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Story and photographs by Michael Burge
PRAGUE’S
JEWISH QUARTER IS A REVELATION
ny tour of Prague must in- and today serves as a museum.
clude a visit to the Jewish The Old Jewish Cemetery illus-
Quarter, a small ghetto trates this ghetto existence. Unable to
A squeezed between the “Old expand or move, The Jewish commu-
Town,” Staré Mesto, and the Vltava nity had no choice when burying their
River. Jews were present in Prague loved ones but to raise the cemetery
since the early 1000s and played a vi- and bury new coffins atop the old
tal role in the commercial and cultural ones on raised ground layers, with
life of the city. From the late 1600s on, new headstones bumping up against
however, they were confined to this old ones.
district, known as Josefov, and depor- The ultimate blow to Prague’s Jew-
tations were common. This history is ish population came with the Nazi
told through several historic sites, takeover in 1939. Jews were removed
such as the Old-New Synagogue, to the fortress of Terezin, which be-
which dates to 1270, and the Pinkas came the Theresienstadt concentra-
Synagogue, which dates to the 1500s tion camp, about 30 miles northeast
118 WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE SUMMER 2025
