Prague Journal

Saturday, March 19, 2005.

As predicted, it is rainy today. Last week’s snow is totally gone, but today is cold and dreary. Our first stop was the Museum of Communism, a panorama of daily life, politics, history, sport, economics, education, “socialist realism” art, media propaganda, the People’s Militias, the army, the police and the secret police apparatus, censorship, judiciary and coercive institutions, and political labor camps. Authentic artifacts are presented along themes of “Communism: the dream,” “…the reality,” and “…the nightmare.” Pictures, paintings, music, statues, and film footage bring back the era of communism in all its dreariness, puffed-up glory, and gruesome oppression in three rooms of very effective and informative displays.
Matt wanted to ride the “B” line to see the ends of the metro (subway) line that had not yet been built when we were here seven years ago. Both ends now have large shopping malls and lots of new or renovated buildings and spiffy stations. Most shopping malls have virtually identical stores (nothing local, only international chains).
Instead of returning to the center of town, we took a tram to Žižkov and went to the top of the transmission tower’s observation deck. Reminiscent of an old Apollo-Saturn 5 rocket gantry, the Žižkov Tower, affectionately known as the “Prague prick” by locals, transmits TV, communication and meteorological signals across the city. Completed in 1992, but planned during the Communist era, the structure stands at a height of 216m, with a public observation area 93 meters above ground, much like Toronto's CN Tower, Moscow’s Ostankino, or Auckland’s Sky Tower.
The tower is built on the site of the former Mahler Park, which included the Old Olsany Cemetery until 1960. Only the northern-most (the oldest) part of the cemetery, with the most valuable tombstones and the adjacent building of the former field hospital, remains. When the Žižkov tower construction started in 1985, a large number of tombstones were dumped during excavations. The people who at that time led the Prague Jewish community served under the dominion of the ruling body of the communist party. They did in fact send a protest letter, but against the rubric of the “public interest” one could not do much. When Mahler Park was created, the gravestones were buried with rites in pits on the cemetery grounds. Later during the building of the tower they were excavated and destroyed.
The Olsany cemetery dates back to the plague of 1679. On January 16, 1680, Prague’s municipal authorities gave the Jewish community permission to bury its dead on a lot situated one mile away from town—about midway between the New Town fortifications and the simultaneously founded Catholic plague burial ground near the village of Olsany. Along with the cemetery, the Jewish community also founded a field hospital to which some Jewish inhabitants infected with the disease were transported from the ghetto. During the epidemic, some 3,000 dead were buried in mass graves at the cemetery. It was re-used temporarily during the plague of 1713 (another 3,388 buried corpses) and during the expulsion of the Jewish population from Prague 1744-1748.
When the internment was prohibited in town centers under Emperor Joseph II, this plague burial ground replaced the officially closed Old Cemetery in the Jewish Town to become Prague’s main Jewish cemetery on June 1, 1787. Since some 250-400 graves were added every year, it was necessary to buy land in the vicinity to expand the cemetery. In two hundred years from 1680, the cemetery grew nearly five times its original size. In the second half of the 19th century, however, the cemetery was approached on two sides by new houses built in the fast-growing towns of Žižkov and Vinohrady which resulted in the prohibition of burials in 1891 for sanitary reasons.
During the Nazi Protectorate when it was prohibited for Jews to enter public parks, Jewish mothers with baby carriages would go there for a walk and children would play there. During the May revolution, on the contrary, the cemetery became the last refuge for Nazis—they hid in tombs, shooting from behind the gravestones. In the end, the cemetery was conquered by armed young Jews, most of whom were members of a Zionist sports club. Several Nazis killed at the cemetery were also buried there. But the very last and somewhat unusual burial took place on February 19, 1948; 180 damaged Torah scrolls that had been taken to Czechoslovakia by the Nazis from the Netherlands were buried there with full honors, and with the assistance of two rabbis. Among the 37,800 deceased buried in the Old Olsany Cemetery are many respectable figures such as rabbis and scholars, physicians, artists, public officials and even noblemen. Some of the most significant are Prague's Chief Rabbi Ezechiel ben Jehuda Landau (1713-1793) whose Classicist tomb is still frequently visited by many foreign visitors; Head of the Rabbinical Collegium Eleazar ben David Fleckeles (1754-1826), Moravia's Landesrabbiner Nehemias ben Selig Trebitsch (1779-1842), historian and teacher Peter Beer (1755-1838), Chief Rabbi Solomon Judah Loeb Rapoport (1790-1867) and mathematician Jacob Koref (1790-1852). Also founders of the first industrial factories are buried at the cemetery such as Leopold Jerusalem (1789-1842), Aaron Beer Pribram (1781-1852), Salomon Pribram (1808-1865), and Leopold Porges von Portheim (1781-1870).
Since this is Matt’s last day in Prague, we let him decide where and how to spend the time. But the cold weather influenced our decision to go to dinner close to home and then spend the evening together—just the three of us—at our flat.

posted by JWinn @ 11:28 PM