История Hřešihlavy Synagogue
Hřešihlavy lies about eight kilometres north of Radnice, on the right bank above the Berounka valley, and today belongs to the municipality of Kladruby in the Rokycany district. Jews settled there in the middle of the seventeenth century, and a Jewish prayer house is recorded in 1680. The community grew until, by about 1815, Jews formed the majority of the village. In 1838 the topographer Johann Gottfried Sommer counted 412 inhabitants, of whom 190 were Jews in 31 families, mostly living from trade, and he listed a synagogue among the buildings of the village. The Jewish houses stood in the eastern part of the village, still known as Karlín.
The synagogue is described by the Jüdische Gemeinden website as a nineteenth-century building. From the 1850s and 1860s the Jewish families left for larger towns, and the village shrank with them; by around 1920 hardly any Jews remained and the community had dissolved. With no congregation left, the synagogue was abandoned and pulled down before 1938, so its loss belongs to the decline of rural Bohemian Jewry rather than to the Second World War. No photograph, plan or description of the building has been found, and its exact site in the village is unknown. The Jewish cemetery in the forest east of the village survives with about fifty gravestones.
Where it stood
Historic: Hřešihlavy (Rescholau), probably in the Jewish quarter in the east of the village (Karlín); street and plot unknown. Today: Hřešihlavy, Kladruby, Rokycany district, Plzeň Region, 338 27. Pin is approximate (hamlet point).
Открыть большую карту →Еврейская община
Jewish settlement in Hřešihlavy goes back to the second half of the seventeenth century, when the village belonged to a small noble estate; a Jewish prayer house is mentioned in 1680. Like many Bohemian villages, it became home to Jewish families who were barred from living in the royal towns and settled instead under the protection of local landowners. The community reached its peak in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Jüdische Gemeinden website gives about 260 members at that time, around thirty families who made up half the village. The German Wikipedia article, drawing on Sommer's 1838 topography, says that Jews were the majority from about 1815 and records 190 Jews in 31 families among 412 inhabitants in 1838, most of them traders. The Jewish families lived in the eastern part of the village, in the area called Karlín, and most of their nineteenth-century houses are still standing. A cemetery was laid out in woodland away from the village around 1820 and was used until 1911. After 1850 to 1860 the families moved away to larger towns, and by around 1920 very few Jews still lived in Hřešihlavy.
Архитектура и дизайн
Almost nothing is known about the building. The Jüdische Gemeinden website dates it to the nineteenth century, and Sommer's topography of 1838, as summarised in the German Wikipedia article, already lists a synagogue in the village, so it was standing by that year. Whether it replaced the prayer house recorded in 1680, or was a new building on another plot, is unknown. No photograph, drawing, plan or written description of the synagogue was found in the sources read, and none appears among the illustrations for the Pilsen region on the Jüdische Gemeinden website, which shows only the cemetery for this village. Its size, material, style, interior arrangement, seating capacity and builder are therefore all unknown. In a community of about thirty families it was probably a modest building, but that is an inference from the size of the congregation, not something any source states. It most likely stood among the Jewish houses of Karlín in the eastern part of the village, but no source confirms its location.
Жизнь в синагоге
No record of services, rabbis, cantors or teachers at the Hřešihlavy synagogue was found in the sources read. The only details of religious life that survive in them are the prayer house of 1680, the synagogue listed in 1838 and the cemetery that the community laid out around 1820 in woodland east of the village and used until 1911, which implies an organised burial society. At its peak in the early nineteenth century the congregation numbered about thirty families, most of them traders, and the synagogue would have been the centre of their communal and religious life, together with the cemetery. As the families left for Pilsen, Prague and other towns after the middle of the century, the congregation dwindled; when regular services ended is not recorded. A Geni project on the Jewish families of Hřešihlavy (Rescholau) is listed in the bibliography of the Jüdische Gemeinden website but was not read.
Разрушение
The Hřešihlavy synagogue was not destroyed by violence. It lost its purpose as the Jewish families left the village in the second half of the nineteenth century, and once the community had dissolved, around or before 1920, the empty building was abandoned. The Jüdische Gemeinden website states that it was demolished before 1938; the German Wikipedia article says only that it was pulled down in the early twentieth century, after the end of the Jewish community. Neither gives a year. Who demolished it, and whether the building was first sold by the community or by a regional Jewish body to a private owner, is not recorded in the sources read. Since the demolition came before the German occupation in 1939, the synagogue was already gone when Nazi Germany occupied Bohemia, and no source connects its loss to the war, to the Nazis or to the post-war Communist regime.
Судьба общины
The Jewish community of Hřešihlavy did not survive into the twentieth century as an organised congregation. From 1850 to 1860 onward its families moved to larger towns, a common pattern in rural Bohemia after Jews gained freedom of residence, and by about 1920 very few Jews were left in the village. The sources read do not say whether any Jews still lived there when the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was established in 1939, nor what happened to them. The descendants of Hřešihlavy families who had settled in Pilsen, Prague and other towns are likely to have shared the fate of Bohemian Jewry under the Nazis, who deported most of them through Theresienstadt to ghettos and extermination camps from 1941 onwards, but no individual from Hřešihlavy is named in the sources consulted. The number of former Hřešihlavy Jews or their descendants who were murdered or survived is unknown.
Место сегодня
The exact plot of the synagogue has not been identified, so it is not known what stands there now. Most of the nineteenth-century houses of the former Jewish quarter, in the eastern part of the village known as Karlín, still stand. Hřešihlavy itself has shrunk to a hamlet; the 2011 census recorded 17 residents. The Jewish cemetery, laid out around 1820 in woodland east of the village and used until 1911, survives with about fifty gravestones. The map pin for this entry marks the hamlet of Hřešihlavy, not the synagogue site.
Вам есть чем поделиться?
Фотографии, документы, семейные истории и воспоминания об этой синагоге и её общине помогают сохранить её историю.
Share a memory or thought
No comments yet. Be the first to add one.