Hajdúsámson Synagogue

La comunità ebraica

Hajdúsámson had six Jews in 1735/36 and 252 in 1748, a remarkable number for a village at that date. The community peaked at 418 in 1840, the year Jews were first allowed to settle in Debrecen, and declined as families moved into the city: 333 in 1880, 309 in 1910, 334 in 1920, 268 in 1930 and 216 in 1941; Gazda's survey of 1980-87 gives the same figures for 1910 and 1941. Its members were merchants, artisans and a few farmers. The congregation organised itself in the second half of the eighteenth century, and after 1869 it belonged to the Orthodox wing of Hungarian Jewry, with the Jews of nearby Vámospércs attached to it. It kept two cemeteries in succession: the older one, with gravestones from 1805 to 1883, includes the grave of Rabbi Jeremiás Mattersdorf, who served as head of the rabbinical court in several communities; the newer one was in use from 1864 to at least 1943 and has an ohel over a grave. After the anti-Jewish laws of 1938 many families lost their livelihoods.

Architettura e design

Nothing is known of the building's appearance. No photograph, postcard, drawing or plan of the Hajdúsámson synagogue was found in this research: the photo and object collections of the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives (MILEV) returned no item for the town, and the town's own published history does not mention the building. Gazda's survey classes the building as a synagogue proper, rather than a prayer room in a house, but gives no construction date for it. The date of construction, the architect or builder, the style, the materials, the seating capacity and the arrangement of the interior are all unknown. Its street and plot are also unknown.

La vita nella sinagoga

The congregation followed Orthodox practice after 1869. Its best-known rabbi was Itzhak Yakov Blum, who died in 1851; his rulings were published in the responsa collection Beit Yakov, and his son, Rabbi Amram Blum, published Beit Shearim in Munkács in 1889. The community maintained a cheder and Talmud Torah for boys and a yeshiva for older students, as well as a school, a ritual bath and a burial society, and it ran several charitable institutions. A youth society called Tiferet Bachurim also met in the community. Its last rabbi before the Holocaust was Gabriel Yehuda Illiovics, who served until 1944. The congregation's members, many of them traders who did business in Debrecen, would have formed a small but traditional prayer community; by 1941 it numbered 216 people. Little else is recorded about the services held in the synagogue, its cantors or its lay officers.

Distruzione

No source found records damage to the synagogue during the Second World War. The building stood empty after the Jews of Hajdúsámson were removed in April 1944. About thirty survivors returned after the war and Rabbi Illiovics tried to re-establish the community, which suggests the synagogue may have been used again for a short time, but no source says so directly. By 1951 only three Jewish families remained in the village. What happened to the building after that is not documented in any source read. Anikó Gazda, who surveyed Hungarian synagogue sites between 1980 and 1987, recorded it as demolished, so it was gone by 1987 at the latest. Who demolished it, when, and whether it was first sold by the remaining community or the national Jewish office, is not recorded in the sources consulted.

Il destino della comunità

In May 1940 Jewish men from Hajdúsámson were called up for forced labour, and in the summer of 1941 labour servicemen were sent to the Ukrainian front. After the Nazi German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, the Jews of Hajdúsámson and Vámospércs were taken after Passover, in April, to a camp on a farm near Debrecen, where Hungarian police held them with barely any food and mistreated them. In mid-June they were moved to the brick factory near Debrecen where the Jews of the whole district were concentrated. On 24 June 1944 the detainees were split into two groups. The larger group, which included most of the Jews of Hajdúsámson, was deported to Auschwitz. The other group was sent to Austria for forced labour and in March 1945 to Theresienstadt; most of its members survived. A plaque added in 1998 to the village war memorial names 188 deported Jews. About thirty survivors returned, but they soon dispersed; there were 62 Jews in 1946, 34 in 1949, and three families by 1951.

Il luogo oggi

The plot on which the synagogue stood has not been identified in any source consulted, so it is not known what occupies it today, and no surviving fragment of the building is recorded. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Hajdúsámson and should not be read as the synagogue's location. Both Jewish cemeteries survive: the old cemetery, with gravestones from 1805 to 1883, and the new cemetery, in use until 1943, are fenced, and the new one has an ohel. The names of 188 deported Jews are on a plaque added in 1998 to the war memorial in Szabadság tér. Locating the synagogue will need the 1944 community census return, cadastral maps or local memory.

Nomi importanti