Item from the Old Jewish Museum in Prague
(1906-1940)

The Jewish Museum in Prague was founded in 1906, the association statutes for its establishment were approved in August of that year. Part of the Museum's collection was an inlaid and stained oak child's cradle, which dates from the first half of the nineteenth century and stems from the Jewish community in Mohelnice na Moravě (inv. no. 32.141). The sides of the cradle bear the inscription "The little one will be big one day".

This cradle is a unique piece in the Museum's collection. The Museum contains very few items connected with the birth of a Jewish child and has few documents pertaining to Jewish communities from the Sudetenland (the area of Czechoslovakia annexed by Germany under the Munich Agreement of September 1938), to which Mohelnice belonged. This is in connection with the tragic circumstances concerning the development of the Museum's collections during World War II.

The vast range of the collection of the Old Jewish Museum in Prague will be showcased at an exhibition that is being prepared for autumn 2006 (the Museum's jubilee year) at the Museum's Robert Guttmann Gallery.