Kispest Synagogue

La comunità ebraica

A Jewish community of Kispest appears in the register of the National Israelite Office as early as 1881. In 1890 what was then styled the Kispest–Lőrinc branch community bought land in Rózsa utca for a cemetery, and in 1898 a joint Kispest–Szentlőrinc burial society (Chevra Kadisha) was founded; neighbouring Pestszentlőrinc remained a branch of Kispest into the 1930s. The congregation owned a plot in Petőfi utca, where it set up the former forestry pavilion of the 1896 Millennium Exhibition as its prayer house. After storm damage in 1908 it replaced the pavilion with the larger synagogue dedicated in 1909. In 1922 the community sent its statutes for approval and formed its own registry district, and the 1922–23 Budapest directory lists the temple and community office at Petőfi utca 51, with Dr Zoltán Bánde as rabbi and Dr József Edelmann as president. In 1928 the school director Lipót Erdélyi published a newspaper article on a monumental new temple and cultural building the community intended to erect; no evidence was found that it was built.

Architettura e design

No plans or architect's name were found, so the description rests on the 1912 postcard view. It shows a rectangular, two-storey building with a pitched roof, set gable-end to the street, its long side wall plain and rendered and pierced by a single round window. The street front is the only decorated part: it is divided by pilasters into bays, with round-arched windows on both floors, those of the upper floor grouped in pairs, which suggests a women's gallery inside. The centre bay rises into a shaped gable with a round window, flanked by small pinnacles and crowned by a finial. A timber fence closes the yard beside it. A small undated photograph in the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives, titled as the interior of the Kispest synagogue, appears to be taken from a curtained gallery: it shows a flat ceiling with painted bands, slender paired columns, globe lamps, rows of benches, and an Ark framed in banded masonry beneath the Tablets of the Law, with a Star of David lamp on either side.

La vita nella sinagoga

The congregation belonged to the Neolog (Congress) organisation: its business passed through the National Israelite Office and the sixth community district, and its rabbi from 1912, Dr Zoltán Bánde, was a graduate of the Budapest Rabbinical Seminary, remembered as a fine preacher much concerned with Jewish education. In 1931 a separate Status Quo community was being organised in the town. Around the synagogue stood the usual institutions: the Chevra Kadisha, presided over in the 1920s and early 1930s by the printer Henrik Fischhof, and a Jewish elementary school founded in 1921 under Lipót Erdélyi, which received its own building in 1924. The community office and school were on Eggert utca, which the district today places at the corner of József Attila utca and Kisfaludy utca. In 1937 the windows of the synagogue and the school were broken during antisemitic disturbances, a case raised in Parliament by the deputy Béla Fábián. An émigré writing in 1977 recalled hearing 'Uncle Feldmár' chant there in broad Ashkenazi pronunciation some forty years earlier.

Distruzione

The synagogue was closed in May 1944, when the Jews of Kispest were forced into designated houses under Nazi German occupation. What happened to the building over the following months is poorly documented. The district's account for the eightieth anniversary of the deportation states only that it was not rebuilt after the war, which implies that it came out of 1944–45 ruined or unusable; no source found says whether this was caused by bombing, by the fighting for Budapest, or by looting and neglect. A photograph of August 1948 in the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives shows the building then serving as the congregation's temple: a former school. The synagogue plot was then taken for a state health project: the Kispest specialist clinic, designed by Lajos Hidasi, opened there on 1 November 1951. Whatever still stood of the synagogue was therefore demolished by the Communists at the latest when the clinic was built, around 1950. The exact date of demolition is Unknown.

Il destino della comunità

According to Randolph Braham, about 4,000 Jews lived in Kispest in 1944. Between 15 and 30 May they were crowded into 548 rooms in designated buildings spread over 53 streets, under a Jewish Council that the mayor enlarged from six to ten members. On 30 June 1944 Hungarian authorities and gendarmerie, acting under Nazi German occupation, took about 3,500 people from Kispest railway station to the brickworks at Monor, from where they were deported to Auschwitz in July. Chief Rabbi Zoltán Bánde, who had served the town since 1912, was among those deported and was killed in 1944; his daughter was also murdered. The survivors who returned re-formed a small congregation. By August 1948 they were worshipping in a former school building, and a Kispest Jewish prayer house at József Attila utca 71 is recorded in later decades. Kispest became the 19th district of Budapest in 1950. Today the South Pest district of the Budapest Jewish Community worships at a prayer house in neighbouring Pesterzsébet.

Il luogo oggi

The site is occupied by the Kispesti Egészségügyi Intézet, the district's outpatient health centre, whose main address is Ady Endre út 122–124 and which has a side entrance on Petőfi utca. The core of the complex is the specialist clinic designed by Lajos Hidasi and opened on 1 November 1951, described as one of the last modern-style public buildings erected in Budapest before Socialist Realism was imposed. Nothing of the synagogue is visible. The district identifies the Petőfi utca entrance as the place where the synagogue stood, and since 2024 it has been the first stop of a local Holocaust remembrance walk, marked with a QR-code information point.

Nomi importanti

Zoltán Bánde

1883–1944Chief Rabbi of Kispest, 1912–1944

Born in Ráckeve, Bánde studied at the Budapest Rabbinical Seminary from 1897 to 1907, took a doctorate in 1906 and was ordained in 1908. After four years as rabbi of Csongrád he became chief rabbi of Kispest in 1912, three years after the Petőfi utca synagogue was dedicated, and served there for the rest of its existence. The 1929 Jewish lexicon describes him as a notable preacher much occupied with Jewish education. He was deported in 1944 and killed.

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Lipót Erdélyi

1861–1943Founding director of the Kispest Jewish elementary school; president of the community school board

A teacher and journalist from Gyöngyös who had led the Jewish school at Nyitra, Erdélyi taught in Kispest from 1919. From 1921 he was founding director of the community's elementary school, which received its own building in 1924, and later presided over the community's school board. In July 1928 he published an article announcing the congregation's plan for a monumental new temple and cultural building. He is buried in the Kispest Jewish cemetery.

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Henrik Fischhof

UnknownPrinter; president of the Kispest Chevra Kadisha

Fischhof ran a printing house in Kispest and is listed as president of the Kispest Israelite burial society (Chevra Kadisha) in both the 1922–23 Budapest directory and the 1931 county directory. His press published the fold-out 'Greetings from Kispest' postcard of about 1912 whose panel captioned 'Izraelita templom' is the only known mass-produced view of the synagogue.

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József Edelmann

UnknownPresident of the Kispest Jewish community (recorded 1922–23)

Dr József Edelmann is named as president of the Kispest Jewish community in the 1922–23 Budapest directory, alongside Rabbi Zoltán Bánde, at the time the temple and community office stood at Petőfi utca 51. A charitable foundation in his and his wife's name was administered by the community in the early 1920s, according to the National Israelite Office register.

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