Deutschkreutz Synagogue

La comunità ebraica

Jews are recorded in Deutschkreutz from the later Middle Ages, and the Jewish Virtual Library notes that Jews expelled from Sopron in 1526 settled there. Conditions improved after the Esterházy family acquired the estate in 1664, and in 1676 Zelem became one of the seven communities under their protection; a letter of protection of 26 March 1720 confirmed the Jews' right of residence as Schutzjuden. An agreement of 1701 allowed them to trade at the Sopron markets. The town's own history gives 47 families in 1725, 268 people in 1768, 535 in 1785 and a peak of 1,244 in 1857. Fires in 1762 and 1777 struck the Jewish quarter hard. After emancipation in 1867 and the opening of the cities to Jewish settlement, many moved away: there were 476 Jews in 1880 and 435 in 1923. The community was known for its Orthodoxy. It maintained a yeshiva headed by the community rabbi, who also presided over the rabbinical court, and its students lodged with local families. The Jewish street, the former Judengasse, is today's Hauptstraße.

Architettura e design

No construction plans of the synagogue survive. Bernhard Braimeier, who prepared a digital reconstruction for his 2015 diploma thesis at the Vienna University of Technology, had to work from comparable buildings, published descriptions, cadastral records, archival correspondence and a small number of photographs, one of which was his only source for the interior. His thesis describes the building of 1834-1835 as classicist. The Jewish Communities of Austria exhibition of the ANU Museum calls it a rectangular building in the centre of the village, and the municipality's history describes it as a two-storey building. Beyond these points the sources read here give no description of its facade, roof, windows, women's gallery or ark. The architect, the builder and the number of seats are unknown. The thesis itself, which contains historical photographs and a detailed architectural analysis, could not be opened in this research, so the description given here is necessarily brief.

La vita nella sinagoga

The synagogue was the centre of community life, especially busy on the Sabbath, according to the municipality's history of the community. Its first cantor was Rubin Goldmark, who moved to Deutschkreutz in 1834 to serve as cantor and community notary; his son Carl Goldmark, later a celebrated composer in Vienna, grew up in the village. The congregation was strictly Orthodox. Its best-known rabbi, Menachem Katz-Proßnitz (1840-1891), headed the community yeshiva, which under him attracted more than a hundred students from many parts of Europe; usually it had thirty to forty. The rabbi also chaired the rabbinical court. Young men prayed separately in a second prayer house called Tiferet Bachurim. Among the synagogue's treasures was a valuable Torah curtain donated by local families. It was confiscated before the building was destroyed and taken to Vienna; after the war it hung in the Salzburg city synagogue until the donors' descendants reclaimed it and took it to Jerusalem.

Distruzione

No damage to the synagogue in 1938 is recorded in the sources read, but it stood empty from May 1938, after the community had been forced out of the village. Its valuable Torah curtain was confiscated and taken to Vienna. On Sunday 16 February 1941 the Nazis blew the building up. According to the ANU Museum the demolition was ordered by the SS. The municipality's history says the blast used 140 charges, twice the permitted amount, so that the building was thrown into the air before it collapsed. A 17-year-old girl who was watching was struck and killed by a flying piece of brick; her name is not given in the sources read. At about the same time the Jewish cemetery was desecrated, and toward the end of the war most of its gravestones were removed for use in the fortifications of the South-East Wall. Who exactly carried out the blasting, whether SS men or a contractor working on SS orders, is not recorded in the sources found.

Il destino della comunità

Immediately after the Anschluss of 12 March 1938, Nazis in Deutschkreutz stoned Jewish homes, arrested prominent members of the community and held them in Oberpullendorf, and seized and 'Aryanised' Jewish property; shops and homes were looted and what remained was auctioned off cheaply. The Jews, about 103 families or 433 people, were ordered to leave within two weeks. By early May 1938 all had gone, most to Vienna, some taken by truck, and by October 1938 there was no Jewish community left anywhere in Burgenland. The teacher David Weiner was the last Jew to leave. Many emigrated further: 154 members are known to have escaped abroad, while 81 are documented as murdered in the camps, and the fate of many others is unknown. In 1944 several hundred Hungarian Jews from Budapest were brought to Deutschkreutz as forced labourers on the South-East Wall; 284 of them died within weeks and were buried in a mass grave. No Jews lived in Deutschkreutz in 1970.

Il luogo oggi

After the war the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien, as legal successor of the destroyed community, sold the synagogue plot to the Konsum cooperative, which built a supermarket there; according to the municipality that supermarket no longer exists. The Jewish Virtual Library and the ANU Museum instead say that the site was fenced and a memorial stone set up there after the war, in 1949, and the two accounts may describe different phases or parts of the plot. The exact position of the plot and what occupies it today are not given in any source read, so the map pin marks only the middle of Hauptstraße, the former Judengasse, in the village centre. A memorial to the Jews of Zelem was unveiled in 2012 in front of the Carl Goldmark house on Hauptstraße.

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