Gajary Synagogue

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Die Geschichte von Gajary Synagogue

Gajary, known in Hungarian as Gajár and in German as Gairing, lies in the Malacky district of western Slovakia, close to the Morava river, which forms the border with Austria. In the nineteenth century it belonged to Pozsony (Pressburg) county of the Kingdom of Hungary and was an estate of the Pálffy family. Elek Fényes's geographical dictionary of 1851 describes it as a Slovak market town with 2,826 Catholics, 10 Lutherans and 180 Jews, a Catholic parish church, a synagogue and a customs post, and notes its ferry across the Morava, its hemp trade and its well-known cattle fair. The Jewish community therefore already had a house of worship by about 1850. The building documented as the Gajary synagogue is dated to the second half of the nineteenth century, and one published list gives 1875; whether this was a new building replacing the one Fényes recorded, or the same one, is unknown. The Jewish cemetery outside the village, with surviving gravestones dated 1872 and 1927, is the community's main physical trace today. The synagogue was demolished after the Second World War, and no picture, plan or description of it has been located.

STANDORT

Where it stood for nearly 75 years

Historic: Gajár (Gairing), Pozsony county; street and plot unknown. Today: unknown; placeholder pin at the centre of 900 61 Gajary, Malacky district, Bratislava Region (approximate).

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Die jüdische Gemeinde

Jews were living in Gajary by the first half of the nineteenth century. Fényes's dictionary of 1851 counts 180 Jewish inhabitants out of just over 3,000, roughly six per cent of the population, and the village was large: a local history gives 381 houses and 2,852 inhabitants in 1828. The cattle fair, the Morava ferry and the hemp trade recorded by Fényes suggest the kind of rural commerce in which village Jews of the region usually worked, but no source read describes the occupations of Gajary's Jews, their families or their communal officers. The community was large enough to keep its own synagogue and its own cemetery. The cemetery, now on forestry land behind the village, holds about 130 gravestones; the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative recorded stones dated 1872 and 1927, showing that burials continued into the twentieth century. Whether the congregation was Orthodox or Neolog after the Hungarian schism of 1868-1869, which rabbinate it belonged to, and how many Jews remained in Gajary by the 1930s are all unknown.

Architektur und Gestaltung

No photograph, drawing, plan or written description of the Gajary synagogue has been found, so its appearance is unknown. The Slovak synagogue survey synagogyslovenska.sk, which records lost synagogues with a short catalogue line each, describes it only as a synagogue from the second half of the nineteenth century. The English-language Wikipedia list of synagogues in Slovakia gives the same period with the year 1875 and has no picture. Fényes already mentions a synagogue in 1851, so the community either worshipped in an older building before about 1875 or the later date is not reliable. The architect, builder, materials, seating capacity, the arrangement of the women's gallery and the exact plot are all unknown. The original street or plot has not been traced either, and no fragment of the building is known to have been kept, so even its rough size and style cannot be stated.

Leben in der Synagoge

Almost nothing is recorded about religious life in the Gajary synagogue. The sources read do not name any rabbi, cantor, teacher or community president, and they do not say whether the community kept a school, a ritual bath or a burial society, although the existence of its own cemetery from at least the 1870s implies that a burial society functioned. The synagogue was in use for several decades, from the second half of the nineteenth century until the community was destroyed in the Second World War, and served a congregation that numbered 180 people in 1851. Its religious orientation after the Hungarian schism of 1868-1869 is unknown, as is its affiliation with a district rabbinate such as Malacky or Stupava. The untranslated Pinkas Hakehillot entry for Gajary, on page 124 of the Slovakia volume, probably holds the missing details.

Zerstörung

No source read describes damage to the Gajary synagogue during the Second World War, although the wooden bridge over the Morava near the village was destroyed at the end of the war. The building apparently survived the war, since every source places its loss after 1945. The Slovak survey synagogyslovenska.sk says it disappeared in the first years after the end of the war, and the Wikipedia list of synagogues in Slovakia gives 1950 and the remark that it was demolished after the war; that list's round year of 1950 is used as a placeholder in many rows and may not be exact. The Slovak Wikipedia article on Gajary states, without a cited source, that the synagogue was demolished during the socialist period, which would place the demolition under Communist rule after February 1948. Who ordered or carried out the demolition, and whether the building was first sold, is not recorded.

Das Schicksal der Gemeinde

No source read gives figures for the Jews of Gajary during the Second World War, and the names and number of those deported are unknown. Gajary was part of the Slovak State, whose government organised the deportation of about 57,700 Jews between 25 March and 20 October 1942. Department 14 of the Central Economic Office arranged the transports, the Slovak Transport Ministry supplied the cattle cars, and the Hlinka Guard, the Freiwillige Schutzstaffel and the gendarmerie rounded people up, held them in transit camps and loaded the trains, which were handed over to Nazi German police at the border. The trains went to Auschwitz, Majdanek, Sobibór and ghettos in the Lublin district, and only a few hundred of those deported in 1942 survived. After the Nazi German invasion of Slovakia in August 1944, Einsatzgruppe H and local collaborators deported or murdered most of the remaining Jews. Whether any Gajary Jews survived or returned after the war is unknown.

Der Ort heute

The plot on which the synagogue stood has not been identified in any source consulted, and nothing is known to survive of the building. The map pin is a placeholder at the centre of Gajary and does not mark the synagogue. The Jewish cemetery survives behind the village, at about 48.4755 N, 16.9336 E on forestry land; the Slovak Wikipedia describes it as decaying, while the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative fenced it in December 2023 and recorded about 130 gravestones. Locating the synagogue plot will need the cadastral maps of Gajary or the untranslated Pinkas Hakehillot entry, which may give its street.

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Fotos, Dokumente, Familiengeschichten oder Erinnerungen an diese Synagoge und ihre Gemeinde halten ihre Geschichte lebendig.