The Lobkowicz Museum and Old Jewish Quarter

The second day in Prague we went to see the private collection of the Lobkowicz family in their former city palace. The Lobkowicz family was a prominent Czech noble family with ties to the Habsburgs and the Spanish royal family. Over the years they had accumulated many artifacts that were seized along with their properties by the Nazi’s and then the Soviet Union. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the family’s decedents tracked down and restored much of what they had lost and but it on public display to preserve them. To list a few pieces of most interest to me there were many 12^th century religious artifacts, a Velazquez painting of la Infanta Margarita, and music manuscripts of Mozart and Beethoven in the composers’ original handwriting. The palace itself was impressive, but the collection inside was amazing and the audio guide we had narrated by family members was particularly good as it told many of the stories behind the pieces and how their family acquired them.

Room in Lobkowicz Palace

After a tasty traditional Czech lunch of goulash and bread dumplings, I walked around the Old Jewish Quarter and visited several of the old Synagogues which are now museums with information on Jewish history in Prague. This was one of the most difficult parts of the trip for me thus far. The Jewish people in Prague have suffered a long history of discrimination and expulsion from Eastern Europe. The most recent and tragic of course is the Holocaust during the Second World War. After the Nazi’s took this region, all of the people in the quarter I was standing in were evicted from their homes and sent to the Terezín where many awaited deportation to Auschwitz and the gas chambers. The Pinkas Synagogue has been transformed into a memorial for all those who died in the holocaust from Prague. The names of all those who perished from Prague are written on the walls and they cover nearly all of the space. It’s hard to imagine this scale of mass murder and looking at all of the names, entire families, just from one city made me feel sick. On the upper floor was an exhibition of children’s drawings found in suitcases inside the concentration camp. In order to give the children a sense of normalcy in the camp, they organized school lessons and art classes. I cannot even fathom the situation those people were in and for them to continue to try and distract the children from their bleak reality must have taken a lot of strength and I admire the men and women who made these images possible. Some of the drawings could have come from any child, showing dragons and princesses and others depicted life before the camps with signs saying “No Jews Allowed” over playgrounds and girls with yellow stars on their dresses. It is one thing to read about history, and its certainly another to see the actual artifacts of those who lived it. I cannot find the words to describe how I felt, but it was overall a very somber yet enlightening experience.

Jewish Cemetery With Ceremonial Hall in the Background