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Jews are believed to have lived in Bohemia and Moravia – the historic territories
that constitute the Czech Republic – since the tenth century. Significant
Jewish communities had developed in Prague and Brno by the 13th
century, and these became active and enduring centers of Jewish life and learning.
After centuries of restrictions on Jewish settlement and activity, Jews in
this region entered an era of relative liberation under the rule of Hapsburg
Monarch Joseph II. They eventually gained emancipation in 1867, under Austro-Hungarian
rule. Many Jews in this region subsequently began to embrace Reform Judaism,
uprooting the strict Orthodoxy that was, until then, the norm.
JDC Begins Working in the Czech Republic
In March 1919, the JDC relief committee was organized in Prague. In the 1930s,
JDC helped establish loan kassas (loan cooperatives), non-sectarian groups,
and a women’s committee, and it furnished assistance to German refugees.
JDC also helped provide medical care, childcare, vocational training, and
education in this region.
The Holocaust
The 1938 Munich Pact forced Czechoslovakia to cede its frontier to Germany,
and Kristallnacht brought havoc and terror to the Jewish community in November
of that year. In March 1939, Slovakia declared itself an independent state.
The Nazis responded by occupying the rest of Czechoslovakia and declaring
the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. A massive Jewish emigration began
in response to these events, but came to an abrupt halt in 1941. Of the 90,000
Jews in Bohemia and Moravia before the start of the war, only 10,000 survived.
Most of Czech Jewry was murdered in the Terezin ghetto or in Auschwitz.
JDC during the Communist Regime
After World War II, JDC launched a major effort to rehabilitate and revive
the Czechoslovak Jewish community through the provision of food to community
members and financial assistance to a variety of Jewish institutions. JDC
helped fund and equip old age homes, local hospitals, and convalescent homes,
and it established and provided the raw materials for textile industry production
co-ops to help spur the community’s economic recovery. In 1960, after a stark
deterioration of Czechoslovak-Jewish relations, JDC – having been accused
of espionage and other false crimes – closed its office in Prague.
In 1981, JDC was extended an invitation to return to Czechoslovakia, where
roughly 17,000 Jews remained. JDC began providing cash assistance to the
impoverished; it opened kosher kitchens; and it sent in religious articles
and medical supplies. This network of support continued through the Velvet
Revolution and the fall of the Communist regime in the winter of 1989-90.
During this period, in cities with sizable communities, Jewish life began
to prosper again.
Today
Today, thanks to financial gains resulting from property restitution, the
Czech Jewish Community is largely self-sufficient and able to respond to the
changing needs of Czech Jewry. However, JDC continues to provide modest financial
as well as technical support to help advance the exciting and dynamic development
of Jewish communal life in the Czech Republic.
2005
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