August 8 – Jewish Quarter Walking Tour



The next day, Priscilla, Pam and I had plans to go on the Jewish Quarter Walking Tour while Miles and Rod played tennis . Bill would be going with Pavel, who had, generously, offered his assistance, to a little village, about two and a half hours from Prague, to try and locate some of his relatives, on his mother's side.

So, off we all went. We met our guide at the designated spot to begin the walking tour. We could tell from the first words out of her mouth that she left a lot to be desired which was disappointing, particularly, since this was the only tour that we had paid for upfront. She did give us some history, in a somewhat monotone voice, and guided us through the significant historical buildings.

A little history….Jews are believed to have settled in Prague as early as the 10^th century. The Jewish Quarter in Prague, known as Josefov or the Prague Jewish Ghetto, dates from the 13^th century, when Jewish people were ordered to vacate their disparate homes and settle in one area. Over the centuries, the Ghetto became more and more crowded with the arrival of Jews who had been expelled from Moravia, Germany Austria and Spain. In addition to the poor conditions, inhabitants of the Prague Jewish Ghetto were forced to endure many structural changes with the latest occurring between 1893 and 1913, when most of the buildings were demolished, and the layout of many streets remodeled.

Fortunately, most of the significant historical buildings were saved from destruction, and today they remain as a testimony to the history of the Jews in Prague and form the best preserved complex of historical Jewish monuments in the whole of Europe . The complex consisting of six synagogues, the Old Jewish Town Hall and the old cemetery, form, with the exception of the Old-New Synagogue, what is called the Jewish Museum in Prague. These historic monuments even survived the Nazi occupation in the 20^th century. It is said that Adolf Hitler himself decided to preserve the Jewish Quarter as a "Museum of an Extinct Race."

On the tour, we passed by all six of the synagogues and learned that the Old-New Synagogue was built in the 13^th century in early Gothic Style and is the oldest preserved synagogue in Central Europe. Today, it’s the main house of prayer for the Jewish community. 



We spent quite a bit of time in the 16^thcentury Pinkas Synagogue. In 1950-1954 the Synagogue was turned into a memorial to the nearly 80,000 Jewish victims of the Holocaust from Bohemia and Moravia and is one of the earliest memorials of its kind in Europe with the names of the victims beautifully inscribed on the walls of the synagogue . Witnessing these names was so impactful and really brought home how truly horrific the Holocaust was.

The permanent exhibition at the Pinkas Synagogue is a series of emotionally powerful drawings that focus on the fate of Jewish children who were incarcerated in the Terezin ghetto during the Second World War. They bear testimony to the persecution of Jews during the Nazi occupation of the Bohemian lands in 1939-1945 and document the transports to Terezin and daily life in the ghetto, as well as the dreams of returning home and of life in the Jewish homeland of Palestine. The vast majority of these children perished in the gas chambers of Auschiwitz-Birkenau.  

Next, we spent time in the Maisel Synagogue built from 1590-1592. During the Nazi occupation of the Czech lands, properties of the Czech Jewish communities were stored in the Maisel Synagogue. Today it is part of the Jewish Museum and has beautiful and interesting exhibits of Jewish history in the Czech lands from the 9^th century until the present .

Finally, we wandered through the pathways of the Old Jewish Cemetery. It’s among the oldest surviving Jewish burial grounds in the world and one of the most important Jewish historical monuments in Prague. The Cemetery was founded in the first half of the 15^th century with the earliest tombstone dating back to 1439. The last burial took place 348 years later and, although the cemetery was expanded several times over the centuries, it was still not big enough to meet the needs of the Jewish Town. As space was scarce, bodies were buried on top of each other, with graves layered up to 10 deep. In all, there are about 12,000 tombstones in the cemetery.

At the end of the tour, we stopped at the statue commemorating Franz Kafka. Kafka spent most of his life in the historic Jewish Quarter and this little square is what the city's famous native writer probably saw each time he looked out of his window. The tall black sculpture, that represents a headless male figure in a suit with a somewhat smaller figure of Kafka sitting on his shoulders, was authored by sculptor, Jaroslav Rona, who found his inspiration in Kafka's work. The image of a young man riding on another one's shoulders through the night streets of Prague appears in Franz Kafka's early short story, "Description of a Struggle".

Bill returned from his ancestry search shortly after we got back to the flat and told us that he and Pavel had been successful in finding one of his 2nd cousins in the little village of Drazovice So, at least, all their research had not been in vain.

That night, we all went to a wonderful concert in one of the churches in the Old Town and then had another fabulous meal in a little Italian restaurant near the flat.

This had been quite a full day for all of us so we headed off to bed as we were having an early start in the morning on an excursion to Cesky Krumlov.