A new issue of the journal Judaica Bohemiae (Vol. 51/2016, 2) came out at the end of December 2016. In the opening study, Olga Sixtová presents the results of extensive research into a source that has so far been little used in the specialist literature – the Pinkas of Kolín Synagogue (The Ledger of the Kolín Synagogue Treasurers), which was kept between 1730 and 1783. On the basis of a detailed analysis of its content and language, and through a comparison with other preserved sources, the author provides new and extraordinarily valuable information relating to the organization, administration and economic life of the Kolín Jewish Community, the second largest in Bohemia. The following study is based on detailed research by Magda Veselská and examines how the Prague Jewish Museum's extensive collections were put together during the Second World War, how the Central Jewish Museum operated during the war, and what role was played by Prague Jewish Community employees in connection with its creation. This paper also focuses considerable attention on the important question of how and when the ‘museum of an extinct race’ slogan first appeared, which to this day is still often regarded as a historical fact.
The present volume also contains reports on the conference ‘Remnants of the Past or Laboratories of Modernity?’, which dealt with the issue of Jewish political communities in Moravia after 1848 (3–5 May 2016, Olomouc, I. Koeltzsch – J. Vitámvásová) and on the international workshop ‘Suppressed Historiography, Erased Memory?’, which explored the perception of the Shoah in Central and Eastern Europe under Communism (30 November –1 December 2015, Halle; M. Sedlická). In addition, Arno Pařík provides information about the exhibition ‘The Missing Images: Eugeen Van Mieghem and the Jewish Emigrants to the New World’, which was held by the Jewish Museum in Prague and the Eugeen Van Mieghem Museum, Antwerp at the Robert Guttmann Gallery between September 2015 and April 2016.
The final section of the volume contains reviews of two books: Prameny k dějinám Židů v Čechách a na Moravě ve středověku. Od počátků do roku 1347 [Sources on the History of the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia in the Middle Ages – From the Beginnings until 1347], an extensive publication that was published in 2015 by the Institute of History at the Czech Academy of Sciences as part of the Czech Archive series (P. Kocman); and Hannelore Burger's Heimatrecht und Staatsbürgerschaft österreichischer Juden. Vom Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts bis in die Gegenwart (Böhlau Verlag 2014, Z. Stoklásková).