Historia Dubník Synagogue
Dubník lies in the flat farmland of southern Slovakia, a few kilometres east of Nové Zámky, in the Nové Zámky district of the Nitra region. Under its Hungarian name, Csúz, it belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary for most of its history; the village is first recorded in 1236, was deserted after Ottoman raids in 1561 and later resettled. In 1787 it had 160 houses and 1,193 inhabitants. Between the world wars it was part of Czechoslovakia, and from 1938 to 1945 it was again annexed to Hungary. A Jewish community lived here from at least the early nineteenth century: its cemetery at the north-eastern edge of the village holds about 150 gravestones dated from 1810 to 1948, with Hebrew and Hungarian inscriptions. The village was also the birthplace of Nathan Ehrenfeld (1843-1912), who became chief rabbi of Prague in 1890. Pinkas Hakehillot Slovakia, the encyclopaedia of Slovak Jewish communities, has an entry for the community under the name Cuz (Csuz), but it is not available in translation online and could not be read for this entry. The synagogue itself is a blank: no date of construction, location, description, photograph or date of loss has been found. This entry records what is known of the community and marks the building's place in the catalogue until better evidence appears.
Where it stood
Historic: Csúz, Kingdom of Hungary; street unknown. Today: Dubník, Nové Zámky district, Nitra region, Slovakia; pin at the village centre (approximate).
Otwórz większą mapę →Społeczność żydowska
The beginnings of Jewish settlement in Csúz are not documented in the sources read. The oldest surviving gravestone in the Jewish cemetery is dated 1810, so Jews were living and burying their dead here by the early nineteenth century at the latest. The cemetery, of about 70 by 70 metres, holds between 20 and 150 stones depending on the survey; they are made of marble, granite and sandstone, and include flat stones, finely smoothed inscribed stones and double tombstones, with inscriptions in Hebrew and Hungarian. The use of Hungarian alongside Hebrew points to a community that, like many in this part of the Kingdom of Hungary, had adopted the Hungarian language by the later nineteenth century. The village's best-known Jewish native is Nathan Ehrenfeld (1843-1912), a member of a rabbinic family who rose to become chief rabbi of Prague in 1890 and trustee of the Rothschild charitable foundations in Austria-Hungary. Numbers of Jewish residents, the community's religious orientation, its rabbis and its institutions are unknown; they are probably given in the untranslated Pinkas Hakehillot entry.
Architektura i projekt
No description, plan or photograph of the Dubník synagogue has been found, so its size, plan, materials, style and architect are all unknown. It is not even certain that it was a free-standing, purpose-built synagogue rather than a prayer room in a house or another building: the list entry that records it uses the word synagogue but gives no details. Maroš Borský, whose survey of synagogue architecture in Slovakia includes many lost buildings in the villages of the south, does not mention Dubník or Csúz. A postcard of the village listed on the Czech Jewish postcard site judaica.cz might show the building, but its gallery could not be opened for this entry. Old cadastral maps of Csúz, which would show the plot of any free-standing synagogue, have not been consulted.
Życie w synagodze
Nothing is recorded about religious life in the Csúz synagogue: the names of its rabbis, cantors or officers, the order of services and the size of the congregation are all unknown. What survives of the community's religious life is its cemetery. A community that maintained its own burial ground for well over a century would normally also have had a burial society, the chevra kadisha, to prepare the dead and care for the graves, but no record of one in Csúz has been found. In smaller villages of the region, Jewish families often depended on a larger neighbouring community, here most likely Nové Zámky (Érsekújvár), for a rabbi, a ritual slaughterer or a school, while keeping a local house of prayer for daily and Sabbath services; whether this was the arrangement in Csúz is not known. The Hebrew and Hungarian inscriptions on the gravestones, dating from 1810 to 1948, are the only first-hand record of the congregation's members that is known to survive, and they have not been transcribed in any source consulted.
Zniszczenie
The only evidence that a synagogue in Dubník was destroyed is a single unreferenced row in the English Wikipedia 'List of synagogues in Slovakia', which names a 'Dubník Synagogue', gives both its year of construction and its year of destruction as unknown, and records its fate in one word: 'Destroyed.' No second source has been found that describes the building or its loss. The village history published on e-obce.sk, the English Wikipedia article on Dubník, the ESJF cemetery survey and the JewishGen cemetery record say nothing about a synagogue, and Maroš Borský's study of synagogue architecture in Slovakia does not mention the village. As a result it is not known when the building was lost, whether it was damaged in the Second World War, demolished after 1945 or pulled down earlier, or who was responsible. Who demolished it is not recorded.
Los społeczności
No source read for this entry describes what happened to the Jews of Csúz during the Holocaust. From 1938 to 1945 the village was part of Hungary, so its Jews lived under Hungarian rule rather than under the Slovak State that deported most Slovak Jews in 1942; the specific fate of the Csúz community in those years has not been documented in the sources consulted. The newest gravestone in the Jewish cemetery is dated 1948, which suggests that at least one burial took place there after the war, but nothing is known of how many survivors returned or how long any Jewish presence lasted in the village. There is no organised Jewish community in Dubník today. The cemetery, owned by the local municipality, survives and was surveyed by the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative (ESJF), which found it well kept and enclosed by a new concrete wall two metres high. The untranslated Pinkas Hakehillot Slovakia entry for Cuz (Csuz) is the most likely place to find the community's numbers and its wartime history.
Miejsce dzisiaj
The site of the synagogue has not been identified, so nothing can be said about what now stands on it. The only physical trace of Jewish Csúz known today is the Jewish cemetery at the north-eastern exit from the village, about 300 metres in perimeter, with about 150 gravestones from 1810 to 1948. An older JewishGen survey described it as reached through a broken fence with no sign or marker and threatened by vandalism; the more recent ESJF survey found it clean and well maintained, with a new concrete fence, and owned by the local municipality. No building stands within the cemetery.
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Zdjęcia, dokumenty, historie rodzinne lub wspomnienia o tej synagodze i jej społeczności pomagają zachować jej historię.
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