History of the Jews in the Czech lands

The history of the Jews in the Czech lands, which include the modern Czech Republic as well as Bohemia, Czech Silesia and Moravia, goes back many centuries. There is evidence that Jews have lived in Moravia and Bohemia since as early as the 10th century.[4] As of 2005, there were approximately 4,000 Jews living in the Czech Republic.[5]

Czech Jews, Bohemian Jews
Židé v Česku
Tschechische Juden
יהודי צ'כיה
טשעכישע יידן
Jews taking snuff in Prague, painting by Mírohorský, 1885
Total population
~4,000
Regions with significant populations
Languages
Czech, German, Yiddish, Hebrew, formerly Judeo-Czech
Religion
Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Jews, Ashkenazi Jews, Slovak Jews, Austrian Jews, German Jews, Hungarian Jews, Ukrainian Jews
Historical Czech Jewish population
YearPop.±%
1921125,083—    
1930117,551−6.0%
194518,000−84.7%
19707,000−61.1%
20004,000−42.9%
20103,900−2.5%
Source: [1][2][3]

Jewish Prague
Further information: History of the Jews in Prague

Jews are believed to have settled in Prague as early as the 10th century. The 16th century was a golden age for Jewry in Prague. One of the famous Jewish scholars of the time was Judah Loew ben Bezalel known as the Maharal, who served as a leading rabbi in Prague for most of his life. He is buried at the Old Jewish Cemetery in Josefov, and his grave with its tombstone intact, can still be visited. It is said that the body of Golem (created by the Maharal) lies in the attic of the Old New Synagogue where the genizah of Prague's community is kept.[6] In 1708, Jews accounted for one-quarter of Prague’s population.[7]

Austro-Hungarian Empire

As part of the original Czechoslovakia, and before that the Austro-Hungarian Empire the Jews had a long association with this part of Europe.[8] Throughout the last thousand years there have emerged over 600 Jewish communities in the Kingdom of Bohemia.[9] According to the 1930 census, Czechoslovakia (including Subcarpathian Ruthenia) had a Jewish population of 356,830.[10]

First Czechoslovak Republic

During the 1890s, most Jews were German-speaking and considered themselves Germans.[11][12][13] By the 1930s, German-speaking Jews had been numerically overtaken by assimilated Jews speaking Czech;[14] Zionism also made inroads among the Jews of the periphery (Moravia and the Sudetenland).[15] In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, thousands of Jews came to Prague from small villages and towns in Bohemia, leading to the urbanization of Bohemian Jewish society.[16] Of the 10 million inhabitants of pre-1938 Bohemia and Moravia, Jews composed only about 1% (117,551). Most Jews lived in large cities such as Prague (35,403 Jews, who made up 4.2% of the population), Brno (11,103, 4.2%), and Ostrava (6,865, 5.5%).[17]

Antisemitism in the Czech lands was lower than elsewhere and strongly opposed by the national founder and first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937),[18][19] while secularism among both Jews and non-Jews facilitated integration.[20] Nevertheless, there had been anti-Jewish rioting during the birth of the Czechoslovak republic in 1918 and 1920.[21] Following a steep decline in religious observance in the nineteenth century, most Bohemian Jews were ambivalent to religion,[22] although this was less true in Moravia.[23] The Jews of Bohemia had the highest rate of intermarriage in Europe;[24] 43.8% married out of the faith compared to 30% in Moravia.[11]

The Holocaust
Main article: The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia
Jews wearing yellow badges in Prague, c. 1942

In contrast to Slovak Jews, who were mostly deported by the First Slovak Republic directly to Auschwitz, Treblinka, and other extermination camps, most Czech Jews were initially deported by the German occupiers with the help of local Czech Nazi collaborators to Theresienstadt concentration camp and only later killed. However, some Czech Jewish children were rescued by Kindertransport and escaped to the United Kingdom and other Allied countries. Some were reunited with their families after the war, while many lost parents and relatives to the concentration camps.

It is estimated that of the 118,310 Jews living in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia upon the German invasion in 1939, 26,000 emigrated legally and illegally; 80,000 were murdered by the Nazis; and 10,000 survived the concentration camps.[25]

Today
Jewish communities associated under the Federation of Jewish communities and their administration within the Czech Republic, 2008

Prague has the most vibrant Jewish life in the entire country; several synagogues operate on regular basis; there are three kindergartens, a Jewish day school, two old age homes, five kosher restaurants, two mikvot, a kosher hotel. Three different Jewish magazines are being issued every month. The Prague Jewish Community officially has about 1,500 members but the real number of Jews in the city is estimated to be much higher; between 7,000 and 15,000. Due to years of persecution by both the Nazis and the subsequent Communist regime, however, most people do not feel comfortable of being registered as such. Moreover, the Czech society is the most secular in the EU.[26]

There are ten small Jewish communities around the country (seven in Bohemia and three in Moravia), the largest one being in Prague, where close to 90% of all Czech Jews live. The umbrella organisation for the Jewish communities and organisations in the country is the Federation of Jewish Communities (Federace židovských obcí, FŽO). Services are regularly held in Prague, Brno, Olomouc, Teplice, Liberec, Pilsen, Karlovy Vary and irregularly in some other cities.

See also

References
  1. "YIVO | Czechoslovakia". Yivoencyclopedia.org. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
  2. "YIVO | Population and Migration: Population since World War I". Yivoencyclopedia.org. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
  3. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-02-09. Retrieved 2012-03-15.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. "The Jews of the Czech Republic". The Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot.
  5. The Virtual Jewish Library - Jewish population of Czech republic, 2005
  6. "The Golem, Temple Emanu-El, San Jose". Templesanjose.org. Archived from the original on 2013-09-16. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
  7. Prague, The Virtual Jewish History Tour
  8. "The Jews and Jewish Communities of Bohemia in the past and present". Jewishgen.org. 2013-04-02. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
  9. "Czech Synagogues and Cemeteries". Isjm.org. 2003-01-04. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
  10. "The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia". Ushmm.org. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
  11. Čapková 2012, p. 22.
  12. Rothkirchen 2006, p. 18.
  13. Gruner 2015, p. 99.
  14. Čapková 2012, p. 152.
  15. Čapková 2012, p. 250.
  16. Čapková 2012, pp. 17, 24–25.
  17. Gruner 2015, p. 101.
  18. Gruner 2015, p. 100.
  19. Čapková 2012, p. 25.
  20. Čapková 2012, p. 24.
  21. Rothkirchen 2006, pp. 27–28.
  22. Čapková 2012, pp. 16, 22.
  23. Rothkirchen 2006, p. 34.
  24. Rothkirchen 2006, p. 49.
  25. Kulka, Erich (1987). Jews in Svoboda's army in the Soviet Union : Czechoslovak Jewry's fight against the Nazis during World War II. Lanham, Md.: Univ. Press of America. p. xviii. ISBN 9780819165770.
  26. "Most Czechs don't believe in God".

Sources
  • Čapková, Kateřina (2012). Czechs, Germans, Jews?: National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia. New York: Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-0-85745-475-1.
  • Gruner, Wolf (2015). "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia". In Gruner, Wolf; Osterloh, Jörg (eds.). The Greater German Reich and the Jews: Nazi Persecution Policies in the Annexed Territories 1935-1945. War and Genocide. Translated by Heise, Bernard. New York: Berghahn Books. pp. 99–135. ISBN 978-1-78238-444-1.
  • Rothkirchen, Livia (2006). The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0803205024.

Further reading
  • David, Zdenek V. (1996). "Hajek, Dubravius, and the Jews: A Contrast in Sixteenth-Century Czech Historiography". The Sixteenth Century Journal. 27 (4): 997–1013. doi:10.2307/2543905. ISSN 0361-0160. JSTOR 2543905.
  • Kieval, Hillel J. (1988). The making of Czech Jewry: national conflict and Jewish society in Bohemia, 1870-1918. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-504057-9.
  • Kieval, Hillel J. (2000). Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-21410-1.
  • Sewering-Wollanek, Marlis; Belcher, Mark (2008). "The Rediscovery of the Jews: Czech History Books since 1989". Osteuropa. 58 (8/10): 289–299. ISSN 0030-6428. JSTOR 44934294.
  • Szabó, Miloslav (2016). "Antijüdische Provokationen". S: I.M.O.N. Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation. 3 (1): 132–135. ISSN 2408-9192.
  • Spyra, Janusz (2001). "Focusing on Jews in the Polish Borderlands". Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 14: Focusing on Jews in the Polish Borderlands. Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-1-874774-69-3. JSTOR j.ctv36zr7c.9.
  • Vobecka, Jana (2013). Demographic Avant-Garde: Jews in Bohemia between the Enlightenment and the Shoah. Central European University Press. ISBN 978-615-5225-33-8.
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