The collection comprises thirty-nine synagogue textiles discovered shortly after the end of the war on Czech territory and held in the care of the Jewish Museum in Prague since the 1950s. These objects are rare witnesses to Jewish communities that Nazi occupation forces sought to erase from the face of the earth.
Predominantly Sephardic in type, the textiles include synagogue curtains (parokhot), Torah mantles (me’ilim), and covers (mappot), many bearing dedicatory inscriptions in Hebrew and Ladino, the language widely used by Sephardic Jews across the Mediterranean and beyond. When incorporated into the museum’s inventory in the mid-1950s, they were broadly labeled as originating from the “Balkans,” reflecting the limited possibilities for provenance research at the time.

To discover the full story of the precious set of textiles see the press release.