La storia di Chlistov Synagogue
Chlistov (Chlistau in German, Klistau from 1935 to 1945) is a farming village in the Klatovy district of the Plzeň region, first mentioned in 1352 and today home to about 130 people. Jews lived there from the beginning of the nineteenth century. They did not form a separate street or quarter: their houses stood scattered among those of their Christian neighbours throughout the village, and one of them, house No. 38/39 in the northern part of Chlistov, survives in its original form and is a protected monument. In 1834 the community built itself a synagogue somewhere in the village, and in the late 1860s it laid out its own cemetery on a wooded hill north-east of the houses. The congregation was always small and it shrank as families left for larger towns in the second half of the nineteenth century; by 1903 only eleven Jews were counted in Chlistov. After the First World War emigration continued, and the synagogue was hardly used any more. The empty building fell into disrepair and was pulled down in the 1960s. No photograph, plan or description of it has been found, and its exact site in the village is not recorded in the sources consulted. The walled cemetery, with fifteen surviving gravestones, is now the only visible trace of the community.
Where it stood
Historic: Chlistov (Chlistau), Klattau district, Bohemia; street and house number unknown. Today: Chlistov, okres Klatovy, Plzeňský kraj; placeholder pin at the village centre (approximate).
Apri la mappa grande →La comunità ebraica
According to the Jewish Community of Prague's inventory of Jewish monuments, Jewish settlement in Chlistov dates from the early nineteenth century; the United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad survey, as summarised by JewishGen, places the earliest known community in the first third of that century. Chlistov lay within reach of the district town of Klatovy, about ten kilometres to the north-west, which had a much older and larger Jewish community. Their homes were spread through the whole village rather than grouped together, and house No. 38/39 is still standing. The community was large enough to build a synagogue in 1834 and to found its own burial ground in 1869. From the second half of the nineteenth century, however, Jews moved away to bigger towns. JewishGen records eleven Jews in Chlistov in 1903. After the First World War the decline continued through emigration. The names of the community's teachers, cantors, rabbis or lay leaders have not been found.
Architettura e design
Nothing is known about the appearance of the Chlistov synagogue beyond the fact that it was a separate synagogue building, completed in 1834, standing within the village. No photograph, postcard, drawing or plan of it was found in the sources consulted, and the inventory of the Jewish Community of Prague gives neither its address nor its house number. The architect or builder, the building materials, the size of the hall, the seating capacity and the arrangement of the interior, including whether there was a women's gallery, are all unknown. No source describes the building's walls, roof, windows or decoration, so its style cannot be stated, and no comparison with other village synagogues of the Klatovy area can be made from the evidence found. The building was standing until the 1960s, so photographs of it may survive in the archives of the regional museum in Klatovy, the State District Archive in Klatovy or the Jewish Museum in Prague, none of which could be consulted for this entry.
La vita nella sinagoga
No source consulted describes services, customs or communal life inside the Chlistov synagogue, and no rabbi, cantor or teacher connected with it has been identified. Whether the congregation kept a teacher or a ritual slaughterer, or shared one with neighbouring communities, is also unknown. JewishGen counts only eleven Jews in the village in 1903, and the US Commission survey describes the community's last burials as Conservative or Progressive/Reform, which is the only hint found about its religious character. The community's burial ground, founded in 1869 on a wooded hill about a kilometre north-east of the village, had a mortuary whose ruins remain; its fifteen surviving gravestones, made of limestone and sandstone with Hebrew and German inscriptions, date from 1869 to 1923, the year of the last known burial. Jüdische Gemeinden states that after the First World War the community became ever smaller through emigration and that the synagogue was, as a result, hardly used any more.
Distruzione
No source found records damage to the Chlistov synagogue during the Nazi German occupation of Bohemia between 1939 and 1945. By then the building was already largely disused, and it survived the war. In the following two decades it decayed further; Jüdische Gemeinden describes it as dilapidated by the time it was demolished. According to the inventory of the Jewish Community of Prague, the synagogue was pulled down in the middle of the 1960s, and Jüdische Gemeinden dates the demolition to the 1960s. This was a period of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, when many disused village synagogues were demolished, sold or converted, but neither source states who ordered or carried out the demolition, whether the building had first been sold, or what the materials were used for. Who demolished the Chlistov synagogue is not recorded in the sources consulted.
Il destino della comunità
The Chlistov community had dwindled to a few people well before the Second World War: eleven Jews lived in the village in 1903, and emigration after the First World War reduced the number further. The last known burial in the village cemetery took place in 1923. No source consulted states whether any Jews still lived in Chlistov in 1939, when Nazi Germany occupied Bohemia and established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Jews from the surrounding area who still lived in the Klatovy region were deported by the Nazis in 1942, according to JGuide Europe's account of the nearby Klatovy community. The names and fates of individual Jews born in Chlistov or living there in the 1930s could not be established in this research. No Jewish community existed in Chlistov after the war, and the cemetery is today owned by the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic.
Il luogo oggi
The exact plot on which the synagogue stood is not identified in any source consulted, so it is not possible to say what occupies it today. No part of the building is known to survive. The community's other remains are still visible: the protected former Jewish house No. 38/39 in the northern part of the village, and the Jewish cemetery about a kilometre north-east of Chlistov, a site of roughly 500 square metres in a small wood, enclosed by a rubble-stone wall, with fifteen gravestones and the ruins of a mortuary. The cemetery is a protected cultural monument owned by the Federation of Jewish Communities and is open to visitors. The map pin for this entry marks the centre of the village, not the synagogue's site.
Hai qualcosa da condividere?
Fotografie, documenti, storie di famiglia o ricordi di questa sinagoga e della sua comunità aiutano a mantenerne viva la storia.
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