The 1000th anniversary of Jewish existence in Czechoslovakia – an event that will not be celebrated in Prague this year – will be marked in New York City on Nov. 17. A program will delineate the role that Jews have played in Central Europe for the past 10 centuries. The celebration at Town Hall is sponsored by the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews, Inc., the New York Board of Rabbis and four other Jewish organizations.
According to Lewis Weiner, chairman of the event, Jews have lived in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Slovakia – the areas that make up today’s Czechoslovakia – at least since the year 970 and there is documentary proof that Jews lived in Prague as early as 906. The millennial celebration will be devoted to their history from that time through the years of the free democracy under presidents Thomas G. Masaryk and Edward Benes and the Nazi holocaust in which 85 percent of Czech Jewry was annihilated, Mr. Weiner said. It will present their religious life, their economy, literature, arts, music and world culture. Mr. Weiner said the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews was an organization composed of former Czech citizens devoted to research and studies in the field.
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