Old Synagogue of Lučenec

La comunidad judía

Jews were living in Lučenec by the early nineteenth century, when they built their first prayer house on Tuhár Square. After its destruction in 1848-49 the community also collected tax from Jews living in Fiľakovo and Strehová to keep a prayer room going. By 1860 it counted about 100 families, and the census of 1869 recorded 821 Jews. Numbers rose to 1,578 in 1890, 2,135 in 1910 and 2,278 in 1930, and before the First World War the community was the seat of the fifth Neolog district, covering Novohrad, Tekov, Zvolen and Hont. In 1912, 25 of the town's 37 largest taxpayers were Jews, and Jewish merchants and bankers dominated local business. The religious split that began at the synagogue's opening hardened after the Hungarian Jewish Congress of 1868-69: an Orthodox prayer society of about ten members was formed in 1888, and in 1920 the Czechoslovak government allowed a separate Orthodox congregation, which had about 250 members. The Neolog congregation, which kept the 1863 synagogue, was formally constituted in 1886 under its president Viliam Sternlicht.

Arquitectura y diseño

Little is recorded about the design. A study of the community says the synagogue was built in the Moorish style, that four towers rising above it dominated the building, and that construction cost 23,000 zlatých (gulden), part of which was raised by selling seats; the congregation also had to take a loan. The architect and builder are unknown. The one known view, a postcard captioned 'Losoncz, Izraelita templom', shows a tall rectangular hall of exposed brick or rendered masonry with a steep gabled front. The gable is edged with a corbel frieze of small round arches and has a round window at its centre, above a group of three round-arched windows. Slender towers stand at the corners of the hall, each with a band of small blind arches near the top, a crenellated gallery, an onion dome and a Star of David finial. The long side wall is divided by pilasters with tall windows between them. A low house with a snow-covered roof and a wooden fence stood directly in front of the entrance front on the street. The seating capacity is unknown.

La vida dentro de la sinagoga

The synagogue was dedicated in 1863, and the ceremony itself caused a quarrel: a guest rabbi from Putnok preached in Hungarian, and conservative members, who objected to the innovation, refused to attend the building afterwards and worshipped in another prayer room. The rabbi at the time was Jakub Singer, a conservative who had replaced the liberal H. M. Goldziher in 1858; after the split the Orthodox group kept Singer, and the congregation that used this synagogue appointed Dr. Móric Diamant. The best-documented later rabbi is Dr. Béla (Vojtech) Vajda, who served the Neolog community for about a quarter of a century until his death in 1926. At a festive assembly held in 1923 or 1924 to mark his 25 years in office, the members voted, on the motion of the community president Dr. František Oppenheimer, to demolish the old synagogue and build a new one, and set aside 100,000 crowns for it. A local paper wrote that the old building had long been too small to hold the congregation.

Destrucción

The synagogue was not destroyed by violence. It was demolished by its own congregation to make way for a larger building. The Neolog community had first discussed a new synagogue in 1911, but the First World War halted the plans. After the war the community commissioned the Budapest architect Lipót Baumhorn. The foundation charter of the new synagogue, written in Slovak and Hungarian and signed at its consecration, records that construction began on 31 March 1924 with the demolition of the temple built in 1863 and was completed on 8 September 1925, when Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was president of Czechoslovakia and František Oppenheimer was president of the congregation. A secondary list gives 1923 as the year the old synagogue was razed, but the charter's date of 31 March 1924 is the more precise documentary evidence. The new synagogue was built on the same plot, so nothing of the 1863 building is known to survive above ground.

El destino de la comunidad

Southern Slovakia, including Lučenec, was annexed by Hungary in November 1938. The census of 15 December 1939 counted 2,099 Jews, almost 17 percent of the town. After Nazi German forces occupied Hungary on 19 March 1944 and entered Lučenec the same day, the Hungarian authorities stripped Jews of their rights and property, closed the synagogues and the Jewish school and dissolved Jewish organisations. A ghetto was set up on 5 May 1944 in the streets south of the Tuhár brook, where more than 2,000 Jews were concentrated; the Neolog synagogue and the Jewish school lay inside it, and the deputy county head Sándor Horváth inspected it on 19 May. In early June the Jews were driven into the local brickyard and, through the collection centre at Balassagyarmat, deported to Auschwitz on 12 and 14 June 1944. Rabbis Artúr Reschowsky and S. H. Unsdorfer and their families were among them. After the war a united community was re-formed with 299 members; emigration reduced it to 149 by the end of 1949.

El lugar hoy

The plot of the 1863 synagogue is occupied by its successor, the Neolog synagogue designed by Lipót Baumhorn and consecrated in 1925, at Adyho 4 in Lučenec. That building was sold by the community to the town in December 1948, used as a warehouse for agricultural products from the 1950s, listed as a monument in 1985, and reopened after reconstruction in May 2016 as a cultural centre run by the town. No part of the older synagogue is visible, and no marker for it is recorded. Because the later building replaced the earlier one on the same site, the map pin marks the present synagogue's address, which is approximately where the 1863 building stood.

Nombres destacados