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New Report Highlights Rise of Anti-Semitism in Czech Republic
Recent reports by the Jewish community in Czech Republic find that anti-Semitism is on the rise with anti-Semitic incidents nearly doubling in 2019 with a total of 694 attacks.
According to an article by ABC News, the majority of incidents in 2019 were conducted on the internet by far-right groups, disinformation websites, and activists involved in the international campaign to boycott Israel. Three attacks targeted Jewish property, and six involved anti-Semitic threats including harassment and verbal insults. There were no reported physical attacks.
The Federation of the Jewish Communities also reported that a monument in Prague’s main train station honoring the children saved by Sir Nicholas Winton during the Holocaust was damaged by an unknown perpetrator. Sir Winton saved 669 Jewish children from Czechoslovakia by arranging for eight trains to carry them through Germany to Britain at the beginning of World War II in 1939. The saved children were sent to foster parents while most of their birth parents died in the Holocaust.
Today, roughly 3,900 Jews reside in the Czech Republic. The majority of the Jewish population lives in Prague, attending one of the five active synagogues in the city. Most of the Jewish buildings in Prague were preserved during the Holocaust and are still used today.
While the report by the Jewish community found that anti-Semitic nearly doubled in the Czech Republic in 2019, anti-Semitism is still at a relatively low level in the country comparison to other European states.
