Photo Archive Collection

Stored in the Photo Archive Collection of the Jewish Museum in Prague are several thousand photographs taken between the start of the 1940s and the present day. This includes negatives of various materials and dimensions (from glass plates to colour film) as well as positive prints, of which several thousand (predominantly glass plates and medium format negatives on artificial stock) document the life and activity of the war-time Jewish Community in Prague under the administration of the occupation authorities. Another major unit comprises documentation of Jewish areas in Bohemia, which has been produced continually from the 1940s until the present. Probably the largest segment is documentation of the museum's artefacts collections.

The Shoah History Department has worked to divide up photographs related to the Holocaust thematically. Aside from the aforementioned several thousand photographs from the war-time photo workshop, this period also includes photographs acquired after World War II documenting the period of the protectorate from Bohušovice nad Ohří, Terezín and other concentration camps, as well as post-war photographs donated by survivors and witnesses. Last but not least there is a set of several hundred portrait photographs of employees of the war-time Jewish community in Prague from the years 1942-1942. The photographs were never described precisely and for this reason the project neZnámí (unKnowns) has been underway for several years now, aiming to identify the greatest possible number of people captured in the pictures.

Contact e-mail: fotoarchiv@jewishmuseum.cz.