Survey of Historic Jewish Monuments in the Czech Republic (original) (raw)
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East European Jewish Affairs , 2015
The 10 Stars project, a linked network of restored or re-restored historic synagogues, associated buildings, and exhibitions in 10 towns around the Czech Republic, is the most ambitious single Jewish heritage project to be carried out in the Czech Republic since the fall of communism. Inaugurated in 2014, it falls within (and is the culmination of) a multifaceted program for Jewish heritage preservation and promotion in that country that was already being implemented in the early 1990s, thanks to the strategic vision of Jewish communal leaders and the active involvement and participation of municipalities, NGOs and others. As a result, in the past quarter century, the Czech Republic has seen the restoration of more than 65 synagogues, as well as the creation of regional Jewish museums and the installation of many local exhibits on Jewish history and heritage. This essay examines elements of the strategic process that achieved these results and shows how the various stages of its implementation led up to the 10 Stars.
Jewish Heritage and Cultural Revival in Poland
Duch-Dyngosz, Marta. "Jewish Heritage and Cultural Revival in Poland." In Oxford Bibliographies in Jewish Studies. Ed. Naomi Seidman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021
Online bibliography which will be updated periodically. Your suggestions are welcome.
Arts, 2019
World War II and the subsequent period of communist rule severely diminished the amount of historic Jewish architecture in Poland. It is estimated that in the mid-1990s there were about 321 synagogues and prayer houses in the country, all in various states of preservation. This article examines two case studies of synagogues that were salvaged by being transformed into Judaica museums. The first of these is the synagogue in Łańcut and the second concerns the complex of two synagogues and one prayer house in Włodawa. The article contains an analysis of both examples from the perspective of the following factors: the circumstances under which the institution was established, the place that the history and culture of Jews took in the Museum’s activity, the way that Judaica collections and exhibitions were constructed, the substantive, educational, and research activities that were undertaken, as well as the issue of what place these monuments occupy in the town’s landscape.
Jewish Monuments in Eastern Europe: The Legacy of the Holocaust and Preservation Today
1992
Unpublished paper delivered in 1992 at the College Art Association Annual meeting, Chicago, February 1992 in the session "The Destruction of Cultural Property." This paper now may be of some historical interest as it was one of the first attempts in an academic setting after 1990 to define the destruction of Jewish heritage in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust. The paper was subsequently quoted - almost verbatim - in the book "The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War." by Robert Bevan (London: Reaktion books, 2006), 50 ff.
Jewish Culture and History, 2017
The Jewish communities of communist Czechoslovakia enjoyed the right to receive in restitution property which had belonged to their interwar predecessors and which had been lost or stolen during the Second World War. The efforts to recover, manage, and dispose of these properties brought the interests of the Council of Jewish Religious Communities in the Czech Lands into alignment with those of their minders at the State Office of Ecclesiastical Affairs and its successor institutions. Their collaboration in the sale of surplus synagogues and the protection of cemeteries (as a class of properties) helped them develop a close working relationship characterized by limited mutuality. This, in turn, contributed to the context which gave rise to an efflorescence of Jewish cultural life in the 1960s. While self-consciously revisionist, this article in no way seeks to deny the prevalence of state and popular antisemitism in the postwar years, which often came in the guise of anti-Zionism. It seeks, rather, to show that Jewish-state relations were complex through a focus on specific institutions, instead of Jewish-state relations in the aggregate. Doing so helps account for apparent inconsistencies in party-state policy and practice without assuming the normalcy of antisemitism and the exceptionality of its absence. Jewish communal properties in postwar Czechoslovakia 1 During the first postwar quarter century, the Jewish religious communities of the communist Czech lands and the state offices that managed ecclesiastical affairs benefited together, albeit differently, from the recognition and defense of Jewish-communal property rights and from the sale of synagogues without congregations. The modus operandi that developed between these two bodies for dealing with such matters played a structuring role in the evolution of Jewish-state relations more broadly. Specifically, an alignment of interests and years of close cooperation between Jewish leaders and a specific cohort of central state administrators in Prague helped produce the context which made possible an efflorescence of Jewish life in that city in association with the political and cultural liberalizations of the 1960s. Beginning in 1945, Jewish survivors and returnees reestablished between 57 and 59 Jewish communities across the Czech lands. 2 Unlike in Poland and, more complexly, the