La historia de Lednice Synagogue
Lednice, known in German as Eisgrub, is a village of about 2,200 people some eight kilometres north-west of Břeclav, close to the Austrian border, best known for the castle and park of the Liechtenstein family. Jewish families may have lived there under the Liechtensteins as early as the fourteenth century, and the first documentary mention dates from 1592-1593. A lasting community took shape in the 1670s, when Jews expelled from Vienna and Lower Austria settled in the village, and for most of the following two centuries the Jewish quarter formed a separate political municipality alongside the Christian one.
The community kept a rabbi and a cantor, a religious school, a ritual bath, a cemetery and a synagogue. Its house of prayer was the religious centre for the small Jewish populations of the surrounding villages, whose members came to Eisgrub for the high holidays. Frequent fires destroyed most of the community's records, so very little is known about the building itself: its date, appearance and exact position are not recorded in the sources found. The religious congregation was dissolved in 1890 and attached to that of Kostel, and the Jewish municipality was abolished in 1920. The synagogue was pulled down during the Nazi occupation, and what remained of it was removed in the 1960s.
Where it stood
Historic: Jewish quarter of Eisgrub, Moravia; street and house number unknown. Today: Lednice, 691 44, Břeclav district, South Moravian Region; exact site unknown (approximate placeholder at the village centre).
Abrir mapa ampliado →La comunidad judía
Jewish settlement in Eisgrub may go back to the fourteenth century, when the village already belonged to the Liechtenstein lords, but the first written record is a Christian parish account of 1592-1593. The community proper was formed in the 1670s by families expelled from Vienna and Lower Austria, who were allowed to settle permanently on the Liechtenstein estate. The Jewish quarter was an autonomous political municipality for more than a century. Most of its members were craftsmen and small traders; around 1800 about 30 Jewish tradesmen were recorded in the village beside 35 Christian ones. According to Hugo Gold's memorial book, about 160 Jews lived there around 1890 and about 100 in 1910; figures of 142 and 88 are also given for 1900. In 1890 the religious congregation was dissolved and joined to that of Kostel (Podivín), and in 1920 the Jewish municipality was abolished by law and merged with the Christian village. By the mid-1920s about ten Jewish families remained, and 32 Jews were counted in 1930.
Arquitectura y diseño
No description, plan, drawing or photograph of the synagogue was found in this research. The sources consulted give neither its construction date nor its builder, size, style or seating capacity, and they do not say whether it was a free-standing building or part of a house in the Jewish quarter. The main source calls it a synagogue (Synagoge) when describing its demolition, but refers to it as the prayer hall (Betsaal) of Eisgrub when describing the holiday visits of Jews from the surrounding villages, so the character of the building remains uncertain. A community of this age and status, with its own rabbi, school and ritual bath, would normally have had a purpose-built house of prayer, but that is an inference, not a documented fact. Frequent fires in the village are said to have destroyed much of the community's documentation, and a building of the late seventeenth century may itself have been rebuilt after a fire. Isidor Herrisch's 1932 study of the community and Hugo Gold's memorial book of the Moravian Jewish communities probably contain the missing details.
La vida dentro de la sinagoga
The community of Eisgrub maintained its own rabbi and its own cantor, who led services in the synagogue; their names were not found in the sources read. Beside the synagogue the community kept a religious school for its children, a ritual bath and a cemetery laid out in the seventeenth century west of the village. The synagogue also served a wider area. The Jews of the nearby villages of Bischofswarth (Hlohovec), Feldsberg (Valtice), Prittlach (Přítluky), Pulgram (Pouzdřany), Seitz (Zaječí) and Voitelsbrunn (Sedlec), too few to hold regular services of their own, came to the prayer hall in Eisgrub on the high holidays. After 1890, when the Eisgrub congregation was dissolved and attached to Kostel, the village no longer formed an independent religious community, and it is not known how regularly services were held in the building during its last decades of use.
Destrucción
No record of the synagogue's fate before the Second World War was found, and it is not known when regular services in it ended; by 1930 only 32 Jews lived in the village. According to Jüdische Gemeinden, the synagogue was torn down during the Nazi occupation ('Während der NS-Okkupation wurde die Synagoge niedergerissen'). The source does not give a precise date or say whether the demolition was ordered by the Nazi authorities, carried out by local people, or done for building material, and who demolished it is not recorded. The work was evidently not completed: a ruin remained standing after the war. That ruin was finally removed in the 1960s ('endgültig abgetragen wurde die Ruine dann in den 1960er Jahren'), in the period of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia; the source does not say who cleared it or why. No photographs of the building before, during or after its destruction were found.
El destino de la comunidad
By the time of the Nazi occupation, the Jewish community of Eisgrub had already shrunk to a small remnant. Its congregation had lost its independence in 1890, when it was joined to Kostel, and its separate municipality in 1920. About ten Jewish families lived in the village in the mid-1920s, and 32 Jews were counted in 1930. The sources consulted in this research do not describe what happened to these people after 1938: whether they emigrated, moved to other towns, or were deported and murdered in the Holocaust is not recorded in them, and no list of victims from Lednice was found. No Jewish community was re-established in the village after the war. Of the old Jewish settlement, some relics of the Jewish quarter still survive in Lednice, and the cemetery, laid out in the seventeenth century, has almost disappeared; only a few gravestones remain on what is now a green space.
El lugar hoy
The exact plot where the synagogue stood has not been identified in any source consulted, so it is not possible to say what occupies it today. The ruin was removed in the 1960s and no fragment of the building is known to survive. Some relics of the former Jewish quarter can still be seen in Lednice, but the sources do not identify which houses belonged to it. The Jewish cemetery lies about 0.8 kilometres west of the village on Mikulovská street; it is now a small green space with a few remaining gravestones. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Lednice and does not mark the synagogue's site.
¿Tiene algo que aportar?
Fotografías, documentos, historias familiares o recuerdos de esta sinagoga y su comunidad ayudan a mantener viva su historia.
Share a memory or thought
No comments yet. Be the first to add one.