Trip to Prague: Jewish Cemetery & Bone Church

I was told by a friend of mine that I must visit the Old Jewish Quarter in Prague and suggested a tour might be best so I would understand what I was looking at.

I did some research and found a Wittman Tours, which has specialized in Jewish tours in Prague and throughout the Czech Republic since the 1980s. Wittman Tours was kind enough to offer me a complimentary ticket to their group tour last Tuesday. It wasn’t a big group, just nine people, which was not too overwhelming.

The tour guide Matthew was tall and slim in his 30s and seemed very scholarly with his great depth of knowledge of Jewish history. He is only part Jewish but he told us many personal stories about his relatives who were part of the Holocaust.

We visited four of the most important synagogues including the Spanish, Maisel, Pinkas and Klausen plus the Old-New synagogue, the oldest active surviving one in Europe, completed in 1270. Surprisingly the Old-New synagogue was built and designed by Christian architects, resembling Gothic churches of the same era with a double nave with six vaulted bays. It was quite small and the most interesting part was the iron cage in the middle, which I had never seen before in a synagogue.

Although many synagogues and Jewish structures were demolished during the WW II, the buildings in Prague were miraculously saved only because the Nazis wanted make them into a museum to show an extinct race.

The highlight of the tour was the Jewish cemetery close by the Old New Synagogue. Operational from the first half of the 1400s until 1786, the cemetery has laid to rest some key figures in Czech Jewish history including Rabbi Jehuda Live ben Becalel, businessman Mordecai Maisel, historian David Gans and Rabbi David Oppenheim. The serenity of the cemetery was so calming, as Paris has been so tense it recent months with sirens going off all the time and heavy security all over town. The sun poured over the petrified tombstones of the cemetery and underneath the green grass glistened along with that wonderful, unmistakable autumn aroma of dried leaves, moss and dirt.

Wittman Tours http://www.wittmann-tours.com/

On Friday morning I took a one-hour train ride from Prague to Kutna Hora, which is the site of the Sedlec Ossuary. Also known as the bone church, the Sedlec Ossuary or the Cemetery Church of All Saints, it contains approximately 40,000 to 70,000 human skeletons.

The original site was an abbey cemetery where thousands of people were buried from the Black Death in the mid 14th century and the Hussite Wars in the early 15th century. After the 15th century a half blind monk was given the task of arranging the bones and skulls in the church.

I initially thought it would be creepy and uncomfortable to view so many dead remains but I actually found it quite beautiful and pristine in an odd way with the symmetry of the stacks of bones and skulls and the shades of white, cream and beige.

Tips for visiting the Sedlec Ossuary:
1.    Don’t buy your ticket online, buy it at the train station in Prague. The website was charging 18€ for the ticket and at the train station it was only 7.50€ round trip.
2.    Also, when you reach Kutna Hora, there’s a small train that connects there that goes to the next stop where the church is.

There are many other things to see in Kutna Hora including UNESCO designated churches and buildings plus a silver mine.

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