Jews in the Bohemian Lands, 19th - 20th Centuries

Written by a team of Czech authors, this publication provides an overview of the 19th- and 20th-century Jewish history of the Bohemian lands. It is not an academic historical study but a work that is primarily based on pictorial material. Conceptually, it follows on from A. Putík’s earlier book, History of the Jews in the Bohemian Lands in the 10th-18th Centuries. Together they provide a brief pictorial guide to the history of the Jews in the Bohemian lands from the beginnings of Jewish settlement through to the present. The first part focuses on the beginnings of Jewish emancipation with the Josephinian reforms through to the fundamental changes after the revolution of 1848. The easing of restrictions on the lives of Jews led to their gradual emancipation and integration into the majority society, as well as to the granting in 1867 of equal civil and political rights in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Growing political antisemitism and a desire to restore Jewish culture led to the birth of the Zionist movement and the initial efforts to establish a Jewish national identity. The second part, titled “Jews in the Czech Lands between Freedom and Totalitarianism”, looks at the historical events following the Munich Agreement and the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939, which marked the beginning of the Nazi persecution of the local Jewish population. Citizens of the Nazi Protectorate who were designated as Jews were gradually deprived of all civil rights and were then deported to ghettos, concentration camps and extermination centres, where almost 80,000 Jewish inhabitants of the Czech lands were murdered. The book also deals with the Jewish resistance, drawing attention to the fact that many Jews fought against Nazism on all fronts of the Second World War. The final part explores the difficult renewal of Jewish life in the post-war period, the persecution of Jews during the communist regime, and the revival of the Jewish community in the Czech Republic after the fall of communism in November 1989. The book is published in Czech and English versions. The book contains 165 illustrations of objects that are on display at the new permanent exhibition in Prague’s Spanish Synagogue (from the collections of the Jewish Museum in Prague and other institutions). The illustrations include many period photographs, a number of which are reproduced here for the first time. Published with support from the Ministry of culture of the Czech Republic.

Židovské muzeum v Praze/2015
Kolektiv autorů
978-80-87366-62-2
Written by a team of Czech authors, this publication provides an overview of the 19th- and 20th-century Jewish history of the Bohemian lands. Published with support from the Ministry of culture of the Czech Republic.