The Jewish community of Czechoslovakia is steadily declining and is now believed to number about 15,000 compared with the 30,000 registered in the census of 1950, and the 400,000 who lived in the country before World War II.
The present total of about 15,000 can be gauged from a new report by the International Council of Jews from Czechoslovakia (ICJC), stating that last year the community had between 6000 and 7000 registered adult members.
The report–the first of its kind on post-war Jewry in Czechoslovakia–also shows that one-third of the Jews living there in 1968 had since died. The number of localities in which Jews reside has also fallen since 1968–from 193 to 174.
The capital, Prague, still has the largest number of registered congregants–644–at the end of last year compared with 934 in 1968, followed by Brno with 237 members (295 in 1968); Ostravia with 122 (154 in 1968); and Bratislava with 88 (314 in 1968).
Much of the information in the ICJC report is culled from “Vestnik,” the officials monthly organ of Czech Jewry, first launched 40 years ago. Today its readers include former Czech Jews living in Western countries. The latest issue, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the paper’s inception, pays tribute to its pre-war editors, Gustav Fleischmann, Dr. Frantisek Friedmann and Josef Pollack, as well as to its post-war editor, Dr. Rudolf Iltis, who died last year.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
