Places of Worship II

In 1930 the population of Prague had grown to approximately 850,000. The Jewish portion of the population was 130,000, roughly 15%. The Jewish people were a robust part of the culture and economy. They were the doctors, lawyers, accountants and artisans. In 1939 Hitler invaded and by 1941, for all intents and purposes, there were no Jews left in Prague. The young were relocated to Terazin and the rest were shipped off to extermination camps.

On May 7, 1945 the Soviets took control of the government and set up communist control. Under communism, religious practices were banned. For the next 44 years this country had no organized religion. Couple a lack of Jewish Religious leaders with 40+ years of communist rule and you have a recipe that completes what Hitler set out to do in the first place, which was eliminate the Jews. Today there are about 6,000 jews in all of the Czech Republic.

The people that lived through the communist rule, at the very least, had respect for their national treasures. Included in those treasures were churches and synogogues. They were not luted and destroyed. For the most part religious artifacts were warehoused for safe keeping the structures were maintained by reassigning the structures to other purposes. The monastery that I wrote about in an earlier post was used as a police station. After communism collapsed in 1989 there was an influx of outside investment and places of worship have been slowly converted back to their original purpose.