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The
crusades caused, among other things, a downfall
in the importance of the international fairs.
The importance of local markets became greater.
In Prague it was in the Old Town Square. The
jewish settlement between the Old Town Square
and Siroká ulice grew and had its own religious
and selfgoverning system. The centres of social
life were the synagogues. There were apparently
several of them.
The Pinkas Synagogue (Pinkasova synagoga) is one
of the oldest. It was built in Siroká ulice
on the west side. The so-called Old Synagogue
(Stará synagoga)
was built on the east side. The synagogues
were also a centre for teachers and
their pupils.
Studies were generally hard, especially in Prague. Efraim of Regensburg wrote, that "there are the wisest of the wise men." The legal status of the jewish settlement was resolutely changed by decree of the lateran council in the year 1215. In it the Jewish citizens were proclaimed prisoners and slaves of the Roman Empire. Jews were from then on restricted to only one profession: the exchange of money.
For over a thousand
years the city lived in its own special way.
Then in between 1893 and 1947 it was renovated
in spite of protests from the public. It was
to be replaced by more modern buildings. The
Oldnew, Pinkas, High, Klaus and Old synagogues
and ofcourse the Jewish cemetery still remind
us of the ghetto which has disappeared. There
is also the Jewish Museum in the Klaus Synagogue
that reminds us of the age-old martyrdom of
the Jews. There are more than 200 thousand
valuable objects. It only had about a thousand
in the year 1939. The rest were collected
from all over Bohemia and Moravia during the
second World War as a result of the, hopefully
last, wittinly catastrophic pogrom. On the
walls of the Pinkas Synagogue are written
77292 names of Jewish citizens from Bohemia
and Moravia, who died in concentration camps.
