A Jewish Ode to the Czech Republic | Page 6

on the street not for salacious nightclubs or “ closing ” sales , but rather for nightly concerts featuring the music of Mozart , Bach , and Vivaldi , not to mention such Czech composers as Dvorak , Janacek , and Smetana .
By the way , it was Smetana ’ s “ Moldau ” that may have inspired the melody of “ Hatikvah ,” Israel ’ s national anthem .
And speaking of music , the national philharmonic plays in a hall overlooking the Vltava River in Prague . The roof is ringed by statues of famous composers . During the war , Adolf Hitler ordered Felix Mendelssohn ’ s statue removed because he was of Jewish origin . His troops climbed to the roof , but couldn ’ t figure out which one was Mendelssohn , so they removed the statue with the largest nose . It turned out to be that of Richard Wagner , Hitler ’ s favorite composer !
Prague was a city infused with the energy and vitality of three dominant cultures — Czech , German , and Jewish .
The city pulsates with history . So does the country . Indeed , if one were looking for a place that defines the epicenter not only of European geography but , even more , of its turbulent history , this might be it . In fact , the history is multilayered , staggeringly complicated . There were just too many border adjustments , rulers , outside occupiers ( including , of all people , the Swedes ), nationality questions ( Czechs , Slovaks , Moravians , Bohemians , Silesians , Ruthenians , Jews , Hungarians , Roma , Germans , Poles , etc .), name changes , and conflicts .
Let ’ s focus only on the 20th century . Even skimming the surface takes time .
The architects and mapmakers of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference — U . S . President Woodrow Wilson , British Prime Minister David Lloyd George , and French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau — dealt with the aftermath of World War I , including the collapse of the centuriesold Austro-Hungarian Empire . Among other notable decisions taken in a six-month period that was to shape ( and misshape ) the world for decades to come , they endorsed an entirely new — and some would say artificial — country called Czechoslovakia , which included Bohemia ,
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