The former Jewish cemetery in Prostějov will be a cultural monument

Prostějov - The Ministry of Culture has included the former Jewish cemetery in Prostějov, which was destroyed during the German occupation and whose gravestones with Jewish inscriptions were taken by people from the town and surrounding villages, on the list of cultural monuments. Rabbi Louis Kestenbaum told journalists today in Prostějov. He arrived at the site of the former cemetery from the USA, accompanied by two dozen Jewish supporters from the United States, Great Britain, Israel, Austria, and the Czech Republic. The ministry's decision is not yet final.

The proposal to declare the former Jewish cemetery, where a park and a school now stand, was submitted by the Jewish organization Kolel Damesek Eliezer and was supported by the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic as well as heritage preservationists. However, the Prostějov City Hall disagreed with the proposal. Its spokesperson, Jana Gáborová, confirmed the information about the declaration of the cemetery as a cultural monument to ČTK and stated that the council has not yet decided whether to appeal the ministry's verdict.

The spokesperson for the Ministry of Culture, Simona Cigánková, told ČTK that the ministry has already issued a decision, which is however not yet final, so details cannot be disclosed. "If no participant in the proceedings appeals, the decision should come into legal effect on July 28," she noted.

Kestenbaum sharply criticized the city today, stating that the city does not want to accommodate the proposal for a memorial arrangement of the space of the former Jewish cemetery. "It is unbelievable that 71 years after the Holocaust in a democratic country, the highest representative of the city (Mayor Alena Rašková from the ČSSD) is sabotaging efforts to honor the 1,924 deceased citizens of Prostějov, who still lie beneath the ground at the site of the Jewish cemetery, destroyed during the Nazi occupation by the then municipal administration," he said.

The city justified its disagreement with the proposal to declare the old Jewish cemetery a cultural monument by stating that engineering networks, including a hot water supply for the nearby housing estate, run underneath the land. "Any potential repair or reconstruction will now be more complicated," said Gáborová.

According to Gáborová, Prostějov is negotiating with the Jewish community about a sensitive arrangement of the memorial site that will be dignified and will not significantly disturb the space. "They (participants of the memorial event) want to restore the entire area as a Jewish cemetery. The city does not want the entire space, including the parking lot and access areas to the school, to become a cemetery again as a whole. We are negative towards that," Gáborová said.

According to Kestenbaum, the architectural proposal for the memorial site does not contain any disruptive elements. The former cemetery is now only commemorated by a monument. "The memorial site can be expanded, for example, by sensitively incorporating some of the found gravestones," Gáborová believes.

The old Jewish cemetery in Prostějov was established in 1801 and was abolished in 1943 at the urging of the German mayor. Most gravestones were then uprooted, used as building material, or repurposed. A significant Jewish community lived in Prostějov until the 19th century. Among those buried in the abolished cemetery are the ancestors of philosopher Edmund Husserl and writer Stefan Zweig.