A sobering day

Most of the day was spent in the old Jewish area of Prague. We started off by visiting the Pinkas Synagogue built in 1535 by Aaron Meshullam Horowitz.

After the Second World War, the synagogue was turned into a Memorial to the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia butchered by the Nazis. On its walls are inscribed the names of 80,00 Jewish victims and the names of the communities to which they belonged. In 1968, the Memorial had to be closed because ground water was endangering the structure. The Communist regime deliberately held up renovation work and removed the painted inscriptions. Finally, in 1992-1994, the 80,000 names of the Jewish victims of Bohemia and Moravia were rewritten on its walls.

The memorial is a truly chilling testimony to the murdered Jews, all without a known grave. To put the numbers involved into appalling perspective, "only" 54,896 names appear on the Menin Gate memorial to the the British missing of World War 1 and "only" 35,000 missing are commemorated on the Tyne Cot memorial, in the largest British Cemetery of WW1.

When we emerged from the Old Jewish Cemetery we were met by a street full of stalls selling souvenirs, including wooden carvings of Jewish people. Are these simply whimsical or are they racially offensive? Holocaust tourism is a complex issue!