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• 1 media/640px-1944_Chapin_Map_of_Germany_during_World_War_II_for_TIME_Magazine-1.jpg 2022-04-28T11:46:20-07:00 Historical Context: Nazi Ideology and World War II 54 plain 2022-05-09T15:18:43-07:00 The Nazi Party, or the National Socialist German Workers Party, formed in 1919 after Germany’s defeat in World War I (WWI). Led by dictator Adolf Hitler, the Nazis rose to power in 1933 and imposed an authoritarian regime fueled by racist ideologies, extreme nationalism, and dissatisfaction with the Treaty of Versailles. The Treaty, which ended WWI, demanded severe reparations from Germany and led to an economic depression that further destabilized the country. Hitler scapegoated Jews and others for the socioeconomic decline. He called for the creation of a new order led by the "Aryan race,” which would exclude and ultimately eradicate other “subhuman races”—especially Jews—to enable a stronger and more united Germany (2).
  
  By the mid-1930s, Nazi discrimination, particularly against German Jews, had escalated. Under the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935, Jews were denied citizenship and banned from marrying someone of the Aryan race. These laws, among others that followed, legalized persecution and sanctioned other antisemitic acts, including the theft and destruction of Jewish property (3).
  
  The first book burnings occurred on May 10, 1933. University student groups and Nazi officials across Germany hosted public bonfires to destroy works of “un-German” ideas. In the years to come, Nazis confiscated countless Jewish books, films, religious artifacts, art, and music from private homes, public museums, Jewish organizations, and universities. The purpose behind the plunder was not merely to destroy. In 1936, the Forschungsabteilung Judenfrage (Research Department for the Jewish Question) was formed. By collecting, dissecting, and manipulating the beliefs, literature, and culture of their enemies, researchers studying “the Jewish Question” aimed to legitimize the regime’s racist policies (4).
  
  On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and World War II began. The world’s deadliest military conflict involved more than thirty countries and lasted for six years until the Allied Powers defeated Germany and Japan, leading to the end of the war on September 2, 1945. By then the Nazis had murdered upwards of six million Jews. In the aftermath, the Allies organized efforts to find looted materials (5). These efforts continue today, as many museums and libraries strive to recover displaced books and other cultural heritage items. The Jewish Museum in Prague (JMP), which will be discussed in the next few sections, is one such example.
• 1 2022-05-06T13:35:17-07:00 Historical Context: Jews in Prague 31 plain 2022-05-16T18:15:27-07:00 The Jewish Museum is located in Prague, Czech Republic, in the heart of the old Jewish Quarter, or Josefov. Prague is an important city in European Jewish history as home to one of the oldest—and at one time the largest—documented Jewish communities in Europe (6). We highlight several key historical moments from the city's millennia-long relationship with Jewish life and culture in order to contextualize the extensive legacy that is preserved by the museum.
  
  The history of Jews in Prague dates back to the ninth century when traveling Jewish merchants came to sell and gather new wares. By the late tenth century, Jewish families had settled in the region and a “Jewish Town” began to thrive on the right bank of the Vltava River. In the twelfth century, backed by Christian claims that Jews were unclean and immoral, the city’s authorities began persecuting Jews and forced them to live apart from Christians. The Jewish Town consequently became an enclosed ghetto on the site of today’s Josefov (7).
  
  From the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, the Jews of Prague experienced a “Golden Age,” so named because Jews were generally more accepted in society due to a series of tolerant rulers (8). By the end of this period, there were more Jews in Prague than elsewhere in Europe, and at one time, Jews constituted a quarter of Prague’s total population (9). During the Golden Age, the Maisel, Pinkas, and Klausen synagogues were constructed, and the Old Jewish Cemetery was also in use. These historic sites are all administered by the JMP.
  
  Another significant turning point in the history of Prague’s Jews began on March 15, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Czech lands and established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Between 1942 and 1945, the Nazis rounded up and deported tens of thousands of Czech Jews. They were taken to the concentration camps Theresienstadt—a transit camp just outside of Prague—and Auschwitz in Poland. At the start of World War II, an estimated 92,000 Jews lived in the protectorate, but by May 1945, 78,000—over two-thirds—had died in the Holocaust (10).
  
  According to the European Jewish Congress, approximately 1,500 Jews live in Prague today, though exact numbers are likely much higher (11). The Jewish population in Prague may be significantly smaller than in previous eras, but Jewish art, architecture, and history continue to permeate the city.