The story of Hohenau an der March Synagogue
Hohenau an der March lies in the far north-east of Lower Austria, on the March (Morava) river where Austria meets Moravia and Slovakia. Jews are recorded there as early as 1620, and the Encyclopaedia Judaica notes that a synagogue existed in 1638, but that early community ended with the expulsion of the Jews from Vienna and Lower Austria in 1670. Jewish settlement resumed after 1861, much of it, according to the German Wikipedia article on the town, through Moravian Jews moving towards Vienna. The founding of a sugar factory by six brothers of the Strakosch family in 1867 brought the town prosperity. The new community consecrated a cemetery in 1879 and in 1899 built the temple described in this entry. Hohenau did not form a Kultusgemeinde of its own: its Jews belonged to the Israelite Kultusgemeinde of Mistelbach. About 70 Jews lived in the town in 1934. In 1938, after the Anschluss, they were forced to leave for Vienna because the town lay close to the border. The temple was demolished in the spring of 1939. Christoph Lind's study of the Jewish communities of Lower Austria singles it out as the only synagogue in the province that was demolished under Nazi rule. No photograph, plan or address of the building has been found.
Where it stood for 40 years
Historic: Hohenau an der March, Lower Austria; street and house number unknown. Today: unknown; placeholder pin at the centre of 2273 Hohenau an der March (approximate).
Open larger map →The Jewish community
Documents first mention Jews in Hohenau in 1620, and six Jewish families lived in the town between 1652 and 1666. The community ended in 1670, when the Jews were expelled from Vienna and Lower Austria. Jews returned after 1861, and the German Wikipedia article on the town describes Hohenau as an active Jewish community from the nineteenth century, fed largely by migration from Moravia. The town's growth followed the founding of the sugar factory by the Strakosch brothers in 1867, and the Encyclopaedia Judaica states that the Jewish founder of the refinery later served as mayor, without naming him. The community laid out a cemetery in the Falkengasse in 1879, which was used until 1938 and still holds 66 gravestones. Administratively the Jews of Hohenau formed part of the Israelite Kultusgemeinde of Mistelbach rather than an independent community. In 1933 the Jewish cemetery was desecrated; the local Catholic priest responded by leading his congregation in a service there. In 1934 the town had 70 Jewish inhabitants.
Architecture and design
Almost nothing is known about the building itself. The German Wikipedia article on Hohenau calls it a Jewish temple and dates its construction to 1899; the term Tempel was used in Austria for synagogues of the late nineteenth century in general and does not by itself indicate a particular style or rite. No photograph, postcard, drawing or plan of the Hohenau temple was found in the collections searched, which included Wikimedia Commons and the online collection of the Jewish Museum Vienna. Its street, its size, the number of seats, its architect or builder and its appearance are therefore unknown. A congregation of around seventy people in the 1930s suggests a modest building, but that is an inference and not a documented fact. The local history of the town, Anton Schultes's Heimatbuch der Marktgemeinde Hohenau a. d. March of 1959, which Christoph Lind cites for the demolition, is the most likely printed source for a description or a photograph.
Life inside the synagogue
The temple served the small community that had grown up in Hohenau after 1861. Because Hohenau belonged to the Israelite Kultusgemeinde of Mistelbach, its religious affairs, including registration and the appointment of religious officials, came under the Mistelbach community; no rabbi, cantor or teacher specifically serving Hohenau is named in the sources read. The congregation had its own cemetery from 1879, laid out twenty years before the temple was built, but where the refounded community prayed before 1899 is not recorded. No account of services, festivals, associations or the interior of the temple was found. The building was in use for under forty years, from 1899 until the forced departure of the Jews in 1938, when the cemetery was also closed.
Destruction
No source read describes damage to the Hohenau temple during the November Pogrom of 1938. By then the building had probably already lost its congregation, since the Jews of Hohenau were forced to move to Vienna in 1938 because of the town's position on the border with Czechoslovakia. According to Christoph Lind, who relies on the 1959 Heimatbuch of the market town, the temple was demolished in the spring of 1939, during the period of Nazi rule; the German Wikipedia article on the town likewise says it was taken down (abgetragen) in 1939. Lind notes that it was the only synagogue in Lower Austria demolished under Nazi rule, which sets it apart from the many buildings that were wrecked, converted to other uses or left standing. Who ordered and carried out the demolition, whether the building or plot was first seized or sold, and what became of the materials is not recorded in the sources read.
The community’s fate
After the Anschluss of March 1938 Jewish life in Hohenau was extinguished. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, the Jews of the town, about 70 people in 1934, were forced to move to Vienna in 1938 because Hohenau lay close to the Czechoslovak border. The Jewish cemetery was closed in the same year. Twenty-six members of the Hohenau community later died in Nazi extermination camps; the sources read do not say where or when they were deported. How many emigrated is unknown. In 1938 the Strakosch sugar factory was Aryanized, and its director Georg Strakosch-Feldringen took his own life on 7 July 1938. Only one Jew returned to Hohenau after the Second World War, and no Jewish community was re-established. Between August 1944 and March 1945 Hungarian Jews, including women and children, were held in the town as forced labourers in agriculture.
The site today
The site of the temple has not been identified in the sources read, so it is not known what stands on the plot today, and no surviving fragment is recorded. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Hohenau an der March and does not mark the synagogue. The Jewish cemetery of 1879 survives in the Falkengasse, with 66 gravestones, and is a protected monument; it is the only physical trace of the modern community identified in this research. Locating the temple will need the 1959 Heimatbuch, the local cadastral records or the archive of the market town.
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