Attached you find an offcial statement of the Jewish Community of Prague which proves that there is no any reason to be worried about the Old-Jewish Cemetery of Prague.
Sincerely yours
Leo Pavlat
Director of the Jewish Museum in
Prague
--------------------------------------------
The Jewish Community in Prague and
its Chief Rabbi consider it their duty to correct certain misinformation
spread outside the Czech Republic in the course of a campaign to save the
preserved sections of a Jewish cemetery in Prague which had been abolished
more than five hundred years ago. The Jewish Community in Prague and its
Chief Rabbi wish to provide true information to the Jewish and Non-Jewish
public, above all outside the Czech Republic, about the true state of affairs.
First of all, we must stress that
the Jewish cemetery whose parts were unearthed by the Ceska Pojistovna
(Czech Insurance Company) during the construction of an underground parking
lot far beyond the limits of the former Jewish Quarter had been abolished
in the 15th century of the common era and is by no means identical with
the world-famous Jewish cemetery located within the former Jewish Quarter.
The latter, commonly known as the Old Jewish Cemetery, is a burial ground
founded in the 15th century within the walls of the Jewish Quarter (it
contains, among others, the grave of Maharal). This existing (never abolished)
Old Jewish Cemetery is owned by the Jewish Community in Prague and is administered
by the Jewish Museum. The Old Jewish Cemetery is accessible daily except
Shabbat and other Jewish holidays to hundreds of visitors from all over
the world; we consider the allegation that the Jewish Community would give
its consent to the construction of an underground parking lot under a cemetery
owned by the Jewish Community to be an inexcusable defamation.
The Jewish cemetery in question
(not identical with the existing Old Jewish Cemetery located in a completely
different part of Prague) was abolished in 1478 by the Czech sovereign
Ladislas Jagiello (Vladislav Jagelonský). In the course of following
five centuries, buildings were erected on the territory of this abolished
cemetery; any skeletal remains of our ancestors found during the construction
work performed there within half a millenium had been exhumed and reburied
at the still existing Old Jewish Cemetery within Prague's Jewish Quarter;
understandably, after such a prolonged period of construction activities
in a densely populated urban area, neither the Jewish Community nor any
historians or archeologists could foresee the existence of any preserved
parts of the former cemetery including those discovered at the present
construction site of the Czech Insurance Company.
Immediately upon the abolishment
of the cemetery in the 15th century, all property rights of the Jewish
community to the entire area became null and void; parcels of land located
on the territory of the former cemetery or houses built on such lots became
either State (or Crown) property or private property. Naturally, such development
also applied to the lot owned by the Czech Insurance Company; presently,
the respective lot is entered in the Land Register as the property of the
Czech Insurance Company.
However, property rights in the
Czech Republic can be restricted in the interest of protecting cultural
monuments. Precisely on such grounds, the Jewish Community in Prague, upon
the request of its Chief Rabbi, has taken steps to ensure the legal protection
of these and other preserved parts of the abolished cemetery within the
zones unaffected by construction. In cooperation with the Jewish Museum
in Prague, the Jewish Community immediately addressed the respective institutions,
i. e. the Czech Insurance Company, the Czech Ministry of Culture, the Municipal
Council of the Capital Prague, the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic,
the Monument Protection Authority, and the Archeology Institute of the
Czech Academy of Sciences in order to prevent the imminent destruction
of the part of the cemetery discovered on the construction site of the
Czech Insurance Company. The result of the ensuing complicated negotiations
was the proposal to catalogue all the interconnected segments of the abolished
cemetery (at the present time, most of those segments are not immediately
endangered) in order to ensure their lasting protection against damage
and/or destruction by declaring them a cultural monument.
A separate issue within the entire
problem area represented the question how to save the part of the cemetery
located within the existing construction pit.
The first possible scenario was
to halt all construction activities and alter the respective construction
project. The construction work performed so far on the respective construction
site has been executed on the basis of a valid construction permit; therefore,
the Czech Insurance Company would be entitled to receive a commensurate
indemnification if it were forced to abandon its ongoing project. According
to the Czech Insurance Company, interrupting the construction work and
altering the project would entail a loss amounting to ten million US dollars;
the Ministry of Culture (representing the Czech state) is unable to pay
such an indemnification; it is conceivable that no one else would provide
the Czech Insurance Company with such a sum.
The second possible scenario was
to exhume the bones and rebury them at a protected Jewish cemetery; besides
irreversible damage to the respective section of the cemetery, accepting
this scenario would create a dangerous precedent. Following this pattern
- considering the lack of scruples on the part of some building contractors
and the deficiency of the present Czech legislation in the field of protection
of cultural monuments - could spell future destruction of further Jewish
cemeteries which might still not revert to the Jewish Communities or whose
existence is presently unknown.
Under these circumstances, the Czech
Insurance Company, the Ministry of Culture, and the Jewish Community in
Prague lead by their effort to find a satisfactory solution to the problem
concluded a trilateral agreement involving the following components:
1) The Ministry of Culture
will declare the locality owned by the Czech Insurance Company and
all other parts of the cemetery in its original extent a cultural monument;
2) The Czech Insurance Company will,
under the supervision of the Chief Rabbinate, protect the graves against
damage; it will lower the entire part of the burial ground (encased in
concrete, without damaging any of the individual graves) to the bottom
of the construction site; a separate consecrated space will be created
there; this space will be accessible to visitors upon demand.
3) The Czech Insurance Company
and the Ministry of Culture will jointly establish the Ministry's contribution
to cover a part of the cost of the entire operation.
After certain doubts regarding the
suitability of the above described decision were voiced outside the Czech
Republic, Prague's Chief Rabbinate consulted members of the respective
Rabbinical Court in Israel whereupon the Court approved of the position
of Prague's Rabbinate. In a situation where some influential Jewish institutions
have expressed their objections regarding the aforesaid approach (thus
placing the Jewish Community in Prague into a second-rate position within
its own area of competency) the Chief Rabbi of Prague has asked the Chief
Rabbi of Israel to present his final opinion. Should the Chief Rabbi of
Israel express disapproval of the above mentioned preliminary agreement,
the Jewish Community in Prague and its Chief Rabbinate will feel obliged
to leave the representation of the right of our ancestors to rest in peace
to those who assume they stand the chance to reach a better solution.
As a conclusion we can state that
the graves located at the part of the cemetery discovered in the building
pit remained intact. No bones were excavated and stored in 36 bags in a
neighboring store-house without guarding as Mr. Moshe Stern from London
says in an article published on January 13, 2000 in the Jerusalem Post.
On the contrary, activities of the Prague Jewish Community resulted in
stopping the construction work and archaeological research above the graves´
layer.
Prague, January 13, 2000
Efraim Sidon, Chief Rabbi of Prague
and Land Rabbi
Jiri Danícek, Chairman of
the Jewish Community in Prague
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Michel G.: Risk of destruction
of Prague Jewish Cemetery - 6.2.00
The Jewish community in Prague is
being pressured by the Czech Government to allow the construction of residential
properties on the site of the old Jewish cemetery in the Jewish Quarter
there. The 800-year-old cemetery, which survived the Nazi destruction of
Jewish religious sites in Central and Eastern Europe, is the last of its
kind, and contains the grave of the Maharal of Prague (R. Yehudah Loewy,
17th century scholar) and other Torah greats. Prague's Chief Rabbi
Efraim Sidon has asked for Jews worldwide to take urgent action to prevent
the desecration of the cemetery. Czech Minister of Culture Mr. Pavel Dorstal
may be e-mailed at minkult@mkcr.cz Below is a sample letter which you can
send. Simply copy and paste it, And fill in your name and country at the
bottom. Please copy and forward this letter to all you know.
Dear Mr. Dorstal,
I am writing to you to protest the
pressure being placed on Prague's
Jewish community by the Czech government,
to allow construction of residential properties on the site of the Jewish
cemetery in the Jewish Quarter of Prague.
This ancient cemetery, which survived
the Nazi destruction of Jewish
religious sites in Central and Eastern
Europe, is the last of its kind, and contains the graves of many important
Jewish scholars.
As the Minister of Culture in Czechoslovakia,
I appeal to you to act immediately to prevent the desecration of the cemetery.
Sincerely yours,
Your name, Your country
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