Police Bust Robber in Murder of Czech Jewish Historian
Jiri Fiedler
Prague police arrested a man suspected of murdering a respected historian of Czech Jewish heritage, Jiri Fiedler, and his wife.
Jiri Fiedler
The renowned researcher, 78, and his wife, Dagmar, 74, were found dead in their Prague apartment in February 2014. The police said the murders had occurred at the end of the previous month.
After a yearlong investigation, the man suspected of the brutal crime was arrested in western Czech Republic on Wednesday, police investigators told reporters. The man belonged to the couple’s wider circle of acquaintances, the police said, and robbery was ascribed as the motive. The suspect has confessed to the crime, investigators said.
Jiri Fiedler, who was not Jewish, spent over 30 years documenting Jewish heritage sites in then-Czechoslovakia, often cycling to remote towns and villages to research derelict Jewish cemeteries, synagogues, rabbis’ homes and other monuments.
His work caught the attention of the Communist secret police and his major work, “Jewish Sites of Bohemia and Moravia,” was published only in 1992, three years after the fall of communism in his country.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
