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The eighteenth Hanukka coin is from Prague. In the heart of Europe, in the ancient capital of the Czech kings, is the community of Prague, one of the earliest, and at times, the largest of Jewish communities in this part of the world.

At the time of the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, there were about 56,000 Jews living in Prague. From October 6th 1941, deportation of the Jews of Prague began to the death camps or the ghetto of Theresienstadt. There were few survivors.

Today the Prague community numbers less than 3000 Jews living in the shadow of the historic buildings which remain from the period of splendor of Prague Jewry. (Yehoshua Bichler). It is known as the Prague or Czechoslovakian Lamp - 1983.
An ornate Hanukkah lamp from Prague with the images of Moses and Aaron on either side (from the Israel Museum collection); and the words: "Hanukkiya from Prague, 18th century".
The nineteenth Hanukka coin has an unusual background In 1981 a unique Hanukkiya was presented to the "Yad Vashem" Museum by an anonymous American donor. The distinguishing feature of this Hanukkiya is not its external beauty but its great historical value. Unknown hands fashioned it from car spares and scrap-iron that they came upon in the garage of the Theresienstadt Ghetto. The Hanukkiya was discovered in Europe after the war and taken to the United States.

Of all the ghettoes and the concentration camps established by the Germans throughout occupied Europe in the Second World War, Theresienstadt was unique. The Nazis wished to create here a kind of model "Jewish City" governed by its inhabitants. The ghetto was established at about 60 km from the Czechoslovak capital of Prague, within the walls of a fortified city built by the Emperor Joseph II in memory of his mother Maria Theresa.

Autumn 1944 saw the beginning of the end of the Theresienstadt ghetto. Most of its inhabitants were sent to Auschwitz. Of the 150,000 who passed through the gates of the ghetto, about 35,000 died in Theresienstadt and almost 90,000 were exterminated in the gas ovens of Birkenau.

The Hanukkiya from Theresienstadt is a mute survivor of a heroic and glorious chapter in the history of the Jewish people at the time of the Holocaust. It is Known as the theresienstadt Lamp - 1984.
Hannuka lamp from the Theresienstadt Ghetto and the inscription in Hebrew and in English: Hanukkiya from the Theresienstadt Ghetto 24.11.1941 - 9.5.1945.

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