Blokzijl Synagogue

PRZEGLĄD

Historia Blokzijl Synagogue

Blokzijl is a small town in the north-west of Overijssel, now part of the municipality of Steenwijkerland. According to the Jewish Cultural Quarter's community encyclopedia, Jews first settled there in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, among them a butcher and his family, and their numbers grew after civil equality came in 1796. From 1791 services were held in a private house. After a period of internal conflict that ended in 1828, the community acquired a building on the Zuiderstraat that held a synagogue, a religious school, a meeting room and a ritual bath under one roof. Early in the nineteenth century the Jews of nearby Vollenhove, who had their own small synagogue of 1809, were merged into the Blokzijl congregation.

The Zuiderstraat synagogue served the community through its peak of 115 people around 1870 and its long decline afterwards. Local Jewish schooling ended in 1885. By the 1920s only a handful of Jews remained, and the building had become dilapidated. It was sold in 1925 and pulled down the following year, so it was already gone long before the Second World War. No photograph of the building has been found; the only known depiction is a modern reconstruction drawing. The exact plot on the Zuiderstraat has not been identified.

LOKALIZACJA

Where it stood for 98 years

Historic: Zuiderstraat, Blokzijl, Overijssel; house number unknown. Today: Zuiderstraat, 8356 Blokzijl, municipality of Steenwijkerland; pin at the midpoint of the street (approximate).

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Społeczność żydowska

The first Jews reached Blokzijl in the third quarter of the eighteenth century; a single family is recorded in 1748, and in 1771 the Jews bought land on the Slingerpad for a cemetery. Few settled before 1796, when Napoleonic rule brought full civil equality, but numbers then grew quickly. Figures for Blokzijl, Vollenhove, Wanneperveen and the surrounding area are 35 in 1797, 93 in 1809, 93 in 1840, 115 in 1869, 38 in 1899 and 9 in 1930. Most Jews made their living as traders or butchers. The community had one voluntary association, a women's charitable society. Vollenhove, which had held services in a house on the Kerkplaatse from 1783 and had its own cemetery from 1775, became part of the Blokzijl community when Dutch Jewish congregations were reorganised early in the nineteenth century, and Wanneperveen briefly had an independent community from the 1820s. After about 1870 the congregation shrank steadily, and by the 1920s it had almost disappeared.

Architektura i projekt

Almost nothing is recorded about the building's appearance. The community encyclopedia says only that the community acquired a building on the Zuiderstraat in 1828 with space for a synagogue, a religious school, a meeting room and a ritual bath. The building therefore seems to have existed before 1828 and to have been adapted rather than purpose-built, but its earlier use, its date of construction, its builder and its owner before 1828 are unknown. Its size, seating capacity, materials, façade and interior layout are also unknown. The only image known is a reconstruction drawing of the demolished synagogue made by P. and J. de Jonge, which is reproduced on the community encyclopedia page; because it is a reconstruction and not a record of the building as it stood, it is not reproduced here. No photograph, postcard, plan or cadastral survey of the building was found.

Życie w synagodze

The Zuiderstraat building was the centre of Jewish life in Blokzijl for about a century. Besides the prayer room it contained the community's religious school, where local children received Jewish instruction until 1885; after that the few remaining children were taught by a teacher in Zwartsluis. The meeting room served the congregation's administration, and the ritual bath in the same building allowed the community to observe the laws of family purity without travelling to another town. The congregation also cared for the Jews of Vollenhove after the two communities merged, and the Vollenhove synagogue built in 1809 with a gift from King Louis Napoleon is said to have been rarely used, which suggests that Blokzijl was the place where services were regularly held. The community's only recorded association was a women's charitable society. No rabbis, cantors, teachers or board members of the congregation are named in the sources consulted, and nothing is recorded about the ritual or the furnishings of the synagogue.

Zniszczenie

The synagogue was not destroyed in the Second World War. By the 1920s the Jewish community of Blokzijl had shrunk to a few people, too few to maintain the building, which had become dilapidated. According to the Jewish Cultural Quarter's community encyclopedia, which goes back to the Pinkas Hakehillot volume on the Netherlands, the collapsing synagogue building was sold in 1925 and razed one year later, in 1926. Who bought it, for what price and for what purpose, and who carried out the demolition, are not recorded in the sources consulted. The congregation still existed as a body at the time, since it was only formally dissolved in 1947, but the sources do not say who signed the sale. No fittings or ritual objects from the building are known to survive, and what became of its Torah scrolls is unknown.

Los społeczności

In 1930 only nine Jews were counted in Blokzijl and the surrounding area. Under the Nazi German occupation of the Netherlands the remaining Jews of Blokzijl and Vollenhove were deported and murdered; a memorial at the Jewish cemetery commemorates fourteen victims from the two places. The best documented are the De Horst family. In June 1942 the pedlar Mozes de Horst, born in Blokzijl in 1867 and a dealer in rags and china, lived with his wife Naatje de Horst-Keizer, born in Hasselt in 1866, at Zuiderstraat 322, in what is described as a condemned house on the same street as the old synagogue. Both were murdered at Sobibor on 14 May 1943, and their daughter Rika on 11 June 1943. A local history by Annemarie Schoemakers, published in 2016, follows eight members of the family from Blokzijl to Sobibor. The community was formally dissolved in 1947 and placed under the Jewish community of Zwolle.

Miejsce dzisiaj

The building on the Zuiderstraat was demolished in 1926, and the exact plot has not been identified in any source consulted, so it is not known what stands there today. The Zuiderstraat itself still exists as a street in the centre of Blokzijl. The map pin for this entry marks the midpoint of the Zuiderstraat and should not be read as the synagogue's exact location. The Jewish cemetery on the Slingerpad, bought in 1771, survives with about eleven gravestones; it has been maintained by the municipality since 1949 and was restored by private initiative in 1999. A memorial stone there commemorates the Jews of Blokzijl and Vollenhove murdered in the Holocaust.

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