The Pinkas Synagogue
Tourists lined up to
enter the Pinkas Synagogue and the Old Cemetery
My visit in 2000 to the Pinkas Synagogue
on Siroka street in Josefov, the old Jewish quarter in Prague,
was a most moving experience. Every inch of the interior stone
walls of the synagogue are inscribed with the names of the 77,297
Jews from Bohemia and Moravia who died in the Holocaust. Most
of them were sent first to the ghetto set up by the Nazis in
the old military garrison in Theresienstadt, now called Terezin,
and were then transported to the death camp at Auschwitz in Poland
where they were murdered in the gas chambers.
Upstairs there is a heart wrenching exhibit
of drawings and paintings done by the children in Theresienstadt
while they were awaiting transportation to the Auschwitz gas
chambers. Inexplicably, the Nazis carefully preserved their artwork,
which is now in a permanent exhibit entitled "Children's
Drawings from Terezin 1942 - 1944."
The children were given art lessons by
Friedl Dicker-Brandejsova in a school which the Nazis allowed
the Jews to organize at Theresienstadt. There are many drawings
done by different children on the same theme, so one can see
that the children were receiving instruction and guidance in
their artwork. There were 10,000 children, mostly orphans, sent
to Theresienstadt by the Nazis, and The Jewish Museum has over
4,000 of their original drawings and paintings done in the ghetto.
The Pinkas Synagogue was founded by Aaron
Meshullam Horowitz who had it built in 1535 between his house
and the Old Cemetery wall. The building juts out from the cemetery
wall and is below the present street level. Inside, there is
a small courtyard with two doors, one to the synagogue, and the
other to the Old Cemetery. A tree is growing right by the entrance
inside the courtyard.
The Pinkas Synagogue was first turned
into a memorial to the Czech Holocaust victims in 1958. Ten years
later, following the Six Day War in Israel in 1967, the Communist
government of Czechoslovakia closed the memorial and removed
the names from the wall. After the fall of Communism in 1989,
the names were painstakingly rewritten on the walls of the synagogue
between 1992 and 1996.
Rear of Pinkas Synagogue
with graffiti on walls of cemetery
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