Old Synagogue of Kardašova Řečice

RESUMEN

La historia de Old Synagogue of Kardašova Řečice

Kardašova Řečice is a small town in the Jindřichův Hradec district of South Bohemia. Jews are recorded in the town from the early fifteenth century, although a settled community seems to date from the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Before about 1650 the families prayed in a room in a private house. In 1708 the community, then some eight to ten families, built a separate synagogue. According to the Jüdische Gemeinden survey and the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project it was a wooden building, and it stood between the dwellings of the Jewish quarter in the eastern half of the town, in the area between present-day Hradní street and the Řečice stream.

The synagogue served the congregation for a century and a half, through its growth to about 25 permitted families in the first half of the nineteenth century. The wooden houses of the quarter around it were vulnerable to fire: a fire in 1840 is reported to have damaged the quarter, and on 18 May 1863 a fire that swept through much of the town burned the synagogue down together with the surrounding houses. The congregation replaced it in 1864-1866 with a masonry synagogue on the same plot, which is the subject of a separate entry. No picture or plan of the wooden building is known to survive.

UBICACIÓN

Where it stood for 155 years

Historic: Jewish quarter of Kardašova Řečice, between present-day Hradní street and the Řečice stream; house number unknown. Today: garden of house No. 408, Hradní, 378 21 Kardašova Řečice (approximate).

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La comunidad judía

Jews are mentioned in the region in the late thirteenth century and in Kardašova Řečice itself from the early fifteenth century, probably not continuously. The community that built the synagogue grew up from the mid-seventeenth century, when three families are recorded. Jüdische Gemeinden counts eight families around 1680-1690 and ten around 1715, so the synagogue of 1708 was built by a congregation of roughly that size. By 1755 the Jewish quarter in the eastern part of the town consisted of ten single-storey houses between today's Hradní street and the Řečice stream, and until 1920 these houses were numbered separately with Roman numerals. The families made their living mostly as small traders and pedlars. Fifteen families are recorded in 1783 and 1811, and the community reached its height in the first half of the nineteenth century, when 25 families were allowed to live in the town; the census of 1840 counted 136 Jews, 6.5 per cent of the population, and 160 were counted in 1857. The congregation's cemetery, about one kilometre south of the town, was walled in 1673 and served Jews of the surrounding villages as well.

Arquitectura y diseño

Very little is known about the building's appearance. The sources consulted agree that the synagogue was built in 1708 as a free-standing house of prayer, the first in the town, replacing a prayer room that had existed in a private house since before 1650. Jüdische Gemeinden and the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project both describe it as built of wood, while the South Bohemian regional tourist guide gives only the date. It stood among the Jewish houses of the quarter rather than on a main street, on the plot later occupied by the masonry synagogue of 1864-1866, which is today the garden of house No. 408 in Hradní street. Its size, plan, roof form, interior arrangement, women's section, seating capacity and builder are all unknown, and no drawing, plan or photograph of it has been found. Anything further would depend on archival documents that were not consulted.

La vida dentro de la sinagoga

No account of worship in the wooden synagogue has been found. The congregation was small throughout the building's life, between about eight families when it was built and some 25 families at its peak in the first half of the nineteenth century, and it also served Jews living in nearby villages, whose dead were buried in the Kardašova Řečice cemetery. The community kept registers of births, marriages and deaths from 1784, which survive with a gap from the 1840s to the 1870s; the gap covers the years of the fire. The names of the rabbis, cantors and teachers who officiated in the synagogue before 1863 were not found in the sources consulted. The cemetery holds the tombstone of a rabbi and teacher, Lazar Beneš, but his dates and whether he served before or after the fire were not established. Members of the community such as the Herrmann family appear in the 1811 register of Jewish families, and Leopold Herrmann of Kardašova Řečice moved to Jindřichův Hradec in 1806, but nothing is recorded about their part in the life of the synagogue.

Destrucción

The wooden synagogue was destroyed by an accidental town fire, not by any deliberate act. The Jewish quarter of Kardašova Řečice consisted of wooden houses built close together, and it had already been badly hit by a fire in 1840. On 18 May 1863 a large fire broke out that destroyed much of the town. According to the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project it burned down the wooden synagogue together with the surrounding wooden housing of the ghetto, and Jüdische Gemeinden states that the synagogue was completely destroyed in this fire. No source consulted records how the fire started, whether any ritual objects or Torah scrolls were saved, or whether any lives were lost. The congregation rebuilt at once: a masonry synagogue was put up on the same site, completed in 1866 according to Jüdische Gemeinden and the regional guide, or by 1874 according to the Cemetery Discovery Project. That second building fell out of use in the twentieth century and was demolished in 1958-1959.

El destino de la comunidad

After 1848 most of the families of Kardašova Řečice moved to larger towns. The community shrank from 160 in 1857 to 100 in 1880, 52 in 1900 and 22 in 1921, about one per cent of the population; 20 Jews lived there in 1930 and 18 in 1938-1939. A congregation serving the surrounding villages nevertheless continued until the Second World War. In the spring of 1942 the Nazis deported the 19 Jews then living in Kardašova Řečice to the Theresienstadt ghetto and from there to extermination camps; by May 1942 no Jews were left in the town. According to Jüdische Gemeinden none of them survived the Shoah. No Jewish community was re-established after the war, and the last burial in the Jewish cemetery took place in 1965.

El lugar hoy

The site of the wooden synagogue was reused for the masonry synagogue of 1864-1866, which was demolished in 1958-1959. According to the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project the plot is now the garden of house No. 408, which stands in Hradní street in the former Jewish quarter in the eastern part of the town. Nothing of either synagogue is visible above ground. Four of the old houses of the Jewish quarter survive in reconstructed form. The Jewish cemetery, about one kilometre south of the town on the blue-marked hiking trail, keeps its wall, a nineteenth-century mortuary with a shingle roof and about 160 tombstones, the oldest reportedly dated 1647, and is the main surviving trace of the community. The empty synagogue site was photographed by Štěpán Bartoš for his Invisible Synagogues project.

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