Juedisches Museum Nikolsburg.

(JUDAICA).

c. 1935

Twenty-two photographs of ceremonial objects from the Jewish Museum of Nikolsburg, along with images of synagogue and cemetery. Each laid onto mat with photographer’s signature (indecipherable) below.

Provenance: The Jewish Museum, London.

Nikolsburg (today known as Mikulov) is a town in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic located directly on the border with Lower Austria. The beginning of Jewish settlement in Nikolsburg dates back to 1421 and over the centuries many famed rabbinic leaders served there including R. Judah Loew ben Bezalel (the Maharal of Prague) and later, Samson Raphael Hirsch. Nikolsburg was a part of the Sudetenland which was handed over to Germany in 1938 following the Munich Agreement. The objects here photographed were in the possession of the many synagogues and institutions of learning in Nikolsburg. In 1936 they were gathered together and put on display in the Central Jewish Museum for Moravia-Silesia which opened in Nikolsburg in 1936. After the occupation of the town by the Nazis, the contents of the museum were confiscated for an “ethnological” museum which the Nazis planned to set up. As a result they were not destroyed and after the war they were collected together in the Jewish Museum in Prague where they remain to this day.