Jewish community house, sometimes called in the spirit of the time Beth Haam (Jewish National House), was built in the early 1930s.
At that time, Rabbi Dr. Michael Halberstam and his family as well as other municipal employees moved into it. The building housed a winter prayer room, a meeting room, and offices for various Jewish associations, such as the Zion People's Association, founded in 1906, with an educational library containing almost two thousand books, or the Makabi gymnastics association and the Techelet Lavan scout organization, established in 1913.
The house also housed the municipal archive and the Jewish registry office.
Photograph from Mr. Hlaváček's archive, published in Josef Lanc book, used with his kind permission.
Unlike the synagogue and the Jews of Most, the Jewish National House survived the war unscathed, only its furnishings were looted, in the words of official documents "it was forfeited to the city and sold to local citizens". The house itself was confiscated by the city and leased to the "National Socialist People's Welfare" (NS Volkswohlfahrt) and then to the Sudetenlandische Treibstoffwerke AG, a company producing synthetic gasoline in Záluží.
After the war, the house was surprisingly restituted, but the Jewish community had no money for maintenance, nor for taxes and other fees required by the city. Therefore, it ultimately preferred to hand over the house without compensation to the MNV, the Municipal National Committee.