VOTICE

VOTICE (Ger. Wotitz), town in S. Bohemia, Czech Republic. The first evidence of a Jewish community dates from a document of 1538 concerning a Jewish cemetery. In 1570 there were 13 Jewish families in Votice. A synagogue was built in 1661 and renovated in 1724. The synagogue was torn down in 1949–50. Fifty families lived there in 1799. Votice was an agricultural center, and many Jews earned their livelihood as grain merchants and as arendas ("land-leasers") on the surrounding estates. There were 340 Jews in Votice proper in 1869 and 1,015 in the district; in 1902 there were 560 Jews living in 12 localities; in 1910 there were 163 Jews in the town and 348 in the district; in 1930 the community numbered 76. The community had an active cultural life. Outstanding among its rabbis were Jedidiah Tia Weil and Moses Bloch (1847–53). The family names Wotizky and Utitz probably indicate origin in this community. Under the Nazi occupation in 1942 all the Jews were deported to extermination camps. The community's synagogue equipment was sent to the Jewish Central Museum in Prague. A Jewish community was not reestablished after World War II. The synagogue and the cemetery, with gravestones dating from the 18th century, were still in existence in 1970. The names of the victims of the Holocaust were included in the memorial at tabor . -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Klein, in: H. Gold (ed.), Die Juden und Judengemeinden Boehmens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (1934), 705–28. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Fiedler, Jewish Sights of Bohemia and Moravia (1991). (Jan Herman / Yeshayahu Jelinek (2nd ed.)