JEWISH HERITAGE
Preserving Jewish culture
Czechia is a country with a very rich spiritual tradition. The Jewish tradition and culture has also played a significant part in its development. The heritage of the Jewish faith can be found all over the country.
The two most exceptional Jewish monuments in Czechia are situated in Prague and Plzeň (Pilsen). The oldest synagogue in Central Europe is the Old New Synagogue in Prague, while the third-largest synagogue in the world, the Great Synagogue, can be visited in Pilsen.
The word ‘ghetto’ was originally used for the Venetian Ghetto in Venice, Italy, as early as 1516, to describe the part of the city where Jews were restricted to live and thus segregated from other people. In Czechia the most frequent form of a ghetto was an aisle with a row of houses or cottages. Whole quarters with a network of streets and a synagogue or a house of prayer were only preserved in towns with larger Jewish communities, such as Dolní Kounice and Luže.
The largest preserved ghettos are in Mikulov, Boskovice, Terezín and Třebíč, the last of which is listed by UNESCO. The former prison camp and memorial site of Terezín is also a national place of remembrance of the horrors of the Holocaust during the second World War.
Essential visits
- Old New Synagogue, Prague
- Spanish Synagogue, Prague
- Old Jewish cemetery, Prague
- Great Synagogue, Plzeň
- Memorial site, Terezín
- UNESCO Jewish Town, Třebíč
- Synagogue and ghetto, Polná
- Ghetto and cemetery, Mikulov
- Synagogue, Břeclav
- Jewish Town, Boskovice
Unique European heritage
With its crooked streets paved with river cobblestones, small squares and low, linked houses, Třebíč is home to the only completely preserved Jewish town in Europe. Thanks to this miniature town and also the St. Procopius Basilica, Třebíč was listed as UNESCO cultural heritage in 2003.
The miniature town is still known as the Jewish quarter today. A lot of the old buildings, such as the school, the rabbinate, the hospital and the synagogue are still standing. Although their use has changed, many of them are open to the public in tours of the Jewish Town, also thanks to the 2.5 km educational route.
The end of July and the beginning of August provide a great opportunity to visit the town during the Shamayim Jewish Culture Festival. In July, there is also the Revived Jewish Town Festival.
At the Jewish cemetery, you will find over 3.000 tombstones, along with memorials to the victims of WWI and WWII.
Did you know?
Almost all Jewish communities had a school, often just a small room. Larger ghettos assigned a building or a part of the synagogue for the school. There is a permanent exhibition in Úštěk dedicated to Jewish education.
In every Jewish town, there was a ritual bath, a mikveh, filled with natural springs. There are mikveh near the Pinkas synagogue in Prague, in Mikulov, Boskovice, Dobruška and Polná.
A lot of the Jewish monuments were destroyed by the Nazi during WWII, and other by communist indifference. It took many years after 1989 to find the resources required for preservation, and some Jewish monuments are still waiting to be restored. 200 synagogues and more than 350 cemeteries are managed by the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic in cooperation with local administrators, cultural institutions and civic associations.
More and more Stolpersteine are appearing in Czech streets as a commemoration of victims of the Shoah. A Stolperstein, literally “stumbling stone”, is a sett-size, ten centimetre concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution.
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