Fülöpszállás Synagogue

PRZEGLĄD

Historia Fülöpszállás Synagogue

Fülöpszállás lies on the Great Hungarian Plain in the Kiskőrös district of Bács-Kiskun county, between Kecskemét and the Danube. It is one of the old settlements of the Kiskun (Little Cumania) region, and its history has been written mainly around its Reformed congregation: a local study notes that the village kept a Latin school as early as the second half of the seventeenth century and that its pupils studied at the Reformed College of Debrecen.

The only record of the synagogue found in this research is the entry in Anikó Gazda's gazetteer of Hungarian synagogues and Jewish communities (1991). Based on a site survey carried out between 1980 and 1987, it classes the Fülöpszállás building as a synagogue, dates it to about 1880, and records that it had been demolished; it also counts 97 Jews in the village in 1910 and 69 in 1941. Gazda herself rated her data as 80 to 90 per cent accurate. No photograph, plan, description, address or demolition record of the building was found, and the village's own heritage pages, which cover its Reformed church, organ and cemetery, do not mention it. The building is therefore known today only as an entry in a list, and this page sets out what is and is not known about it.

LOKALIZACJA

Where it stood for nearly 110 years

Historic: Fülöpszállás, Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun county; street and house number unknown. Today: unknown; placeholder pin at the centre of 6085 Fülöpszállás, Bács-Kiskun county (approximate).

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Społeczność żydowska

Almost nothing about the Jewish community of Fülöpszállás was found in the sources that could be read for this entry. Its size in the nineteenth century, the date its members first settled in the village, its religious affiliation (Neolog, Orthodox or Status Quo) and the names of its officers are all unknown here. The building of a synagogue around 1880, as Gazda records, suggests that by then enough Jewish families lived in the village to support a prayer house of their own. Gazda's survey of 1980-87 records 97 Jews in Fülöpszállás in 1910 and 69 in 1941, and gives no figures for 1828 or 1851. The Pinkas Hakehillot volume on Hungary published by Yad Vashem has an entry for Fülöpszállás, listed on page 447 of its index, but that entry has not been translated online and was not read. Whether the community had its own rabbi or was served from a larger neighbouring congregation, and whether it kept a school or a burial society, is also unknown.

Architektura i projekt

No photograph, drawing, plan or written description of the Fülöpszállás synagogue was found. Gazda's gazetteer classes the building as a synagogue proper, as opposed to a prayer room in a house, and dates it to about 1880, but nothing specific about this building's size, materials, plan, facade or interior can be stated from the sources read. The architect, the builder, the seating capacity, the style and the arrangement of the women's section are all unknown. Searches of the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives photo collection, which holds a postwar photographic survey of many derelict Hungarian synagogues, returned no image of this building, and no postcard of it was found among the Fülöpszállás postcards traced online, which show the Reformed church and village streets. Any description would have to come from cadastral or building records, local memory, or a photograph not yet identified.

Życie w synagodze

No account of religious life in the Fülöpszállás synagogue was found. The names of its rabbis, cantors, ritual slaughterers and lay leaders, the customs it followed, the size of the congregation on weekdays and festivals, and whether it served Jews from nearby farmsteads and hamlets as well as the village itself are all unknown from the sources consulted. The building was presumably in use from about 1880, the date Gazda gives, until the community ceased to exist, but even the last date on which services were held is not recorded. The Magyar Zsidó Lexikon of 1929 has no entry for Fülöpszállás, and the Pinkas Hakehillot entry for the village, the most likely published source for the community's institutions and religious life, was not read.

Zniszczenie

There is no record in the sources read of what happened to the Fülöpszállás synagogue during or after the Second World War. Anikó Gazda's site survey of 1980 to 1987 recorded the building as demolished, which is the only firm evidence of its loss; it gives no date and names no one responsible. No source was found showing that the building was still standing after 1945, so it cannot be said whether it was damaged in 1944, stood empty and was sold after the war, or was pulled down under Communist rule. Who demolished it is not recorded, and whether it was first sold by survivors or by the national Jewish office is also unknown. The demolition can therefore only be dated to some time before the end of Gazda's survey in 1987.

Los społeczności

The fate of the Jews of Fülöpszállás in 1944 is not described in any source read for this entry. After the Nazi German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, the Hungarian authorities concentrated the Jews of the provincial towns and villages in ghettos and deported them. The ghetto or collection point to which the Fülöpszállás Jews were taken, their number and the transport that carried them are unknown here. The Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives holds a photograph of a martyrs' memorial at Fülöpszállás in its series of Holocaust memorial photographs, which indicates that the murdered Jews of the village were later commemorated, but the photograph's record gives no names or numbers. How many survived, whether any returned, and when organised Jewish life in the village ended are unknown. Randolph Braham's study of the Holocaust in Hungary and the Pinkas Hakehillot entry should answer these questions.

Miejsce dzisiaj

The plot on which the synagogue stood has not been identified in any source consulted, so it is not possible to say what occupies it today or whether any trace of the building survives. The village's heritage register does not list it. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Fülöpszállás and should not be read as the synagogue's location. A photograph of a martyrs' memorial at Fülöpszállás is held by the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives. The village, which had 2,255 inhabitants in 2025, has no known Jewish community today. Locating the site will need old cadastral maps, the land registry, or the memories of older residents.

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