Kurima Synagogue

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Die Geschichte von Kurima Synagogue

Kurima lies in the hills of the Bardejov district of the Prešov region, close to the Polish border. In the nineteenth century it had one of the larger rural Jewish communities in what is now Slovakia: the architectural historian Maroš Borský counts it among the places whose Jewish population numbered between 500 and 1,000 in the 1910 census, the same bracket as towns such as Pezinok or Rožňava. He describes the congregation as Hasidic and its setting as deep in the forests near Polish territory.

The village had a wooden synagogue earlier: Borský, citing the ethnographer Soňa Kovačevičová, notes that the wooden synagogue of Kurima was demolished in 1810. It was replaced by the masonry building described in this entry, which Borský dates only to the nineteenth century; a published list of Slovak synagogues gives 1850, without a source. The building was a modest free-standing house of prayer, notable for a western façade with three round-arched doorways, a scheme Borský groups with the synagogues of Šahy and Liptovský Hrádok. Its congregation was deported in 1942. The building survived the war but was demolished at some point after 1945; no record of the date or of who demolished it has been found, and nothing of it remains.

STANDORT

Where it stood

Historic: Kurima; street and house number unknown. Today: approximate pin from pamiatkynaslovensku.sk in the village centre near Námestie sv. Michala, 086 12 Kurima, Bardejov district (approximate).

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Die jüdische Gemeinde

Little detailed history of the Kurima Jewish community was found in the sources consulted. Borský places Kurima among the Slovak localities with between 500 and 1,000 Jewish inhabitants in the 1910 census, which made it unusually large for a village, and describes the community as Hasidic, living in a forested district close to the Galician border. The community kept two cemeteries. Surveys record an old cemetery, now a private garden, with a small number of nineteenth-century sandstone tombstones carrying Hebrew inscriptions, and a newer hillside cemetery east of the village with twentieth-century stones. A Chabad.org article based on the recollections of Rabbi Nissen Mangel, whose maternal grandparents, the Sterns, were prominent members of the community, records that a tzadik known as Reb Mechele, described as a grandson of Reb Zusha of Anipoli, is buried in Kurima and that his grave was never destroyed.

Architektur und Gestaltung

No plan or measured drawing of the Kurima synagogue is known from the sources read, and its appearance is recorded mainly through Borský's catalogue, which reproduces a photograph of the west façade as his figure 485. He describes it as a simple free-standing house of prayer covered by a hipped roof. The western, entrance façade had a three-bay arrangement: three round-arched portals at ground level, with small windows set above them. In his survey of nineteenth-century synagogue types he names Kurima, together with Šahy and Liptovský Hrádok, as examples of the three-bay scheme with three doorways as the main façade motif, a pattern common among architecturally modest synagogues in small agricultural towns and villages. The small upper windows suggest a women's gallery over the entrance bays, but that is an inference, not something a source states. The architect, builder, construction date within the century, seating capacity and interior arrangement are unknown.

Leben in der Synagoge

No description of worship or communal life inside the Kurima synagogue was found. Borský identifies the congregation as Hasidic, so services presumably followed Hasidic custom, and the building served a community large enough in 1910 to number several hundred people. The earlier wooden synagogue, demolished in 1810 according to Kovačevičová as cited by Borský, shows that organised worship in Kurima predates the masonry building by at least a generation. The presence of the grave of Reb Mechele, said in the Chabad.org account to be a grandson of Reb Zusha of Anipoli who had found shelter in the village after leaving the Russian Empire, suggests that Kurima had a place in local Hasidic memory, but no source read links him directly to this building or gives his dates. The names of the community's rabbis, cantors and lay leaders were not found in the sources consulted.

Zerstörung

No source found records damage to the Kurima synagogue during the Second World War, and it stood empty after the deportations of 1942. Borský's catalogue of demolished Slovak synagogues gives the date of its destruction only as after World War II, and the Slovak heritage gazetteer pamiatkynaslovensku.sk, which follows Borský, says the same: it was demolished after the war. A published list of Slovak synagogues gives 1950, but without a source, and the round year looks like a placeholder rather than a documented date. Neither source names who ordered or carried out the demolition, whether the building was first sold, or what its materials were used for, and no local account was found. Who demolished the synagogue is not recorded. The Chabad.org account notes that after the war local people took headstones from the Jewish cemetery to serve as foundations for new building in the village, which shows that Jewish property in Kurima was reused for construction, but it says only that the synagogue is long gone.

Das Schicksal der Gemeinde

Kurima's Jews were deported in 1942, in the mass deportations of that year from the wartime Slovak State. The Chabad.org account of Rabbi Nissen Mangel's family states that the maternal grandparents of Mangel, the Sterns, were deported along with the rest of Kurima's Jews in 1942, and that the community as it had existed then disappeared. The sources read do not give the number of Jews living in Kurima in 1940 or 1942, the dates of the transports, the camps to which they were sent, or the number who survived. No organised Jewish community is recorded in Kurima after the war. Both Jewish cemeteries survive in neglected condition: the old one lies within a private garden, and the newer hillside cemetery, according to the cemetery survey, has no marker or wall and is threatened by vegetation and dumping.

Der Ort heute

The synagogue's exact plot has not been identified in any source read. The heritage gazetteer pamiatkynaslovensku.sk places it at 49.2278 N, 21.4525 E, which falls in the centre of the village by Námestie svätého Michala, the square around the Roman Catholic church; whether this pin marks the documented site or only the village is not stated. No remains of the building are recorded, and no marker on the site was found. Kurima today is a village of about 1,100 people with no Jewish community. The two Jewish cemeteries remain the only physical traces of the congregation: the old cemetery stands in a private garden and the newer one on a hillside east of the village. Pinning down the plot would need the cadastral maps of Kurima or the photograph and notes behind Borský's figure 485.

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