Karol Sidon

Karol Efraim Sidon (born 9 August 1942) is a Czech rabbi, writer and playwright. He is the Chief Rabbi of the Czech Republic, and former Chief Rabbi of the city of Prague. Life Born in Prague during the war, Karol Sidon is a distant relative of rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld. His father Alexander Sidon came from Trnava, where his great-uncle Shimon Sidon was the first rabbi after a long expulsion of Jews from the city. Alexander was arrested in 1944 and imprisoned by the Gestapo in Pankrác and in Terezin, where he was tortured to death in the same year. Karol was then hidden away in the countryside until the end of the occupation. His mother raised him alone until 1948 when she remarried a Jew. He began studying at the Academy of Musical Art in Prague in 1960 where he began writing film scripts, and radio plays for Czech public radio - Český rozhlas. Until 1968 he worked as a producer for Czech puppeteer Jiří Trnka. In the same year, Sidon's first book, which became a cult book "Sen o mém otci" ("Dream about my father") was published, in which the author deals with his being brought up without his Jewish father Alexander Sidon, who perished in the Terezín ghetto (his wife was a Christian). In 1977 he was a signatory to Charter 77. He received the Jiří Kolář prize in 1978. He was married to Marcela Třebická, he is the father of the actors Daniel Sidon and Magdalena Sidonová. In 1983 he emigrated to West Germany and he studied Jewish studies at the Heidelberg university. He became ordained as a Rabbi after studying for a time in Israel. He returned to the Czech Republic in 1992, where he became chief rabbi of Prague.