Towards the end of her long life Eliška Kleinová, known to all who knew her as Lisa, recalled a portent of something cataclysmic. There was no reason for her to feel this way; in many respects, she enjoyed an idyllic childhood in Přerov, with her loving yet somewhat quirky family, within a stable Jewish community at peace with itself and its environment.

There are perhaps fewer than ten Jews in Přerov today. After the Second World War, out of the few who survived, only a handful of the pre-war Jewish community returned. The treasures of the synagogue had been stolen by the Nazis and the building remained empty, eventually becoming a church. Its outside walls now bear a plaque as a memorial to that lost Jewish community. Of its holy Torah scrolls, three miraculously survived the Holocaust, and are now in regular use in synagogues in the UK and USA.

Jews began to settle in Přerov by the fourteenth century. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the small Přerov Jewish community numbering just over 600 began to enjoy civic and political emancipation. This epochal change began throughout the Czech Lands when, between 1848 and 1867, the Austro-Hungarian constitution granted Jews full equality, even if only on paper rather than in practice. By 1860, the Jewish community, no longer restricted to the Jewish quarter of Přerov, replaced its old synagogue, which had been destroyed by fire in 1832. In 1898 the building was beautifully restored by the Přerov-born, but Viennese-based, architect Jakob Gartner in a neo-Roman style, demonstrating the relative affluence of the community, which by 1900, at more than 717, constituted just over four per cent of Přerov's total population.