Bečej Synagogue

OVERVIEW

The story of Bečej Synagogue

Bečej, also called Stari Bečej and in Hungarian Óbecse, is a town on the Tisza in the South Bačka district of Vojvodina. Jews were living and burying their dead there by the first half of the nineteenth century: the oldest surviving gravestone in the town's Jewish cemetery is dated 1834. The community opened a Jewish elementary school in 1882, and in the following year, 1883, it completed the synagogue that is the subject of this entry. The date is given consistently by the 2014 study of Jewish heritage in Bačka by Aleksandra Terzić and Željko Bjeljac and by the 2021 survey of Vojvodina's synagogues by Rastislav Stojsavljević and Nikola Vujinović.

Nothing has been found in the sources consulted about the building's architect, its appearance, its seating or its exact address, and no photograph of it was located. Bačka was occupied by Hungary from 1941 to 1944, and the town was one of those struck by the raid of January 1942. The synagogue itself outlived the war. It was pulled down in 1962, under Communist rule in Yugoslavia, and the town's Jewish cemetery on the road to Iđoš is now the main surviving trace of the congregation.

LOCATION

Where it stood for 79 years

Historic: Óbecse / Stari Bečej; street and house number unknown. Today: unknown; placeholder pin at the centre of Bečej, 21220, South Bačka district (approximate).

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The Jewish community

The earliest evidence of a settled Jewish community in Bečej is its cemetery. The European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative counted 242 gravestones there, the oldest dated 1834 and the latest 1938, while Terzić and Bjeljac date the cemetery to 1848 and describe about 200 monuments. Through the nineteenth century the town was part of the Kingdom of Hungary. The community was large enough by the early 1880s to support its own institutions: the English Wikipedia article on the town records that a Jewish elementary school opened in 1882, a year before the synagogue was completed. After 1918 Bečej became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later Yugoslavia. The size of the community at its height, the names of its rabbis, cantors and lay leaders, and whether it followed the Neolog, Orthodox or status quo rite are unknown; none of the sources read gives population figures for the Jews of Bečej.

Architecture and design

No description, plan or photograph of the Bečej synagogue was found in the sources consulted. The two survey works that record it, Terzić and Bjeljac (2014) and Stojsavljević and Vujinović (2021), give only the year of construction, 1883, and the year of demolition, 1962. Its architect, builder, style, materials and dimensions are therefore unknown, as is whether it had a women's gallery, towers or a dome. No written description of the exterior or interior was located either, so nothing should be assumed about its appearance, size or decoration until a photograph, a plan or a contemporary account is found. Goran Levi's 2016 catalogue of the synagogues of Serbia is reported to include a photograph of the building, and old postcards of Óbecse in Hungarian collections may also show it, but neither could be checked in this research.

Life inside the synagogue

Very little is recorded about the religious life conducted in the Bečej synagogue. The sources read do not name any rabbi, cantor or community president, and they do not say which rite the congregation followed. What can be said is that the synagogue stood at the centre of an organised community with its own elementary school, opened in 1882, and its own cemetery, which had been in use since at least 1834 and continued to receive burials until 1938, the date of the latest gravestone counted by the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative. The building served the congregation for about six decades, from its completion in 1883 until the Second World War, through the transfer of the town from Hungary to Yugoslavia after 1918. Whether any services were held in it after 1945 by survivors who returned is unknown. Fuller detail about the congregation's officers and religious life is likely to be found in Hungarian community directories and in Yugoslav Jewish publications that were not available for this research.

Destruction

The synagogue was not destroyed in the Second World War. It survived the Hungarian occupation of Bačka between 1941 and 1944 and was still standing after the war, when the Jewish community of Bečej had been almost wiped out. It was demolished in 1962. Stojsavljević and Vujinović, in their 2021 survey of the emergence and disappearance of synagogues in Vojvodina published by the Archives of Vojvodina, state plainly that the synagogue in Bečej was demolished in 1962 by the Communist authorities without any reason. The same year is given by Terzić and Bjeljac, by the English Wikipedia list of synagogues in Serbia and by the weekly Vreme in a 2023 article on the lost synagogues of Vojvodina. None of the sources consulted names the specific body, such as the municipal council, that ordered the demolition, says whether the building had first been sold or taken over, or records what became of its furnishings and ritual objects.

The community’s fate

Bačka was annexed by Hungary in April 1941. Terzić and Bjeljac record that the Hungarian occupation authorities began arresting Jews in Stari Bečej, as in Novi Sad and Srbobran. In January 1942 Hungarian forces carried out the so-called Raid in southern Bačka, and between 26 and 29 January it was extended to Bečej. According to the English Wikipedia article on the town, 215 inhabitants were murdered by Hungarian forces, of whom 110 were Jews and 102 Serbs; other figures cited by Terzić and Bjeljac for Bečej range from 168, the occupation authorities' own count, to 248. The fate of the Jews who survived the raid has not been documented in the sources read for this entry. Those still living in the town in 1944, after the Nazi German occupation of Hungary, are presumed to have been deported with the other Jews of Bačka, but no source consulted gives the date, route or number of those taken from Bečej, or how many survived and returned. The cemetery, described by Terzić and Bjeljac as vandalised, is now fenced and maintained by the local community.

The site today

The exact plot on which the synagogue stood has not been identified in any source consulted, so it is not possible to say what occupies it today. No surviving fragment of the building and no marker on its site are recorded. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Bečej and should not be read as the synagogue's location. The Jewish cemetery survives at Iđoški put 1, on the road out of town towards Iđoš; the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative found it fenced, partly by a brick wall, and in good condition, with 242 gravestones. Locating the synagogue will need old cadastral maps, the town museum in Bečej or the local Jewish community of Novi Sad.

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