Jewish Museum - Pinkas Synagogue and Cemetery

What started with the intention to visit the medieval Jewish cemetery and a synagogue, once we arrived, turned out to include a visit to three synagogues and the cemetery. The first of these synagogues is, in fact, a memorial to all the czech jews killed during WWII.

This place is rooms filled with walls covered, as you see above, with names of those killed. To fit the wall in, the print is so small as to be illegibly small.



Other than the lists, the building is a relatively simple structure.

But the wall covering lists are everywhere and contain about 78,000 names. The format of the listing is that the family name is first given in bold red text - you can make out these red portion on the wall in the photos - followed by the list of first names with birth and death dates. There are places in the list where there is a family name followed by five, six or ten lines of names.

On this wall is a list of the places where people were killed.

Outside, is the cemetery. Between 1439 and 1787, this was the only place in Prague where jew could be buried. As a result, people are buried here at least 12 layers deep. The headstones form a jumbled blizzard covering the ground everywhere.

I'm quite sure that were I able to read Hebrew, I'd find hundreds of stories carved on these stones.

The crowded layout helps keep the grounds unkempt with the result that some weeds reach maturity. Life and death together.

It is a somber place. Even in the presence of many tour groups, each led by a person speaking in a different language, there is a serenity here.

Here is a view of the jumble of markers seen everywhere. An intense experience.

After leaving the Pinkas synagogue and the cemetery we visited other synagogues that now function as museums. They are filled with artifacts...alms collection containers, plates, Torahs, etc...all interesting but not very photogenic. I did get a photo of the Old-New Synagogue from the outside. The price to visit these places is a bit steep and we opted out of visiting this place.

From Wikipedia:

Completed in 1270 in gothic style, it was one of Prague's first gothic buildings.^[3] A still older Prague synagogue, known as the Old Synagogue, was demolished in 1867 and replaced by the Spanish Synagogue.

As you can see, the outside has received many updates in the intervening centuries. It is Europe's oldest active synagogue. It is also the oldest surviving medieval synagogue of twin-nave design.