Old Synagogue of Berettyóújfalu

Społeczność żydowska

The Encyclopaedia Judaica traces the Jews of Berettyóújfalu to settlers from Zsáka at the beginning of the nineteenth century. A chevra kadisha burial society was founded in 1807, a ritual bath followed in 1866, and a Jewish elementary school opened in 1876. After the split of Hungarian Jewry in 1868-69 the community joined the Orthodox wing. In 1885 several small neighbouring communities, among them Csökmő, were attached to it, and by 1920 there was also a Hasidic congregation in the town. The Jewish population rose from 125, or 2.5 per cent of the inhabitants, in 1840 to 1,083, or 9.9 per cent, in 1930. The 1941 census counted 982 Jews among 11,781 residents. Its rabbis included Amram Blum from 1883 to 1907, Mordechai Friedmann from 1912 to 1930 and Amram's son Béla Benzion Blum from 1930 to 1944. Gazda's survey of 1980-87 records 81 Jews in 1828, 115 in 1851, 1,041 in 1910 and 996 in 1941.

Architektura i projekt

Nothing is known about the appearance of the old synagogue. No photograph, drawing, plan or written description of it was found, and its architect, builder, size, seating capacity and style are unknown. Gazda gives it a construction date of 1790 and records a renovation in 1840-1866; the Encyclopaedia Judaica states only that the first synagogue was built in 1840. Two postcards held by the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives, captioned 'Izr. templom' and 'Izraelita templom', show the community's later and much larger synagogue: a tall rendered hall with round-arched windows in two storeys, a gabled street front with a rose window and crenellated corner towers, set behind a brick and iron fence among low village houses. Gazda dates that building to 1903, so it is not the building of 1790 or 1840. Whether the old synagogue stood on the same plot, stood beside the new one as a smaller prayer house, or was elsewhere in the town is unknown.

Życie w synagodze

No source read describes services or communal life inside the old synagogue specifically. What is known concerns the congregation as a whole. It was formed around a burial society founded in 1807, and the first synagogue, whichever date is correct, would have served a community of little more than a hundred people; the Encyclopaedia Judaica counts 125 Jews in 1840. The ritual bath of 1866 and the school of 1876 show a community organising the full range of religious institutions in the decades after the synagogue was built. From 1868-69 the congregation followed the Orthodox rite. Its known rabbis, Amram Blum, Mordechai Friedmann and Béla Benzion Blum, all served after 1883, by which time the community may already have been worshipping in its larger new building; whether the old synagogue was still in use then, perhaps as a study house or a Hasidic prayer room, is unknown.

Zniszczenie

The circumstances of the old synagogue's destruction are not documented in any source read. Gazda's survey of 1980-87 records the building as demolished, which means it was gone by 1987 at the latest, but she gives no date and names nobody. It may have been replaced and pulled down when the community built its larger synagogue, or it may have survived into the twentieth century; no evidence was found either way, and nothing read shows it standing after 1945. The Encyclopaedia Judaica reports that the postwar congregation existed until 1956 and that 'the synagogue' was sold in 1964, but this almost certainly refers to the community's later synagogue of 1903, which Gazda records as still standing and used as a warehouse. Who demolished the old synagogue, and when, is not recorded in the sources found.

Los społeczności

During the Second World War Jewish men from Berettyóújfalu were conscripted into forced labour service. After the Nazi German occupation of Hungary in March 1944 a register of the town's Jews was drawn up in April, and the Jews of the town and surrounding villages were concentrated in a local ghetto. According to Gergely Kovács, Hungarian gendarmes marched them to the brickyard, and on 7 June 1944 they were taken by train to the ghetto of Nagyvárad (Oradea). The last transport from Nagyvárad left for Auschwitz on 26 June 1944. Kovács counts 654 Jews of Berettyóújfalu who died, most of them murdered at Auschwitz. Rabbi Béla Benzion Blum died in the Budapest ghetto. About 150 survivors returned, many of them former labour servicemen, and the 1949 census counted 221 Jews. The congregation lasted until 1956; most members then moved away or emigrated, about 20 remained in 1968 and only two by the end of the century.

Miejsce dzisiaj

The site of the old synagogue has not been identified in any source consulted, so it is not possible to say what occupies the plot today. No surviving fragment and no marker are recorded. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Berettyóújfalu and should not be read as the building's location. Locating the plot will need the town's nineteenth-century cadastral maps, the records of the Bihar county archives or the full text of Gergely Kovács's 2020 study of the town's Jewish community, which was not available in full.

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