Deník Vyšehorky PDF Print E-mail
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Tuesday, 28 July 2009 12:24

Sumpersky a Jesenicky


Denik


March 17, 2009

Commemorative Service Honored the Victims On Sunday March 15, 2009 in the afternoon the victims of WWII were honored in the service, which was held in the Church of All Saints in Vysehorky.

Autor: Author:
Stanislava Rybickova

The service. Frantisek Lizna with the book Hours of Devotion



The service was prepared by the Foundation Respect and Tolerance in a co-operation with the Vysehorky Parish. It was organized as the pious act at the 70th Anniversary of tragic events - the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia and destruction of the Olomouc synagogue - on March 15, 1939. The service was lead by the Father Frantisek Lizna, the bearer of the T. G. Masaryk Order for Contributions to the Development of Democracy and Human Rights.

“We are meeting here to honor all those who perished and to pray for the world without concentration camps,” said the priest at the opening address.

The service had a quite unusual beginning and closing, as the priest Frantisek Lizna red prayers from the book Hours of Devotion, which was written in 1854 by the Lostice Rabbi’s wife Fanny Neuda.
During the service Lizna also red a chapter Jew among Czechs from the book written by the Rabbi Richard Feder. “Where love brings people together, religious differences are only a thin web...,” underlined the priest.
Before the service Ludek Stipl from the Foundation respect and Tolerance told people about the destruction of the Olomouc synagogue. The synagogue was built in 1897 on a place which is today called the Palach Square. Presently there is just an empty space there. Right after the arrival of the Wehrmacht, during the night from March 15th to 16th 1939 the synagogue was burnt down. The Rabbi Oppenheim and other Jewish people from Olomouc were transported to concentration camps. He perished in Treblinka in 1942.
However, thanks to a coincidence the tangible monument to the rabbi Oppenheim remains.
From about hundred stained glass windows only eight survived the fire. The Foundation Respect and Tolerance acquired them recently. One of the windows bears names the Rabbi Oppenheim and his wife. The (decorative) inscription states, they donated it to the synagogue (about hundred years ago). This window was displayed in the Vysehorky church during the service.

Notes:

Father Frantisek Lizna (b. 1941) received the T.G. Masaryk Order from the president Vaclav Havel in 2001. Father Lizna fought against the communist’s dictatorship, signed document Charta 77 and was imprisoned five times during the Communist era.

Rabbi Richard Feder (1875-1970) survived the Holocaust, but lost his wife, children and grandchildren. He came back from Theresienstadt in 1945, when he was 70. He started to work hard to forget and he became the rabbi in the town of Kolin, later was elected as the Rabbi of Moravia and Silesia and eventually he was named the Chief Rabbi of Czech Lands, when was 86 years old! He published several books and became the main symbol of Jewish-Czech Cooperation and understanding. He also received (like the Father Lizna) the T.G. Masaryk Order from the president Vaclav Havel (In memoriam in 2002).

The service was attended by variety of people including local Christians, regional supervisor of Jesuit Order, professional from the Jewish Museum in Prague, Mr. Jiri Fiser of Mohelnice, who survived the imprisonment in Auschwitz etc.


Frantisek Lizna, Jiri Fiser and the stained glass window from the Olomouc synagogue.
 
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