Old Synagogue of Bjelovar

Еврейская община

In 1802 nine Jews were recorded in Bjelovar despite official bans on their settlement, but in 1857 none were registered. Settlement grew quickly from the 1870s: 15 Jews lived in the town in 1871, 97 in 1880, 216 in 1890 and 306 in 1900. The community, founded on 23 February 1877 and confirmed by the authorities in 1879, had twelve members at first and about eighty after its tax rolls were set; the ESJF survey counts some eighty Jewish families in 1881 in a town of 5,609. Its first president was Emanuel Ebenspanger, who paid 3,500 talers for the synagogue plot, followed in January 1878 by Jakob Fleischmann, who led it until his death in 1902. Albert Liebermann held a provisional office, Josef Liebermann headed the Chevra Kadisha burial society, and David Lindenfeld served as prayer leader and ritual slaughterer from 1877 to 1881. Jews soon became, in the words of a 2024 study, an important and progressive part of the town's economic, social and cultural life. Later presidents included Jaša Hržić, in office in 1913.

Архитектура и дизайн

The building is known from a drawing made in 1901 by the town engineer Srećko Smočinski, reproduced by both Medar and Karaula, and from an undated postcard on Wikimedia Commons. Mladen Medar classes it as a synagogue-house: it repeated the architecture of an ordinary single-storey dwelling with a triangular gable and a double-pitched roof. Its historicist street front imitated a classicist facade, and the gable was crowned with the tablets of the Law. Inside there were 100 seats for men and 80 for women; how the women's seats were arranged is not described. No architect or builder is named. The project was driven by the community president Jakob Fleischmann. Bjelovar's Christian population contributed 500 talers, the town council gave 6,000 bricks, and the Hirschler brothers of Alsó-Dombor sent 50 gulden. The Zagreb Jewish community presented a silver eternal lamp and a gold-embroidered curtain, and the community's women's society provided the other curtains. The building cost and the date of completion of the interior are unknown.

Жизнь в синагоге

The consecration on 19 September 1881 was led by Dr Moritz Grünwald, a graduate of the Breslau rabbinical seminary who had just been appointed district rabbi. His commemorative booklet, dated Belovar, 11 September 1881, recorded the community's history and was dedicated to Jakob Fleischmann. Karl Löwi was engaged as cantor and ritual slaughterer at the same time. Grünwald stayed until 1884, when he left for Písek and Mladá Boleslav in Bohemia. He also edited Das jüdische Centralblatt, which was printed in Fleischmann's Bjelovar shop and carried texts of sermons preached in the town synagogue. The longest-serving rabbi of the old building was Dr Samuel D. Tauber, district and later chief rabbi of Bjelovar for 37 years until his death in 1927, who also consecrated the new synagogue in 1917. A school for the community's children was supported for two years by the Israelite Alliance of Vienna, and the Chevra Kadisha cared for the new Jewish cemetery laid out during Fleischmann's presidency. The community printed its statutes in 1910. In the old synagogue's last years the congregation had outgrown it.

Разрушение

The old synagogue was not destroyed by violence. It was closed when the new synagogue on Ulica Ivana Mažuranića opened in August 1917 and the Torah scrolls were transferred there. According to Mladen Medar, who relied on the notes of the local historian Z. Lovrenčević, the community then sold the small temple to a man named Suhanek, who used it as a mill, and the building was later demolished. Neither the date of the sale nor the date of the demolition is given, and who pulled the building down is not recorded. A description on Wikimedia Commons states that it was abandoned in 1914 and demolished in 1917, but cites no source, and it conflicts with Medar's account of its later use as a mill. No source read describes the building during the Second World War or shows it standing after 1945.

Судьба общины

In April 1941 Bjelovar had 303 Jews. Days after Nazi German troops entered the town, Ernest Kopstein shot himself on 10 April 1941, and by 1 September eleven Jews had taken their own lives. Under the Ustaša regime of the Independent State of Croatia Jewish property was seized and shops were advertised for sale in the local paper. Arrests and deportations began in late July and early August 1941. Rabbi David Ginsberg was arrested with his family on the night of 31 July 1941 and died at Jasenovac. One group was sent to the Gospić camp and others to the Zagreb assembly camp; men were then taken to Jasenovac, women and children to Stara Gradiška and Loborgrad. Forty-four people obtained passes to the Italian-occupied coast, and 27 elderly people, women and children were held in a building in the town. The commissions of 1945 counted 288 Bjelovar Jews deported and 262 killed, 94 men, 106 women and 62 children; only 35 survived. A community was re-established in 1945, but by 1968 only twelve Jews remained.

Место сегодня

The synagogue stood at the crossroads of today's Strossmayerova ulica and Ulica Andrije Kačića Miošića, in the centre of Bjelovar. Medar writes that a multi-storey residential building now occupies its site. Which corner of the crossroads it stood on, and its historic house number, have not been identified, so the map pin marks the junction itself. Nothing of the building survives and no marker on the site is recorded. Its successor, the synagogue of 1917 on Ulica Ivana Mažuranića, stands a short walk away; after wartime use as a store for looted property and confiscation in 1947, it became a concert hall and is now the town's Dom kulture.

Значимые имена