La historia de Balmazújváros Synagogue
Balmazújváros lies on the edge of the Hortobágy in Hajdú-Bihar county, north-west of Debrecen. Jews were few there in the first half of the nineteenth century: the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative (ESJF) gives 44 Jewish residents in 1840. The community grew quickly in the following decades and built its synagogue in 1850, according to both ESJF and Anikó Gazda's gazetteer of Hungarian synagogues. By 1880 there were 386 Jews in a population of 9,861, and in 1920 the figure was 415. The Jewish population then stayed at about that level: 388 Jews lived in the town in 1941, two per cent of its 16,318 inhabitants. The community was Orthodox, and by 1944 it no longer employed a rabbi of its own. Besides the synagogue it kept a cemetery, where a mortuary house (ohel) stood; two photographs of the cemetery are held by the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives. Nothing is known in the sources read about the appearance of the synagogue, its builder or its exact site. Gazda's survey of 1980-87 records 414 Jews in the town in 1910 and 388 in 1941, classes the building as a synagogue and marks it as demolished. No source read gives the date of the demolition or names who carried it out, and the town's own published history does not mention the synagogue at all.
Where it stood for 137 years
Historic: Balmazújváros, Hajdú county; street and house number unknown. Today: unknown; placeholder pin at the centre of 4060 Balmazújváros, Hajdú-Bihar county (approximate).
Abrir mapa ampliado →La comunidad judía
The Jewish settlement of Balmazújváros was small in its early years. ESJF records 44 Jews in 1840, a figure that rose almost ninefold over the next forty years to 386 out of 9,861 inhabitants in 1880, about four per cent of the town. The community reached 415 people by 1920 and was still 388 strong in 1941, when Jews made up two per cent of a much larger town of 16,318. The building of a synagogue in 1850, only a decade after the 1840 count, shows how fast the community was forming in the middle of the century. It was an Orthodox congregation; in 1944 it numbered 340 members but no longer had its own rabbi. Gazda's survey of 1980-87 records 414 Jews in 1910 and 388 in 1941. The names of its founders, rabbis, presidents and other officers have not been found in the sources read, nor have details of its school, burial society or occupations, and no entry on the town was found in the Magyar Zsidó Lexikon of 1929.
Arquitectura y diseño
No photograph, drawing, plan or written description of the Balmazújváros synagogue was found in the sources consulted, so its form is unknown. The only facts available are its date and its type: ESJF and Gazda both give 1850 as the year of construction, and Gazda's site survey classed the building as a synagogue proper rather than a prayer room in a private house. The architect or builder, the materials, the seating capacity, the layout of the women's gallery and the furnishing of the ark and bimah are all unknown. Further research in the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives photo collection, county archives in Debrecen, and old postcards of the town may yet produce an image.
La vida dentro de la sinagoga
Very little is recorded about religious life in the Balmazújváros synagogue. ESJF describes the community as Orthodox and notes that by 1944 it no longer employed a rabbi of its own; who led services in its last years is not recorded in the sources read. The community also maintained a cemetery with a mortuary house (ohel), photographed at an unknown date for the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives. Who served the congregation as rabbi in its earlier decades, when it was founded as an independent community, which rabbinate it later belonged to, and whether it kept a school or a burial society are all questions this entry could not answer. No memoir, newspaper notice or community record describing services, festivals or notable events in the building was found, and the Magyar Zsidó Lexikon of 1929, which often records such details, has no entry on the town.
Destrucción
No source read describes what happened to the Balmazújváros synagogue during or after the Second World War. ESJF reports that the Jewish cemetery was closed in 1944, the year the congregation came to an end, and the synagogue presumably stood empty from then on, but no document of its later use, sale or condition was found. Anikó Gazda's survey of Hungarian synagogue sites between 1980 and 1987 recorded the building as demolished. That is the only evidence that it no longer exists, and it fixes the latest possible date of demolition at the mid-1980s. Whether the building was damaged in the war, sold after 1945 by survivors or by the national Jewish office, or pulled down by a council under Communist rule is not recorded in any source consulted, and who demolished it is not known.
El destino de la comunidad
The congregation numbered 340 members in 1944, according to ESJF, and 388 Jews had lived in Balmazújváros at the census of 1941. The same source records that the Jewish cemetery was closed in 1944, which marks the end of organised Jewish life in the town. The sources read do not describe the ghettoisation and deportation of the Balmazújváros Jews in 1944: the location of the ghetto or concentration point to which they were taken, the dates of their removal and the camps to which they were sent are all unknown here. Randolph Braham's study of the Holocaust in Hungary, which covers the ghettos of the region, was not consulted for this entry. The number of victims and survivors, and whether any survivors returned to the town after the war, are also unknown. No Jewish community is recorded in Balmazújváros after 1945.
El lugar hoy
The street and plot on which the synagogue stood have not been identified in any source consulted, so it is not possible to say what occupies the site today. Gazda's survey of the 1980s found no surviving building. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Balmazújváros and should not be read as the synagogue's location. The Jewish cemetery of the town survives and was surveyed by the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative; older photographs held by the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives show its mortuary house. Locating the synagogue will need old cadastral maps, the town's local-history collection, or records in the Hajdú-Bihar county archives in Debrecen.
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