Heerenveen Synagogue

La comunidad judía

According to the Jewish Cultural Quarter's community encyclopedia, Heerenveen counted one Jewish resident in 1781, four families by 1813 and its own independent congregation from 1817. The Jewish population of Heerenveen and its surroundings was 34 in 1840, 70 in 1869, 71 in 1899 and 23 in 1930, so the community was largest in the 1870s. Most Jews lived close to the synagogue, along the Molenwijk canal and in the alleys around it, and earned their living in the clothing trade or as butchers. The congregation ran a men's society and two women's societies, one probably caring for the sick and the dead and the other looking after the synagogue's interior. Its oldest cemetery, at Veensluis between 't Veen and De Knipe, was used from 1860 to 1880; in 1883 a gift from the Rothschild family paid for a new burial ground at Oranjewoud. Both cemeteries are now maintained by the municipality. By the 1930s only about twenty Jews remained.

Arquitectura y diseño

No photograph or drawing of the synagogue has been found, so its appearance is unknown. What is known comes from property records summarised by the Stichting Historie Heerenveen. The building stood on a back plot behind the houses of the Heerenwal, invisible from the street, and the only access was a narrow alley beside the shop at Heerenwal 69, running past number 69a. The same plot held the community's bathhouse, used for ritual immersion. In 1861 the parcel, then numbered A-2073, was described as 'synagogue, house and yard' of 0.90 are, and in 1876 as 'a building serving as synagogue and bathroom'. On the cadastral Netteplan of 1887 the synagogue parcel is A-2862, 0.92 are, with a main building and a separate small structure on the same yard; it was later renumbered A-4573. The building was rebuilt in 1892 and reconsecrated in 1893. Architect, builder, style and seating capacity are unknown.

La vida dentro de la sinagoga

According to the property records, the synagogue served the Nederlandsche Israëlietische Gemeente Heerenveen both for worship and for Torah instruction. The bathhouse on the same yard allowed members to perform ritual immersion. A women's society looked after the interior of the synagogue, while a men's society and a second women's society probably cared for the sick and arranged burials. Lay leaders ran the congregation: in 1876 its chairman, Izaäk Veldman, and its treasurer, Hartog Izaäks Cohen, both merchants at Nijehaske, bought the building from the heirs of its former owner, so that the community owned the premises it had previously rented. The rebuilding of 1892 and the reconsecration of 1893 came when membership was still around seventy. No names of rabbis, teachers or cantors serving in Heerenveen were found in the sources consulted.

Destrucción

The synagogue was not destroyed in the war. By 1930 only 23 Jews lived in Heerenveen and its surroundings, too few to maintain a congregation, and in 1933 the community was dissolved and joined to that of Sneek. A study of Jewish property in Heerenveen published by Radboud University states that the synagogue was sold and demolished in 1933, and the community encyclopedia of the Jewish Cultural Quarter also says it was pulled down that year. Property records show that the synagogue, bathhouse and yard (parcel A-4573) passed from the Heerenveen congregation to the Jewish congregation of Sneek, and that around 1934, when the front premises were rebuilt, the shopkeeper Pasveer acquired the rear land with the former synagogue and bathhouse and absorbed it into his property. Who demolished the building is not recorded; the local historians do not describe the demolition itself.

El destino de la comunidad

At the census ordered by the Nazi German occupiers in 1941, 21 Jews were registered in the municipality of Heerenveen. Like Jews across the Netherlands they were stripped of their property and, from 1942, deported through the Westerbork transit camp to the death camps. The Radboud University study counts 29 Jews born in Heerenveen and 35 from the former municipality of Schoterland among those named in the Joods Monument, the Dutch memorial to the murdered Jews; eleven of those born in Heerenveen were deported from an address in the town, and most were murdered in Auschwitz or Sobibor. Salomon van Loon and Jeltje Smeer were both killed in Auschwitz on the same day in late 1942. As far as is known, the Tof family was the only family of the small community to survive and return; Abraham Tof later recovered his property. No congregation was re-established, though a Liberal Jewish community for the northern Netherlands, Beth Hatsafon, was founded in Heerenveen in 2000.

El lugar hoy

The synagogue's plot lay behind Heerenwal 69a and 70 and was merged into the neighbouring commercial property after about 1934. Local historians record that Bernardus C. Brouwer bought the whole complex in 1958, and that the premises later housed a warehouse of Van Ommen's Handelsvereniging and then a tyre business. Nothing of the building survives on the site, and no marker there is recorded. A stone from the synagogue is kept in the local museum (the former oudheidkamer). The Jewish cemeteries at Veensluis and Oranjewoud survive and are maintained by the municipality.

Nombres destacados