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The large village of Roudnice nad Labem twenty-five miles from Prague was one of the first small centers of Judaism in Bohemia and merits a brief visit. The oldest Jewish quarter, destroyed in the seventeenth century, stood beside the village’s lovely Baroque castle. The “new ghetto” is to the west of the castle in what is today Havlickova Street. It contains ten or so ...
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Plzen is the principal center and beer capital of wester Bohemia. The Jews were expelled from the city in 1504 and not permitted to return for more than two centuries. Following the industrial and urban development in the nineteenth century, a Jewish community resettled here and flourished. In 1921 more than 3000 Jews lived in Plzen. Three synagogues were built in Plzen in the nineteenth ...
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There is a small Jewish quarter of about ten houses to the southwest of Kasejovice’s central square, linked to the rest of the city by a narrow, straight street. The , in the heart of the Zidovske Mesto, was built in 1762 in the rococo style and redone a century later. With its striking aron and painted decorative features, it is one of the most interesting and best preserved in the region.
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In Breznice in western Bohemia one can still see the former Jewish quater created in 1570 by the local lord, Ferdinand of Loksany, and enlarged a century and a half later. The two streets and large square of the quarter are lined with low houses. Breznice’s Jewish quarter is located to the north of the town’s central square. Its most beautiful building is the Popper Palace, a ...
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The small town of Golcuv Jenikov near Caslav had a significant Jewish quarter of some fifty homes to the south of the town’s central square. Most have kept their original appearance. Of interest is that Christian also lived in Golcuv Jenikov Jewish quarter. The oriental neo-Romanesque was constructed in the middle of the nineteenth century. The has some interesting Baroque tombs. The ...
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Those with a healthy curiosity should make a quick detour to the small town of Cáslav, located forty-four miles southeast of the capital. Forbidden to Jews until the middle of the nineteenth century, the communities in the neighboring villages began to settle here after the Jews’ emancipation. To the northeast of the large square on Fucikova Street one can see an unusual synagogue in a ...
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The city of Kolín, one of the most important places of Jewish remembrance in the Czech lands, is worth a trip to see the small streets of the Jewish quarter and the magnificent cemetery. Overrun with vegetation, the cemetery’s atmosphere recalls that of Prague’s old Jewish cemetery before it became a usual stop for large tour groups. The Jews settled in this town close to the ...
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In the village of Drevikov, roughly sixty miles southeast of Prague, it is possible to see how Jews lived in the villages of Bohemia at the end of the nineteenth century, before their immigration to cities and industrial centers. About thirty Jewish families lived in the two-story houses on the “Jewish street” of this village. The school and small synagogue of the community, now a ...
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Stuccoed in pink, green or yellow, grand neo-Renaissance and neo-Gothic buildings line the Parizká, the Avenue of Paris. Since the fall of the wall, elegant boutiques have been flourishing on this major traffic artery, which lacks none of the cachet that it had at the beginning of the century. Here the legendary ghetto of Prague was located until the renovation of the city center between 1897 ...
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What if you climbed on the shoulders of the Golem or travelled between Kafka’s lines through enchanting Prague or beyond its walls to discover all the traces of Jewish presence in many towns in the Bohemian region?
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Approximately thirty miles northeast of Presov, the small city of Stropkov had one of the largest Jewish communities in the region and was an important center of Judaism. Many of its Jews arrived from Poland in the seventeenth century, victims of the pogroms who were in search of the relative security in lands belonging to the Hapsburg Empire. Although allowed to work in the city, they did ...
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Bardejov possessed a large Jewish quarter where some 5000 Jews lived before World War II. This small medieval city of 35000 inhabitants lies thirty-seven miles north of Presov near the Polish border. Most of Bardejov’s Jewish community was wiped out during the war. Despite the devastations of the war and postwar reconstruction, a few houses and an interesting eighteenth-century ...
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Not far from Kosice, Presov was also an important center of Jewish life. More than 6000 Jews from the city and surrounding villages were killed during the war. Today fewer than 100 Jews live here in Presov. The area from near the old city center with its Renaissance homes and palace to beyond the city walls once marked the extent of the Jewish quarter. Close to the Jewish community center ...
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The capital of eastern Slovakia, Kosice is a large industrial city of 250000 inhabitants. Its sizable Jewish community was almost totally annihilated during the Second World War. The city os now home to 800 Jews. The spacious nineteenth-century is in a building adjacent to the community headquarters. The building also includes a mikvah, a kosher butcher shop, and a prayer hall. This ...
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In this region, you can visit ancient synagogues in Bardejov, Kosice and especially the sublime Presov synagogue. Unfortunately, there are fewer traces of Jewish life in Stropkov.
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Trencin is a city of roughly 60000 inhabitants, and you will find on Vajanskeho Street a beautiful synagogue dating from the beginning of the twentieth century. Although now an exhibition space, its decorations remain, and a plaque recalls that the building was once the location of worship for the 1300 Jews in the city, most of whom were exterminated during World War II.
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Bratislava, capital of Slovakia and a large city of more than 500000 inhabitants, is located on the banks of the Danube River not far from the Hungarian and Austrian borders. Although Jews have thought to live lived here since the Roman period, the first mention of a community dates back to the second half of the thirteenth century. The Jews of Bratislava have been expelled from the city ...
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Bratislava was one of the European centres of Judaism, when Rabbi Hatam Sofer lived there. Neighbouring Trencin boasts a beautiful synagogue dating from the early 20th century.
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Half a day will suffice to see the in Szeged, one of the most interesting ones in Hungary (1903). With its Baroque dome, Roman columns, and Byzantine-inspired bellows, the monumental building is a hymn to eclecticism. At the entrance, two plaques honor rabbis Lipot, a reform pioneer who was the first to deliver his sermons in Hungarian, and Immanuel Loew, son of the former whose passion for ...
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Kecskemét is worth a stop for its two synagogues. The largest is in (nineteenth-century) Romantic style. Today it houses the , where expositions and conferences are regularly held on technical subjects. The second contains a small . There’s also a in the city.
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The region is famous for its rebbes, heads of Hasidic communities whose followers revered their thaumaturgical and magical powers. The city of Sátorajújhely, where 4000 Jews lived in 1939, houses the mausoleum of Moses Teitelbaum. Born in Poland in 1759, he founded a dynasty of rebbes in Hungary, Galicia, and Romania. Every day, legend has it, Teitelbaum dressed in rags and climbed Mount ...
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Built in 1795, the looms over the old Jewish quarter with its elegant white facade. With the Protestant church on the other side of the small valley, it symbolizes the religious balance of a large wine-making village, a quarter of whose inhabitants were Jews at the end of the nineteenth century. It represents a very beautiful and rare example of a Baroque synagogue in Hungary. The interior is ...
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In the seventeenth century, the Jews of Galicia and Silesia (modern-day Poland and Ukraine) were drawn to this region by trade in tokaj, a syrupy, amber-tinted wine very popular at the courts of Louis XIV and Peter of Russia. Jews gradually settled here, producing wine for Jews and non-Jews alike, and a crowd of other small trades followed subsequently. In this very Orthodox region, Hasidism ...
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This region of rolling hills punctuated by vineyards merits a two-day visit for memory’s sake. There remains, in fact, little evidence of Jewish life here, as most of it was eradicated by the Shoah.
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Within this Baroque city, where splendid thirteenth-century houses have been transformed into museums, restoration projects have brought two medieval synagogues back to life. Built in the early thirteenth century, the on Uj street is the oldest one in Hungary. So closely does it resemble the one in Miltenberg (Bavaria) that historian Ferenc David suspects Sopron’s Jews originated there. ...
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The immense gray dome of stands out against the industrial landscape. Completed in 1870, the structure reflects the prosperity of the city’s Jewish middle class -lawyers, bankers, and manufacturers of German or Moravian origin. The massive bronze pillars supporting the octagonal building contrast with the subtlety of the eastern-inspired decor of the galleries, beams, and frescoes. ...
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Visiting Budapest requires at least three days. The capital was born from the unification of three cities: Buda and Óbuda on the western shore of the Danube, and Pest on the eastern shores. Although wars and urbanization have left few traces of the Jewish presence in Buda, Pest contains an old Jewish quarter that still houses a portion of the community. Buda “There are a few Jews here ...
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The earliest refugees from the Iberian Peninsula arrived in Ragusa (present-day Dubrovnik) at the end of the fifteenth century, at a time when the republic, still under nominal supervision by Hungary for a few more decades, had reached its apex. The early years were tumultuous: forced exile in 1515 was followed by a return several years later. With reinforcements of fellow Jews coming in ...
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Archaeologists have recently unearthed traces of a Jewish presence in Salona (Solin), capital of Roman Dalmatia and sister city to Split, that dates as far back as the first centuries C.E. Salona was destroyed in the seventh century, and its survivors, some of whom were Jewish, took refuge behind the solid walls of Emperor Diocletian’s palace, the origin of present-day Split. ...
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The several hundred Spanish Jews who arrived on the shores of the Adriatic had a key role for centuries in the development of these coastal principalities, and contributed greatly to their growth and prosperity. Exploiting their relationships with fellow Jewish settlers in Venice and Constantinople, the Jews of Dalmatia provided an invaluable service to the small cities of the region; pressed ...
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