Die Geschichte von Prašný Újezd Synagogue
Prašný Újezd is a small village in the Rokycany district of the Plzeň region, about three kilometres west of Mlečice, of which it has formed part since 1980. Until 1979 it was a municipality of its own, belonging first to the Hořovice district and from 1900 to Rokycany. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it had a Jewish quarter, a remnant of which, a Jewish street, was still recognisable when Jiří Fiedler compiled his survey of Jewish monuments in Bohemia and Moravia. According to the village history published by the municipality of Mlečice, the community was numerous enough in 1785 to ask the land office in Prague for permission to open its own school, and a synagogue is mentioned in sources of 1838. Fiedler describes the building as a synagogue of unknown age. The local Jews were not an independent religious community: they belonged to the community and burial society of nearby Terešov. The synagogue burned down in 1907. By 1920 no inhabitant declared themselves Jewish, and in the early 1960s the remains of the synagogue were removed together with the former gendarmerie station and other houses. Who carried out that clearance is not recorded in the sources read.
Where it stood for 69 years
Historic: Prašný Újezd (Prašný Oujezd), Hořovice district, Bohemia; plot number unknown. Today: open space in the village of Prašný Újezd, part of Mlečice, 338 08, Rokycany district, Plzeň region; exact spot unknown, pin is approximate (village centre).
Größere Karte öffnen →Die jüdische Gemeinde
Jews are documented in Prašný Újezd from at least the late eighteenth century. The village history of Mlečice calls the community of 1785 numerous and notes that it applied to the land office in Prague for permission to set up a school, which was then founded; when the school closed is not known. The same history states that the Jewish community of Prašný Újezd had once been the strongest in the surrounding area after that of Terešov. Religiously, however, the village was not independent. The Jewish Community of Prague's monument register, describing Terešov, lists Prašný Újezd among the villages whose Jews belonged to the Terešov religious community and its Chevra kadisha burial society, together with Lhotka, Cerhovice, Svinná, Chříč, Hlohovičky and Hřešihlavy. In 1898 the whole village had 61 houses and 383 inhabitants; how many of them were Jews is unknown. Wilhelm Glaser, a banker of the Creditanstalt ennobled by Emperor Franz Joseph in 1870, was born in the village in 1825.
Architektur und Gestaltung
No description, plan or photograph of the synagogue was found. Fiedler gives its age as unknown, and the earliest dated reference located is the mention of a synagogue in sources of 1838 cited in the Mlečice village history. Whether this was the first synagogue in the village or a replacement for an older prayer room is unknown. Its size, materials, seating capacity, builder and style are all unknown. The only evidence for its position is indirect: the village history says that the open space created in the early 1960s by pulling down the former gendarmerie station, the synagogue and other houses later received the village memorial to the dead of the First World War. Fiedler records a remnant of the Jewish street, which suggests that the synagogue stood within a small Jewish quarter of houses, as at neighbouring Terešov, where the register of the Jewish Community of Prague describes a cluster of small houses gathered around the synagogue.
Leben in der Synagoge
Very little is recorded about religious life in the building. The Jews of Prašný Újezd belonged to the religious community of Terešov and to its Chevra kadisha, so burials and the wider affairs of the community were tied to Terešov, where Fiedler records a Jewish cemetery probably dating from the seventeenth century. The village synagogue was the local house of prayer, and from 1785 the community also maintained a Jewish school, founded with the approval of the land office in Prague. No names of teachers, cantors, wardens or other office holders were found, and no ritual objects from the building have been traced to any collection. By the time of the fire in 1907 the congregation had probably become very small, since by 1920 nobody in the village declared themselves Jewish; whether services were still held in the building before the fire is unknown.
Zerstörung
The synagogue burned down in 1907. Both Fiedler and the village history of Mlečice give that year, but neither says how the fire started or whether it was confined to the synagogue. The building does not appear to have been restored for worship, since the Jewish community of the village had practically disappeared by 1920. What stood on the site in the following decades, a burnt-out shell or a converted remnant, is not recorded. Fiedler says only that the synagogue was later demolished. The village history is more precise: the remains were removed in the 1960s, at the beginning of that decade, together with the former gendarmerie station and other houses, to create an open space in the village. This took place under the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, but the sources read do not say who ordered or carried out the clearance.
Das Schicksal der Gemeinde
The Jewish community of Prašný Újezd faded away long before the Second World War. According to the village history, nobody in the village declared themselves Jewish by 1920. At least one Jewish resident remained or returned, however. The database of victims kept by the Terezín Initiative Institute records Josef Ehrlich, born on 14 September 1865, whose last place of residence before deportation was Prašný Újezd and who was registered in Rokycany under the Nazi German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. He was deported by the Nazis on transport T, number 547, from Plzeň to the Terezín ghetto on 26 January 1942 and died there on 16 April 1942. Whether other Jews from the village were deported, or whether any former residents who had moved elsewhere survived, is unknown. No Jewish community existed in Prašný Újezd after the war.
Der Ort heute
Prašný Újezd is now a small village with about forty permanent inhabitants. Nothing of the synagogue survives. The space cleared in the early 1960s, where the synagogue, the former gendarmerie station and other houses had stood, became an open area in the village, and the memorial to the seventeen local men killed in the First World War was moved there from its first position by house number 45. The exact plot of the synagogue has not been identified on a map, so the pin for this entry marks the village centre rather than the building itself. Fiedler noted a remnant of the Jewish street in the village.
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Fotos, Dokumente, Familiengeschichten oder Erinnerungen an diese Synagoge und ihre Gemeinde halten ihre Geschichte lebendig.
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