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• 1 media/Jewish_Museum_and_the_Spanish_synagogue_in_Prague.jpeg 2022-02-09T14:17:53-08:00 Jewish Museum in Prague 83 plain 2022-05-09T12:39:48-07:00 The JMP, or Židovské muzeum v Praze, has played an important role in the preservation of Jewish artifacts and the documentation of Jewish culture since its founding in 1906. One of the oldest Jewish museums in Europe, it started out as Spolek pro založení a vydržování Židovského musea v Praze (The Society for the Establishment and Maintenance of a Jewish Museum in Prague) and was formed in response to the demolition of much of Josefov, ostensibly as part of city planning efforts, at the turn of the twentieth century. Its primary purpose was to ensure the preservation of valuable ritual objects from the three synagogues that were razed, but it also aimed to document Jewish life in Bohemia and Moravia. The Society’s activities ended with the arrival of the Nazis in 1939 and its collections were placed under the administration of Prague’s Jewish Religious Community (JRC) in 1940 (12).
  
  

  During the occupation, JRC staff lobbied for the creation of a central museum, with the ulterior motive of saving artifacts from pre-war museums, defunct Jewish synagogues, and eradicated Jewish communities throughout Bohemia and Moravia. The Nazis approved the proposal, and Židovské ústřední muzeum, or the Central Jewish Museum, was established in 1942. Items confiscated from Jewish communities were thereafter shipped to the museum for the duration of the war (13).
  
  After WWII, the Central Museum was re-established as the JMP and placed under the administration of the National Council of JRCs. In 1948, communists successfully staged a coup d’etat. The museum was nationalized as the State Jewish Museum in 1950, and its activities were severely restricted. After the communist regime fell in 1989, the museum buildings were returned to the Jewish Community of Prague, while its collections were returned to the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic in 1994. Since then, the JMP has operated as an independent museum (14).
  
  Today, it is one of the most frequented museums in Prague and contains one of the world’s largest Judaica collections. In addition to overseeing many of the Jewish Quarter’s historical synagogues, the Ceremonial Hall, and Old Jewish Cemetery, the museum also administers a gallery, an archive, and a library (15).

• 1 media/labeled theresienstadt.jpg 2022-02-09T14:18:19-08:00 Library of the Jewish Museum in Prague 56 plain 2022-05-16T18:16:21-07:00 During and since WWII, the JMP has been a central location for the storage and transit of many Nazi-confiscated items. As a result, its library is an amalgamation of collections from different sources, including the Prague Jewish Religious Community (JRC) Library and the Theresienstadt Library (16).
  
  Communal libraries that were founded by JRCs first started cropping up in Italy, then in German-speaking countries, in the nineteenth century. One of the earliest of these was the Prague JRC Library, which opened in 1874 and was initially composed of almost 3,500 books and a few manuscripts donated by community leaders. By 1935, it held about 25,000 volumes (divided into Hebraica, Judaica, and periodicals), 300 manuscripts, and a reference section. The library ceased operations in 1939 with the arrival of the Nazis, who confiscated the collections and temporarily deposited them in the Oriental Seminar of the Law Faculty in Prague before taking them to the Zlatá Koruna Monastery in South Bohemia. The JMP reacquired a portion of the looted books (around 15,000 items) in 1946, but the rest of the collection remained lost. This pre-war JRC Library, or the “historical collection,” forms the core of today’s JMP Library. The catalog created by Tobias Jakobovits, its last head librarian, in 1938 continues to be an important bibliographic aid to this collection, providing curators at the JMP with a way to track down the missing items (17).
  
  
  In 1941, the town of Terezín was transformed into the Ghetto Theresienstadt, a reception and transit concentration camp for Jews. In 1942, a library was established there. It soon grew to about 200,000 volumes and included books confiscated from newly-arrived Jews and liquidated libraries. The Central Library and the Library for Youth were accessible to the public, but the Hebrew Library, consisting of roughly 60,000 items and meant to create a representative library of Hebraica and Judaica, was not. After the war, approximately 100,000 books from the Terezín library were sent to the JMP, though only a small percentage stayed in its collection (18).
  
  
  The JMP received other books confiscated from Jewish communities and individuals during the occupation, as well as books from German JRCs stored in castles in Mimoň and other localities. During the immediate post-war period (1945-1950), while almost 200,000 volumes came to the museum, approximately 160,000 were transferred to other institutions, restituted, or sold (19). Today, the JMP Library has 130,000 volumes and includes a reading room, a research room, and a multimedia centre (20).