The story of Hroubovice Synagogue
Hroubovice lies a few kilometres south-west of Luže and about 15 km south-east of Chrudim, in today's Pardubice region. Jews settled there by the eighteenth century, and for a time they formed close to half of the village population. Their houses and the synagogue stood in the middle of the village on both sides of a stream, an arrangement the municipal archive's description calls a ghetto with the synagogue and the school at its centre. The Jewish cemetery lay on a nearby hill and survives.
The community declined in the second half of the nineteenth century as families moved to larger towns. The independent congregation was dissolved in 1894 and its remaining members were attached to the community of Heřmanův Městec. About 30 Jews still lived in Hroubovice in 1930, and according to the JewishGen cemetery survey the synagogue remained in use until about the 1930s. The building outlived the community by several decades: it was demolished at the end of the 1970s, under the Communist regime. Apart from one photograph taken during its demolition, no picture, plan or description of the building was found, and its date of construction and size are unknown.
Where it stood
Historic: centre of Hroubovice, beside the village stream; house number unknown. Today: 539 73 Hroubovice, Chrudim district, Pardubice region; pin at the OpenStreetMap village centre (approximate).
Open larger map →The Jewish community
The JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project dates the earliest known Jewish community in Hroubovice probably to the second half of the eighteenth century, while the Jüdische Gemeinden website thinks it existed from the early eighteenth century; the cemetery itself may be older. The description of the municipal archive says an independent Jewish religious community was established at the end of the eighteenth century and that at the beginning of the nineteenth Jews made up as much as half of the inhabitants. JewishGen counts 52 families, 48 per cent of the population, at the peak before the middle of the nineteenth century, and Jüdische Gemeinden gives up to 250 members, more than 40 per cent, in the second half of that century. Many Jewish businessmen lived in the village, which had a few small factories, and the archive names the Mandelík family as important. After emigration to larger towns the congregation was dissolved in 1894 and joined Heřmanův Městec; about 30 Jews remained in 1930.
Architecture and design
The only known image is a photograph kept by the municipality of Hroubovice that shows the building during its demolition: plastered masonry walls, the bare timbers of the roof and a small open turret frame on the ridge. No drawing, plan or written description was found. What is recorded is its setting: it stood in the middle of the village among the Jewish houses, beside the stream that runs through Hroubovice, and the municipal archive's description places a Jewish school next to it at the centre of the Jewish quarter. Nothing is known of its construction date, builder, materials, size, roof form or interior arrangement. As a village synagogue serving a community of at most about 250 people, it was presumably a modest building, but that is an inference, not a documented fact. Its construction date, architect, style and seating capacity are therefore all unknown.
Life inside the synagogue
Very little is recorded about worship and communal life in the Hroubovice synagogue. The municipal archive's description says the synagogue and the Jewish school stood together at the centre of the Jewish quarter, so the building was the focus of religious and educational life for a congregation that, at its height, included around 50 families. The community maintained its own cemetery on a hill outside the village, with gravestones dating back at least to the 1780s. After the independent congregation was dissolved in 1894, the Jews remaining in the village belonged to the community of Heřmanův Městec, but the synagogue in Hroubovice continued to be used, according to the JewishGen cemetery survey, until about the 1930s. The council minutes of 1902 to 1921 preserved in the village archive show Jewish families represented on the municipal council. No names of rabbis, teachers, cantors or community presidents of Hroubovice were found in the sources read.
Destruction
No source read records damage to the Hroubovice synagogue during the Nazi occupation. Worship there had probably ended by the 1930s, and after the deportation of the village's last Jews the building stood without a congregation. It survived the war and stood for more than three decades afterwards. According to the Jüdische Gemeinden website, which is the source for the date, the synagogue was demolished at the end of the 1970s; the description of the Hroubovice municipal archive likewise says the synagogue and school at the centre of the former Jewish quarter stood until the 1970s. The demolition therefore took place under the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia. None of the sources read says who ordered or carried out the demolition, whether the building had been sold or converted to another use beforehand, or what condition it was in when it was pulled down.
The community’s fate
About 30 Jews lived in Hroubovice in 1930. After the Nazi German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939, the Jews still living in the village were deported, and according to the Jüdische Gemeinden website only two of them are said to have survived. The municipal chronicles kept in the Hroubovice archive record inhabitants taken to concentration camps, and the archive also holds files on the Lampl and Husch families covering 1929 to 1945. The route of the deportations, their dates and the names and number of the victims from Hroubovice were not found in the sources read. No Jewish community was re-established in the village after the war, and JewishGen reports that no Jews live there today.
The site today
The synagogue's exact plot has not been identified in any source read. It stood in the centre of the village beside the stream, but no street address, house number or cadastral parcel was found, so it is not possible to say what occupies the site today. The map pin for this entry marks the centre of the village as recorded by OpenStreetMap, which lies close to the stream, and should be read as approximate. The Jewish cemetery on a hill near the village survives, with a wall, a gate and a small ceremonial hall, and is owned by the Jewish Community of Prague; it is the main surviving trace of Jewish Hroubovice.
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