Did you know that the first european theatre lighten up by electrict light bulbs was located in Brno? And that the famous inventor Thomas Alva Edison visited the town in 1882, because this was his project?

Most people don’t, so now there is a monument to remind that:

Three giant light bulbs commemorating Thomas Alva Edison

The first electically lit theatre in Europe behind the monument

The sculpture was made by Tomáš Medek

I like this monument – people passing by were stopping to explore it, touch it, and to read the small banner. I’ve never experienced such a reception of a new sculpture on a street.

Map

Larger map

Statue of Edvard Beneš in Prague, identical to the one in Brno (source: Wikimedia Commons)

Let’s forget that Beneš had little to do with Brno and that he was a “loser president” (he ended his first term by surrending to fascists and his second term by surrending to commies). I just can not understand how can the author of Beneš decrees have a statue in front of the Faculty of law.

Beneš decrees was series of laws enacted by Beneš between 1940 and 1945. The most controversial laws were declared shortly after the end of war – and they were filled with principes of collective guilt, national chauvinism and central planned economy:

• In May 1945, Beneš confiscated the property of German and Hungarian citizens of Czechoslovakia (some 3,000,000+ people). You had to prove you were actively fighting against Nazis to save your property.
• He also nationalized major branches of industry, from coal mines to banks. Three years before communists took the power, Beneš de-facto destroyed the free market economy in the country. (This injustice has never been corrected by the governments elected after 1989, on the contrary to nationalization caused by communists after 1948.)
• In August 1945, a decree #17 deprived Czechoslovak Germans and Hungarians of Czechoslovak citizenship, which led to the deportation of one fifth of the Czechoslovak population, living in their houses for hundreds of years, to the neighbor countries.
• What makes me sick the most: Beneš stopped investigation of the ethnically-motivated violence that took place in many Czech towns during the summer of 1945. Hundreds of innocent women and children were killed in these months, partially by Czech collaborants who tried to prove how loyal they were to their nation.

I am not saying that Edvard Beneš was an embodiment of evil, nor that all Germans and Hungarians were innocent victims of his laws. However, Beneš lived in an era that had nothing to do with law as we understand it today and his “Expell Them All, Let God Sort Them Out!” decrees prove it quite well. There are many people who deserve a statue in front of the Faculty of law much more than Beneš does.

Too bad that the Czech republic is still not ready for a cold-blooded debate about all the things that happened between years 1938 and 1948.

Your comments at Facebook

Yesterday I asked this question: This weekend, a statue of Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš will be mounted in front of the Faculty of law. Do you think he deserves such an honour?

I liked your answers:

• Tomáš Kutypa: don’t know what common have Beneš and communism…I think he should be there..
• Andre Bienvenu: No. And why in front of the faculty of law? I’m not taking up for the Germans and Austrians, but didn’t he illegally take their land and expel them all? Not all the Germans were Nazis in Czechoslovakia and many of the families had lived here for several generations.
• Peter Fronček: kind of ironic, that the faculty of law used to be gestapo headquarters…

Without the functionalist architecture designed and financed by Jews, Brno would have a totally different, much less elegant face.

History

First Jews came to Brno in the 13th century and their population was growing fast, as Brno was among the few tolerant towns opened to the community.

The original ghetto was located roughly around the current Masarykova st.

In 1454, all Jews were forced out of the town. It was probably because of all the money Jews had loaned to the local politicians, who decided to solve their debt in this immoral way.

The expelled community settled in towns Boskovice, Rousínov, Slavkov, Dolní Kounice and Ivančice.

Until 1848, the access of Jews to Brno was strictly regulated. However, during the 18th and 19th century Jews returned to do business in the town and generally speaking they had great success. Many of the factories in neigborhoods Cejl, Židenice and Trnitá belonged to Jewish businessmen.

The great synagogue, built in the 1850s and destroyed by nazis in 1939

20th century: great rise, tragic fall

The First Republic of Czechoslovakia (1918–1938) was probably the luckiest period for Jews in Brno, even though being so short. In that era, the Jewish community gave Brno several great minds who shaped the face of the town:

Actor Hugo Haas. Source: Wikimedia Commons

• Otto Eisler, architect; designer of the only remaining synagogue of Brno at Skořepka st.
• Arnošt Wiesner, architect; author of several buildings in the centre, incl. today Komerční banka at Náměstí Svobody sq. and also the designer of the town’s crematorium.
• Roman Jakobson, linguist; Jakobson’s works influenced the complete field of social sciences. Mr Jakobson was not born in Brno nor died here but he stayed here for some time and was connected to other great minds of the town.
• Hugo Haas; actor; one of the most popular Czech film stars.
• Alfred Stiassny, businessman; owner of villa Stiassny, later used as a hotel for diplomats.

It’s good to remind that the Tugendhat family, who built and owned the coolest villa ever, were also Jews.

There were 12,000 Jews living in Brno in 1938. One year later, nazis came to Brno and started working on their evil plan of cleaning the planet from Jews. Only approx. 1,000 of Brno’s Jews survived the war.

Beautiful “Great synagogue” was destroyed as soon as in March 1939. “New synagogue” survived the war but was torn down in 1985 to clear a space for a new hospital. (There was a plan of turning the synagogue into a theatre, which would be really cool; what a pity.)

The Jews in Brno today

There’s a small community of pracising Jews in Brno. The only “running” synagogue in Moravia is located at Skořepka st. near centre — it is a pure functionalist building built in 1934, so it looks like a gym.

Jewish cemetery in Židenice

The biggest Jewish cemetery at Moravia is located in quarter Židenice and is opened for public. (By the way, although the Czech word for a Jew is “Žid”, there have been almost no Jews living Židenice and even the name of the quarter is derrived from a certain Bohemian surname.)

Brno has a small museum of Jewish culture, located at Třída kapitána Jaroše st.

I myself have several friends from Jewish families. They don’t practise and I think they don’t even believe in God but still are proud about their origin.

Jewish cuisine anyone?

As far as I know, there’s no Jewish restaurant in Brno (hey, that’s a great business niche!) but I have eaten in a nice Jewish restaurant Makkabi in Boskovice, a poetic small town with a ghetto north of Brno.

To be continued

I will try to post an article about a certain minority each week. I’ll also write an article about all the wonderful Jewish ghettos and synagogues in towns around Brno sooner or later.

Links and further sources

The Jewish Community of Brno has a nice website but it lacks an English version.

If you are looking for a grave of some person burried in Brno, try this search engine.

I highly recommend a bilingual book “Brno židovské” by Jaroslav Klenovský. The book contains a great list of further sources:

Literature and sources about the Jews in Brno

The dam northwest of Brno was created in the 1930s and it flooded the old village “Kníničky”. New village with the same name was built nearby and the ruins of the original place have been decaying under water…

…until now – the dam is being cleaned and it has extremly low level of water, which exposes the ruins of the destroyed village. Although the place smells and there is really nothing beautiful to see, it atracts many people these days.

Old Kníničky in the times when there were no New Kníničky - before WW2. Source: rozdrojky.blog.cz

Old Kníničky today

If you are going to visit the ruins of old Kníničky, don’t touch any suspicious objects there – some explosives from World War II were found nearby in recent days.

Map (the ruins are denoted by the green arrow)

Zvětšit mapu

Let this small gallery commemorate the bloody events preceding April 26, 1945, the day the Red Army conquered Brno.

A war victim being buried in front of Mahen's theatre. Note the missing pillar.

Horse artillery going down the Milady Horákové st.

Red Army passing trough Tišnovská st. for a battle at Soběšice.

The pictures have been reprinted from Vojtěch Žampach’s book about the events of April 1945, called “Směr Brno” (“Direction: Brno”). I was directly inspired by Jason Powell’s gallery Looking into the past.

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