Jewish Museum head Pavla Niklová: When Oct. 7 happened we realised we live in an open society
Pavla Niklová has been the director of the Jewish Museum in Prague, one of the oldest institutions of its kind in the world, for around a year and a half. When we spoke at her office on the edge of the city’s Jewish Quarter, the conversation took in everything from Niklová’s own background to whether the museum has been much impacted by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
What’s your background, Pavla? What kind of family do you come from, that kind of thing?
“I come from a Czech family. My father was born in Brno and my mother was born in a little town in Eastern Bohemia.
“And – probably we would come to this anyway – my grandfather was Jewish. He spent the war in London and then he came back to be with grandma and my father again.
“In my family nobody was religious, so when I started at the Jewish Museum for the first time a new world opened in front of me.”
“My grandmother was put in prison and in a labour camp near Brno during the war, but, thank God, all of them survived.
“And in my family – my grandparents and my parents – nobody was religious, so when I started working at the Jewish Museum for the first time [as head of PR], in 2004, a new world opened in front of me and then I started exploring a new journey.”
You studied Czech and English. How did you get into your field, which was, or is, arts management?
“Yes, I studied Czech and English literature and teaching and language.
“I started teaching in 1990. I started teaching at the Czech Technical University and I taught an incredible number of classes per day, because everyone wanted to learn English.
“That was a great experience, but then I was offered a job at the then new Soros Center for Contemporary Arts.
“I believe it was because I spoke English that I was offered that job, and so I got to arts management because of that.
“I stayed and it’s been a great life and great career – because of English, basically.”
You also spent time in London around that time, is that correct?
“Yes. I couldn’t travel before ’89 and when they opened the borders I travelled to London – I think it was 1992 – and stayed with a friend for six months.
“I met a lot of people and did weird jobs and it was a great time and I loved the city.
“I always wanted to live and work for some time in London and New York and I managed to do it. Now I have two kids: my daughter lives in London and my son lives in New York, so they’re really living my dream.
“But now they’re a little bit too far away. So you always wish for something and then it comes true and that’s it [laughs].”
I first met you in New York about six or seven years ago. What led you to the city?
“So I applied to be the director of the Czech Center New York. The Czech Centres are a government agency promoting Czech arts and culture.
“Oh, it was a dream job at that time – you could pick the best of Czech arts and present it to New York audiences.
“Of course it’s not an easy job, because in New York hundreds of things are happening every night, so you have to compete for the audience every night.
“But it was a great time and I met great Czech artists. I met Jiří Bělohlávek, who came to perform with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, or Jiří Menzel, or Magor [poet Ivan Martin Jirous] – it was his last visit to the United States.
“So English and the arts brought me to New York.”
When you were at the Czech Center was the Bohemian National Hall [where the Czech Center is located] already renovated?
“Yes, I started in spring of 2010 and the building was reopened in I believe 2008 or 2009, something like that.”
When we spoke at the Bohemian National Hall in 2018 you were the head of the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation, which is now called the Vaclav Havel Center. Did you have some connection with Havel?
“Not directly. I met him a few times. One occasion was when I was at the Soros Center and we were donating some paintings to one of the halls at the Military Hospital, where he unfortunately had to spend some time.
“Then during a performance of Leaving at the Archa Theatre. Oh and here – that was a wonderful occasion. Miloš Pojar was at that time running a series of conversations called Conversations about Judaism and Václav Havel was closing the series.
“It was here at the Spanish Synagogue, so the synagogue was of course packed. We were waiting for Havel in front of the place and he arrived and got out. This was when he wasn’t president anymore, so he was relaxed.
“He was like, So what is tonight about? Miloš Pojar told him, Well, it’s about Judaism. And Havel went pale and said, I don’t know anything about it [laughs].
“So Miloš said, OK, let’s go for a beer, let’s have a small beer. And then it was a wonderful conversation.
“So that’s how I knew Václav Havel personally.”
One thing I’m curious about with anybody who has been away from Prague for a long time, especially if they’ve been in some exciting place, like New York: How is it coming back here after, I don’t know, 15 years or so?
“My mother lives here, my brother lives here so my kids and I used to come here at least once every year, so I didn’t lose the connection.
“And I worked at the Jewish Museum before, so I knew what I was getting into.
“But of course there are some things. I miss one thing: the ocean! I really got used to the fresh air the ocean brings. And some other things.”
You took the position here after Leo Pavlát, who was the director of the museum for about 30 years. He was the first modern-era director. How is it taking over after somebody who has really kind of created the position in many ways?
“I know Leo Pavlát, he was my boss for five years. I learned a lot from him and I really respect him for many things that he did with the museum and the way he was running it.
“On the other hand, I think that 30 years is a long time and that every institution deserves, or probably needs, a slight change.
"Thirty years is a long time and that every institution deserves, or probably needs, a slight change."
“So in some ways it is difficult but in some ways it feels natural, I think both for the institution and for people who work here, or for the broader community, to start exploring new possibilities and new directions that that the museum can take.
“So it hasn’t been that hard.”
We met recently at an event and you were telling me that this is one of the oldest Jewish museums in the world, or in Europe. When was it set up and why was it set up?
“We are the third oldest Jewish museum in the world. We were established in 1906, after Vienna and New York.
“It was established during a time of big renovation, reconstruction of Josefov [the Jewish Quarter]; basically you could say gentrification, using the current term.
“And it was established to preserve some of the buildings, synagogues and some of the objects from these synagogues.
“That was the original aim, and with that aim the museum continued until the Second World War, when history took over.
“Basically what happened was the museum became the central place where objects from abandoned synagogues from the Czech lands, and also from some Jewish homes, were gathered.”
Was it the case that some families brought their belongings here with the idea that they would be held in safekeeping?
“Probably you can say that. Or maybe it was even… because there was a huge number of communities around Czechoslovakia, so all of these things were brought here to Prague.
“We are the third oldest Jewish museum in the world. We were established in 1906, after Vienna and New York.”
“This was run by the Prague Jewish community and they always had in mind that they would take care of these things so that people could take them back when they returned after the war.
“The Germans had other plans, so it never happened. But there was a team of dedicated curators and historians who worked here during the war.
“They did their best to catalogue these things and to prepare two exhibitions, so it was a heroic time.
“And thanks to that we have a very unique collection, because it mainly contains objects from this area, from Bohemia and Moravia.
“And it’s a huge responsibility to take care of all these objects.”
Do you have a lot of items today that were acquired, for want of a better word, at that time?
“Yes, we do. But we have a policy that if there are people who were previous owners, or their children or grandchildren, we are very transparent.
“We started that in the 1990s. People have to prove that they are relatives and then the items are given back to them.”
Who are your visitors? I presume that they’re almost all foreigners, or tourists?
“Not only. We have a lot of tourists – they are mainly foreigners – but we’d like to change that.
“We will promote the museum with Czech audiences as well. We will start new guided tours and try to invite more Czech people.
“On the other hand, we have a huge educational programme. Many schools from the whole country visit us.
“It happens us, for example, that when we are looking for a new person for a position I ask them if they have been to the Jewish museum and they say, Yes, when I was a teenager at high school we visited the museum.
“That’s not enough, if they haven’t seen it before the interview, but that’s what many people say.”
Is it getting harder to teach about the Holocaust with every passing decade? Fifteen years from now it will be a century since the Holocaust began.
“Of course. But we are trying to come up with new ideas. We have a big Shoah department and we have interviews, we have oral history projects, testimonies from Holocaust survivors but also from the second generation.
“So that’s one way to go, to speak with people whose parents or grandparents were killed or were Holocaust survivors.
“That’s one way, and then we just have to be creative.
“We offer about 10 different seminars or workshops for kids from primary to high school. We also can design a special seminar and tour, if there’s a school who’s interested in that.
“We hope to use cells or different apps to get kids involved in something they otherwise probably wouldn’t be interested in, or wouldn’t like to listen to.
“But we have great teachers and I believe we’re still on track to keep the memory alive, and accessible: it has to be specially adapted so that kids can remember something and can understand.
“That’s one of our priorities – to keep doing that.”
And you’re also planning a big exhibition at the National Museum?
“That’s right. Next year is a big year for the Jewish Museum, because we will celebrate 120 years.
“So we were offered to have an exhibition on this occasion at the historical building of the National Museum on Wenceslas Square.
“The exhibition will be about the history of the museum, but we hope to present objects that haven’t been exhibited at all or that much.
“We already started restoring some of our big Torah curtains, some textiles.
“And we are excited about this opportunity – I feel it as a symbolic representation too, that we will become part of the National Museum.”
Tensions have been high since the October 7 attacks and the bombardment of Gaza. Do those tensions cause any kind of consequences for your institution?
“We were very worried. Two things happened: October 7, but also the shooting at the Faculty of Arts [in December 2023], which is our neighbour. We had to put 500 tourists on lockdown.
“So we are increasing our security. We were also worried that the number of our visitors would go down. It didn’t happen so we are very grateful, and we are lucky.
“Two things happened: October 7, but also the shooting at the Faculty of Arts [in December 2023], which is our neighbour.”
“Of course security is something that is special with the Jewish Museum. You don’t get that level with any other museum in the Czech Republic.
“But we have very good security of our own – they are a professional team, they are our employees – and we have very good relations, connections with the Czech Police; we are also very grateful for that.
“When somebody leaves a suspect flask with tea or something they come and take it away and check it. In other museums people would just throw it away – we can’t do that.
“But I must say that from the first moment when it happened we realised that we, luckily, live in a society that is open.
“The Jewish Museum is a Czech cultural Jewish institution, and people keep coming and supporting us in this way.”
Have there been expressions of pro-Palestinian feeling that have impacted on you?
“Not that much. We even had the luxury that when we posted photographs of the hostages on the wall of the Old Jewish Cemetery, outside, not inside.
“They’ve basically been there since November ‘23 and somebody vandalised them, I can count it on the fingers of one hand, four or five times.
“Security is something that is special with the Jewish Museum. You don’t get that level with any other museum in the Czech Republic.”
“Otherwise they are there and people gather there, people discuss, people leave their own notes there. So it became like a discussion platform.
“And really I think we are the only Jewish Museum in the world that can afford this. I think any other place in the world it would be a constant battle of taking them down and putting the photos back.
“So we’ve been lucky and we are grateful, and we are of course open to discussions about hard topics.”
I understand that when you began here you created a five-year mission statement. What’s in your mission statement?
“Well, we created a mission for the first time, and then we created a strategic plan for five years.
“The mission is, briefly, that we are here to care about the history, to give a voice to generations that were silenced, to be an open for space for discussions and to create new history.”
