After the lazy day yesterday I was prepared for something a bit more substantial today. So, after a late breakfast shared with many people who looked a little bit worse off for wear, we went to what it probably the most historically significant part of Prague. It was a place dripping with history and culture, that of a people who have suffered many persecutions and oppressive governments. I’m talking of course about Josefov, the old Jewish Ghetto.
Since the walls around the Ghetto were pulled down in 1848 and complete remoulding completed in 1912, there isn’t a great deal left which gives you a good idea of the tightly packed part of the city filled with winding streets and buildings in the continuous process of expansion and rebuilding. Only the town centre, the cemetery and six synagogues remain of the area that used to house tens of thousands of Jews. Thankfully these have been masterfully renovated and well kept, and with a museum ticket it was possible to visit all of these apart from the Old-New Synagogue (which I love purely because the name is fantastic).
The first synagogue is quite barren, with the only decoration being on the walls. On here are the names of all 70,000 Czech Jews who were deported into ghettos and concentration camps in Eastern Europe. They are arranged in their communities, and their date of death serves as a chilling reminded of the horrors of the previous century. Ironically when the Jews were emptied out of Prague the nazis were planning to make the synagogues their own museum, that to an extinct race. It was chilling, just like all holocaust memorials, but the personal touch made it truly hit home how awful it was. More heartbreaking was the exhibition of children’s paintings taken from the local concentration camp in Terezin, depicting daily life for children who had nothing but death in their future. If you look at these and are not moved, you truly have no soul.
Funnily enough, the less morbid site was the massive Jewish Cemetery. As Jews who lived in the ghetto were only allowed to bury their dead in this small set of land, the bodies quickly piled up over the years. There are at the last count over 12,000 headstones and tombs in the cemetery, but this is not counting the graves of those who’s headstones have been destroyed. It was a truly impressive site, and the more famous graves are marked with a simple plaque. The only one I could recognise shamefully enough was that of Rabbi Loew, famous for the story of the Prague Golem.
The last few synagogues were devoted to various parts of Jewish culture and history. This was very fascinating and informative, although the spread out nature of the exhibitions meant that I had forgotten most of the facts I had learnt by the time I read the follow up parts. For me the crowning glory was the Spanish Synagogue, which looked pretty enough on the outside but breathtaking on the inside. Decorated like the moorish buildings in Southern Spain, every square metre was painted or carved in delicate and amazing motifs. I left the building in awe at the ancient craftsmen who had originally created this marvel. This was replaced by amusement however when I saw the Kafka monument standing beside it. It depicted Kafka riding a giant headless and handless version of himself. I really need to read some of his work if his memorials are so surreal.
The afternoon was spent in a lovely pastry shop, where I ate far too much of a French tart, but I have no regrets. We didn’t want to head back to the hotel so soon so we decided to go find a theatre or a show to watch. Since we didn’t quite know what we wanted to see, we just wandered down parts of the old city waiting to see what was on offer. What eventually drew us was a puppet show of the famous opera Don Giovanni, scored by Mozart and premiered in this beautiful city all those years ago. The theatre was tucked away in the attic of a restaurant, so we had not idea what we had just set ourselves up for.
It was, to say the least, surreal and hilarious. My Italian is non existent and so I spent most of the show trying to guess what was happening, but there is nothing quite like slapstick when it is performed by a series of puppets. It was lighthearted and thankfully abridged, but definitely one of the most bizarre experiences I’ve had in Europe. I would thoroughly recommend this to anyone visiting Prague if they can find it, but do not expect a highly polished performance.
So that was today, a very informative and powerful midday follows by a more fanciful evening. Tomorrow we are off to walk the walk of the Velvet Revolution and the underground of the old city. As we are I me again going out the next post might be a little delayed, but I am steadily getting better at keeping these things up. So until then!