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The history of the Jews in the Czech lands, historically the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, including the modern Czech Republic (i.e. Bohemia, Moravia, and the southeast or Czech Silesia), goes back many centuries. There is evidence that Jews have lived in Moravia and Bohemia since as early as the 10th century. [5]
For the Czechs of the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia, German occupation was a period of brutal oppression. The Jewish population of Bohemia and Moravia (117,551 according to the 1930 census) was virtually annihilated. Many Jews emigrated after 1939; approximately 78,000 were killed. By 1945, some 14,000 Jews remained alive in the Czech lands. [5]
Gate of No Return [], a memorial at Praha–Bubny railway station commemorating the deportation of tens of thousands Jews via the station. The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia resulted in the deportation, dispossession, and murder of most of the pre-World War II population of Jews in the Czech lands that were annexed by Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945.
There was a large and thriving community of Jews, both religious and secular, in Czechoslovakia before World War II. Many perished during the Holocaust. Today, nearly all of the survivors have inter-married and assimilated into Czech and Slovak society.
In 1969, the Czech lands (including Bohemia) were given autonomy within Czechoslovakia as the Czech Socialist Republic. In 1990, the name was changed to the Czech Republic, which became a separate state in 1993 with the breakup of Czechoslovakia. [7] Until 1948, Bohemia was an administrative unit of Czechoslovakia as one of its "lands" (země). [8]
The Jewish populations of Bohemia and Moravia (118,000 according to the 1930 census) were virtually annihilated. Many Jews emigrated after 1939; more than 70,000 were killed; 8,000 survived at Terezín. Several thousand Jews managed to live in freedom or in hiding throughout the occupation.
During World War II, Czechoslovakia was divided into four different regions, each administered by a different authority: Sudetenland (Germany), Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the Slovak State, and Carpathian Ruthenia and southern Slovakia (Hungary). As a result, the Holocaust unfolded differently in each of these areas:
The Jewish Town Hall in Prague's Jewish Quarter.. 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.