Dolní Bolíkov Synagogue

סקירה

הסיפור של Dolní Bolíkov Synagogue

Dolní Bolíkov, called Wölking in German, is a small village south-west of Dačice, close to the Austrian border. It lay in historic Moravia and is now part of the municipality of Cizkrajov in the South Bohemian region. Jews settled here around 1670, most likely refugees expelled from Vienna and Lower Austria, and the first written record of them dates from 1678. A religious community formed soon afterwards, and its synagogue was built in the last quarter of the seventeenth century or in the first quarter of the eighteenth; the two inventories consulted differ on the date.

The building stood at the lower, north-eastern edge of the village near a stream, among the houses in which the Jewish families lived, next to the community house numbered 67. Nothing certain is known of its appearance: it is reported to have been a masonry building. The community was at its largest in the first half of the nineteenth century, with more than 160 members, and then shrank quickly as families moved to towns. It was formally dissolved in 1891, and in 1898 the Jewish community sold the synagogue and the neighbouring house to a farmer, who demolished both. No photograph or drawing of the synagogue has been found. The Jewish cemetery south-west of the village survives.

מיקום

Where it stood for nearly 180 years

Historic: Wölking (Dolní Bolíkov), lower north-eastern edge of the village near the stream, next to house no. 67 (demolished 1899). Today: plot not identified; pin at the OpenStreetMap village point of Dolní Bolíkov, 378 81 Cizkrajov (approximate).

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הקהילה היהודית

According to the Prague Jewish Community's heritage inventory, Jewish settlement in Wölking began in 1670 with immigrants expelled from Vienna and Lower Austria; the first written mention dates from 1678, after which a religious community was organised. In 1725 seven of the thirteen manorial rental houses in the village were occupied by Jews. The Jewish houses lay in the lower, north-eastern part of the village but did not form a closed ghetto or continuous quarter; of the original 31 Jewish houses, 16 still stand. Joachim Hahn's successor site gives the community's size as 14 families around 1765, 25 families around 1800, 162 persons in 1830 and 160 in 1848. A large fire in 1822 destroyed parts of the village, including more than twenty Jewish houses. After 1850 most families left for towns with better prospects: there were 135 Jews in 1857, 30 in 1869 and only 7 in 1880. Families recorded in the civil registers include Bauer, Fürst and Planer. The community was administratively dissolved in 1891.

אדריכלות ועיצוב

Very little is known about the building. The Prague Jewish Community's inventory states plainly that it is not known exactly what the synagogue looked like. It was reportedly built of masonry, and by the time it was sold in 1898 it was already dilapidated. The same inventory places it at the lower, north-eastern edge of the village close to a stream, next to the house numbered 67 that also belonged to the Jewish community, which places it within the cluster of Jewish houses rather than in a separate quarter. The date of construction is uncertain: the inventory suggests shortly after the community was constituted, perhaps in the last quarter of the seventeenth century or later, while the South Bohemian regional guide gives the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The architect, the builder, the size, the seating capacity, the plan and the interior furnishings are all unknown, and no photograph, drawing or plan of the synagogue was found in this research.

החיים בבית הכנסת

No account of services, rabbis, cantors or teachers at the Wölking synagogue was found in the sources read. The community was large enough in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to keep its own synagogue and a burial ground about 500 metres south-west of the village, where about 130 gravestones survive, the oldest from 1701, for Aaron son of Jakob Austerlitz, and the youngest from 1932. A simple drive-through mortuary stands at the cemetery. Civil registers of births and marriages kept from 1783, and of deaths from 1828 to 1847, are held in the Moravian archives. After the departures of the 1850s and 1860s regular communal worship in the building probably could not be sustained; with only seven Jews in the village in 1880, the synagogue seems to have fallen out of use well before the community was dissolved in 1891, but no source dates its last service.

הרס

The synagogue was not destroyed by violence. After the community was dissolved in 1891 the building stood unused and deteriorated. According to the Prague Jewish Community's heritage inventory, the Jewish community sold both the synagogue and the neighbouring community house number 67 in 1898 to a local farmer, Jan Novák, who demolished them a year later. Joachim Hahn's successor site likewise dates the demolition to 1898/99, while the South Bohemian regional guide states that the synagogue was for the most part pulled down during 1899 and 1900. The phrase 'for the most part' could mean that some masonry was left standing or reused, but no source describes any surviving remains, and the inventory lists none. What Novák did with the materials or the cleared plot is not recorded.

גורל הקהילה

By the time of the Holocaust the Jewish community of Dolní Bolíkov had long ceased to exist. Joachim Hahn's successor site counts five Jews in the village in 1921 and three in 1930, and says that only one Jewish family remained there in the 1920s. Most families had left after 1850 for towns with better prospects, and the sources read do not follow them further: no individual born in Wölking is named in them as deported or murdered, and what happened to the last Jewish residents of the village after the Nazi occupation of 1938 and 1939 is unknown. Toward the end of the Second World War, in 1944, the Nazis held Hungarian Jewish women in a forced labour camp in the village; nothing further about it was found. The Jewish cemetery was later devastated and many stones were knocked over, but it was restored in the 1990s and is freely accessible.

האתר כיום

The synagogue stood at the lower, north-eastern edge of Dolní Bolíkov near the stream, beside house number 67, which was demolished with it. The exact plot has not been identified in the sources read, and no remains of the building are recorded. About half of the former Jewish houses of the village still stand in the same area, sixteen of the original thirty-one according to the Prague Jewish Community's inventory. The map pin is the OpenStreetMap point for the village and does not mark the synagogue's plot. The Jewish cemetery, restored in the 1990s, lies about 500 metres south-west of the village at the edge of the forest.

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