Hilversum Synagogue (Zeedijk)

La comunità ebraica

The Joods Historisch Museum's community history traces Jewish prayer in Hilversum to a house on the Kerkstraat near the Groest in the first half of the eighteenth century, and the community received its own cemetery on the Gooise Vaart in 1751. A newspaper history of 1986 names Natan Eliaser as the man who signed the founding contract with the village's deputy secretary in the presence of about ten men, and Abraham Wolf as the owner of the house where the first services were held and the keeper of the building fund. The statutes approved in 1781 laid down fines, half of which went to the community and half to the Reformed poor. Numbers rose from about 80 in 1789 and 184 in 1809 to 246 in 1869, 538 in 1899 and 1,007 in 1930. Many families lived from trade and butchery, and the de Rood family opened two carpet-weaving works. In the 1930s about 400 refugees from Germany arrived, and several Jewish children's homes and institutions were based in and around the town.

Architettura e design

No plan, drawing or architect's name was found. The 1986 newspaper history says the synagogue was built between the Groest and the Zeedijk, that its interior was very plain because the small congregation could hardly afford the building, and that a mortgage loan was sought from the bailiff of the Gooi in 1791. It was enlarged in 1880 and 1900. A photograph published as the Zeedijk synagogue around 1950 shows a narrow brick hall with a tiled pitched roof and a small finial at the apex, a plain cornice, two round-arched windows with glazing bars on the front and a central double door under a triangular pediment, reached by a curving paved path beside a large tree. An undated photograph of a gutted hall, published on a local history page about the Zeedijk, shows long brick side walls with tall round-headed windows, the roof gone, rubble on the floor and a rendered end wall with a rounded top around a projecting ark niche under a canopy. Whether these two views show the 1789 building is not certain. The style and capacity are unknown.

La vita nella sinagoga

The congregation was led by its parnassim and by a voorzanger rather than a resident rabbi; the 1986 newspaper history names no rabbi for Hilversum before the war. It records Nathan Dasberg as voorzanger and voorlezer, cantor and Torah reader, from 1935. In 1785, before the synagogue was built, a quarrel between Abraham Wolf and the wardens ended with the door between his house and the prayer room being nailed shut. Children were taught at the Jewish school on the Zeedijk, first housed in the teacher's home and given two full storeys in 1906; it had 31 pupils in 1868 and 51 in 1911. On Sabbaths services were also held in the school, and at the New Year the youth synagogue and a hall called De Vereeniging were used as well, which suggests the main building had become too small for the High Holidays. The synagogue's 150th anniversary was marked in 1939 with a refurbishment of the interior.

Distruzione

In 1942 the synagogue was looted by the Nazi German occupiers, who carried off its ritual objects. The Torah scrolls had been hidden in time: the 1986 newspaper history says the Protestant minister J. Zuurdeeg kept six of them in his attic, and they were recovered after the war. The same article says the interior was completely wrecked in 1942, and that the removal firm Puls shipped valuable Jewish household goods to Germany while neighbours took other things. During the hunger winter of 1944-1945, when the town had no fuel, the building was stripped of everything that could be taken; the Joods Historisch Museum describes it as entirely dismantled. Who stripped it is not recorded. After the liberation the damaged building was not restored as a synagogue. The 1986 article says it served for a time as a church hall and a cinema. It was then sold, and the remains were demolished: in 1963 according to the 1986 article, in 1969 according to the Joods Historisch Museum. The sources do not name the buyer or the demolition contractor.

Il destino della comunità

Immediately after the German invasion in May 1940 three Jews in Hilversum took their own lives, and the broadcaster AVRO dismissed its Jewish staff. Persecution sharpened in 1941 under a mayor from the NSB, the Dutch Nazi party, after part of the town had joined the February strike. Jewish children were expelled from public schools, and the community set up its own primary school, ULO and lyceum. Deportation of stateless Jews began in January 1942; in May about 200 German Jews were moved to Asterdorp in Amsterdam, and around mid-June 1942 most Hilversum Jews were forced to move to Amsterdam, from where they were later deported. Patients of Jewish institutions were deported in March and April 1943, about 60 children of the Rudelsheim foundation in February 1943, and in April 1943 the last Jews left Hilversum through the Vught camp. Hartog Bartels, betrayed while hiding the congregation's ceremonial silver, was among those killed. Only about ten per cent of the town's 1941 Jewish population survived. About 200 Jews lived in Hilversum in 1951 and 40 in 1998.

Il luogo oggi

The 1789 synagogue stood between the Groest and the Zeedijk in the centre of Hilversum. According to the 1986 newspaper history, the community's Zeedijk land was given up for shopping centre development, and the area is now part of the pedestrian shopping streets around the Hilvertshof centre. No part of the building survives and no source found gives its house number, so the exact plot has not been identified. The postwar congregation moved to a synagogue on the Laanstraat, built when the school synagogue on the Zeedijk was demolished in 1969; it was sold in 2005 and is now used only on the High Holidays. A monument for the murdered Jews of Hilversum stands in the Jewish cemetery on the Vreelandseweg.

Nomi importanti