Old Synagogue of Dej

Społeczność żydowska

Jews were barred from Transylvanian mining and salt towns by laws of 1693-1700, and in 1722 Dej itself forbade Jewish residence. Jews lived in the surrounding villages from about 1800, but none are recorded in the town until 1834, when three were counted. A burial society was founded in 1857 under Nathan Friedländer, and in 1862 the community adopted its statutes, appointed Menachem Mendel Paneth as rabbi and opened its first school. After the national schism of 1868-69 it joined the Orthodox camp. The population rose from 122 in 1857 and 351 in 1869-70 to 1,114 in 1890, 3,360 in 1930 (22.2 per cent of the town) and 3,719 in 1941 (22.8 per cent). The community had a strong Hasidic following and spoke Yiddish and Hungarian. It ran an elementary school from 1891, a Talmud Torah from 1923, a women's association from 1889, a Hebrew printing press from 1894 and a club with a library from 1930. Its members included manufacturers, artisans, traders, teachers, lawyers and physicians.

Architektura i projekt

Almost nothing is known about the building's appearance. The Romanian digest of synagogue history on the website of the Federation of Jewish Communities describes it only as the first synagogue of brick masonry, built in 1862, which implies that earlier prayer rooms in Dej were of timber or held in private houses. No photograph, drawing, plan or description of the old synagogue was found; the only historic picture of a Dej synagogue located in this research, a coloured postcard in the collection of the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives captioned 'Dés, Izr. orth. templom', shows the large temple of 1907-09 and not the older building. The architect, builder, seating capacity, plan, roof form and interior arrangement of the 1862 synagogue are all unknown. Its street and plot are also unknown. The later temple was modelled on the Orthodox synagogue of Oradea designed by Nándor Bach, but nothing indicates any link between that design and the earlier building.

Życie w synagodze

The old synagogue was the community's main house of prayer from 1862 until the new temple opened in 1907-09. Throughout that period the community was led by rabbis of the Paneth family, the founders of the Deyzh Hasidic dynasty: Menachem Mendel Paneth from 1862, Moshe Paneth from 1886 to 1903 and Yechezkel Paneth from 1903 to 1929. After the community chose the Orthodox side in 1868-69, services followed traditional Orthodox practice, and Hasidic custom was strong among the members. When the new temple was opened, the Leo Baeck Institute's gazetteer says, the old synagogue was given to the town's 250 Hasidic families, so it continued in use as a Hasidic house of prayer. After 1918 the site was used by the Hasidic prayer house of Poalei Tzedek, a congregation of craftsmen. A Centropa interview with a Dej widow recalls that her father-in-law did not attend the main temple because the family had a separate Hasidic one, though it does not name that building.

Zniszczenie

None of the sources read describes the end of the 1862 synagogue. The Romanian digest says only that after 1918 a Hasidic prayer house stood 'on the site of the old synagogue', which most naturally means that the old building had been pulled down or rebuilt by then, between the two world wars and before the Holocaust. The Leo Baeck Institute gazetteer, by contrast, says the old synagogue itself was given to Hasidic families after 1909 and does not say it was replaced. Neither source gives a date, a reason or an actor for its removal. The memorial book's account of 1944, which describes the expulsion of the Jews to the Bungur forest by Hungarian gendarmes, does not mention damage to any synagogue in Dej. Whether the Poalei Tzedek prayer house that followed on the site survived the war, and what became of it under Communist rule, is also unknown. The memorial book's chapters on synagogues and prayer houses, on the Poalei Tzedek organisation and on the shoemakers' synagogue have not been translated online and were not read.

Los społeczności

Hungary annexed northern Transylvania, including Dej, in September 1940, and Hungarian anti-Jewish laws followed. After the Nazi German occupation of Hungary on 19 March 1944, the Hungarian authorities ghettoised the Jews of Dej and Szolnok-Doboka county. On 3, 4 and 5 May 1944 they were marched to a fenced ghetto in the Bungur forest, about two miles from town, chosen by the town council. The memorial book records that Hungarian gendarmes brought in from Somogy county replaced the local police and intensified the beatings. Three transports took the inmates to Auschwitz, on 28 May and on 6 and 8 June 1944. Of the 3,719 Jews counted in Dej in 1941, most were murdered. In 1946, 239 survivors reorganised the community, which together with Jews from elsewhere numbered about 1,000 in 1947. Emigration, largely to Israel, steadily reduced it, and fewer than ten Jews lived in Dej by 2004.

Miejsce dzisiaj

The location of the 1862 synagogue has not been identified in any source read, so it is not known what stands on its plot today, or whether anything of the later Hasidic prayer house survives. The pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Dej and does not mark the site. The community's later temple, the Înfrățirea Temple of 1907-09 at Strada Înfrățirii 1, still stands and is still listed as a synagogue. Fixing the site of the old synagogue will need the untranslated memorial book chapters or historic town plans.

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