NOVY JICIN

NOVY JICIN (Czech, Nový Jičín ; Ger. Neutitschein ), town in Moravia, Czech Republic. Jews are recorded in Novy Jicin in the middle of the 14^th century as owners of houses, and as cloth merchants. The Jewish lane (Judengasse), which in 1581 contained 46 houses, was situated next to the castle, but Jews resided in other streets as well. When the community was expelled in 1562, its leaders sold the synagogue to the mayor and presented the city with the cemetery, requesting that it should not be damaged. The expellees settled in the neighboring villages. In the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries Jews returned to the vicinity of the town, and by 1828 a few privileged families were again residing in it. Full freedom of settlement was granted only in 1848, and in July 1850 the authorities quelled an attempt to organize anti-Jewish riots. In 1868 the statutes of a *Kultusverein were confirmed, and by 1892 it was acknowledged as a community. The cemetery dates from 1875 and the synagogue from 1908. The Jews of Novy Jicin were active in the local textile industry and in trade. The community numbered 14 in 1847, 155 in 1868, 275 in 1880, 253 in 1900, and 206 (1.4% of the total population) in 1930. Novy Jicin was the site of the first hakhsharah farm in Czechoslovakia, organized in 1921. At the time of the Sudeten crisis in 1938, the community dispersed, and it was not revived after World War ii.

bibliography:

S. Mandl, in: H. Gold (ed.), Juden und Judengemeinden Maehrens… (1929), 404–16; P. Ziegler, Zur Geschichte der Juden in Neu-Titschein (1939); Bondy-Dworský, no. 649; Ch. D'Elvert, Zur Geschichte der Juden in Maehren… (1895), 110–3.