains in the morning and evening. When Acela trains served the station, most ran nonstop between and New Haven. Acela service was discontinued by 2022.

Shore Line East service to New London is limited by slots available over the Connecticut River bridge between Old Saybrook and Old Lyme; service is operated at uneven headways on weekdays and weekends. Multi-ride and monthly Shore Line East tickets are accepted on several Northeast Regional trains as well.

The Central Corridor Rail Line is a proposed regional service which would run from New London north through Norwich, Willimantic, and Amherst to Brattleboro, Vermont over the New England Central Railroad. While locally supported by some towns along the route, the service is not currently funded.

### Intermodal connections

Several ferry services run from docks on Ferry Street just north of the station. The Cross Sound Ferry runs to Orient Point on Long Island with approximately hourly service year-round. The Block Island Fast Ferry, a high-speed catamaran to Block Island, runs several daily round trips during the summer months. The Fishers Island Ferry offers year-round local service to Fisher's Island, about 5 miles offshore, with multiple daily trips.

Greyhound Bus Lines offers limited intercity service from a stop on Water Street. Current service consists of two daily buses in each direction operating along the I-95 corridor, with transfers available to other routes in Boston, New Haven, and New York City. Greyhound and Peter Pan Bus (which no longer serves New London) previously used the former baggage and express office.

Union Station is one of four major transfer points for Southeast Area Transit (SEAT) local bus service, with timed connections on a clock-face schedule between several routes running from New London to nearby areas including Norwich, Groton, Niantic, Waterford, and Foxwoods Casino. SEAT buses serving the station stop at a shelter north of the station building on Water Street. The following SEAT routes run from Union Station:

- 1 Norwich / Mohegan Sun / New London – Route 32
- 2 Norwich / Groton/ New London – Route 12
- 3 Groton / New London / Niantic
- 12 Jefferson Avenue / Crystal Mall / New London Shopping Center / Senior Center
- 13 Shaws Cove / L & M Hospital / Ocean Beach
- 14 New London Mall / Waterford Commons / Crystal Mall / New London Shopping Center
- 15 New London / Waterford – Evening Service
- 101 Norwich / Mohegan Sun / New London – Route 32
- 108 New London / Groton / Mistick Village / Foxwoods

Union Station is also served by 9 Town Transit route 643. The drop-off lane in front of the station also serves as a taxi stand for several local companies. Special buses to Foxwoods Casino, which connect primarily to Cross Sound Ferry services, also stop nearby.

## See also

- National Register of Historic Places listings in New London County, Connecticut

Railway station in New London, Connecticut, US

Buildings and structures in New London, Connecticut

Former New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad stations

National Register of Historic Places in New London County, Connecticut

Railway stations in the United States opened in 1889

Railway stations on the National Register of Historic Places in Connecticut

Richardsonian Romanesque architecture in Connecticut

Transportation buildings and structures in New London County, Connecticut

Transportation in New London County, Connecticut