Ada Synagogue

OVERVIEW

The story of Ada Synagogue

Ada lies on the western, Bačka, bank of the river Tisza in northern Vojvodina; today it belongs administratively to the North Banat district. Jews settled there after the Turkish wars, coming from German-speaking lands; they spoke Yiddish and later also Hungarian. English Wikipedia dates the formal community to 1790, and the Jewish cemetery is dated to about 1800 in the study of Bačka's Jewish heritage by Aleksandra Terzić and Željko Bjeljac.

The community's history was violent from early on. During the revolution of 1848-49 a Serbian force occupied the town, seized sixty Jews, among them Rabbi Jacob Heilprin, took them to Senta and killed them there. After the Hungarian Jewish schism of 1868-69 Ada remained Orthodox. The synagogue that is the subject of this entry was completed in 1896, when the community numbered roughly four hundred people. It served them until the Second World War, in which it was damaged. Survivors repaired it, and it remained the longest-standing of the lost synagogues of northern Bačka listed by the Archives of Vojvodina. It disappeared in the 1970s; the date given by most sources is 1973, and a commemorative plaque was placed on the site in 1994.

LOCATION

Where it stood for 77 years

Historic: Ada, Bács-Bodrog county, Hungary; street and house number unknown. Today: unknown; a residential building is reported on the site. Placeholder pin at the centre of 24430 Ada, Serbia (approximate).

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The Jewish community

According to Zvi Loker's article in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, the Jews of Ada came from German-speaking lands and were admitted to help resettle the southern regions laid waste in the wars against the Ottomans. Their first known rabbi was Aaron Acker, who died in 1837, followed by Jacob Heilprin. In 1848-49 a Serbian force occupied the town and carried sixty Jews, Heilprin among them, to Senta, where they were murdered. When Hungarian Jewry split in 1868-69, Ada chose the Orthodox side. Its community kept Talmud Torah schools and, after the First World War, belonged to the association of Orthodox communities that worked with the Neolog federation based in Belgrade. The JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project gives 410 Jews in 1880 and 370 in 1921; the Encyclopaedia Judaica gives 452 in 1925, and notes that many families were moving to larger towns. The Archives of Vojvodina and Terzić and Bjeljac both count Ada among the older Jewish communities of Bačka, with a cemetery founded around 1800.

Architecture and design

No photograph, drawing or plan of the Ada synagogue was found in this research, so nothing can be said with confidence about its appearance. The sources consulted agree only on the date of completion, 1896, which places it among the many synagogues built in the towns of southern Hungary in the decades after the emancipation of 1867. Terzić and Bjeljac list Ada with Novi Sad, Sremska Mitrovica, Subotica, Zrenjanin and Pančevo as places where synagogues were built in the nineteenth century, but they describe none of its features. The architect, builder, materials, style, seating capacity and interior arrangement are all unknown. Because the community was Orthodox, the building would have had a central bimah and a separate women's section, but this is an inference from its rite, not a documented fact. Goran Levi's 2016 catalogue of Serbian synagogues is reported to include a photograph, and that book, or the collection of the Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade, is the most likely place to find one.

Life inside the synagogue

Very little is recorded about worship in the synagogue itself. The community that built it was Orthodox from 1868-69 onwards, and the Encyclopaedia Judaica notes that it maintained Talmud Torah schools for the religious education of its boys. Its first rabbis, Aaron Acker and Jacob Heilprin, served long before the 1896 building existed, and the names of the rabbis, cantors and lay leaders who officiated in it between 1896 and 1941 were not found in any source read. Between the two world wars Ada's Orthodox congregation belonged to the association of Orthodox communities in Yugoslavia, which cooperated with the Neolog-led federation in Belgrade. The language of the community had shifted from Yiddish to Hungarian over the nineteenth century, and this was probably also the language of sermons and communal records, although official registers could not be kept in Hebrew or Yiddish. After 1945 the few survivors briefly re-established the community and restored the war-damaged building, but how long services continued is unknown.

Destruction

The Archives of Vojvodina volume of 2021 (Stojsavljević and Vujinović) states that the synagogue was damaged in the Second World War and that the Jewish population repaired it after the war. The survivors gradually left for Israel. The same volume lists Ada among the demolished synagogues of northern Bačka with the year 1973 and says it survived longer than any other synagogue on that list; its conclusion says, less clearly, that thirty years after the repair the site was turned into a residential building. The JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project and English Wikipedia also give 1973, and the Wikipedia article on the town says it was demolished on the order of the Yugoslav authorities, without citing a source. A 2023 article by Robert Čoban in Vreme gives 1962 instead. No demolition permit or contemporary report was found, so who demolished it, and whether it was first sold, is not recorded in any source that could be checked. The year 1973 is preferred here because three sources agree on it and the archive's thirty-year interval points to the 1970s.

The community’s fate

Ada was occupied by Hungary in April 1941 together with the rest of Bačka. The Encyclopaedia Judaica records that the Hungarian authorities set up a concentration camp in the town. Of the 350 Jews counted in Ada in 1940, only 59 were living there after the war; the others were murdered in the Holocaust, most of them presumably after the Nazi German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, when the Jews of Bačka were deported, but the dates and route of the deportation from Ada were not found in the sources read. The survivors briefly re-established the community after 1945, and most of them later emigrated to Israel; English Wikipedia gives 1948 for the departure of 59 survivors. No Jewish community exists in Ada today. The Jewish cemetery, founded around 1800, survives; its gravestones were photographed and catalogued by the local engineer József Ádám.

The site today

The exact plot of the synagogue was not identified in any source read. The Archives of Vojvodina say the site was turned into a residential building, which suggests that housing stands on it now, but the street is not named. A commemorative plaque was placed on the site in 1994, according to the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Ada and does not mark the synagogue. Locating the plot will need the Ada cadastral records, the municipal archive or the Jewish Community of Senta or Subotica, which may know where the plaque is.

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