Krompachy Synagogue

La comunità ebraica

The first detailed description of Krompachy in the Hungarian gazetteer of Elek Fényes (1851) lists only 1,376 Catholics and 482 Lutherans, living from mining, linen weaving, honey refining and shingle-making; no Jews are recorded. Jewish settlement followed the industrial boom that began in 1841 with the founding of the ironworks, which by the early 20th century had become the largest in the Kingdom of Hungary. The town grew quickly, from 1,810 inhabitants in 1880 to 4,731 in 1900 and 6,378 in 1910, a mixed population of Hungarian, Slovak, German and Serbian speakers.

The Jewish community's own cemetery was founded in the mid-19th century, and by the 1880s a Chevra Kadisha (burial society) existed. After the First World War the ironworks closed, a workers' uprising was suppressed in February 1921, and the plant was dismantled in 1923, which reduced the population to 4,273 by 1930. In that census 184 people, 4.3 percent of the town, declared Jewish nationality. The community's rite, its rabbis and its affiliation are unknown.

Architettura e design

No description, plan or photograph of a synagogue in Krompachy has been found. The building's date, size, materials, style and architect are all unknown, and the single list entry that names it gives no detail at all. Maroš Borský's 2005 survey of synagogue architecture in Slovakia, which catalogues both standing and demolished synagogues, does not mention the town, and neither does the Slovak heritage gazetteer pamiatkynaslovensku.sk, which draws on that survey. The town's municipal and heritage listings record its Catholic church of 1774, a chapel of 1776, a Lutheran church of 1883 and the classicist ironworks hammer mill of 1852 at Stará Maša, but no Jewish building.

With a community of under two hundred people in 1930, Krompachy's Jews may have worshipped in a small prayer house rather than a large purpose-built synagogue, but no source confirms either. The Hebrew-language Pinkas Hakehillot volume on Slovakia, which has an entry on Krompachy, is the most likely source to settle what kind of building existed and where it stood.

La vita nella sinagoga

Almost nothing is recorded of religious life in Krompachy. The clearest trace of the congregation is its cemetery, founded in the mid-19th century on a steep slope beside a road near the town's other cemeteries. Its limestone tombstones carry Hebrew inscriptions; the oldest surviving stone is dated 1869, and burials continued up to the Second World War. A Chevra Kadisha, the voluntary burial society that cared for the dying and prepared the dead for burial, was active by the 1880s; such a society was usually one of the first institutions of a new Jewish community, alongside a place for daily and Sabbath prayer.

The names of rabbis, cantors, ritual slaughterers or community leaders who served Krompachy have not been found, nor whether the community kept its own rabbi or relied on a larger neighbouring congregation in Spiš. Whether there was a school, a ritual bath or a Talmud Torah is likewise unknown.

Distruzione

The only claim that Krompachy had a synagogue that was destroyed is a single unreferenced row in the English Wikipedia list of synagogues in Slovakia, which gives neither a building date nor a demolition date and says only "Destroyed". No other source read for this entry confirms the building, its fate or the date of its loss, and who demolished it is not recorded.

What is known of the period is that the Jewish cemetery was heavily damaged at the end of the Second World War and that the municipality partially demolished it in 1976, during Communist rule. Whether the synagogue or prayer house suffered damage in wartime, stood empty after the deportations, was taken over for another use, or was pulled down later in the Communist period cannot be said from the sources found. Because nothing read proves that the building stood after 1945, the date and the actor of its destruction are both unknown.

Il destino della comunità

In 1940 about 89,000 Jews lived in the Slovak State. After their property was taken through Aryanization and the Jewish Code of September 1941 stripped them of their rights, the Slovak government organised mass deportations between 25 March and 20 October 1942. The Hlinka Guard, the gendarmerie and the Freiwillige Schutzstaffel rounded up almost 58,000 Jews and forced them onto trains to Auschwitz and to ghettos and camps in the Lublin District, including Majdanek and Sobibor; only a few hundred of them survived. After Nazi German forces occupied Slovakia in 1944 to crush the Slovak National Uprising, another 13,500 Jews were deported, and Einsatzgruppe H and Hlinka Guard units murdered many others inside the country. About 69,000 Slovak Jews were killed.

The fate of the Jews of Krompachy within these events has not been documented in the sources read: transport dates, numbers and the names of victims are unknown. One son of the town, Ludwig Eisenberg (later Lale Sokolov), born in Korompa in 1916, was deported to Auschwitz in April 1942 and survived. Whether any Jews returned to the town after 1945 is not recorded.

Il luogo oggi

The site of the synagogue is unknown, so it cannot be said what stands there now. Krompachy is today a town of about 8,800 people in the Spišská Nová Ves district, its economy based on the copper works built in 1937 on the site of the old ironworks. The only surviving Jewish site in the town is the cemetery, which lies by a road near the other town cemeteries. About 45 tombstones dating from 1869 to the war years remain on its steep slope; the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative (ESJF) fenced it with support from the Jewish community organisation in Slovakia. No marker is known to record where the community's house of prayer stood.