In Most synagogue, various rabbis were quickly replaced at first: Dr. Alexander Kisch from Mladá Boleslav, later working in Zurich, Dr. Josef Samuel Bloch from Vienna, Dr. phil. Jakob Tauber from Lipník nad Bečvou, a professor at the Czech grammar school, Dr. Adolf Rozenzweig from Teplice, and the radical fighter against traditions, Dr. Gotthard Deutsch, who, while working in Most, cut out many prayers and shortened services. Later on he became an associate professor of history at the prestigious Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in the USA, a rabbinical seminary of Reform Judaism.
The real leading figures of the Jewish community in Most were Prof. Dr. Adolf Biach from Moravian Načeratice, who, before his unexpected death in 1918, raised an entire generation of Most Jews. He was the author of a textbook on Jewish history, approved for use in all secondary schools in Austria-Hungary. After his death, Prof. Dr. Simon Stern from Žatec came, only to hand over the scepter in 1919 to Dr. Michael Halberstam, who had previously served as rabbi in Uherský Ostroh and Šafov.
Now watch a clip of testimony of Miriam Kohn.
Brief biography of the witness
Miriam Kohn was born in 1929 in České Budějovice as Marianne Bauer, known as Maruška. Shortly after her birth, her parents divorced, and Marianne and her mother moved to her grandmother in Most.
At a time when other Jewish girls between the ages of twelve and thirteen enjoy the Bat Mitzvah ceremony, which marks the beginning of entering the adulthood, Maruška was deported to the ghetto in Terezín and then to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. She was selected for slave labor in the Hamburg-Neugraben concentration camp, from where she was deported to Bergen-Belsen. There she lived to see liberation by British troops. After a stay in DP camps, she emigrated to Israel.
The interview was recorded on March 15, 2000 in Haifa, Israel.
What new things did you learn from Miriam Kohn's testimony?