The walls of names
Some eighty thousand names written by hand from floor to ceiling — absolute austerity, and an effect you do not forget.
VitVit — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Ricardalovesmonuments — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Ricardalovesmonuments — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Øyvind Holmstad — CC BY-SA 3.0
From about twelve upwards, with preparation. The children's drawings section in particular is very hard. With younger children, skip this site and start at the Spanish Synagogue.
A camp and walled town north of Prague used as a transit point for deporting Bohemian and Moravian Jews to the extermination camps. Nazi propaganda presented it as a "model town" while the reality was entirely different. It can be visited today as a day trip from Prague.
Out of respect for what the place is: a memorial to real people, named, rather than a sight. Observe the rule even when nobody is watching.
Enter at Pinkas and exit straight into the Old Cemetery — the two connect. Then take a break before the Spanish Synagogue; moving from this weight to that ornament needs a pause.
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From outside, the Pinkas Synagogue is a small, quiet 16th-century building beside the Old Jewish Cemetery. Inside it is the heaviest place in Prague. After the Second World War it was converted into a memorial to the Bohemian and Moravian Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and the names of some eighty thousand people were written on its walls — by hand, letter by letter — each with a date of birth and a date of disappearance, arranged by the towns they came from. There are no photographs, no documents, no long captions: only names, floor to ceiling, in every room. The effect of that austerity is stronger than any exhibition could be. Under communism the names were painted over, ostensibly because of damp, and the building was closed; they were not fully rewritten until after 1989 — so the walls themselves testify to two periods of history. Upstairs is the exhibition of children's drawings from the Terezín camp: pictures made by children in secret art classes inside the camp, which survived hidden in two suitcases. Most of those who drew them did not survive. That room is the hardest in Prague, and among the most important. Entry is on the Jewish Museum combined ticket.
Some eighty thousand names written by hand from floor to ceiling — absolute austerity, and an effect you do not forget.
Pictures that survived hidden in two suitcases, drawn by children in secret classes inside the camp — most of whom did not survive.
The names are grouped by the towns and villages people came from — you read the map of an entire community that vanished.
The names were painted over under communism and rewritten after 1989 — the wall testifies to two layers of history.
Široká 3, Josefov, Prague 1