Egyek Synagogue

Die jüdische Gemeinde

The ESJF overview says that most of Egyek's Jews lived from trade, that others were artisans, and that later some were farmers and private clerks. The community organised itself in 1860, when it bought land for a cemetery, set up a Chevra Kadisha and opened a cheder. There were 124 Jews among 3,639 inhabitants in 1880, 142 in 1910, 115 in 1920, 123 in 1930 and 107 among 7,473 inhabitants in 1941; Gazda's gazetteer gives the same figures for 1910 and 1941. The village had two Jewish cemeteries, an older one that already appears on the cadastral map of 1870 and a later one in the centre of the village. In the April 1944 survey of Hungarian Jewish communities Egyek appears as an Orthodox mother community of Hajdú county with 86 members, 20 of them taxpayers. Its president was Arnold Domán. It had no rabbi and no registrar rabbi, and its single employee was the caretaker Dezső Horovitz, a timber merchant. The Magyar Zsidó Lexikon of 1929 has no entry for Egyek.

Architektur und Gestaltung

The only view found is a postcard captioned 'Üdvözlet Egyekről', catalogued by the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives as the exterior of the Egyek synagogue. It shows the building from the street, at an angle. The synagogue is a tall rectangular hall under a steep tiled saddle roof with a chimney, standing with its narrow end to the street. That end is opened as a deep porch the full height of the wall, framed by slender pale piers with tall narrow openings between them and a strong projecting cornice above. Over the cornice rises a shaped gable: a rectangular centre panel pierced by a row of five narrow round-headed openings, flanked by concave curved shoulders that end in small piers, and crowned by a little triangular pediment. The walls look dark in the photograph, which may mean exposed brick, but the print is too coarse to be sure. A low whitewashed house with a boarded gable adjoins on the left, and a fence of capped masonry piers with a gate closes the yard. The architect, builder, seating capacity and interior are unknown.

Leben in der Synagoge

Very little is recorded about worship in the building. The congregation followed the Orthodox rite, and the April 1944 survey shows how it worked on the eve of its destruction. There was no rabbi; the accounts for the last closed year show 1,600 pengő spent on ritual staff out of total expenditure of 3,032 pengő, with 790 pengő going to charity, 400 pengő in national dues to OMZSA and 192 pengő to the upkeep of the community's property. Income of 3,070 pengő came from the religious tax (900 pengő), the gabella levy (1,500 pengő) and donations for national causes (670 pengő). The community held 38 pengő in cash. Beside the synagogue it had maintained a cheder and a burial society since 1860. The ESJF overview records that during the White Terror after the First World War Jewish shops in Egyek were smashed and stones were thrown at the synagogue. In 1938 the authorities withdrew the trade licences of Jews, closing the pub and the tobacco shop, and one Jewish shopkeeper was forbidden to sell sugar, flour and soap; later Jewish-owned land was expropriated.

Zerstörung

No source found describes the end of the building. The synagogue was attacked once before the Holocaust, when stones were thrown at it during the White Terror, but nothing suggests lasting damage. The April 1944 survey shows that the congregation was still paying for the upkeep of its property in the spring of 1944, so the synagogue was presumably standing when its members were rounded up for deportation later that year, under the Nazi German occupation of Hungary. What happened afterwards is not documented in anything read for this entry: whether the building was looted or damaged in 1944, whether returning survivors or the national Jewish office sold it, and whether a private buyer or a local council pulled it down are all unknown. Anikó Gazda, who inspected Hungarian synagogue sites between 1980 and 1987, classed the Egyek building as a synagogue and marked it as demolished. The ESJF survey of the village's cemeteries likewise states that the synagogue built in 1905 has since been demolished. The demolition therefore took place at some time between 1944 and 1987, and nobody is named as responsible.

Das Schicksal der Gemeinde

The census of 1941 counted 107 Jews in Egyek, and the community reported 86 members to the Central Council of Hungarian Jews in April 1944, after the Nazi German occupation of Hungary. Randolph Braham lists Egyek among the places in Hajdú county where Jews were rounded up in 1944 and notes that their names are printed in Gavriel Bar-Shaked's 'Nevek', a Yad Vashem volume on the Jews driven out of Hajdú county, published in 1991. Braham's account of the county describes the concentration of Jews at the Serly brickworks in Debrecen, from where 13,084 people were deported in the last days of June 1944, some trains going to Auschwitz and two to Strasshof in Austria. His main text does not name Egyek among the places brought to the brickworks, so the route taken by the Egyek families is not confirmed here. English Wikipedia states that most of the community was murdered in the Holocaust. The number of survivors is unknown, and no organised community is recorded after the war. The newest gravestone in the surviving cemetery dates from 1940.

Der Ort heute

The plot on which the synagogue stood has not been identified in any source read for this entry, so what occupies it today is unknown. The postcard shows the building on a village street beside a low house, but names no street. The map pin is a placeholder at the centre of Egyek and should not be read as the synagogue's location. The later of the village's two Jewish cemeteries survives at the corner of Tópart and Hunyadi János streets; it is fenced, its gravestones have been restored, and a Holocaust memorial was placed there in 2014. The older cemetery at 3 Árpád Street has been demolished and built over.

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