What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on Twitter on 8 October 2022.

Votička was built in 1925.

Votice is a town of 4,500 people in the Benešov District, about 60 km from Prague. It’s within a mountainous region known as ‘Česká Sibiř’ / ‘Czech Siberia’.

It was first mentioned in writing in 1359, but had probably existed for over two centuries before that.

In the 1530s, a Jewish community set itself up in the city, which became a major trading centre, especially in salt.

In March 1942, Jews from Benešov were evicted to Votice. On 1 September, the Jews of Votice were deported to Terezín.

The majority were murdered at Malé Trostinec on 10 September 1942. Less than one in ten survived.

The Votice Synagogue was destroyed in 1949.

The Jewish Central Library has a nice, if heartbreaking, one-paragraph summary of Votice’s Jewish community: https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/votice

And there are some pictures of the synagogue and the Jewish quarter here: http://zanikleobce.cz/index.php?obec=9943