Karol Sidon

Karol Efraim Sidon was born in Prague during the war to a Jewish father, Alexander Sidon, and a Christian mother; his father was arrested in 1944, held by the Gestapo at Pankrác and then at Terezín, where he was tortured to death that same year, and the child was hidden in the countryside until the occupation ended. He studied at the Academy of Musical Arts in Prague from 1960, wrote screenplays and radio plays, worked until 1968 as a producer for the puppeteer Jiří Trnka, and published in that year the book that made his name, A Dream About My Father, on growing up without the Jewish father who died in the Terezín ghetto.

He signed Charter 77 in 1977, and in 1983 emigrated to West Germany, read Jewish studies at Heidelberg, studied for a time in Israel and was ordained a rabbi. He came home in 1992 as Chief Rabbi of Prague and later of the Czech Republic, brought young rabbinical families from Israel to rebuild the Orthodox community, founded the Lauder schools, a mikveh and a house of study, and translated the Five Books of Moses into Czech — the most important Czech translation of the Torah.