“Jews of Czechia: Yesterday and Today” Documentary

Filmmaker Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the producer of the in-progress documentary and Yael K. Miller is the associate producer through their company Miller Mosaic LLC. Their research trip to Czechia in April/May 2023 — including visits to Prague and Terezin — provided numerous filming opportunities.

The theme of the documentary is reclaiming the Jews of Czechia (Bohemia and Moravia) in 20th and 21st Century Central European Jewish history.

JEWS OF CZECHIA: YESTERDAY AND TODAY will shed light on the Jewish communities of Bohemia and Moravia before, during, and after the Holocaust – particularly the anomaly of the Prague Jewish Museum curators being allowed by the Nazis to save Czech ritual items.

The documentary JEWS OF CZECHIA: YESTERDAY AND TODAY is planned to consist of these four parts (scroll to the bottom of this page to read more about these four parts):

• Jews of Czechia — WWI and the interwar period
• Holocaust in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia — saving the ritual objects and the “model ghetto” Terezin
• After the Holocaust — the Communist era*
• Prague, its synagogues and Jews in 21st Century Czechia

*“In 1994, in the wake of the 1989 Velvet Revolution, the buildings used by the Museum, as well as the Old Jewish Cemetery, returned to the possession of the Jewish Community of Prague and the Museum’s collections were restituted to the Federation of Jewish Communities as the legal successor of the ceased Jewish Communities.” — Wikipedia

A goal of the documentary is to present information about the Jewish ritual items saved in Czechia during WWII:

After WWII a pervasive legend has been put forward that the Nazis collected Jewish ritual items in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia for a planned museum of an extinct race. This has been proven by several scholars to be suspect.

Here is a March 2023 response from a curator of the Jewish Museum in Prague:

[T]here was no such thing as ‘a Nazi museum of an extinct race’ and there were no objects processed into the Central Jewish Museum’s collection other than those from the territory of the historical Czech lands (precisely the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia at that time, which means that even Sudetenland, in those years considered part of the German Reich, were not included).

People who provided information for JEWS OF CZECHIA (alphabetical by last name):

• František Bányai — chairman of the Prague Jewish community
• Pavel Batel — Czech writer and Terezin scholar/researcher at www.jewish-prague-tours.com
• Michael Berenbaum — director of the Sigi Ziering Institute and a professor of Jewish studies at the American Jewish University
• Susan Boyer — trustee of the Memorial Scrolls Trust
• Doron Epstein — Ayelet.com in Prague
• Helen Epstein (not related to Doron Epstein) — daughter of Czech Holocaust survivors Kurt Epstein and Franci Rabinek Epstein, who recounts her survival story in the book FRANCI’S WAR
• Bryan Felber — American filmmaker
• Rubi Gat — director of documentary DEAR FREDY about Fredy Hirsch
• Rabbi Naomi Goldman — Kol Chai Hatch End Reform Jewish Community in London
• Roberta Grossman — executive producer at Katahdin Productions
• Katherine Haber, MBE — filmmaker and social activist; niece of Frantisek Zelenka, the original stage designer of “Brundibar” and a prisoner at Terezin
• Anna Hájková — author of THE LAST GHETTO: AN EVERYDAY HISTORY OF THERESIENSTADT
• Tami Kinberg — general director of Beit Terezin in Israel
• Beth Kopin — daughter of author Marvell Ginsburg of THE TATTOOED TORAH
• David Lawson — co-author of OSTRAVA AND ITS JEWS: “NOW NO ONE SINGS YOU LULLABIES”
• Joseph Lebovic, M.D. — born in Czechoslovakia in 1947 of parents who survived the Holocaust
• Raquel Masel — niece of Fredy Hirsch
• Rabbi David Maxa — Ec Chaim in Prague
• Daniel Mendelsohn — author of THE LOST: A SEARCH FOR SIX OF SIX MILLION
• Steen Metz — child survivor of Terezin — steenmetzneverforget.com — and author of A DANISH BOY IN THERESIENSTADT, REFLECTIONS OF A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR
• Julius Muller — genealogist and guide at Toledot.org and co-author of book LIGHT BEYOND THE SHADOWS
• Hermina Neuner — oral history expert focusing on 20th century Jewish history
• Pavla Niklová — director of Jewish Museum of Prague
• Rabbi Ulrike Offenberg — congregational rabbi in Hamelin and Stuttgart; Jewish-German historian
• Jeffrey Ohrenstein — chair of the Board of Trustees of Memorial Scrolls Trust
• Mordecai Paldiel — author and former director (1984-2007) of the Department of the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem
• Sheila Palley— photographer for the Memorial Scrolls Trust and co-author of the book LIGHT BEYOND THE SHADOWS
• Petr Papousek — president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic
• Naomi Patz — author of chapter “Terezin and the ‘Last Cyclist'” in the book THE HOLOCAUST: REMEMBRANCE, RESPECT, AND RESILENCE edited by Michael Polgar and Suki John
• Rabbi Norman Patz — Holocaust educator
• Yvonne Weisgrab Penkavova — historian and educator at www.jewish-prague-tours.com
• Tereza Rafoth — Czech educator and tour guide
• Lois Roman— trustee of the Memorial Scrolls Trust
• Trevor Sage — author of PRAGUE’S STOLPERSTEINE — STUMBLING STONES: DEFIANT IN THEIR MEMORY — 2008-2021
• Joanie Schirm — nonfiction author of books about her Czech Jewish father
• Victor Shack — photographer in the U.K. and member of Kol Chai Hatch End Reform Jewish Community in London
• Margalit Shlain — historian of Central European Jewry during the Holocaust with a specialty about Terezin
• Michaela Sidenberg — visual arts curator/curator in chief of the Jewish Museum in Prague
• Amanda Smulowitz — Yad Vashem in Israel
• Ji Strangeway — film director, writer, producer
• Yetsirah Strauss — daughter of Sarah Sadian, who recounts her Bohemia-born grandmother’s survival account in the book MITZI
• Terry Swartzberg — head of the Stolpersteine organization in Munich and a spokesperson for the Stolpersteine movement

Partial bibliography list:

Books:

Bondy, Ruth. Trapped: Essays on the History of the Czech Jews, 1939-1943. Yad Vashem Publications, 2008.

Bondy, Ruth. Elder of the Jews: Jakob Edelstein of Theresienstadt. Grove Press, 1989.

Epstein, Franci Rabinek. Franci’s War: A Woman’s Story of Survival. Michael Joseph, 2020.

Epstein, Helen and Wilma Iggers, ed. Archivist on a Bicycle: Jiří Fiedler. Plunkett Lake Press, 2015.

Fiser, Rudolf, and Libor Teply and Emanuel Ranny. Trebic: Town and Time. Fibox, 1996.

Freedland, Jonathan. The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World. Harper, 2022.

Hajkova, Anna. The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Makarova, Elena, and Sergei Makarov and Victor Kuperman. University Over the Abyss: The story behind 520 lecturers and 2,430 lectures in KZ Theresienstadt 1942-1944. Verba Publishes Ltd., 2004.

Lawson, David, and Libuse Salomonovicova and Hana Sustkova. Ostrava and Its Jews: “Now No One Sings You Lullabies.” Vallentine Mitchell, 2018.

Pallay, Sheila, and Julius Muller. Light Beyond the Shadows: The Legacy of the Czech Torah Scrolls and the Renewal of Jewish Life in Czechia. Memorial Scrolls Trust, 2020.

Redlich, Gonda. The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich. Ed. Saul S. Friedman. Tr: Laurence Kutler. The University Press of Kentucky, 2021.

Rubin, Susan Goldman, and Ela Weissberger: The Cat With the Yellow Star: Coming of Age in Terezin. Holiday House, 2006.

Sage, Trevor. Prague’s Stolpersteine — Stumbling Stones: Defiant in Their Memory — 2008-2021.Oko! Multimedia, 2021.

Veselska, Magda. Defying the Beast: The Jewish Museum in Prague, 1906-1940. Jewish Museum in Prague, 2006.

Veselska, Magda. The Man Who Never Gave Up / The Story of Josef Polak (1886-1945). Jewish Museum in Prague, 2005.

Synopsis of four parts of JEWS OF CZECHIA:

Part 1: Jews of Czechia — WWI and the interwar period

What eventually became known as WWI started when a Serbian national, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Princip was captured and imprisoned in the Small Fortress of Terezin (which the Germans called Theresienstadt).

At the start of this war, the Protestant provinces of Bohemia and Moravia as well as the Catholic province of Slovakia were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The end of WWI brought the end of this empire and the formation of the independent democratic country of Czechoslovakia created from the above-named provinces.

In an interview for the documentary, Daniel Mendelsohn — author of the book THE LOST: A SEARCH FOR SIX OF SIX MILLION — talks about his feelings on seeing the cell at Terezin where Princip was held. Mendelsohn feels that WWI to WWII was one long war in Europe. He refers to the historical fact that, from the moment the Germans had to surrender at the end of WWI, they started promoting the “stab in the back” theory of why they lost the war (blaming Jews and Communists) and were eager to go to war again to prove their superiority.

Part 2: Holocaust in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia — saving the ritual objects and the “model ghetto” Terezin

Nazi Germany moved into the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in October 1938 (see Munich Agreement below), and during Kristallnacht November 9-10, 1938, the synagogues were destroyed there as well as in Germany and Austria.

The official start of WWII was September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany — with no provocation — attacked Poland. 

The perspective of the JEWS OF CZECHIA documentary is that the actual start of WWII was March 15, 1939, when none of the major European powers did anything when Nazi Germany occupied what remained of Czechoslovakia. This occupation took place less than six months after the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia had been given away to Nazi Germany in the Munich Agreement in what supposedly would ensure “peace in our times.”

The two most important parts of this documentary section will focus on 1) the collection of Jewish ritual objects and 2) Terezin (Thereisenstadt in German).

For somewhat disputed reasons, under Nazi control much of the Jewish religious artifacts of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (Czechia today) were allowed to be gathered from Jewish communities outside Prague. These religious artifacts were then catalogued by the curators of the Jewish Museum in Prague (before the curators were deported to Auschwitz) and stored in numerous warehouses around Prague.

Also, this documentary will present a different narrative than the one usually presented in regards to Terezin as a “model” ghetto. The well-known one focuses on the supposed cultural vibrancy in Terezin with musical events such as the much-described production of the children’s opera “Brundibar.” Due to our private Terezin tour with Terezin scholar/researcher Pavel Batel and further research, the more accurate narrative is that many if not most incarcerated Terezin prisoners were unable to attend these cultural events. Those who did were mostly prisoners with highly valued positions in the ghetto workforce.

Included in this section will be another anomaly about the Czech Jews under Nazi control: the Czech family camp at Auschwitz. This uniqueness is explained in an interview with Holocaust scholar and rabbi Dr. Michael Berenbaum.

Part 3: After the Holocaust – the Communist era

The centuries-old Jewish communities in Bohemia and Moravia had been destroyed by the Nazis. A low profile was kept by the small number of surviving Jewish community members who stayed in Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia reunited with Slovakia after WWII until January 1, 1993 when Czechia and Slovakia separated into two autonomous countries). Those Jews with German last names often changed these to Czech last names. Many did not share their Jewish roots with their descendants.

In an interview medical doctor Joseph Lebovic describes his birth in Czechoslovakia after WWII as the son of two Czech Jewish survivors and the family’s departure from Czechoslovakia later to escape the Communist regime.

And it was during this era in 1964 that the Communist government sold the Holocaust-salvaged 1,564 Torah Scrolls to a buyer in the U.K.  Then the Memorial Scrolls Trust — https://memorialscrollstrust.org/ — was established to share the Torahs with Jewish communities throughout the world. Jeffrey Ohrenstein, the current chair of the Board of Trustees of the Memorial Scrolls Trust, relates this account in an interview for the documentary.

Part 4: Prague’s Jews and Terezin in 21st Century Czechia

Today the old Jewish quarter in Prague is a very popular tourist destination for Jews and non-Jews alike. Only a fraction of the items owned by the Jewish Museum of Prague are on display – scattered in the historic synagogue buildings. This is because Czechia does not have a separate physical museum structure for visitors to view the collection of the Jewish Museum.

The Old Zizkov Cemetery outside the city center of Prague has been greatly reduced in size to make room for a mini golf course, restaurant, and TV tower. In an interview for this documentary, American filmmaker Bryan Felber talks about his affinity for the 2022 inaugurated Return of the Stones Memorial and the need to salvage the fragments of Czech Jewish history.

Also part of this section is that some young Czechs are beginning to discover their Jewish roots – and then embrace these roots. Historian Hermina Neuner talks in an interview about reclaiming her German Jewish last name now that Jews in Czechia no longer have to hide their identity.

Two perspectives of the Czech Jewish community today will be provided by the interviews done with: Frantisek Banyai – chairman of the Prague Jewish community and involved with the Stolpersteine (Stumbling Stones) – who talks about the Jews in Prague; Petra Papousek – current president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic – who talks about Jewish communities throughout Czechia.