History of the Jews in Prague

The history of the Jews in Prague, the capital of today's Czech Republic, relates to one of Europe's oldest recorded and most well-known Jewish communities (in Hebrew, Kehilla), first mentioned by the Sephardi-Jewish traveller Ibrahim ibn Yaqub in 965 CE.

Since then, the community has existed continuously, despite various pogroms and expulsions, the Holocaust, and subsequent antisemitic persecution by the Czech Communist regime in the 20th century.

Notable Jews from Prague include Judah Loew ben Bezalel, Franz Kafka, Miloš Forman and Madeleine Albright.

[1] By the mid-12th century, following various attacks and pogroms, Prague's Jews were confined to living in an area on the right bank of the Vltava river which would eventually become the ghetto.

[1] At Easter in 1389, which coincided with Passover, Jews were accused of ‘vandalizing the eucharistic wafer’ and, as a result, 3,000 Jewish men, women, and children were murdered in the streets, homes, and synagogues of the ghetto.

[1] In 1501, Bohemia’s landed nobility reaffirmed the ancient privileges of the Jews of Prague and this fostered an open atmosphere for economic activity.

The situation worsened following the failure of the Prague Spring and the resulting Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, following which 3,400 Jews fled the country.

[5] From 1522 to 1541, the population of the ghetto almost doubled due to an influx of Jews expelled from Moravia, German lands (of the Holy Roman Empire), Austria and Spain.

Because the Cemetery was only capable of holding around ten per cent of the number of Jews buried there, the graves span about twelve tombs deep.

[7] During the 1945 bombing of Prague in World War II, the Vinohrady Synagogue [cs] (opened 1896), the largest Jewish house of prayer in the city, was destroyed.

More synagogues were built in the suburbs of Prague: in Michle (opened in around 1730), Uhřiněves (1848), Košíře (1849), Libeň (1858), Karlín (1861), Smíchov (consecrated 1863, reconstructed 1931) and Bubny (1899).

[8] In 1648, Ferdinand III gave the Jewish community a flag for their assistance in fighting Swedish attackers during the Thirty Years' War.