NEW ISSUE OF JUDAICA BOHEMIAE OUT NOW

A new monothematic issue of the journal Judaica Bohemiae (Vol. 58/2023) came out at the end of December 2023 as a collaboration between the Jewish Museum in Prague and the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, Prague. Subtitled Jews and Non-Jews in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia: Attitudes, Strategies, Policies, and Practices, it seeks to create as true a picture as possible of the dynamic living conditions in the Protectorate, which had a direct influence on the fate of the Jews who lived there. The studies are based largely on primary research and on specific sources that have previously been underused as a way of gaining knowledge about this topic.

The opening study by Magda Veselská, The Interaction of Jews and the Society of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia: Attitudes, Forms and Dynamics, demonstrates the attitudes towards Jews as expressed actively in denunciations to the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police force, as well as the forms of interaction that were based on close co-operation between Jews and non-Jews in the Protectorate. In the next study, Jewish Women from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in the Nazi Concentration Camp Ravensbrück, Pavla Plachá points to the kinds of activities that could have landed Jewish women in this central concentration camp for women in Nazi Germany, as well as the kinds of interactions with Jews that could have led to the punishment of non-Jewish women. The attitude of Catholic Church representatives towards the persecution of Jews from the 1930s onwards is examined in a study by Stanislava Vodičková, The Catholic Church and Jews in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. On the basis of surviving court records, Tatjana Lichtenstein (Contested Paternity: Seeking Reprieve from Anti-Jewish Persecution in the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia) considers the way Protectorate Jews tried to save themselves by questioning their “racial classification” according to the so-called Nuremberg Laws. A study by Jan Dvořák, The “Jewish Department” of the Police Headquarters in Prague and its Role in the “Solution to the Jewish Question” in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, describes the activities, powers and methods of a separate “Jewish department” at the Police Headquarters Prague, which was responsible for punishing people who had failed to comply with the anti-Jewish regulations.

Published since 1965 by the Jewish Museum in Prague, Judaica Bohemiae focuses on Jewish history and culture in Bohemia, Moravia and the wider Central European area (the territory of the former Habsburg Monarchy). The texts are published in English and German.

You can buy the latest issue of Judaica Bohemiae online at the museum’s site by clicking the link below  Judaica Bohemiae LVIII | Publikace | Židovské muzeum v Praze (jewishmuseum.cz)