March 8th

Yesterday was a very educational day for us in Prague. First we got a tour of the Jewish ghetto and then Kathleen and I went to the Communist museum. We woke up around 11 and booked a tour of the Jewish ghetto online. We figured it would be much more meaningful for someone to explain to us what everything is since I don't know much about the Czech Jews and my roommates don't know much about Jews in general. The Jewish quarter is the biggest and most impressive Jewish ghetto in all of Europe. The tour started at the astronomical clock (a medieval clock which is a big tourist attraction now-a-days). Our tour guide was named George (he had some really complicated name in Czech, but he told us to call him George). He kind of reminded me of Agaustus Gloop from Charlie and the Chocolate factory. We were the only ones on the tour so we were able to ask a lot of questions. We learned a lot about the Czech jews and the conditions they were living under throughout the centuries. There were always good periods and bad periods. THe good periods were always when the Protestants ruled, and the bad periods were always when the Catholic Church ruled. The Jews were put into a ghetto during the Catholic rule (i think in the 1300s), were made to wear yellow hats, and were not allowed to leave the ghetto at night. We also went to the Spanish Synagogue which looked very Sephardic and had architecture that looked like it was influenced by the Middle East. It was filled with intricate decorations and gold everywhere. There was also a Jewish museum that showed a bunch of world famous Jews from the Czech Republic...such as Kafka. Then we went to a memorial for the thousands of Jews killed in Prague (only 10% of the Prague Jewish population survived the Holocaust!). The memorial was in the Jewish synagogue and all of the walls were filled with names of the victims, the town they were from, and the date they were deported. The names took up all of the first floor and second floor of the synagogue. It was crazy to visually see all of the names written out because we could actually get an idea of how many people perished, as opposed to just getting a numerical statistic. It took the people about 15 years to come up with a list of all the victims and another year and a half to write all of the names out.
We also went to the old Jewish cemetery. It was filled with gravestones very close together and from all different time periods. Because there was not enough space to bury the dead, the Jews stacked bodies on top of bodies over time. There were about 12 levels of graves. Our tour guide told us that if you look at the symbols depicted on the graves, you could figure out their family name. For example...A pair of hands is Cohen, a water pitcher is Levy, a rose could be Rosenthal or Rosenstein. Modern jewish names are mostly german translations- so families with the words "Gold" or "Silver" like Goldberg or Silverstein were bought to elevate their status hundreds of years ago. Jews wanted to have German last-names so they could fit into society better and be more respected.
The tour was a bit overwhelming. The tour guide presented way too much information, but a lot of it was things I knew from before. George thought that we were at the beginner level of Jewish knowledge (which my roommates definitely were) so he didn't present us with too many complicated facts. After the tour, we went to get some hot chocolate and then Katelin went home because she didn't feel well, and Kathleen and I went to the Communist museum. It was a lot of reading but it had some really interesting info about communism in Czechoslovakia. It had different artifacts like communist books, old bike, a big scary suit in case there was a nuclear attack. THere was also this blackboard with a homework assignment and poem from the teacher in Russian about some girl feeding geese and cows. There was a short documentary as well that included very graphic footage of protesters against the regime. It showed people getting beat up and harassed by the Commies. One British man was trying to get footage of the protest and a commie ripped out his film. There was also a 20 yr old student who lit himself on fire to protest the regime and died from his burns. After the museum, we walked back to the hostel, got some food at the supermarket for dinner, and just chilled at the hostel for the night.