Borsec Wooden Synagogue

PRZEGLĄD

Historia Borsec Wooden Synagogue

Borsec lies in a high valley of the Eastern Carpathians in present-day Harghita County. Its Hungarian name, Borszék, comes from borvízszék, 'seat of mineral water', and the place grew up around its springs. Until 1876 it belonged to the Szekler seat of Csík and then to Csík County in Hungary; after 1919 it was part of Romania's Ciuc County, between 1940 and October 1944 it was again held by Hungary, and Romanian administration returned in March 1945.

A small Jewish community lived here, and its synagogue is known almost entirely from one line in a list of synagogues and prayer houses of interwar Romania compiled by the historian I. Kara and reproduced on the Jewish-Romania website: 'Borsec, Harghita county, wooden synagogue destroyed in 1914, rebuilt in 1922.' The list does not say when the wooden building was put up, what destroyed it, or whether the 1922 building stood on the same plot. The English Wikipedia list of synagogues in Romania includes a Borsec synagogue with its date and status both marked as unknown. The Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities in Romania (Pinkas Hakehillot, vol. 2, Yad Vashem) has an entry on Borsec at page 95, but it has not been translated online and could not be read. This entry therefore records the loss of the wooden building in 1914 and leaves its cause, its appearance and its exact site as open questions.

LOKALIZACJA

Where it stood

Historic: Borszék, Csík County, Kingdom of Hungary; street and plot unknown. Today: Borsec, Harghita County, 535300, Romania; exact site unknown; placeholder pin at the town centre (approximate).

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Społeczność żydowska

Almost nothing about the Jews of Borsec was found in the sources that could be read. The Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities in Romania lists Borsec (Borszek) among the communities of its second volume, which covers Transylvania, so the editors at Yad Vashem had enough material for an entry of their own, but its text, including any population figures and the names of rabbis or leaders, is not available in translation. Borsec was a small spa settlement and today has fewer than 2,600 inhabitants, about three quarters of them Hungarian-speaking, so the Jewish community is likely to have been small. That the congregation rebuilt its synagogue in 1922, in the first years of Romanian rule, shows that it was still able to support a house of worship after the First World War. For comparison, the nearest town studied in the sources read, Gyergyószentmiklós (Gheorgheni), had 321 Jews in 1910 and 619 in 1930. The number of Jews in Borsec at any date, their occupations and their communal organisation are unknown.

Architektura i projekt

The only description of the building is the single word used in I. Kara's list: it was a wooden synagogue. No photograph, drawing, postcard, plan or written account of it was found, and no source gives its date of construction, its size, its seating capacity, its builder or the layout of the prayer hall and women's section. Nothing read says whether the Borsec synagogue was a purpose-built house of worship or a converted house, or whether it had any decoration. The successor building of 1922 is described only as a rebuilding, and its material and form are also unknown. Because no image of either building was found, no illustration accompanies this entry. Old postcards of the Borszék spa, local-history collections in Gheorgheni and Miercurea Ciuc, and the Pinkas Hakehillot entry are the most likely places to find a view of it.

Życie w synagodze

No account of worship, teachers, prayer leaders or community events in the wooden synagogue was found. Nothing read names a rabbi or cantor of Borsec, and it is not known whether the congregation followed the Orthodox or the Neolog rite, or which rabbinate the village came under. Borsec grew up around its mineral springs, and a synagogue in a spa may have served visitors as well as residents, but no source read says whether this was so in Borsec. The fact that the building was replaced within eight years of its loss, through the war years and the change from Hungarian to Romanian rule, suggests that there was a congregation large enough to hold regular services. Details of its religious life are expected in the untranslated Pinkas Hakehillot entry and in the Hungarian Jewish press of the period, neither of which could be consulted.

Zniszczenie

I. Kara's list states only that the wooden synagogue of Borsec was destroyed in 1914. It does not give the month or the cause, and no other source read mentions the event. The year raises the question of whether the loss was connected with the First World War, which began that summer, but no source links the two. A wooden building in a mountain settlement was also exposed to fire, storm or decay, and nothing read allows a choice between these possibilities. Without a contemporary report, the cause and the people responsible, if any, are unknown, and no perpetrator can be named. The community replaced the building in 1922. What became of that second synagogue, through the Hungarian period of 1940 to 1944, the deportations and the Communist decades, is not recorded in any source read; the English Wikipedia list gives its status as unknown.

Los społeczności

Borsec was part of Northern Transylvania, which Hungary held from 1940 until October 1944. Its Jews were deported in 1944, after the Nazi German occupation of Hungary; a petition of the Central Council of Hungarian Jews dated 22 June 1944, quoted by Randolph Braham, states that by then the Jews of Northern Transylvania had already been deported. In nearby Gyergyószentmiklós the local newspaper reported in May and June 1944 that the authorities were taking over and inventorying the homes and property of Jews who had been removed. No source read gives the date on which the Jews of Borsec were taken, the ghetto through which they passed, the number deported or the number who survived. Whether any Jews returned to Borsec after the war, and when communal life there ended, is unknown.

Miejsce dzisiaj

The site of the wooden synagogue has not been identified. No source read gives a street, a plot or a description of where it stood, and it is not known whether the 1922 building was raised on the same spot. No surviving remains, marker or later use of the plot are recorded. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of the town of Borsec as given by OpenStreetMap and should not be read as the synagogue's location. Borsec today is a small resort town of about 2,400 people known for its mineral water. Locating the synagogue will need the cadastral maps of the town, the records of the Jewish community of Miercurea Ciuc or Târgu Mureș, or the Pinkas Hakehillot entry.

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