Jewish cemeteries in the Czech lands after World War II. On the displacement of Jewish memory after the Shoah (with special attention to the period 1945-1956)
Abstract
Jewish landscape memorial (memory) was interrupted by the Shoah in the 20th century. The handful of Czech Jews, who had survived the largest genocide in the history of mankind, was confronted not only with the tragic fate of their relatives and acquaintances after their return home, but also with the devastation of the Jewish monuments (predominantly cemeteries and synagogues).
Already at this time, symbolic memorials of the dead and fallen members of the communities began to emerge at the initiative of some active surviving members of the minority. Most often they were situated precisely at Jewish cemeteries.
On the one hand, we encounter the extraordinary efforts of the Jewish representation and individuals to put the damaged cemeteries back in order, however, this effort rather than by religious reasons was motivated by the ambition to return a memory of the Jewish minority to the area of the Czech lands (the most frequently visited cemetery with the greatest symbolism, however, naturally became the atypical Terezin cemetery with a crematorium), but, on the other hand, the vandal attacks on usually unsecured cemeteries continued in the raw post-war period. This fact corresponded to the atmosphere in the Czech post-war society, in which the anti-Semitic stereotypes and the general lack of interest in the life of the Jewish minority reappeared.
The devastation of the cemeteries continued even after the February coup d 'etat (1948), which part of the Jews understood as a guarantee of the elimination of anti-Semitism. Although it was attributed to Nazi anti-Semitism, the greatest threat to the cemeteries came from state organs of the public administration.
The establishment of the State Office for Church Affairs (1949), the dissolution of torso of the burial fraternities (1950), the new expropriation and closure of cemeteries, the Ministry of Health Decree on Funeral Services (1955), which the minority representatives reversed only with difficulty, only deepened the post-war unfavorable circumstances in the care of cemeteries (the numerous devastations of the community as a result of the Shoah and post-war immigration and emigration waves). The short-term improvement of the situation since the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, when not only members of the Jewish representation but also conservationists and museum workers began to deal with the care of cemeteries seriously, and when the Terezin Cemetery was incorporated into the National Monument, alternated with the extremely serious "normalization" devastating wave.
The cemeteries were massively disturbed without any piety, replaced by lapidaria. During "normalization", about one half disappeared in the Czech lands.
Already in the mid-eighties, that is, before the Velvet Revolution (1989), we also encountered a certain activation of groups in the society that modified the cemeteries on a voluntary basis.