La storia di Izsák Synagogue
Izsák is a small town in the Kiskőrös district of Bács-Kiskun county. Its synagogue is known today almost entirely from one entry in Anikó Gazda's gazetteer Zsinagógák és zsidó községek Magyarországon, published in 1991 by the Judaic research group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Gazda and her team visited the sites of Hungarian synagogues between 1980 and 1987. For Izsák they recorded a building of the synagogue type, built in the late eighteenth century and repaired in 1866, and they marked it as demolished. The same survey counts 349 Jews in Izsák in 1828, 260 in 1851, 140 in 1910 and only 31 in 1941. The 1866 repair shows that the building was still in use and cared for in the second half of the nineteenth century. Beyond these two dates very little has come to light. No photograph, drawing, plan or description of the building was found, its street and plot are not identified, and no rabbi, cantor or community officer could be named from the sources that could be read. The town's Jewish cemetery, which still exists between houses on Pacsirta Street, is the only surviving physical trace of the community.
Where it stood
Historic: Izsák; street and house number unknown. Today: unknown; placeholder pin at the centre of 6070 Izsák, Bács-Kiskun county (approximate).
Apri la mappa grande →La comunità ebraica
Almost nothing about the Jewish community of Izsák could be documented. A synagogue standing by the late eighteenth century, in Gazda's dating, implies an organised congregation from that period, and the repair of 1866 implies one that was still able to maintain its building in the decades of Jewish emancipation in Hungary. Gazda's survey of 1980-87 records 349 Jews in Izsák in 1828, 260 in 1851, 140 in 1910 and 31 in 1941, so the community was at its largest early in the nineteenth century and dwindled steadily afterwards. Whether the congregation was Orthodox, Neolog or Status Quo after the schism of 1868-1869, which larger community it was attached to, and who its rabbis and lay leaders were, are all unknown. The community kept its own burial ground. JewishGen's Cemetery Discovery Project places the Izsák Jewish cemetery between the houses of Pacsirta Street, the first street a traveller reaches on entering the town from the direction of Kecskemét.
Architettura e design
No image or description of the Izsák synagogue was found, so its appearance is unknown. Gazda's survey classes the building as a synagogue proper rather than a prayer room in a house, dates its construction to the late eighteenth century and records a repair in 1866. No source describes the building, and nothing can be said about its size, building material, roof, windows, women's gallery or interior fittings. The architect and builder are unknown, as is the work done in 1866: the word recorded is repair, not rebuilding, which suggests that the late eighteenth-century structure survived in its main parts. The seating capacity is unknown. The building is not mentioned in the lists of Hungarian synagogues on English Wikipedia, and no postcard of it was traced in the public auction and museum collections that were searched.
La vita nella sinagoga
No account of religious life in the Izsák synagogue has been found. The sources read name no rabbi, cantor, ritual slaughterer, teacher or warden, give no date for the founding of a burial society, and do not say whether the community maintained a Jewish elementary school. The Jewish cemetery on Pacsirta Street shows that the congregation buried its own dead and so presumably had a burial society, but that is the only aspect of communal life for which there is physical evidence. Whether the synagogue held daily services or only Sabbath and festival prayers, and how many families used it, is unknown. The rite followed after the Hungarian schism of 1868-1869 is likewise unknown.
Distruzione
No source found records damage to the Izsák synagogue during the Second World War, its condition after 1945, or the date of its demolition. Gazda's survey of 1980-87 found the building gone and marked it as demolished, but like the rest of her gazetteer it gives no year and names no one responsible. Nothing read in this research shows the building still standing after 1945, so it cannot be said whether it was pulled down before the war, in the postwar years, or under Communist rule; nor whether it was first sold by survivors or by the national Jewish office. Who demolished it is not recorded. The town's local-history series on the municipal website, which describes individual houses and their owners, was searched in part without finding any mention of the synagogue.
Il destino della comunità
The fate of the Jews of Izsák in 1944 could not be documented. Randolph Braham's study of the Holocaust in Hungary, which normally gives the ghetto and entrainment centre for each district, was not consulted, and no other source naming Izsák in connection with the deportations was found. Gazda's survey records 31 Jews in Izsák in 1941; how many of them were murdered and how many survived is unknown. No organised Jewish community is recorded in Izsák after the war, and none exists there today. The only physical reminder of the community in the town is the Jewish cemetery on Pacsirta Street, recorded by JewishGen's Cemetery Discovery Project. The names of victims from Izsák may be recoverable from the Yad Vashem Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names and from the April 1944 community data sheets, neither of which was consulted for this entry.
Il luogo oggi
The plot on which the synagogue stood has not been identified in any source consulted, so it is not possible to say what occupies it now. No surviving fragment of the building and no marker on its site is recorded. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Izsák, taken from OpenStreetMap, and should not be read as the synagogue's location. The Jewish cemetery survives between the houses of Pacsirta Street, on the Kecskemét side of the town. Locating the synagogue will need nineteenth-century cadastral maps of Izsák or the help of local historians.
Hai qualcosa da condividere?
Fotografie, documenti, storie di famiglia o ricordi di questa sinagoga e della sua comunità aiutano a mantenerne viva la storia.
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