Prague's Jewish community was one of the oldest in Europe, and rich in history, legend and tragedy. Here, the story goes, Rabbi Loew created the Golem nearly half a millennium ago.
The community was confined to a ghetto until 1781 when Josef II issued the Edict of Tolerance, which permitted the free exercise of religion and the secularisation of education, science and art. The Jewish town is called Josefov to this day in his honour.
From the 1880s, in the name of slum-clearing, most of Josefov was razed to the ground and only a few synagogues, the cemetery and the Josefov town hall remained. Wide new streets with grand Art Nouveau buildings emerged in place of the decrepit old tenement buildings.
Later still, the Nazis all but annihilated Prague's Jewish legacy, saving the monuments as their planned epitaph to a vanished culture. The post-war communists did little to alleviate the persecution - many of the remaining Jewish inhabitants chose to emigrate.
The community was confined to a ghetto until 1781 when Josef II issued the Edict of Tolerance, which permitted the free exercise of religion and the secularisation of education, science and art. The Jewish town is called Josefov to this day in his honour.
From the 1880s, in the name of slum-clearing, most of Josefov was razed to the ground and only a few synagogues, the cemetery and the Josefov town hall remained. Wide new streets with grand Art Nouveau buildings emerged in place of the decrepit old tenement buildings.
Later still, the Nazis all but annihilated Prague's Jewish legacy, saving the monuments as their planned epitaph to a vanished culture. The post-war communists did little to alleviate the persecution - many of the remaining Jewish inhabitants chose to emigrate.
