Jakobovits, Tobias
JAKOBOVITS, TOBIAS
JAKOBOVITS, TOBIAS (1887–1944), Prague librarian and scholar. Born of a rabbinical family in Lackenbach (Burgenland) and pupil of the yeshivot of Deutschkreuz, Szombathely, and Bratislava, he came to Prague after World War i as a teacher of religion at secondary schools and the talmud torah. There he attended the German university. He reorganized the community's library, publishing a pamphlet on its history in Czech and German (Entstehungsgeschichte der Bibliothek der israelitischen Kultusgemeinde in Prag, 1927). Devoting himself to research on the history of the Jews in Bohemia, he published the greater number of his articles in the yearbook of the society for the history of Czechoslovakian Jewry (jggjČ) and in Věstnik, the periodical of the Prague community. During the occupation of Bohemia (1939), he and Joseph Polak headed the scholarly staff of the Jewish museum, which was taken over by the Nazis in 1942 (see *Museums, Jewish). He organized a book exhibition in 1942 and wrote the major part of the museum guide. On Oct. 28, 1944, along with the rest of the museum staff, he was deported to his death in *Auschwitz.
bibliography:
G. Kisch, in: hj, 11 (1949), 112–4 (bibl.); H. Volávkov, The Story of the Jewish Museum in Prague (1968), passim; O. Muneles, Bibliographical Survey of Jewish Prague (1952), index.
[Meir Lamed]