הסיפור של Soroksári út Synagogue, Budapest
Ferencváros, the ninth district of Budapest, lies south-east of the inner city along the Danube. Soroksári út, the long road running south through the district, was lined with mills, the Zwack liqueur factory and the Budapest-Dunapart freight yard. Gazda's survey of 1980-87 records 14,441 Jews living in the district in 1910 and lists more than a dozen addresses where they prayed, among them another prayer place further up the same road, at Soroksári út 11-13. Gazda prints permanent synagogues in capital letters, and in Ferencváros only two appear that way: the Páva utca synagogue of 1923, which still stood at the time of the survey, and a synagogue at Soroksári út 25, dated 1925 and marked as demolished. That row is the only record of the building found. It does not appear in the Hungarian Wikipedia list of Budapest synagogues, and no photograph, plan or newspaper notice of it was found. The name of its congregation, the form of the building and the date and circumstances of its demolition are unknown. The odd-numbered side of the road between nos. 1 and 30 was later cleared and is now numbered on Lechner Ödön fasor, so the original plot cannot be identified today.
Where it stood for 62 years
Historic: Budapest IX, Soroksári út 25 (Ferencváros). Today: the odd side of Soroksári út 1-30 is renumbered as Lechner Ödön fasor 1-10; exact plot unknown (approximate).
פתיחת מפה גדולה ←הקהילה היהודית
Gazda's survey of 1980-87 gives no Jewish population for Ferencváros in 1828 or 1851, when the district was still thinly built up, and records 14,441 Jews there in 1910. Her table of the district's places of worship shows how this population prayed: alongside the two synagogues of Páva utca and Soroksári út, it lists prayer places in Márton utca (1900), Ráday utca 13 (1907), Lónyay utca 25 (1909), Ráday utca 11-13 (1911), Lónyay utca 15 and 35, Tompa utca 2 and 14/a, Liliom utca 18, Remete utca 15 and Soroksári út 11-13. A Torah ark curtain in the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives is embroidered with the name of the Ferencváros (Franzstadt) congregation of Pest, showing an organised district community. Nothing specific about the congregation that used the Soroksári út 25 synagogue has been found: its name, its religious orientation, its founders, its officers and its size are all unknown, and whether it belonged to the district congregation or was a separate association could not be determined.
אדריכלות ועיצוב
No description, photograph or plan of the building has been found. Everything known comes from one row of Gazda's survey of 1980-87, which dates the building to 1925 and, by printing its address in capital letters, classes it as a permanent synagogue rather than one of the district's smaller prayer places. Gazda herself states that her survey records the condition of Hungary's synagogues with about 80 to 90 per cent accuracy, and she gives no architect, size or other detail for this building. The architect, the builder, the seating capacity, the materials and the style are therefore all unknown, and it is not known whether the synagogue was a free-standing building or stood in a courtyard behind a street-front house. The 1920s building-permit files of the Budapest City Archives and the city's address directories would be the place to look for a plan or a description.
החיים בבית הכנסת
No account of services, rabbis, cantors, festivals, schools or charitable work connected with the Soroksári út synagogue has been found. Gazda's survey names no rabbi or founder for it, and the building does not appear in the Hungarian Wikipedia list of Budapest synagogues, which names the Páva utca synagogue as the house of worship of Ferencváros. The Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives holds a Torah ark curtain made for the Ferencváros congregation of Pest, but its inscription does not name Soroksári út and it cannot be tied to this building. Who prayed here, which rite they followed and how long the synagogue was in use between its construction in 1925 and its disappearance are all unknown. Its neighbours on Soroksári út were mills, the Zwack factory at no. 26 and the Dunapart freight yard, so it stood in an industrial stretch of the district rather than among its residential streets.
הרס
When and by whom the building was demolished is unknown. Gazda's survey of 1980 to 1987 is the only source found, and it records only that the synagogue no longer stood; the mark she uses means that the building had been pulled down. No document of the demolition, no photograph of the ruin and no newspaper report of it have been found, and nothing read proves that the building survived the war or stood after 1945. After the war much of the odd-numbered side of the road between nos. 1 and 30 belonged to the Dunapart freight yard and was later cleared; according to the Hungarian Wikipedia list of the road's buildings, the structures there were removed in stages, the last in the 1990s, and the area was rebuilt as Lechner Ödön fasor. No document connects the synagogue's disappearance with that clearance, and Gazda's survey shows that it was already gone by the 1980s.
גורל הקהילה
The fate of this congregation in particular is not recorded. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, after German troops occupied Hungary in March 1944 the Jews of Budapest were ordered into houses marked with a yellow Star of David and placed under a strict curfew, while Jewish men were conscripted into labour service. After the Arrow Cross seized power in October 1944, its militias rounded up Jews for forced labour and drove tens of thousands on foot towards camps in Austria; thousands were shot or died of hunger and cold on the way. The remaining Jews of Pest were confined to a ghetto by early December, and between December 1944 and the end of January 1945 the Arrow Cross shot as many as 20,000 of them on the banks of the Danube. Soviet forces liberated Budapest on 13 February 1945, when more than 100,000 Jews remained in the city. No record of the Soroksári út congregation after the war was found.
האתר כיום
The exact plot cannot be identified. The odd-numbered side of Soroksári út from no. 1 to no. 30 no longer exists under that name: according to the Hungarian Wikipedia list of the road's buildings it was cleared after the closure of the Budapest-Dunapart freight yard and is now numbered on Lechner Ödön fasor, which carries modern office buildings, the National Theatre and the car park of the Müpa arts centre. Without a historic address map showing where no. 25 stood, the map pin marks only the approximate stretch of Soroksári út opposite the Zwack Unicum factory (no. 26). No marker or surviving fragment is recorded.
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תמונות, מסמכים, סיפורי משפחה וזיכרונות מבית הכנסת ומהקהילה שלו עוזרים לשמור על ההיסטוריה שלו בחיים.
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