Ilok Synagogue

La comunità ebraica

Jewish settlement at Ilok belongs to the nineteenth century. The ESJF cemetery survey says the settlers came largely from Slovakia and formed a small Orthodox community whose everyday language was Yiddish, and an overview of Jewish heritage in Croatia places the founding of the Ilok community in the middle of the century. The oldest gravestone recorded in the cemetery dates from 1862 and the cemetery itself was laid out in 1869. Population figures differ slightly between sources: ESJF gives 304 Jews in 1921 and 296 in 1931, while the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project, drawing on data collected by Srdjan Matić, gives 320 in 1925/26, 307 in 1931 and 310 in 1937/38. Until 1941 the town had two separate Orthodox congregations, and ESJF records a yeshiva or study society called Hevrat Bahurim. A rabbi named Yosef Naftali Shtern is mentioned by ESJF as a notable figure of the community. Ilok was the seat of a district (kotar), and its Jews were tied to the wider Jewish network of Srijem, centred on Vukovar, Vinkovci and Mitrovica.

Architettura e design

Karač's survey of nineteenth-century Croatian synagogues, as summarised in the Croatian Wikipedia, describes the Ilok building as a simple single-storey structure (prizemnica) with a pitched, gabled roof. Its front was articulated by pilaster strips (lezene) and arched niches. Because its design scarcely set it apart from the neighbouring houses, Karač assigns it to the type he calls the 'sinagoga-kuća', the synagogue-house, a common solution for small provincial congregations. The first building was damaged by fire and restored after 1873. In the course of this renovation the interior was refitted with historicist furnishings. As the synagogue was a single-nave hall, Karač assumes that it had no women's galleries, which would mean that women prayed behind a partition or in a side room; this is an inference, not a documented arrangement. No photograph, plan or drawing of the building was found. The architect, the builder, the dimensions and the number of seats are unknown, and the Jewish Street itself has not been matched to a present-day street name.

La vita nella sinagoga

Very little is recorded about worship in the building. The community was Orthodox throughout its existence, and its members spoke Yiddish, as the many Yiddish and Hebrew inscriptions in the cemetery confirm. ESJF records that the town had a society or yeshiva called Hevrat Bahurim, a name usually given to a fellowship of young men who met to study, so the synagogue was presumably one centre of Torah learning alongside it. From some point before 1941 Ilok had two separate Orthodox congregations. ESJF notes that a second synagogue building still existed in the town in the 1990s; this was presumably the prayer house of the second congregation, but neither source names it or gives its address. The historicist refit after the fire of 1873 shows that the community had the means to renew its furnishings, but no description of the ark, bimah or seating survives in the sources read. The names of cantors, beadles and lay leaders are unknown.

Distruzione

The synagogue was not damaged in any recorded wartime action. After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 Ilok became part of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), ruled by the Ustaše, and the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project and the ESJF survey both say the building was abandoned in 1941. What use, if any, the Ustaše authorities made of it during the war is not recorded. After 1945, under the new Communist government of Yugoslavia, the building was sold: the Cemetery Discovery Project gives the year of sale as 1948. According to Karač's survey, summarised in the Croatian Wikipedia, the synagogue was sold and demolished in 1949, while ESJF places both sale and demolition in 1948. None of the sources names the seller, the buyer, or whoever carried out the demolition. The Cemetery Discovery Project adds that a 'building still exists in 1994', which seems to refer to the second synagogue building that ESJF says survived into the 1990s.

Il destino della comunità

Ilok lay in the Ustaše-controlled Velika župa Vuka. According to the archivist Rajka Bućin, the Jews of Ilok were held until the summer of 1942 and then, on the night of 27 to 28 July 1942, moved in cattle wagons to the collection camp at Vinkovci together with the Jews of Šid. From Vinkovci a transport of about a thousand Srijem Jews, including those from Ilok, Vukovar and Županja, was sent to Auschwitz in August 1942. Other accounts differ: the local historian Kumović, as cited by Bućin, writes that the Jews of Ilok were deported to Jasenovac and in one place that some were taken to work in Germany. Ljiljana Dobrovšak's history of the Jews of Srijem lists 377 victims from Ilok, a figure higher than the town's prewar Jewish population and therefore likely to include people from the surrounding district. The ESJF survey states that all the Jewish inhabitants of the town perished. The Cemetery Discovery Project counts fifteen Jews in Ilok in 1947 and none in 1994. No organised congregation was re-established.

Il luogo oggi

The exact site of the synagogue has not been identified. The sources place it in the Lower Town, in the lane once called the Jewish Street near the market, but no source read gives its present street name or house number, and nothing is known of what replaced it. No surviving fragment or marker is recorded. The map pin for this entry therefore marks the centre of Ilok and should not be read as the synagogue's location. The Jewish cemetery, on Ivana Gundulića street between Gundulićeva and Augusta Cesarca streets, is listed in the Register of Cultural Goods of Croatia (Z-7176), though ESJF reports that houses now stand on much of it. The Muzej grada Iloka may hold photographs or cadastral records that would locate the building.

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