Old Synagogue of Břeclav (Lundenburg)

The Jewish community

The community that built this synagogue was formed around 1650 from refugees, many of them from Lower Austria, whom the lord of Lundenburg allowed to settle for economic reasons. Jüdische Gemeinden gives about 30 families in 1672 and again around 1720. A court decree of 1726 fixed the number of Jewish families permitted in the town at 66, part of the Habsburg Familiants system that limited Jewish marriages and households in Moravia. The community had 61 families in 1787 and 66 families, about 320 people, around 1795; in 1830 it counted 363 people. It was governed by elected judges, among them Alexander Süsskind in 1734, Isak Hirsch Schwoner in 1787, Samuel Goldreich in 1801, Wolf Kuffner from 1803 to 1806 and Jakob Sternfeld in 1810. The Jewish houses stood together in a quarter close to the synagogue.

Architecture and design

No plan, drawing or view of the synagogue of the 1670s has been found, and its builder, size and seating capacity are unknown. The only architectural detail recorded is that it had a dome or vaulted roof. Jüdische Gemeinden says that about twenty years after it was built the roof dome had fallen in ('die Dachkuppel war eingestürzt') and that a partial rebuilding followed; the German Wikipedia article on the Břeclav synagogue, drawing on Alicke's lexicon, likewise speaks of a collapsed dome. The JewishGen page, which follows Hugo Gold's 1929 history, gives the date of the collapse as 1697 and simply says the roof fell in. Whether the rebuilt building kept a dome is not recorded. A Slovak tourism text describes the original building of the late seventeenth century as too small for the growing community, which suggests a modest structure, but that text does not mention the 1812 fire and may refer to a later prayer house.

Life inside the synagogue

The building is best remembered for the collapse of its roof in 1697. According to the account preserved by Hugo Gold and summarised on JewishGen, the men had gathered for evening prayers on a cold day and were waiting outside because the synagogue servant who kept the key was late. While they stood outside, the roof fell in, so no one inside was hurt. The community turned the date, the 11th of Tevet, into an annual day of commemoration, kept with fasting and as a festive day of thanksgiving; the Encyclopaedia Judaica also records the 11 Tevet observance. The synagogue was the seat of a line of rabbis that included Elieser ben Jizchak Halewi in 1697, Josef Morgenstern around 1760, Jechiel ben Nesanel Schemuel, who died in 1786, Mordechai Banet from 1787 to 1789, Juda Löb Glück from 1789 to 1809 and Abraham Bäck from 1809, who was rabbi when the building burned.

Destruction

The synagogue was destroyed by fire on 24 March 1812. JewishGen's summary of Hugo Gold's history says the fire broke out at the house of a Jewish butcher and destroyed all the Jewish houses, and Jüdische Gemeinden states that a great fire destroyed every house of the Jewish community, including the synagogue ('auch die Synagoge'). No source consulted describes the fire as deliberate or names anyone responsible, and nothing suggests the ruin was repaired: the community worshipped somewhere else for the next half century, though where is not recorded. In 1868 the community, which had grown after Jews gained civil rights in the mid nineteenth century, dedicated a new synagogue in place of the old one under Rabbi Nathan Müller. One source, a Slovak tourist text, describes the late seventeenth-century building as still in use until it became too small, which conflicts with the account of the 1812 fire.

The community’s fate

The community recovered after 1812 and grew to 434 people by 1848. It built a new synagogue in 1868 and in 1930 numbered 589 people, 4.3 per cent of the town. Lundenburg lay in the border area annexed by Nazi Germany in October 1938 under the Munich Agreement. The Encyclopaedia Judaica states that in April 1942 the Jews of Břeclav were deported to Theresienstadt and from there to the death camps, and that about 100 survived. Jüdische Gemeinden says that by December 1942 no Jews remained in the town and that almost all of the deported were murdered in the extermination camps. The 1868 synagogue was closed by the Nazis and afterwards used as a warehouse; its furnishings were taken to the Jewish Central Museum in Prague. The names of the murdered are recorded on a plaque at the Jewish cemetery.

The site today

The synagogue of the 1670s has entirely disappeared. Its place is occupied by the synagogue the community dedicated in 1868 in place of the old one, which still stands in the street U Tržiště in the centre of Břeclav. That later building, given a neo-Romanesque exterior and Moorish interior about twenty years after construction, was restored in 1997 to 1999 and is run by the town museum as a cultural venue with the permanent exhibition 'Židovská Břeclav' on its upper floor. No visible trace of the earlier building is recorded. The map pin marks the 1868 synagogue, on the assumption that it stands on the old plot.

Notable names

Mordechai Banet (Benet)

1753-1829Rabbi of Lundenburg, 1787-1789 (per Gold)

Banet, later Landesrabbiner of Moravia at Nikolsburg and one of the leading Talmudists of his day, held the Lundenburg rabbinate early in his career. Hugo Gold's list, followed by JewishGen and the Encyclopaedia Judaica, gives 1787 to 1789; the Jewish Encyclopedia says he stayed only about six months before moving to Schossberg. During his tenure the old synagogue of the 1670s was the community's house of prayer.

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Juda Löb Glück

UnknownRabbi of Lundenburg, 1789-1809

Glück succeeded Mordechai Banet and served as rabbi of Lundenburg for twenty years, from 1789 to 1809, according to Hugo Gold's list of the town's rabbis as reproduced on JewishGen. His tenure fell in the last decades of the synagogue of the 1670s, when the community had reached the legal limit of about 66 families. Nothing further about his life was found.

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Abraham Bäck

UnknownRabbi of Lundenburg, 1809-1819

Bäck became rabbi of Lundenburg in 1809, according to Hugo Gold's list as given on JewishGen, and held the post until 1819. He was therefore the community's rabbi when the fire of 24 March 1812 destroyed the Jewish quarter and the old synagogue, and he led the congregation in the years after it lost its building. Nothing further about him was found.

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Elieser ben Jizchak Halewi

UnknownRabbi of Lundenburg, recorded in 1697

Gold's list of the rabbis of Lundenburg, reproduced on JewishGen, names Elieser ben Jizchak Halewi as rabbi in 1697 and says he later went to the Land of Israel. That is the year in which, according to the same account, the synagogue roof collapsed while the men were waiting outside for the servant with the key, so he was probably rabbi at the time of the collapse and the partial rebuilding.

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Wolf Kuffner

UnknownJudge (head) of the Jewish community, 1803-1806

Wolf Kuffner served as judge, the elected head of the Lundenburg Jewish community, from 1803 to 1806, according to the list of community officers on JewishGen after Hugo Gold. Several other members of the Kuffner family, among them David, Jakob and Hermann Kuffner, later led the community. As judge he was responsible for the community and its synagogue a few years before the fire of 1812.

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