Die Geschichte von Legrad Synagogue
Legrad lies in the far north of Croatia on the left bank of the Drava, on an old route of trade and migration towards Koprivnica and Međimurje. First recorded in 1384, it became a market town in the fifteenth century and received free-trade privileges from Ferdinand III in 1643. Jews are documented here earlier than almost anywhere else in northern Croatia: military plans of 1670 and 1671 show a Jewish quarter outside the fortress, and Jews appear in a tax list of 1676 and in church visitations of 1698.
The nineteenth-century community that built the synagogue was a later and separate settlement of merchants. According to the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative (ESJF) it was officially registered in 1820, and it founded a cemetery and a burial society in 1867. It was always small, with about 130 members at its largest in 1880, and as Jews moved to larger towns it declined. The organised community had ceased to exist by 1918, and by 1931 only 30 Jews lived in Legrad. The synagogue, whose date, appearance and site are not recorded in any source found, stood empty for years, was sold in 1947 and then demolished. Today the small Jewish cemetery is the community's only visible trace.
Where it stood
Historic: Legrad; street and house number unknown. Today: unknown; placeholder pin at the centre of Legrad, 48317, Koprivnica-Križevci county (approximate).
Größere Karte öffnen →Die jüdische Gemeinde
Historians count Legrad among the first places in northern Croatia where Jews lived. Ljiljana Dobrovšak notes that a 'Juden Stadt', a Jewish quarter linked to the fortified town by three wooden bridges, appears on plans drawn by Giovanni Giuseppe Spalla in 1670 and 1671; that a 1676 tax list records tax collected from Jews; and that canonical visitations of 1698 give the first firm evidence of permanent Jewish settlement. That early group did not last. Jewish merchants reappeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century, after Greek traders had come in the late eighteenth, and the ESJF dates the official registration of the community to 1820. During the revolution of 1848 and 1849 the Jews of the area were in a difficult position, since local people suspected them of informing for the Hungarian or the Austrian side. The 1857 census counted 48 Jews among about 2,750 inhabitants; there were 129 in 1880 and 100 in 1890. In 1867 the community established its cemetery and its Chevra Kadisha burial society. The congregation had dissolved by 1918.
Architektur und Gestaltung
No description, plan or photograph of the Legrad synagogue was found in this research. The JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project page for Legrad, compiled from data supplied by Srdjan Matić in 1999, says only that the synagogue was built in the nineteenth century, and it once linked to a photograph of the synagogue and a Jewish-owned shop on the website jewish-memories.com; that page no longer loads and no archived copy could be reached. The ESJF survey likewise records only that the community built a synagogue. Given a congregation of between about fifty and 130 people, the building was probably a modest hall but this is an inference, not a documented fact. Its construction date, architect, builder, size, style, seating capacity, interior arrangement and street address are all unknown, as is whether it was a purpose-built synagogue or an existing house converted for worship.
Leben in der Synagoge
Almost nothing is known about worship in the Legrad synagogue. No rabbi, cantor, teacher or community president of Legrad was named in any source read. The community was small enough that it may not have kept a rabbi of its own, but the sources do not say how services were led or which larger rabbinate Legrad belonged to. What is documented is the community's religious organisation around the end of life: in 1867 the Jews of Legrad founded a Chevra Kadisha, the burial society that cared for the dying and prepared the dead, and opened their own cemetery, which originally had about twenty gravestones. Families of the town married into neighbouring Podravina communities; a wedding notice, for example, records a Gisela Goldschmiedt from Legrad marrying a man from Đurđevac. As members left for larger towns in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the congregation shrank, and the organised community had come to an end by 1918, after which regular services in the building probably ceased.
Zerstörung
The synagogue was not destroyed in the Second World War, at least according to the sources found: both the ESJF survey and the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project state that it had already been abandoned before 1941, after the congregation dissolved. It therefore stood empty through the war years. In 1947, in the early years of the new Yugoslav state, it was sold and afterwards demolished. Neither source says who owned the building at the time of the sale, who sold it, who bought it, or when exactly it was pulled down, so the demolition can only be dated to 1947 or later. The JewishGen page notes that the land of the Jewish cemetery was also sold in 1947, which suggests that the remaining Jewish property in Legrad was disposed of together, but the seller is not named. Who demolished the synagogue is not recorded in the sources consulted, and no local account of its demolition was found.
Das Schicksal der Gemeinde
By the time of the Holocaust there was no longer an organised Jewish community in Legrad. The 1931 count recorded 30 Jews in the town. No source read in this research records what happened to the individual Jews still living in Legrad, how many of them were murdered or how many survived. After the Second World War only one Jew lived in Legrad, according to the ESJF; the JewishGen data give one Jew in 1947 and none in 1994. The Jewish cemetery on Petra Zrinskog Street survives, unfenced and partly overgrown, with one undated gravestone visible and about five graves among the trees.
Der Ort heute
The site of the synagogue has not been identified in any source consulted, so it is not possible to say what stands on the plot today. No remains of the building are recorded. The map pin for this entry marks the centre of Legrad and should not be read as the synagogue's location. The only surviving Jewish site in the town is the cemetery at 36 Petra Zrinskog Street, founded in 1867, now owned by the local community; half of it is meadow and half woodland, and only a single tombstone and a few graves can still be seen. Finding the synagogue's plot will need nineteenth-century cadastral maps of Legrad or the land-registry record of the 1947 sale.
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Fotos, Dokumente, Familiengeschichten oder Erinnerungen an diese Synagoge und ihre Gemeinde halten ihre Geschichte lebendig.
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