The following article is an adaptation of a lecture given at the 28th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy held in Chicago in August, 2008—Ed.
The political and social changes that occurred in the Czech Republic after November 1989 opened access to archives and documents, not only to professional historians interested in the history of the Jewish population of the Czech Lands, but also to ordinary people of Jewish origin seeking their family roots. For many individuals, interest in genealogical research was spurred by the new post-1989 Czech laws concerning restitution of property and indemnification of victims of racial persecution in World War II. Others began their genealogical research under the stimulus of questions posed by children or grandchildren: “Where did our family come from? Who were our ancestors? How did they live, and where did they die?”
This article explains the origins of registers of Jewish vital events (births, marriages, and deaths) and the ways in which they can be used by genealogical researchers. It also describes the types of archival records available at each level of the Czech archival system, with focus on records of particular interest for Jewish genealogy. Actual archival sources are cited to demonstrate types of results possible.
Jewish Community Registers
The path to discovering one’s family history usually begins with a search for information in registers of vital events—births, marriages, and deaths. Such registers (Czech matriky) exist for the Czech Christian population from the 16th or 17th centuries onward, but were created for the Jewish population in 1784 by decree of Austrian Emperor Joseph II. This decree ordered registers of Jewish births, marriages, and deaths to be kept in a precise format: a separate column for each category of information about the individual whose vital event was recorded.
The decree assigned Catholic priests the responsibility of creating the registers and ensuring that they were kept carefully. In order to guarantee standardized registration, pre-printed forms were used. The decree also instructed Jewish registrars to maintain the same type of registers, but allowed them to adapt the columns to categories used in the Jewish religion. In localities with rabbis, the rabbis were assigned responsibility for maintaining the registers; where Jewish families lived scattered in the countryside without an organized community or a rabbi of their own, the master record was to be kept by the rabbi of the closest Jewish community. An alternative option was for Jewish vital events to be recorded on the back pages of the Catholic parish registers by the local Catholic priest.
In 1787, authorities took steps to improve and standardize the master records of Jewish vital events. A new decree ordered that parish registers and circumcision registers were to be kept for the Jewish population in the German language, and all Jewish records were to include the official given names and family names assigned to every individual. In practice, this meant that all Jews permitted to reside in the Czech Lands, by virtue of the so-called Familiant (licensed Jew) law of 1726, were compelled to adopt family names. They and their families were to use these names henceforth in all formal activities, such as records in the vital event registers, visiting schools, contact with state or manorial authorities, lists of Jews, and so forth.
The relationship between the Jewish population and the state in the Czech Lands underwent a fundamental change in 1797 with the so-called “systemal patent.” This decree outlined the rights and obligations of the Jewish population. For example, Jewish teachers were responsible for maintenance of Jewish vital registers. In localities with no Jewish schools, the responsibility fell on men appointed and sworn by the local manorial authorities. Catholic priests were responsible for checking the Jewish registers and for keeping duplicate registers of Jewish births, marriages, and deaths, so-called “control registers.”
The years 1848-49 saw liberal uprisings (sometimes called “revolutions”) throughout many parts of Europe, including the Czech lands. These events began the process of full emancipation of Czech Jewry and the abolition of all discriminatory laws against them that had existed up to that time. These changes are reflected in the master records of Jewish vital events. The registers kept by Jewish registrars were declared to be authentic records acceptable as evidence in a court of law. Supervision of Jewish vital registration by Catholic priests was abolished. Instead, Jewish registrars were ordered to keep duplicates of the originals with appropriate indexes and to submit them to district authorities annually. District authorities were instructed to place the duplicate Jewish registers in safekeeping and to compare them with the original registers. As late as the first half of the 20th century, district authorities still checked the maintenance of the original registers of Jewish communities and stored duplicate Jewish registers.
When the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia between 1938 and 1945, the registers and documents of the Jewish communities suffered a fate similar to that of the Jewish population itself. In October 1938, Jewish communal registries in German-occupied Czech borderlands were closed. Registers from the Bohemian border region were collected in Liberec, the center of the so-called Sudetenland. The registers were not maintained between 1939 and 1945, but were completed retrospectively—death records especially—by referring to the master records. The registers from the Jewish communities in the border regions of northern and southern Moravia did not survive at all and are believed to have been lost at the beginning of the German occupation.
In 1942, the Office of the Reichsprotektor ordered that all original Jewish registers in the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia be sent to the Central Office for the Regulation of the Jewish Question in Prague. In April 1945, by order of the Gestapo, the original registers were transported to a paper mill in Prague and destroyed. In 1943, the duplicate registers also were collected, but thanks to the Czech employees of the Central Office for the Regulation of the Jewish Question, they were stored along with the older control registers. Duplicate registers for the years 1880–1945, saved by virtue of having been stored outside Prague, were (in October 1945) declared to be valid originals for issuing certificates, official documents, and licenses.
All preserved registers were transferred to the Prague Jewish community, which then was entrusted with the further administration of the registers for Bohemia and Moravia. In December 1949, a new law removed administration of vital registers from the churches, instead establishing standardized civil registers supervised by non-religious authorities—initially district committees, today municipal offices and town councils. In compliance with this law, the Prague Jewish community transferred the entire collection of Jewish registers, along with all other master documents, to the district committee of Prague. They remained there until 1983, when the entire collection was transferred to the Central State Archive in Prague, now the National Archive. This priceless collection of more than 3,000 volumes of Jewish birth, marriage, and death registers that cover Bohemia, Moravia, and the Czech part of Silesia for the period 1784–1949 now is held in the First Department of the Czech National Archive in Prague. The collection inventory is available on the website of the National Archive at <www.nacr.cz>.
Early Registers
The earliest Jewish birth registers, like the Christian baptismal registers of the time, included date of birth, child’s name, parents’ names, and names of witnesses. In addition, they included details specific to the Jewish religion: circumcision ceremonies for boys and name-giving ceremonies for girls. Entries in the early registers were simple, often including only names and dates. The information included depended on the decisions and conscientiousness of the man responsible for making the entries. Standardized rules for the design of the master registers were not issued until 1838, when specific columns for each category of information were mandated.
Most registers were not completed in such an ideal form. The registrar always determined how much information was recorded. Duplicate registers, especially, often were kept in outline form only. For example, duplicate birth registers sometimes recorded only the names of parents and omitted all other mandated information. In addition, the Familiant law allowed only 8,500 Jewish families to reside in Bohemia and only 5,400 in Moravia. In these families, only the first born son had the right to marry and replace his father as head of the family—called the familiant in German and Czech documents. Subsequent sons had to wait for a vacancy among the official families and needed to apply for a state permit to marry. Some Jewish marriages were performed by rabbis without the requisite state permit. Any child of such a marriage was defined officially as fatherless and was recorded in the Jewish birth registers under the mother’s maiden name. The father could assume responsibility for such a child, and if he did, his declaration of paternity, together with the signatures of two witnesses, was recorded as a note. Children of parents who married after 1848 were legitimized retrospectively and, at that time, received their fathers’ surnames. This fact is not widely known by their descendants and often complicates research in pre-1848 registers.
In 1838, the same year that standardized forms were introduced, registration districts were specified. The community with the largest Jewish population was designated the center of a district and the location where the registrar was supposed to reside. If the registrar’s position was not filled in a particular locality, births, marriages, and deaths were to be reported to the nearest alternative registry office. In many cases, this meant going beyond the geographical boundaries of the original registry district. This fact complicates genealogical research, especially in Jewish communities on the inland border between Bohemia and Moravia.
Holocaust Era Documents
The master documents transferred along with the Jewish registers to the Central State Archive in December 1949 include original reports of autopsies from the Terezin (Theresienstadt) ghetto conducted between 1941 and 1943. In addition, judicial declarations of death for many Holocaust victims issued during the period 1946–48 and 1950 fill gaps in the master Jewish death records.
Jews who survived the Holocaust needed to create new lives—find work, apply to inherit relatives’ property, marry and/or adopt children. To do so, they needed new personal documentation for themselves and, often, death certificates for their relatives. The latter were replaced with judicial confirmations of death. Useful for genealogical research, these documents provide personal data such as birth date and parents’ names, plus information about where the subject had been born and his or her last place of residence before deportation. In some cases, these documents also include the address and name of the person applying for a declaration of death, usually a relative of the deceased.
The master document records also include a small group of applications for change of surname and for permission to adopt an orphan. Children coming back from the concentration camps without parents were adopted either by relatives, family friends, or by people who had lost their own children in the war. The process to adopt a child was not simple; it required numerous confirmations and references. The former especially can help verify the identity of applicants for citizenship or to confirm kinship in applications for property or indemnification. Applications for change of surname were made by a number of concentration camp survivors with typical Jewish surnames (such as Abeles, Kohn, and Roubitschek) or typical German surnames (such as Adler, Schwarzkopf, or Weissmuller)—with the intention of putting the past behind them and integrating into a non-Jewish environment.
Also valuable are registers created during Germany’s occupation of Czechoslovakia in connection with deportations to Terezin and other camps in Eastern Europe. Until now, one card index in Prague is used for official purposes by the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic. Another index is stored in the Third Department of the National Archives, and another in the archives of the Terezin Memorial located in a small fortress in Terezin. Records on the cards also provide information helpful for genealogical research: names, dates of birth, last address before deportation, and transport number.
The First Department of the Czech National Archive also holds Jewish Control Registers, duplicate registers kept by the Jewish community for review by the Catholic priests designated to keep their eye on all Jews living in their parishes.
Privacy Rules
According to the Czech Law of Registration enacted August 2, 2000, personal data recorded in both original and control registers and in the card index files are protected legally. Birth registers for 100 years after the last entry and marriage and death registers for 75 years after the last entry are accessible only to direct relatives of the individual concerned—or to a plenipotentiary body or state authorities. Access to more recent registers is not permitted for genealogical research. More than 3,000 volumes in both collections of Jewish registers are available on microfilm in the study room of the First Department of the National Archives. In recent years, gaps in the archival collections described above and in the registers of Jewish vital events have been filled by reference to volumes discovered in archives of individual parishes. The National Archive’s department of conservation is restoring damaged registers.
Jewish History in the Czech Lands
Documents preserved in Czech archives on the history of the Jews of the Czech Lands fall into two broad categories. Documents in the first category were generated internally by Jewish communities, schools, associations, foundations, and prominent individuals. These records reflect the functions that Jewish communities and institutions carried out for their own members as well as their relationships with the surrounding Christian world. Functions conducted within the Jewish community itself included election of community representatives, conduct of religious life and education, poor relief, care of orphans, support for refugees and foreign Jews who had come to the end of their resources, philanthropy, and so on. Documents useful for genealogical research include records of Jewish schools, associations, foundations, and funeral organizations, all of which usually include personal data.
Functions involving the surrounding Christian world included the implementation of rules imposed by the state and the manorial administration, payment of feudal levies and state taxes, registration of vital events, and resolution of conflicts and complaints. Relevant documents include correspondence with civic and church authorities and institutions in matters relevant to the Jewish community as a whole, as well as individuals in conflicts with Christians over debts and criminal affairs.
Unfortunately, because of loss and damage to documents during the German occupation, most archives of the original Jewish communities have not survived. The few surviving documents are deposited in the archives of the Jewish Museum in Prague, in the district state archives for the relevant locality, or in the municipal archives of the relevant large city. The former administrative districts currently are served by 72 district state archives that have become constituents of the regional state archives. Documents concerning larger urban centers may be found in the city archives of Brno, Ostrava, Prague, Plzen, and Usti nad Labem.
The second broad category of documentary sources on Czech Jewish history arises from activities of state, regional, and district authorities; town councils; and other state and independent institutions at various levels. From the 17th through the 19th centuries, the Hapsburgs tried to restrict and ultimately reduce the number of Jewish families in the Czech Lands. These efforts generated many official registers; for example, there are lists of all Jews resident in Bohemia in 1724, 1783, and 1793, and the Judische Familiantenbuch (Jewish family books) of 1811 that recorded the 8,500 Jewish families officially permitted to live in Bohemia and the 5,400 allowed to live in Moravia. Lists of Jews and family books typically provide such personal data as name, gender, age, marital status, relationship to head of household, and occupation. When using these sources, however, especially those created before 1787, researchers must be aware that most Jews did not have fixed hereditary family names. As a result, it often is difficult to trace relationships down through the generations. For Bohemia, the book of Jewish families and the other lists of Jews were collected by the Bohemian Gubernium, the governmental authority, and now are deposited in the National Archives in Prague. The situation for Moravia is quite different; insofar as lists and registers have survived at all, they may be found either in the records of Moravian Gubernium or among the records of the manorial authorities, which are deposited now in the Moravian Regional Archives in Brno.
Jews also were recorded in the central statistical sources generated by all levels of the state administration. Most important are the land registers: the 1654 Berni rula for Bohemia (deposited in the National Archives), the 1657 Lanove rejstriky for Moravia (deposited in the Moravian Regional Archives in Brno), the 1713 Theresian Cadaster, the 1789 Joseph’s Cadaster, and the 1836 Stabile Cadaster. The latter three registers are stored in the National Archives in Prague, the Moravian Regional Archives in Brno, and the Regional Archive in Opava, according to the territory from which they came. Results of complex research into references to Jews in the oldest Bohemian and Moravian tax cadasters, from 1654 and 1657 respectively, have been published and are available in the 2002 and 2004 issues of Judaica Bohemiae, the yearbook of the Prague Jewish Museum. Considerable variation exists in the amount of information about Jews found in the old cadasters. Some record only the number of Jewish men over age 10 (or age 20) with no names; others list entire Jewish families, along with their servants and occupations.
Manorial Records
An experienced genealogical researcher also can make use of documents generated by the manorial authorities that administered the large feudal domains in which Bohemians lived. Before 1848, feudal domains were the units of local administration. Manorial authorities had two responsibilities. First, they administered the property of the domain’s owner (usually a member of the nobility), which also involved responsibility for the property of all the ordinary people who lived on the domain and for levying the feudal duties owed by serfs to their overlords. Secondly, manorial authorities acted as the local government administration, dealing with matters related to commerce, economic regulation, the judiciary, military affairs, police, politics, and taxation.
Records of the manorial administration include documents concerning the acceptance of Jews onto the domain, periodic lists of Jewish residents and the establishment, Jewish traders invited to live on the domain as Schutzjuden (protected Jews), and filling of the positions of familiants. Manorial authorities also supervised issuance of Jewish marriage licenses, tenancies, and sales of real estate, especially distilleries, tanneries, potash plants, and other forms of production commonly undertaken by Jews, because they were unpopular among Christians.
Schutzjuden were responsible for selling the output of the overlord’s home farm or industrial operations, such as grain, livestock, or alcoholic beverages. They also bought the surplus output of the serfs such as butter, eggs, feathers, and linen cloth. Finally, protected Jews were responsible for importing back onto the domain the common wares unavailable locally, including coffee, fruit, dry goods, and spices. The manorial authorities were directly involved in administering the inheritances of the Schutzjuden, which gave rise to useful documentary sources. Manorial records do not include death records, but the date of death of an individual may be found in the records which offer considerable information about individual property, repayment of debts, and the division of assets among relatives. Such documents may be used to study the economic and social conditions of the Jewish families living in the small rural towns; to follow the process of the division of an inheritance; and to reconstruct a deceased individual’s business, craft, or equipment; and to show how people dressed; and the types of tools they used.
Because the manorial authorities intervened in all spheres of Jewish communal life on the domain, manorial archives include records of elections to Jewish councils, records of the synagogue, establishment of Jewish schools, appointment of Jewish teachers, and social care within Jewish communities. While manorial records, now held in the seven regional state archives of the Czech Republic, may be helpful in genealogical research, they require an experienced researcher with the expertise to read and understand the handwriting and the language—often non-standardized and difficult to understand.
Regional State Archives
Regional state archives hold the records of the former regional administrative offices (Kreisamte) established in 1751 and continued for about 100 years. These offices generated several types of registers of inhabitants: lists of taxpayers, lists of travel and emigration permits, and many other miscellaneous documents. These documents frequently provide useful evidence on Jewish vital events.
Regional administrative offices were abolished in 1868 and replaced by district administrative offices (Bezirksamte). These offices also generated numerous documents of genealogical value, including registers of residency certificates, passport and travel permit registers, indexes of work permits, and after 1918 registers of nationality permits. From 1870 onward, district offices registered births, marriages, and deaths of all individuals who had no official religion. (Judaism was an official religion.) District offices preserved the censuses taken every 10 years from 1857 onward. All types of documents generated by the district administrative offices now are stored in the district state archives.
Grundbucher (land books), some of which date from the late 15th century, recorded all transfers of real estate between owners (whether by inheritance or sale) and legal documents such as wills in the district archives. Many other interesting genealogical records, especially from the second half of the 19th century, include registers of native and foreign persons belonging to the local community, registers of residency certificates, and registers of tradesmen..
Genealogists can also find interesting information in the records left by elementary, grammar, and vocational schools. Personal data such as names, birth dates, addresses, and parents’ names may be found in school registers, graduation books, attendance registers, and registers of examination results.
Not even church records should be omitted from a survey of documents potentially useful for Jewish genealogy. Because Catholic priests were tasked with observing all Jews living in their parishes, information about Jews, especially about conversions to Catholicism, is found among the records of parish offices, today stored in district state archives.
How to Consult Documents in Czech Archives
Basic information about all the Czech archives may be found on the website of the Czech Archive Society at <www.cearch.cz> and the Ministry of the Interior at <www.mvcr.cz> and <www.mvcr.cz/archivy>. Both the archives and the Ministry of Interior websites provide access to a database called “Archive Holdings and Collections in the Czech Republic” (PevA) where many more details are provided.
As part of the universal information system of the Czech Republic, the archives are accessible to the general public; however, people may work with documents deposited for fewer than 30 years only exceptionally and only with the permission of the archive director. Anyone who wants to look at archival documents must verify his or her identity by means of a valid identity card or passport. Foreigners require no special permit. Researchers may use their own digital cameras, although some restrictions may be imposed depending on the content and physical condition of particular documents.
The best way to examine archival documents is to visit the archive in person, but it is possible to obtain basic information through a written request to the archive. When one completes an application to do genealogical research, whether in person or in writing, one should supply as many details as possible about the person being sought—not just the name, but also the dates of birth, marriage, and death; places where these events occurred; and all other known facts about the individual. If information about the locality of vital events is unknown, the next best thing is to provide information about any other places where the person lived, such as last known address, place of residence of family members or relatives, or location of the school attended by that person.
Remember that 19th-century documents use the German spelling for the names of Czech towns and villages, so be sure to enter the German place names. Even better, enclose photocopies of any old documents or mementos that you may have. If the registers of the locality in question have not survived, one can then address a request to the regional or district state archives and ask that research be undertaken in the Catholic parish registers, registers of local residents, school registers, archives of the Jewish community, or censuses.
Personal data from the history of the Czech lands has not been digitized yet, and archives lack the resources to engage in extensive genealogical research for private applicants. A Czech archive typically will respond to a written request from a private user by providing basic information, advising on other archives or archival holdings that might hold the requested data, and recommending the use of private genealogical researchers or firms if more extensive research is required.
The National Archives can provide extracts from registers for those applying to do genealogical research. The birth, marriage, and death certificates are issued by the Registry of the Uřad mestske casti Praha 1, Vodickova 18, 115 68 Praha 1.
Case Study: Glaser Family of Postoloprty
This example demonstrates the process of conducting genealogical research on Jewish inhabitants of the Czech lands. The author traced all available records for a family called Glaser in both the small town of Postoloprty and the village of Lenesice in the district of Louny in northwest Bohemia.
The author began with only the most basic information: seeking Adolf Glaser, born in 1886, who lived in Postoloprty until the German occupation of Czechoslovakia and was lost in a concentration camp sometime during World War II. Among records listing those declared dead, I found a document recording the vital events of Adolf Glaser, born on April 30, 1886, in Postoloprty, unmarried, son of Moritz Glaser and Anna Pollak. Although he lived in Postoloprty, his last address before deportation was Prague. Adolf Glaser was declared dead at the request of Gabriela Chlamtatsch from Palestine and Lotty Glaser from England, both of whom were represented by a Czech lawyer. In the same archival carton, I found information on Emilie Glaser, born June 5, 1896, in Postoloprty, sister of Adolf Glaser. Both Adolf and Emilie were deported from Prague to Theresienstadt by Transport AA on July 23, 1942. On September 1, 1942, both were deported by Transport Be to Raasika. Neither ever returned, and they were declared dead. They were assumed to have died on March 1, 1943, because it is known that most of the people on transport Be to Raasika were killed then.
Next the author looked for other relatives of Adolf Glaser in the surviving registers of births, marriages, and deaths for the Jewish community of Postoloprty. This search produced considerable additional data about the vital events of Adolf and his relatives. Adolf had an elder brother named Friedrich (Bedrich in Czech), born in 1885. Friedrich became an attorney and, at the time of his marriage to Elisabeth Strass in 1921, worked in a bank in Vienna. The birth register also records three sisters: Charlotte (born 1890), Gabriele (born 1892), and Emmi (born 1896). At some point, Gabriele married a man named Chlamtatsch, and Charlotte (whose nickname was Lotty) left the country. After the war, they requested death certificates and death declarations for their siblings.
To find more details about the family of Adolf Glaser and the Jewish community of Postoloprty, the author visited the district state archives in Louny. These archives hold the documents of the district authorities, the archives of the town of Postoloprty, the 1921 census, and many records of other local institutions and personalities. According to the 1921 census, Adolf Glaser lived in house number 62 in Postoloprty along with his parents and two younger sisters. His father, Moritz Glaser (born 1857 in Postoloprty), was a farmer and Adolf worked with him. Adolf’s mother, Anna (born in 1860), and Adolf’s sisters, Ella and Emma, kept the household. The family was Jewish and spoke German. The census also records three Catholic servants—a coachman, a house maid, and a cook.
The Louny district archives also preserve a manuscript city chronicle for Postoloprty, which is deposited in the personal collection of Emil Mendl. This chronicle incorporates a list of the Jewish magistrates and heads of the Jewish community in Postoloprty since 1674. Adolf’s father headed the Jewish community in Postoloprty for 31 years, from 1893 until his death in 1924.
Unfortunately, the records of the Jewish community in Postoloprty have been lost. Nevertheless, further research in the registers of Jewish vital events and the books of Jewish families (both deposited in the National Archives in Prague), as well as in the records of the manorial administration of the domain of Postoloprty (deposited in the Regional State Archives in Trebon), produced additional generations of the Glaser family.
Moritz Leopold Glaser, Adolf’s father, was the youngest of eight children of Simon Glaser and his wife, Charlotte Hirsch from Ustek. Simon Glaser was the second son of Löbl Glaser. In 1844, Simon obtained permission to marry and replaced a familiant in Postoloprty who had died without male issue.
Löbl Glaser, Adolf’s great-grandfather, also was called Löwy or Leopold as revealed in some documents that refer to him. Löbl is thought to have been born in 1773, and he definitely died in 1846. In 1799, he obtained permission to marry because he was a glazier (glaser in German), and his craft was needed in the domain. The occupation of glazier was practiced before him by his father, Elias, who already used the German term Glaser as his own identification among the Jewish families of Postoloprty. The earliest birth register for the Jewish community of Postoloprty records a total of 11 children for Löbl and his wife, Eva Mendlin (Heller). She is recorded as Mendlin, that is, the daughter of Mendl, and as Heller, her father’s surname.
Löbl’s father, Elias Wolf, thought to have been born in 1735, died in 1805. In 1787, he adopted the family name Glaser for himself and for his unmarried sons, Simon, Löbl, and Isaak. Elias, Adolf’s great-great-grandfather, is the earliest member of the Glaser family of Postoloprty who can be verified in the sources. His adoption of the family name Glaser is confirmed in the records of the manorial administration of the estate of Postoloprty currently held in the Regional State Archives in Trebon. Among other documents, this archive holds official confirmations of the adoption of new given and family names by Jews from 1787 onward.
As a glazier, Elias Wolf was permitted to marry Barbara Löwenfeld (Löbl) in 1759, and, as before, the father’s given name was Löbl and his surname was Löwenfeld. Their four sons can be found only in the book of Jewish families, because Jewish vital registers were not kept in Postoloprty until 1788. At that time, their eldest son, Wolf, who also adopted the family name Glaser, was allowed to marry Kressel (Katharina) Kofman and gained his own position of licensed Jew on the estate of Lenesice. Wolf’s sons, Michael (born 1787), Pinkas (born 1791), and Löwy (born 1796), were born there, while Elias (born 1807) and Moises (born 1810) were born in Postoloprty after Wolf was invited back to occupy his father’s position as a licensed Jew in that town. We do not know how many daughters were born to the family, because the books of Jewish families list sons only.
It was possible to trace the family even further back in time by consulting the lists of Jews compiled in Bohemia in 1793, 1784, and 1724, as well as the papers of the Theresianum—the early 18th-century Czech cadaster—where Jews settled on the estate of Postoloprty were recorded in 1715 with information going back to 1670. The 1793 list of Jews has been made available to the public in a scholarly paper prepared by students at the Charles University in Prague. This 1793 list records the glazier, Elias Glaser, with his wife, Barbara, and his sons, Lewi, Simon (then in Vienna), and Isaak. The family is recorded as being under the protection of the estate of Postoloprty. The 1793 list also records, for the estate of Lenesice, Elias’s son, Wolf, with his wife, Katharina, and his two sons. They owned a house that had been sold to them by the manorial administration, and they engaged in potash production.
Elias Glaser also is recorded in Postoloprty, in the 1783 list of Jews, with his wife and four children. This list records that for three months of the year he worked as a glazier and the rest of the year sold spices and haberdashery.
Here the clear genealogical link between Adolf Glaser and Elias Glaser ends. The 1724 list of Jews, as well as the records of the Theresianum from 1715, only mention a Jew called Elias Veith. This man lived in Postoloprty for 44 years and, in 1715, had a wife and five children. He held the office of Jewish magistrate, or headman, in Postoloprty. The information about Elias Veith states that he came to Bohemia from Austria at a very young age, earned his living by trading in linen and other goods, and paid 30 gulden in protection money (Schutzgeld) to the manorial authorities each year.
The information about Elias Veith is consistent with the fact noted in several regional histories that, in 1671, the owner of the estate of Postoloprty, Count von Sinzendorf, brought 55 Jews to his estate who had been banished from Austria. One may speculate that Elias Veith was an ancestor of Elias Wolf Glaser, the great-great-grandfather of Adolf Glaser, and thus, that the history of the Glaser family in Postoloprty can be traced back, somewhat insecurely, to the late 17th century. One cannot have absolute confidence, however, in any of the links prior to 1783. We are sure that Elias Glaser was the head of family, but the linkage between him and Elias Veith is speculation.
Another example of the genealogy research process: While at the archives in Louny in search of Adolf Glaser and his ancestors, a colleague showed the author a card register of local Jews compiled by district authorities in 1938 and 1939 that included photographs. If such a card can be found for an interested family, it often provides the sole surviving pictures of an individual who died in the Holocaust. The card register for Louny included cards and photographs for the family of Julius (born 1890) and Marie (born 1900) Glaser and their daughters Johanna (born 1926) and Marie (born 1928) from Lenesice. Julius is recorded as Jewish, but his wife and daughters are listed as Catholic. Julius came from the family of Friedrich Glaser (born 1858), owner of a farm in Lenesice, and Julie Getreuer from Louny. His grandfather, Simon Glaser (born 1826), became a tanner in Lenesice. In 1849, Simon Glaser obtained permission to marry Theresia Glaser from Leskov. The couple had eight children. Julius’ great-grandfather, Michael Glaser (born 1787), came from Postoloprty and was a son of the great-great-grandfather of the family, Wolf Glaser (born 1760), and Kressel Kofman (Katharina Kaufmann). The family circle closes in the person of Julius’s great-great-great-grandfather, Elias Glaser (born 1735), who headed the Glaser family in the second half of the 18th century.
Although Adolf and Julius Glaser had the same ancestors and relatives, their fates during the Holocaust differed. Adolf was deported in 1942 and killed, but Julius was sent to a labor camp at the start of 1945 and survived. His wife was not Jewish, and, for this reason, Julius was more protected during the German occupation, and his wife and daughters survived. We don’t know how they lived after 1945. Because of legislation governing personal data protection, it is not possible for anyone who is not a direct descendant to continue genealogical research into records created after 1945.
If one accepts the hypothesis that Elias Veith, who came to Postoloprty from Austria in the latter part of the 17th century, was the direct ancestor of Elias Wolf Glaser, one can follow the Glaser family back for more than 250 years. The occupation of glazier in which most of the family were engaged, gave the surname to five generations. Heads of the Glaser family were among the representatives of the Jewish community where they held several formal offices. They had large families with many children. Thanks to relatively stable conditions in the Jewish community and the protection granted to Jews by the manorial authorities, most of the sons from all branches of the Glaser family obtained positions as licensed Jews, or were able to earn a livelihood in some other way, either in Postoloprty or in the villages or domains in the vicinity. The centuries-long history of the Jewish community of Postoloprty was broken by violence in World War II and did not recover, because those who might have been able to continue its activities were lost.
The estate of Postoloprty and its Jewish community were unusually successful in collecting and preserving almost all of the types of archival documents discussed in this article. It is important to recognize, however, that many archives of Jewish communities were destroyed or damaged beyond repair during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War II.
Summary
What can be quite easy in undertaking Christian genealogy usually is more complicated in Jewish genealogical research. As we have seen, the collection of Jewish registers of vital events is not complete, because most of the originals were destroyed, along with other Jewish documents and archives, during World War II. In addition, Jewish families moved more often than Christian families and, often, the last known address where they lived before deportation to a concentration or extermination camp was not the locality where they and their ancestors had lived for many generations. This is especially true of Jews who previously had lived in the German-occupied Sudeten borderland regions of Czechoslovakia. The discriminatory laws even influenced Jewish names and the state of master records, all of which makes genealogical research even more difficult.
- Lenka Matusikova is Archivist and Deputy Head of the First Department of the National Archives in Prague, Czech Republic. As the supervisor of the archival holdings relating to the history of the Jewish population in Bohemia and Moravia for 1700–1950, she has a special interest in the history of Jewish communities and historical records retrieval. Her research interests also include the social and economic world of peasants in early modern Bohemia. She graduated with a PhD from Charles University in 1977.
