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History of the Jews in the Czech lands

January 01, 1970

The history of the Jews in the Czech lands, historically the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, including the modern Czech Republic (i.e. Bohemia, Moravia, and the southeast or Czech Silesia), goes back many centuries. There is evidence that Jews have lived in Moravia and Bohemia since as early as the 10th century.[5] Jewish communities flourished here specifically in the 16th and 17th centuries, and again in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Local Jews were mostly murdered in the Holocaust, or exiled at various points. As of 2021, there were only about 2,300 Jews estimated to be living in the Czech Republic.

Czech Jews, Bohemian Jews, Moravian Jews
Židé v Českých zemích
Juden der böhmischen Länder
(יהדות בוהמיה (צ'כיה
בעמישע יידן
Jews taking snuff in Prague, painting by Mírohorský, 1885
Total population
2,349[1]
Regions with significant populations
Languages
Czech, German, Yiddish, Hebrew, Judeo-Czech
Religion
Judaism, Frankism, Jewish Brotherhoods
Related ethnic groups
Jews, Ashkenazi Jews, Slovak Jews, Austrian Jews, German Jews, Hungarian Jews, Ukrainian Jews
Historical local Jewish population
YearPop.±%
192135,699—    
193037,093+3.9%
1991218−99.4%
2011521+139.0%
20212,349+350.9%
Source: [2][3][4]

Jewish Prague edit

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. According to a popular legend, 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 edit

As part of inter-war 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, over 600 Jewish communities have emerged in the Kingdom of Bohemia (including Moravia).[9] According to the 1930 census, Czechoslovakia (including Subcarpathian Ruthenia) had a Jewish population of 356,830.[10]

First Czechoslovak Republic edit

Further information: History of the Jews in Czechoslovakia

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 Czech-speaking Jews;[14] Zionism also made inroads among the Jews of the periphery (Moravia and the Sudetenland).[15] In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, 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 less prevalent than elsewhere, and was 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 19th 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 edit

Main article: The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia
 
Jewish refugees from Czechoslovakia are deported from Croydon airport, England, on March 31, 1939.
 
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.[citation needed]

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 edit

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

Prague has the most vibrant Jewish community in the entire country. Several synagogues operate on a regular basis, there are three kindergartens, a Jewish day school, two retirement homes, five kosher restaurants, two mikvot, and a kosher hotel. Three different Jewish magazines are issued every month, and 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 Stalinist regime of Klement Gottwald, however, most people do not feel comfortable being registered as such. In addition, the Czech Republic is one of the most secularized and atheistic countries in Europe.[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 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, Plzeň, and Karlovy Vary, and irregularly in some other cities.

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ "SLDB 2021: Obyvatelstvo podle národnosti, jednotek věku a pohlaví". Public Database (in Czech). Czech Statistical Office. Retrieved 2023-02-10.
  2. ^ "YIVO | Czechoslovakia". Yivoencyclopedia.org. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
  3. ^ "YIVO | Population and Migration: Population since World War I". Yivoencyclopedia.org. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
  4. ^ (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-02-09. Retrieved 2012-03-15.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. ^ . The Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot. Archived from the original on 2018-06-24. Retrieved 2018-06-24.
  6. ^ . 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. ^ . Isjm.org. 2003-01-04. Archived from the original on 2010-04-07. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
  10. ^ "The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia". Ushmm.org. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
  11. ^ a b 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 edit

  • 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 edit

  • Čapková, Kateřina; Kieval, Hillel J., eds. (2021). Prague and Beyond: Jews in the Bohemian Lands. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-9959-5.
  • 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.
  • Gleixner, Johannes (2020). "Standard-bearers of Hussitism or Agents of Germanization?". Jews and Protestants: From the Reformation to the Present. De Gruyter. pp. 137–160. doi:10.1515/9783110664713-010. ISBN 978-3-11-066471-3. S2CID 216337230.
  • 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.
  • Labendz, Jacob Ari (2017). "Synagogues for sale: Jewish-State mutuality in the communist Czech lands, 1945–1970". Jewish Culture and History. 18 (1): 54–78. doi:10.1080/1462169X.2017.1278832. S2CID 159614300.
  • 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.
  • Vobecká, Jana (2013). Demographic Avant-Garde: Jews in Bohemia between the Enlightenment and the Shoah. Central European University Press. ISBN 978-615-5225-33-8.
  • Wein, Martin (2015). History of the Jews in the Bohemian Lands. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-30127-6.

External links edit

  • The Jewish Virtual Library - Prague
  • Chanukah celebration in prague, by Jewish community of prague
  • Chabad Prague

January 01, 1970
history, jews, czech, lands, help, expand, this, article, with, text, translated, from, corresponding, article, czech, july, 2018, click, show, important, translation, instructions, machine, translation, like, deepl, google, translate, useful, starting, point,. You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Czech July 2018 Click show for important translation instructions Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate rather than simply copy pasting machine translated text into the English Wikipedia Consider adding a topic to this template there are already 244 articles in the main category and specifying topic will aid in categorization Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low quality If possible verify the text with references provided in the foreign language article You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Czech Wikipedia article at cs Zide v Cesku see its history for attribution You may also add the template Translated cs Zide v Cesku to the talk page For more guidance see Wikipedia Translation The history of the Jews in the Czech lands historically the Lands of the Bohemian Crown including the modern Czech Republic i e Bohemia Moravia and the southeast or Czech Silesia goes back many centuries There is evidence that Jews have lived in Moravia and Bohemia since as early as the 10th century 5 Jewish communities flourished here specifically in the 16th and 17th centuries and again in the late 19th and early 20th centuries Local Jews were mostly murdered in the Holocaust or exiled at various points As of 2021 there were only about 2 300 Jews estimated to be living in the Czech Republic Czech Jews Bohemian Jews Moravian JewsZide v Ceskych zemich Juden der bohmischen Lander יהדות בוהמיה צ כיהבעמישע יידןJews taking snuff in Prague painting by Mirohorsky 1885Total population2 349 1 Regions with significant populationsLanguagesCzech German Yiddish Hebrew Judeo CzechReligionJudaism Frankism Jewish BrotherhoodsRelated ethnic groupsJews Ashkenazi Jews Slovak Jews Austrian Jews German Jews Hungarian Jews Ukrainian Jews Historical local Jewish populationYearPop 192135 699 193037 093 3 9 1991218 99 4 2011521 139 0 20212 349 350 9 Source 2 3 4 Contents 1 Jewish Prague 2 Austro Hungarian Empire 3 First Czechoslovak Republic 4 The Holocaust 5 Today 6 See also 7 References 8 Sources 9 Further reading 10 External linksJewish Prague editFurther 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 According to a popular legend 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 editAs part of inter war 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 over 600 Jewish communities have emerged in the Kingdom of Bohemia including Moravia 9 According to the 1930 census Czechoslovakia including Subcarpathian Ruthenia had a Jewish population of 356 830 10 First Czechoslovak Republic editFurther information History of the Jews in Czechoslovakia 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 Czech speaking Jews 14 Zionism also made inroads among the Jews of the periphery Moravia and the Sudetenland 15 In the late 19th and early 20th centuries 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 less prevalent than elsewhere and was strongly opposed by the national founder and first president Tomas 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 19th 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 editMain article The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia nbsp Jewish refugees from Czechoslovakia are deported from Croydon airport England on March 31 1939 nbsp 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 citation needed 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 edit nbsp Jewish communities associated under the Federation of Jewish communities and their administration within the Czech Republic 2008 Prague has the most vibrant Jewish community in the entire country Several synagogues operate on a regular basis there are three kindergartens a Jewish day school two retirement homes five kosher restaurants two mikvot and a kosher hotel Three different Jewish magazines are issued every month and 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 Stalinist regime of Klement Gottwald however most people do not feel comfortable being registered as such In addition the Czech Republic is one of the most secularized and atheistic countries in Europe 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 Jewish communities and organisations in the country is the Federation of Jewish Communities Federace zidovskych obci FZO Services are regularly held in Prague Brno Olomouc Teplice Liberec Plzen and Karlovy Vary and irregularly in some other cities See also edit nbsp Judaism portal nbsp Czech Republic portal Czech Republic Israel relations History of the Jews in Czechoslovakia List of Czech and Slovak Jews History of the Jews in Slovakia History of the Jews in Carpathian Ruthenia Ethnic minorities in CzechoslovakiaReferences edit SLDB 2021 Obyvatelstvo podle narodnosti jednotek veku a pohlavi Public Database in Czech Czech Statistical Office Retrieved 2023 02 10 YIVO Czechoslovakia Yivoencyclopedia org Retrieved 2013 04 16 YIVO Population and Migration Population since World War I Yivoencyclopedia org Retrieved 2013 04 16 Archived copy PDF Archived from the original PDF on 2012 02 09 Retrieved 2012 03 15 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint archived copy as title link The Jews of the Czech Republic The Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot Archived from the original on 2018 06 24 Retrieved 2018 06 24 The Golem Temple Emanu El San Jose Templesanjose org Archived from the original on 2013 09 16 Retrieved 2013 04 16 Prague The Virtual Jewish History Tour The Jews and Jewish Communities of Bohemia in the past and present Jewishgen org 2013 04 02 Retrieved 2013 04 16 Czech Synagogues and Cemeteries Isjm org 2003 01 04 Archived from the original on 2010 04 07 Retrieved 2013 04 16 The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia Ushmm org Retrieved 2013 04 16 a b Capkova 2012 p 22 Rothkirchen 2006 p 18 Gruner 2015 p 99 Capkova 2012 p 152 Capkova 2012 p 250 Capkova 2012 pp 17 24 25 Gruner 2015 p 101 Gruner 2015 p 100 Capkova 2012 p 25 Capkova 2012 p 24 Rothkirchen 2006 pp 27 28 Capkova 2012 pp 16 22 Rothkirchen 2006 p 34 Rothkirchen 2006 p 49 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 Most Czechs don t believe in God Sources editCapkova Katerina 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 Jorg 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 editCapkova Katerina Kieval Hillel J eds 2021 Prague and Beyond Jews in the Bohemian Lands University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN 978 0 8122 9959 5 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 Gleixner Johannes 2020 Standard bearers of Hussitism or Agents of Germanization Jews and Protestants From the Reformation to the Present De Gruyter pp 137 160 doi 10 1515 9783110664713 010 ISBN 978 3 11 066471 3 S2CID 216337230 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 Labendz Jacob Ari 2017 Synagogues for sale Jewish State mutuality in the communist Czech lands 1945 1970 Jewish Culture and History 18 1 54 78 doi 10 1080 1462169X 2017 1278832 S2CID 159614300 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 Szabo Miloslav 2016 Antijudische Provokationen S I M O N Shoah Intervention Methods Documentation 3 1 132 135 ISSN 2408 9192 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 Wein Martin 2015 History of the Jews in the Bohemian Lands Leiden Brill ISBN 978 90 04 30127 6 External links editThe Jewish Virtual Library Prague Chanukah celebration in prague by Jewish community of prague Chabad Prague Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title History of the Jews in the Czech lands amp oldid 1176080386, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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