Three Towns, Three Torahs

The Torahs came from three towns in the Czech Republic.

Here is a brief Jewish history of those three towns.

Louny, a town in the Czech Republic founded in 12th century, is roughly 35 miles northwest of Prague. The original name was Luna, which accounts for the image of the Moon on the town’s emblem.  Jews have a long history in Louny, and are first mentioned in 1254 as living on a Jewish street and having a synagogue and a cemetery. The city records for 1380–92 contained a special section for Jewish lawsuits.  In 1505, Jews lived mostly in the eastern part on Židovská (Jewish) street in a small ghetto consisting of 12 houses, a school and a prayer chapel. In the city record books we can find the names of the eight prominent Jews.

As elsewhere in Europe, Jewish life in Louny was sometimes chaotic and sometimes peaceful.   In the 16th and 17th centuries, Jews were periodically expelled from Louny, only to be allowed back again because the town needed their financial help. 

After the early 17th century’s Thirty Years' War, the city needed money and allowed the Jews to move back to Louny to finance reconstruction.  As compensation for not receiving payment for a loan, one Jew, Simon Lobl, was allowed to settle in the house at no.3 Česká Street forever--an extremely rare occurrence that continued to be honored. Simon became the head of the Louny Jewish community.  After 1727, when yet another restrictive law was passed, only one family, that of David Lobl, Simon’s son, a “protected Jew,” remained in Louny. In 1760, after restrictions were eased, the Taussig family bought the Lobl house from the town. In 1803, Gabriel Taussig built a synagogue, and in 1860 the Louny Jewish Community was officially established. 

Louny

Plaque inscription on Louny synagogue wall: 

“In memory of the citizens of our city who were victims of the Holocaust 1939-1945”

Beth Am’s Louny Torah

Jews from surrounding communities moved to Louny, and in 1871 they built a new synagogue, which the Beth Am group led by Rabbi Leib visited in April 2013 as part of its Central Europe tour. The community flourished in the second half of the 19th century and included doctors, businessmen, and lawyers. Family names like Taussig, Weil, Bulova, Katz, Glazer, Heller, and Fanta were symbols of Jewish prosperity and success in Louny. Bulova is the world-famous watchmaker trademark, established by Josef Bulova, an immigrant to the USA from Louny. In 1902 there were 666 Jews in Louny and the 18 surrounding villages; however, in 1930 there were only 205, many having left for urban areas.

Tragedy Befell Louny’s Jewish Community in WWII. 

The entire community was deported to the Nazi death camps in 1942, and the synagogue's religious items were sent to the Central Jewish Museum in Prague.  The Jewish community in Louny disappeared. The synagogue was rented out as a workshop and is currently used as the municipal archive. Little “Jewishness” remains except for a Jewish star on the handsome iron entrance gate, the Ten Commandments on the facade above the door, and a faded star visible on the ceiling. The building is filled with stacks and stacks of files. The nearby town of Teplice, that still has a small Jewish community, celebrated 600 years of Jewish presence in the region with a service in Louny on June 23, 2014. They placed a plaque on the outside wall of the synagogue commemorating the lost Jews of Louny.

Svĕtlá nad Sázavou

The story of our “Little Torah” begins in the bucolic 12th century village of Svĕtlá nad Sázavou, 80 kilometers from Prague in both the regions of Bohemia and Moravia in what is today the Czech Republic. The Sázava River flows through it, giving it its name. Svĕtlá is known as the town of stone and glass where garnets, precious stones, granite and glass were produced. The first mention of a Jewish settlement was in the 17th century. Little by little, in houses on the south bank of the river near the Castle, a community was established; it was a neighborhood, never a ghetto. In 1721, one Jewish family was officially recorded in the town registry. In 1787 there were four; in 1802, ten; and at its peak, in 1890, the Jewish community numbered 111. In 1930, the last official count before the Nazi occupation, 79 Jewish men, women and children lived in Svĕtlá nad Sázavou. The town’s population today is approximately 7,000 including possibly Jews.

Svĕtlá had two synagogues. The second, with a vaulted wooden ceiling over the sanctuary and a wooden women’s gallery, was rebuilt in 1889 from an older, partly brick and half-timbered synagogue. Sadly, as no vestige of either remains, we cannot know exactly when our Little Torah Scroll was first used. By its weathered worn-out appearance, we can guess it was 150 years ago. Svetlá also had two Jewish cemeteries. The old one on the outskirts of town on the river bank was founded in 1742 and was used until the second was consecrated in 1886. The last Jewish burial was in 1941. 

The Castle of Svĕtlá

The story of Svĕtlá is typical - a small Czech town with a small acculturated Jewish population; a cross section of merchants, scholars, farmers, industrialists, etc., making up a fraction of the general population. Typical and yet extraordinary, for the last private owners of Svĕtlá nad Sázavou’s most beautiful building, the stunning 16th century 70-room Castle, were Jews.

In 1914, Richard Morawetz, a wealthy Jewish industrialist, purchased the Castle of Svĕtlá along with ten farms and 5,000 acres of forests. The former owner, Count Francis Thun-Holdstein was so upset that Jews would own it that he had his family’s coat of arms knocked off the entrance wall. Ironically, along with the deed, came the patronage of all the Catholic churches in the area and now even the bishops had to seek approval from Richard Morawetz.

In the aftermath of the Munich Agreement and the Nazi occupation of the Sudetenland, 200 German socialists were given refuge in the Castle. After the last member of Morawetz’ immediate family emigrated to safety in Canada, the castle became the residence of German troops. After WWII, it housed a brigade of the Czechoslovak army. For many years it was an agricultural school. The “Chateau” was a regional museum and the English gardens that surround it served as a public recreational park.

The deportation list of Svĕtlá nad Sázavou records the death of 54 of their 79 Jews. Everyone was sent to Terezin on June 13, 1942, some to die there and others eventually murdered in Osvetim (Auschwitz-Birkenau), Maly Trostinec, Treblinka, or Neznámé concentration camps. That is why the next step in the story of the Jews and the town where our little scroll originated is so important.

Almost 74 years after the last transport to Terezin left Svĕtlá, we honored those who never returned. On June 20, 2016, the people of Svĕtlá, led by their mayor, Jan Tourek, dedicated a memorial plaque donated by Beth Am in the Town Hall and hosted an unforgettable event in memory of the Jews of Svĕtlá killed in the Holocaust. Nine members of Old York Road Temple-Beth Am and the Morawetz family, as well as members of the Jewish Community of the Czech Republic attended. Every year since, the town of Svĕtlá nad Sázavou and its dignitaries repeat the ceremony. And now, in 2022, 80 years after the last transport to Terezin left Svĕtlá, the Beth Am family honors their memory and the Torah Scroll we share with a unique, permanent memorial that covers a wall in our lobby.

Jewish Cemetery of Svĕtlá

“The Little Torah from Svĕtlá

Tábor

The town of Tábor, located about 75 miles SSE of Prague, was founded in 1420 by a radical wing of the Hussites (a Christian movement that became one of the forerunners of the Protestant Reformation) and named after Mt. Tabor in Israel. It was granted a royal charter after the defeat of the Hussites and is recognized for the years it once existed as an egalitarian peasant commune.

From the time of the town’s founding, Jews were not permitted to live, or even stay overnight, in Tábor. The first record of a Jewish family in the town was in 1594, but it was not until the first half of the 17th century that a Jewish community and prayer room were established. By 1769 there were 18 Jewish families living in the town. Services continued to be held in the prayer room until 1885, when a reform synagogue was opened. By 1893 there were 455 Jews living in Tábor, with a total Jewish population of 683 including the surrounding communities. By the 1930’s, the Jewish population had dwindled to about half that number.

Before World War II, Tábor was a calm, countrified town without much industry, surrounded by a beautiful hilly and wooded landscape. Most of its residents were middle-class. Jews lived among the Christian population and were well represented in the government and commerce. Most Jewish men were businessmen and their wives were housewives who sometimes helped out in their husbands’ shops and offices.

The Jews of Tábor had a synagogue, a rabbi, a cantor, a shochet and a shammas, even though most of Tábor’s 20th-century Jews rarely went to synagogue, and many identified themselves with a Czech-Jewish assimilationist movement.

There were plans to create a permanent concentration camp in Tábor similar to that at Terezin, but this plan was not carried out. However, in November 1942 a transit camp was created by the Nazis in Tábor. On the 12th and 15th of November, 1942, 1,268 Jews from Tábor and 9 other communities, including many from as far as Benesov, about 50 miles away, were gathered in Tábor and transported to Terezin. By the war’s end, only 70 of them had survived.

The Old Jewish Cemetery had been used from the 17th until the 19th century. All the tombstones were removed by the Nazis and the cemetery was eventually converted into a small park, where a monument was erected in 1955. The “new” Jewish cemetery was also demolished.

There was an attempt to revive the congregation after the War, but there was only a small group using a prayer room, and even that ended in 1972. The abandoned synagogue building, used by the Nazis as a warehouse, was torn down in 1977 and replaced by a parking lot, with a commemorative plaque.

Timeline of Jewish Life in Louny

The Castle of Svĕtlá

Tábor Torah