Čáslav

Čáslav (Czech pronunciation: [ˈtʃaːslaf]; German: Tschaslau) is a town in eastern part of Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic.

History

The history of Čáslav begins after the year 800 with the founding of a citadel and settlement called Hrádek. Near Hrádek, a new town with huge square was founded by King Přemysl Otakar II in 1250. In 1421, Bohemian parliament debated in Čáslav and voted new a Hussite government. During the Thirty Years' War, in 1639 and 1642, Čáslav was devastated and burnt down by Swedish troops. In 1751 Čáslav became the centre of region (county). Čáslav Museum, one of the oldest regional museums in Bohemia was founded in 1864. In 1910, part of the cranium of famous Hussite general Jan Žižka z Trocnova was discovered in Čáslav parish church.

Synagogue

The synagogue was built between 1899 and 1900 in Moorish style, designed by architect Wilhelm Stiassny. It was used until 1939 by the local Jewish community, which was then almost totally wiped out during the Shoah. After World War II the abandoned building saw use as a warehouse, and then (between 1969–1989) as a gallery. In 1989, however, it was returned to the Jewish Community in Prague and has recently been restored.

Slavs

Slavs are the largest Indo-European ethno-linguistic group in Europe. They inhabit Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. Slavs speak Indo-European Slavic languages and share, to varying degrees, some cultural traits and historical backgrounds. From the early 6th century they spread to inhabit most of Central and Eastern Europe and Southeast Europe, whilst Slavic mercenaries fighting for the Byzantines and Arabs settled Asia Minor and even as far as Syria. The East Slavs colonised Siberia and Central Asia. Presently over half of Europe's territory is inhabited by Slavic-speaking communities, but every Slavic ethnicity has emigrated to other continents.

Present-day Slavic people are classified into West Slavic (chiefly Poles, Czechs and Slovaks), East Slavic (chiefly Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians), and South Slavic (chiefly Serbs, Bulgarians, Croats, Bosniaks, Macedonians, Slovenes, and Montenegrins), though sometimes the West Slavs and East Slavs are combined into a single group known as North Slavs. For a more comprehensive list, see the ethnocultural subdivisions. Modern Slavic nations and ethnic groups are considerably diverse both genetically and culturally, and relations between them – even within the individual ethnic groups themselves – are varied, ranging from a sense of connection to mutual feelings of hostility.

Slavs (ethnonym)

The Slavic autonym is reconstructed in Proto-Slavic as *Slověninъ, plural *Slověně. The oldest documents written in Old Church Slavonic and dating from the 9th century attest Словѣне Slověne to describe the Slavs. Other early Slavic attestations include Old East Slavic Словѣнѣ Slověně for "an East Slavic group near Novgorod." However, the earliest written references to the Slavs under this name are in other languages. In the 6th century AD Procopius, writing in Byzantine Greek, refers to the Σκλάβοι Sklaboi, Σκλαβηνοί Sklabēnoi, Σκλαυηνοί Sklauenoi, Σθλαβηνοί Sthlauenoi, or Σκλαβῖνοι Sklabinoi, while his contemporary Jordanes refers to the Sclaveni in Latin.

The Slavic autonym *Slověninъ is usually considered a derivation from slovo "word", originally denoting "people who speak (the same language)," i.e. people who understand each other, in contrast to the Slavic word denoting "foreign people" – němci, meaning "mumbling, murmuring people" (from Slavic *němъ – "mumbling, mute"). The latter word may be the derivation of words to denote German/Germanic people in many later Slavic languages: e.g., Czech Němec, Slovak Nemec, Slovene Nemec, Belarusian, Russian and Bulgarian Немец, Serbian Немац, Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian Nijemac, Polish Niemiec, Ukrainian Німець, etc., but another theory states that rather these words are derived from the name of the Nemetes tribe, which is derived from the Celtic root nemeto-.