The story of Old Wooden Synagogue of Kovanice
Kovanice, called Kovanitz or Kowanitz in German, is a village in the Nymburk district of Central Bohemia, between Nymburk and Poděbrady on the Elbe plain. Jews are recorded there from about 1700, when seven Jewish families lived in the village. In the second half of the eighteenth century the village Jews had a wooden synagogue, the building described here. Nothing about its size, appearance or exact date of construction has been found, and no picture of it is known.
The wooden synagogue was destroyed by fire. The sources consulted do not give the date of the fire or say how it started, but they agree that it was replaced: Jüdische Gemeinden writes that after the fire the village Jews, who had by then grown to about 130 people, put up a new synagogue building, and the Prague Jewish Community's heritage inventory says the new synagogue was built in the 1840s by the builder František Heller on the site of the older wooden one. The loss of the wooden building therefore happened at some point before the late 1840s. The replacement, house no. 111 in the centre of the village, was converted into a dwelling in 1892 and still stands; it is not the subject of this entry.
Where it stood
Historic: plot of the later synagogue, Kovanice, centre of the village. Today: Kovanice č.p. 111, 288 02 Kovanice, okres Nymburk, Středočeský kraj (exact house; footprint of the wooden building within the plot unknown).
Open larger map →The Jewish community
Kovanice had one of the small village Jewish communities of the Elbe plain east of Prague. According to Jüdische Gemeinden, seven Jewish families lived in the village around 1700. The community grew in the following century and a half and numbered about 130 people by the time the second synagogue was built in the 1840s. In 1830 a Jewish cemetery was laid out about 500 metres south-west of the village; the heritage inventory of the Prague Jewish Community describes it as the burial ground of the Jewish communities of Kovanice, Nymburk, Poděbrady and Křinec, which shows that Kovanice was then a local centre for the Jews of the surrounding area. After 1848 the number of members fell sharply. In the 1870s the community merged with that of Nymburk, with its seat at Kovanice.
Architecture and design
No description, plan or picture of the wooden synagogue has been found. The only facts recorded are that it was built of wood and that it was in use in the second half of the eighteenth century. Wooden synagogues were common in Bohemian villages at that time, but the sources consulted say nothing about the form of this one, so its size, roof, interior layout, seating and furnishings are unknown, as are its builder and the year it was put up. Its location is known indirectly: the Prague Jewish Community's heritage inventory states that the masonry synagogue of the 1840s, house no. 111 in the centre of the village, was built on the site of the older wooden building. The wooden synagogue therefore stood on the same plot in the village centre. Whether the fire left any part of it, such as foundations, that was reused in the new building is not recorded.
Life inside the synagogue
No account of religious life in the wooden synagogue has been found. No rabbi, cantor, teacher or community leader of eighteenth-century Kovanice is named in the sources consulted, and no records of the congregation from that period were located. What can be said is limited to the general picture given by Jüdische Gemeinden: a village congregation of a handful of families around 1700, large enough by the second half of the century to maintain a synagogue building of its own, and still growing, so that by the 1840s it counted about 130 people. Where the community buried its dead before the cemetery near the village was opened in 1830 is not recorded in the sources read. Any further detail about services, the community's officials or its relations with the Christian villagers would need the records held by the Jewish Museum in Prague or the regional archives.
Destruction
The wooden synagogue was destroyed by fire. Jüdische Gemeinden states only that the house of prayer was destroyed after a fire, without giving a year, a cause or any information on whether the fire also burned other buildings in the village. The Prague Jewish Community's heritage inventory adds that the new synagogue was built in the 1840s, before 1849, on the site of the older wooden one, so the fire must have happened before the late 1840s and probably not long before the rebuilding, though this last point is an inference. Neither source says whether the fire was accidental or deliberate, and no person or group is named as responsible. No damage report, insurance record or contemporary account of the fire has been found. The burned building was not restored; the community cleared the plot and replaced it with a new synagogue on the same site.
The community’s fate
The Kovanice community did not end in the Holocaust but faded away through migration in the nineteenth century. Jüdische Gemeinden records that after 1848 the number of its members fell sharply. In the 1870s it merged with the Jewish community of Nymburk, and the united community had its seat at Kovanice. By about 1890 almost no Jews lived in Kovanice any more, the united community was dissolved and the Nymburk Jews became an independent community again; Nymburk's own synagogue was built in 1891 and 1892. The second Kovanice synagogue was converted into a residential house from 1892. The last Jewish inhabitant of Kovanice died in 1916. The descendants of the Kovanice families had largely moved to Nymburk, Poděbrady, Prague and other towns; their fate in the Nazi period was not traced in the sources read for this entry.
The site today
Nothing remains of the wooden synagogue. Its plot in the centre of the village is occupied by house no. 111, the masonry synagogue built in the 1840s by František Heller to replace it, which was converted into a residential house from 1892 and is now privately owned and not open to the public. The Jewish cemetery founded in 1830, about 500 metres south-west of the village beside the lane that leaves the main Nymburk to Poděbrady road at the village green, survives with some 280 gravestones; it was cleaned up from the 1990s, its fallen stones were set upright in 2005 and 2006, and all the stones were documented in 2015. A plaque for Holocaust victims stands at its entrance.
Do you have something to contribute?
Photographs, documents, family stories or memories of this synagogue and its community help keep its history alive.
Share a memory or thought
No comments yet. Be the first to add one.