Holíč Synagogue

La comunidad judía

Jewish residents of Holíč are first named in 1593, and a Jew who collected the transit toll is recorded in 1678. The early settlers were under the protection of the Czobor family and kept close ties with Hodonín across the Moravian border. Early in the eighteenth century they founded a cemetery and an organised community; in 1727 it counted 27 families. After Holíč passed to the Habsburgs in 1736, refugees from Moravia arrived, and Maria Theresa's privilege of 1751 secured the community's rights. In 1768 its taxpayers included shopkeepers, tailors, leaseholders, a wagon driver and a prayer leader, and some Jews were wealthy tobacco merchants. The community had 851 members in 1828 and peaked at 1,316 in 1869, when it chose the status quo affiliation. Numbers then fell, to 712 in 1900 and 386 in 1930, and the local rabbinate ended in 1908, after which Holíč belonged to the rabbinate of Skalica. Between the wars Jews ran most of the town's grocery, clothing and shoe shops as well as a cement works and a malt factory, and held seats on the town council.

Arquitectura y diseño

Pinkas Hakehillot Slovakia states that the synagogue dedicated in 1786 was built in the Baroque style, and the e-obce.sk listing of Holíč's monuments likewise describes it as a Baroque synagogue of the eighteenth century. A Slovak heritage website on the Jewish cemetery, by contrast, calls it a classicist synagogue. The building belonged to a group of communal structures: the ritual bath and the school stood next door, and the old cemetery was close by, so the synagogue formed the centre of the area where Jews chose to live, although they were never required to live in a separate quarter. No description of its plan, dimensions, roof, women's gallery, Torah ark or furnishings was found, and no photograph, drawing or plan of it could be located during this research. The architect or master builder and the seating capacity are unknown. A dissertation by Maroš Borský on synagogue architecture in Slovakia may describe the building but could not be read.

La vida dentro de la sinagoga

The synagogue served a congregation with a long line of learned rabbis. Pinkas Hakehillot names Rabbi Aharon Leibel and Rabbi Yehuda Dreznitz as the first rabbis in the eighteenth century, and records a bitter dispute from 1777 to 1781 over the preacher Rabbi Aharon Freishtatl, which ended when the district authorities ordered him to leave. From 1800 the rabbi was Yosef Kuttenplan, author of Beit Nefesh; he was followed by Aharon Spitz (1813-1817), Moshe Yitzchak Perlis (1820-1827), who later served Eisenstadt, and Avraham Bek, a pupil of the Chatam Sofer. The last rabbi was Herman Pullach, with Moshe Leib Feilbogen as rabbinical judge. Alongside the rabbi the community paid a cantor, a ritual slaughterer, a scribe, a secretary and teachers. After the rabbinate ended in 1908 the cantor Herman Abramson also guided the community in religious matters. In 1929 the congregation joined the Yeshurun association of liberal communities, and Zionist groups were active from the end of the First World War.

Destrucción

No source found reports damage to the synagogue during the Second World War. After the deportations of 1942 a small community of about 50 protected Jews remained, and after liberation in April 1945 roughly 30 Jews returned and briefly restored communal life. Most of those left emigrated to Israel in 1949 and the rest moved to Bratislava. According to Pinkas Hakehillot Slovakia, the old synagogue was then used as a warehouse and later destroyed; the Jüdische Gemeinden website repeats this. A Slovak heritage website says the synagogue was cleared ('asanovaná') after the Second World War, and the English Wikipedia list of Slovak synagogues gives 1950, a date that appears there without a source. No document of the demolition was found, so the year is unknown, and who ordered or carried out the demolition is not recorded in any source consulted. Pinkas also notes that the old Jewish cemetery near the synagogue was destroyed in 1975.

El destino de la comunidad

In 1940 about 360 Jews lived in Holíč. Under the Slovak State, allied with Nazi Germany, anti-Jewish decrees closed or 'aryanised' most Jewish businesses during 1941. Deportations began on 27 March 1942 with a round-up of young people: dozens of young men were sent through the Sereď camp to Majdanek, and about 30 young women were taken on 1 April to the Patronka camp in Bratislava and deported to Auschwitz. Families were deported from 6 June 1942, when about 210 Jews of Holíč and the district were sent through the Žilina collection camp to ghettos and death camps in Poland, and small groups followed through July via Sereď and Žilina to Auschwitz. In August 1942 President Jozef Tiso spoke at a rally in Holíč defending the deportations. About 90 per cent of the area's Jews were deported in 1942. After the Nazi German invasion in late August 1944 several of the remaining families were arrested and sent to concentration camps; a few survived in hiding with Slovak neighbours. About 30 returned in 1945, and only 26 lived in the town in 1948.

El lugar hoy

The exact site of the synagogue has not been identified in any source consulted. Pinkas Hakehillot says only that the ritual bath and the school stood next to it and that the old Jewish cemetery was nearby; that cemetery was itself destroyed in 1975. Without a street name or a cadastral map it is not possible to say what occupies the plot today. No surviving fragment of the building is recorded, and no marker on the site was found. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Holíč and should not be read as the synagogue's location. The new Jewish cemetery, with its ceremonial hall, survives, and a communal kitchen and four houses once owned by the community were still standing when Pinkas Hakehillot was published in 2003.

Nombres destacados