The Judenstadt (Jew Town) was called the Josefov in the Czech language. It is now a museum housed in various old synagogues. The Josefov became the home for Prague's Jews in the 1200s. It remained so until the 19th century. In the 1600s the famed creator of the Golem Judah Lowe ben Bezalel was the city's leading rabbi. He brought his mechanical monster to life-so the story goes-to protect the Jews from marauding mobs.
In the mid 18th century the Jews were actually expelled from the city. After the revolution of 1848 the Jews were accorded, for the first time, full civil rights. In general, the Jewish community gravitated towards German language and culture and away from Czech language and culture. The writer Franz Kafka exemplified this trend. Â
After World War I Praha became Czechoslovakia's capital. Over a twenty year period, the Jewish citizens were well treated by the government. All that came to a terrible end with the German invasion of 1939. Over the next several years tens of thousands of Prague's Jews were murdered by the Nazis. Hunreds of thousands of Jewish citizens of Czechoslovakia met the same fate.
In 1948 Stalin's allies took over the country of Czechoslovakia. The thousands of Jews who survived the Nazis lived under communist oppression along with all other Czechoslovak citizens for 40 years.
