Prague and Eastern Europe Goulash
The Prague a few years ago is the Prague who was wakening from long sleep. The city was wakening from the decaying of the Soviet influence. The Dictatorship of technocrats, originated in working class, Prague try to forget the past, but the Velvet Revolution created a myth from the past.
Prague is time a stuck and Prague did not want to remember, how Tomáš Masaryk the last president of the Czechoslovakia republic stand for independences. The fact was the Czech becoming the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia under NAZI. The Slovaks under guides of Monsignor Josef Tiso, a Roman Catholic Priest whish regime deport Jews, Roma to the death camps.
In the same token Czech and Slovaks assassinated the Reichsprotector Heydrich in 1942, the brutality of the NAZI regime was without mercy the village of Licide all the males and children were send to the death camps a total of 340 souls, and the reason because the place was hostile to the NAZI regime.
Today the traveler of the new Prague will start in the narrow streets of the Josephus the old Jewish section of the city, the narrow streets can revive the Prague of Kafka become a manifestation of deep root of a conflict, but we can’t speak of a future without a past.
The city of Rabbi Low (Maharal of Prague) and the Golem, tell story of Jesuits and thirty year war, the burning of rebels, the invasion of Protestant Sweden and pillage of the Baroque Gardens. Prague being the center of the conflict between Lutheran Prussia and Catholic Austro-Hungary Empire was reduced to the status of a Provincial city.
In the mist of the power play, city takes live. Jews become inhabitants in the 10 Century and Grantee Status by the Germans and Later Prussia, but that did not stop the expulsion twice, taking nothing with them. And out this Label and Chaos the Legend Born Joseph the Golem to Protect the Jews from Pogroms and from the start the Jews leave in separate quarters and later codify.
Not just in Prague in every small town in Czech Republic had a castle when the order of the expulsion did not applied just to Prague but to all the towns in Bohemia, but in many towns the expulsion of the Jews will bring hardships the refuse and the many castle protected the town and there was not army to go after every castle. The expulsion was in part, because the Jews took site with the Protestant German and took the German culture as their own.
Since the Catholics under Austria took Prague, the persecution was a fact. Austria using the fact the Czech, Slavs and Jews leave in their own island and castles use divide and conquer. In the mist of the pain the Slav despotism of govern, the absolute rulers to the family and there was a case where a Jewish father kill his son is consequence of violence, they had to leave with every day is Jews.
The violence suffer by every minority and his community culminated by killing their own outsider-his son who when to Jesuits for conversion but his own rebellion can not submitted to another despotic ruler the Roman Catholic Church.
Kafka relationship with his father was not just an exception, but rule. Prague was the rebellion son under a despotic world of Prussia-Austria Hungary, German NAZI and Soviet-Slavic despotism. The Slovaks departed form the Czech, but humanist side of the Czech still in the roots of Prague, they rebellion of 68’s Prague spring still alive and justices for everyone may still have a chance.
Fast forward the Czech trauma dealing of the long sleep to the shock therapy of Argentina applied to Czech Republic, where pensioners are getting 7,000 Crowns a moth and pensioners chasing tourist to offer themselves to be guide tourist to survive. A dark side of these therapy is people displayed by the economic creating un-necessary hardships, since all the safety net does not existing any more, following third world pattern, groups from the small towns and villages moving to the city to find work, in many case even work is found the pay is limited or little.
The Novo Rich in the New Czech Republic and the outside world closed the eyes and destitute and homeless take their sorrow in the Alcohol. Around the central train station, any one can find rows of destitute, homeless and the rest Prague just sleep to economic in justice.
When Czech will be part of the Euro zone; then what? Another sleep or another revolution like there was in Spain 1936 a revolution between the wealthy and the poor. In the Anglo-Saxon model is O.k. to have 41% of the population without any healthcare despite the nation pay a high premium of the western world close to $ 7,000 USD or work in Wal-Mart, where the average salary is $ 7, 50 in hour, and you have the privilege work for free after your regular 8 hour work for them with out compensation just to have the privilege of having a Job.
A new velvet revolution awaits Czech Republic like the last hundred years, because when they had chance to let castle crumble, they start building new ones all over Eastern Europe as the goulash of different groups forming given a unique flavor. But in the Anglo-Saxon model there is one flavor. One day perhaps the Goulash will be ready where the Czech, German, Jew and Slav finally can give their unique flavor by accepted each other.