Having been travelling around in the Czech Republic for our summer vacation during the past month, my wife and I left the European and local council elections behind us as we left England and observed the election in Iran mostly on CNN and the BBC World News.

We hired a car, which we collected from the airport, to tour round and we visited many synagogues as we travelled around in the Czech Republic. Of course there are not many Jewish communities there now, except for small communities in Prague, because the Nazis murdered most Czech Jews during World War II.

There were some splendid renovations of synagogues which were being used as museums. It was a rather weird experience having to pay to go into a synagogue, and look at sacred objects such as torah scrolls and prayer shawls being displayed in cases, knowing they would never be used in a Jewish way again. My wife thought it very sad, but I thought it was better that the synagogue buildings were used, and used in a cultural way, to educate and teach respect for the Jewish culture, than to be used as warehouses, or store rooms, or unused and fall into ruin. We saw some synagogues like that too. Some synagogues have been converted for use as Hussite churches. These are the Czech version of Protestantism. It was interesting to visit one and see that they still had kept some of  the original seating inside. When I flipped up the seat the old label under the squab read; ‘Israelitisch gemeinde’. We also visited Terezin, [Theresienstadt] the site of the ghetto established by the Germans during World War II which acted as a transit camp for most of Czech Jewry towards their murder at Auschwitz. This was a fortress, built as a garrison town for military purposes, in case of an attack from Germany, in an earlier era. There is an excellent series of displays and museums there now, but, interestingly and rather bizarrely, it is still a residential town where people live normal everyday lives.

My wife used to nurse a woman who came from Czechoslovakia to England with her brother just before World War II. She was then 2 and her brother 4. The rest of her family, were Czech Jews. Her father was Victor Ullman, a brilliant musician, who whilst imprisoned at Terezin composed, amongst other pieces, ‘The Emperor of Atlantis’, which mocked Hitler and the Nazis, a remarkably brave gesture of resistance. The senior camp Nazi officials saw the dress rehearsal, shortly after which the entire cast and orchestra were deported to be gassed. The family name is preserved in memorials to Czech Jews, such as the synagogue in Prague which has all the names of the murdered written upon the walls.

The Prague Jewish Community earns a lot of money from entrance fees to the beautiful and historic synagogues, visited by the swarms of tourists who flock to the city. This money goes towards the welfare of the few survivors who remain alive and to preserve the heritage and the memory of the Czech Jewish culture.It seemed to us that Czech Jewry was to a large degree quite assimilated and contributed a great deal to the Czech national culture.

In my Congregation, in Bristol, we have a member who walked out of Czechoslovakia just before the German Army invaded, walked across Europe and then came to Britain as a refugee. He spent all his life working as a doctor, much of the time in Easton with many Muslim patients. When we left Bristol for our vacation many people were expressing concern about the election of representatives of the British National Party, the fascist, racist, xenophobic aspect of British democratic freedom. Many people also expressed anxiety about these aspects of the Iranian election a few weeks later, but not many people seemed to draw any comparison between what happened in either of these elections and what had happened in Europe in 1933, 76 years earlier when Hitler was elected.

Dictators can be democratically elected! The ease with which elections can be manipulated and the protests afterwards put down is surprising. What can ordinary people do when confronted by force and violence? It seems to me as a religious leader that personal morality and spirituality is a route towards integrity which beats politics and all its associated razzamatazz. The collusion between politicians and the media can be quite deceptive, and faith and truth can counter the deceit and engender a healthy scepticism. What eventually will happen as a result of the re-election of President Ahmadinejad in Iran I do not know, but I hope and pray that the Iranian people do not allow themselves to be led by him into  suffering as the German people eventually were led into suffering and defeat under Hitler.

Rabbi Francis Ronald Berry