The Czech Jewish heritage: a thousand years of community and what survives

A short walk from Old Town Square you step into a district where the streets are narrow and the buildings are older than most of the capital. The Old-New Synagogue, on a quiet street in Josefov, has been in use since the thirteenth century, one of the oldest synagogues in Europe still holding services. A few steps away, the Old Jewish Cemetery crowds thousands of stones into a small space, layered one over another because there was no room to expand.

These places are not exotic. They are part of Prague's own history, and the story of the Czech Jewish community, its rise, its destruction and its partial survival, is one of the weightier chapters in the national story.

An old community

Jewish merchants are mentioned in Prague in written sources from the tenth century. By the Middle Ages, Jewish communities had formed in Prague and in towns across Bohemia and Moravia. Their position was precarious: they were protected by the ruler and taxed heavily, they were restricted in the trades they could practise and where they could live, and they were periodically attacked. The Prague ghetto, later called Josefov after Emperor Joseph II, whose reforms improved the legal status of Jews, was one of the largest in Europe.

The sixteenth century brought a high point of learning and wealth in Prague. The rabbi Judah Loew, known as the Maharal, is buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery, and legend ties him to the Golem, a clay figure said to have been brought to life to defend the community. The story is legend, not history, but it is a good example of how the city's folklore is bound up with its Jewish quarter.

The oldest surviving gravestone in the Old Jewish Cemetery is that of the poet and scholar Avigdor Kara, dated 1439. Because the cemetery could not be enlarged, burials were layered, and many thousands of stones stand crowded into a small area.

Emancipation and the modern community

Joseph II's patents of the 1780s relaxed some restrictions, and over the following decades Jews gained civil rights, with full legal equality in the Austrian half of the monarchy in 1867. Many moved from small towns to Prague, Brno and Vienna, entered business and the professions, and joined cultural life. Some used German as their main language, others Czech, so the community carried both Czech-Jewish and German-Jewish traditions. Franz Kafka, who was born in Prague in 1883 into a German-speaking Jewish family, belongs to this world.

At the end of the nineteenth century the old ghetto was largely cleared in a slum redevelopment, and replaced by the Parisian-style boulevards and Art Nouveau buildings you see around Pařížská today. A few synagogues, the cemetery and the Jewish Town Hall were kept. The Jewish Museum was founded in 1906 to preserve objects from the demolished buildings. Under the First Republic the community had full rights; the background is in interwar Czechoslovakia: the First Republic.

The Holocaust

After the occupation of 1939, described in the Munich Agreement and the occupation, the Protectorate authorities introduced anti-Jewish laws. Jews lost their property, jobs and rights and, from 1941, were deported, many of them via the Terezín ghetto in a fortress town north of Prague, and then to camps in the East. Thousands died in Terezín itself from disease and hunger. The great majority of the Jews who remained in Bohemia and Moravia were murdered. The names written on the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue in Josefov number nearly 80,000.

Paradoxically, the Jewish Museum's collection grew during the occupation, because the Nazi authorities ordered Jewish ritual objects from across the Protectorate to be gathered and stored there. That collection, with the synagogues, became the core of the museum that exists today.

Terezín

The fortress town of Terezín was built in the 1780s by Joseph II and named after his mother, Maria Theresa. In the Second World War its Small Fortress served as a Gestapo prison, while the walled town beside it became a ghetto from late 1941, crowded with Jews from the Protectorate and, later, from Germany, Austria and other countries. The Nazis presented it as a model settlement and in 1944 staged a Red Cross visit, with cosmetic improvements to deceive the inspectors. Prisoners wrote, painted and composed in the ghetto, and the Terezín Memorial and the Jewish Museum preserve some of their work. The Terezín Memorial maintains the Small Fortress and ghetto sites; allow most of a day for a visit from Prague.

After the war

Few survivors returned, and the community was small. In the years that followed it faced the Communist takeover of 1948 and persecution. The antisemitic overtones of the 1952 Slánský trial hit it directly, restrictions on religion made Jewish life difficult, and many emigrated. The story of the regime is told in Czechoslovakia under communism.

After 1989 Jewish life revived. Synagogues were restored, schools and cultural institutions reopened, and Jewish communities in Prague, Brno and other cities resumed activity. Today's community is small compared with the prewar one, but active; the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic is its umbrella body.

Beyond Prague

The Jewish heritage is not confined to the capital. In Třebíč, in the Vysočina region, the Jewish Quarter and the Basilica of St Procopius are on the UNESCO World Heritage list, listed in 2003 for the unusual survival of a Jewish quarter beside a Christian monument. Other places with notable synagogues or cemeteries include Brno, Mikulov, Boskovice, Holešov, Kolín, Plzeň and Olomouc. Many small villages have cemeteries with a few stones in the woods, kept by volunteers or local authorities.

In Brno, the Tugendhat Villa, a modernist masterpiece, was built for a Jewish family who left in 1938. The Jewish contribution to Czech industry, architecture and culture is substantial and still being researched.

How to approach the sites

These are memorials and, in places, active religious spaces as well as monuments. Dress modestly, follow the rules on photography, and ask before entering a place of worship. A guided visit or an audio guide gives a richer picture than a quick walk. To research family history, begin with the Jewish Museum's archive and the national archives.

Frequently asked questions

Which is the oldest synagogue in Prague?

The Old-New Synagogue, built around 1270, which is still used for services.

What is on the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue?

The names of nearly 80,000 Jewish victims of the Holocaust from Bohemia and Moravia.

Can I visit Jewish sites outside Prague?

Yes. Třebíč has a UNESCO-listed Jewish quarter, and Brno, Mikulov, Boskovice and other towns have synagogues and cemeteries open to visitors.

Is there a Jewish community in Czechia today?

Yes, a small but active one with communities in Prague, Brno and other towns.