Malešov Synagogue

ОБЗОР

История Malešov Synagogue

Malešov is a small market town in the Upper Sázava Hills about five kilometres south of Kutná Hora, in the Central Bohemian Region, known chiefly for its medieval fortress and for Jan Žižka's victory over the Prague Hussites there in 1424. Jews are first recorded in the town in 1719, and by about 1840 some twenty families lived there, most of them in a lane called the Jewish Street (Judenstraße). The community's synagogue is thought to have been built at the end of the eighteenth century, although no document of its construction has been found.

After 1848 most families moved to Kutná Hora and other towns. Within a few decades the Malešov congregation dissolved and its remaining members joined the community of Kutná Hora (Kuttenberg), which also buried its dead in the Malešov cemetery. By the early 1930s only eight Jews lived in the town. The synagogue building outlasted its congregation by about a century and was demolished in the 1980s. No photograph, plan or description of it has been found, and its exact site has not been identified. The walled Jewish cemetery on the edge of the town, with about 210 gravestones, is the community's only surviving monument.

МЕСТО

Where it stood

Historic: Jewish Street (Judenstraße), Malešov (Maleschau), Kutná Hora district; house number and exact position unknown. Today: Unknown; placeholder pin on Žižkovo náměstí, 285 41 Malešov (approximate).

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Еврейская община

Jewish settlement in Malešov is first mentioned in 1719, when seven families are said to have lived there, and JewishGen's cemetery survey also dates the community to the early eighteenth century, citing census records of 1724 and 1819. The community grew slowly, reaching about twenty families, some 140 people, by around 1840. Most of them lived in the Jewish Street of the town. The occupations of its members, the names of its leaders and the names of any rabbis or teachers who served it have not been found in the sources consulted. The cemetery, which existed before 1758, was the community's other institution and later also served the Jews of Kutná Hora. After 1848 most families left for Kutná Hora and larger towns, and within a few decades the congregation dissolved and its last members were attached to the Kutná Hora community. In 1930 Malešov had eight Jewish residents.

Архитектура и дизайн

Nothing is known about the appearance of the Malešov synagogue beyond the statement in Joachim Hahn's successor site Jüdische Gemeinden that the building probably dated from the end of the eighteenth century. No photograph, drawing, postcard, cadastral plan or inventory description of it was found in this research, and it does not appear in the 1989 survey of the condition and uses of Czech synagogues compiled by Jan Stejskal. Its architect or builder, its dimensions, its seating capacity and the arrangement of its interior are therefore unknown. For a congregation of at most about twenty families in a small market town, a modest building on the Jewish Street would be typical of rural Bohemian synagogues of the period, but that is a general observation and not evidence about this building. Whether it was a free-standing structure or formed part of a row of houses, and whether it was rebuilt or altered in the nineteenth century, also remains unknown. The style quick fact is left as unknown for this reason.

Жизнь в синагоге

No records of worship in the Malešov synagogue were found. Nothing is known in the sources consulted about the rite followed by the congregation, its rabbis, cantors or teachers, or any school or ritual bath connected with the building. The community was small throughout its history, at most about 140 people around 1840, and after 1848 it shrank quickly as families moved to Kutná Hora and other towns. After the congregation dissolved, a few decades later, its remaining members belonged to the Kutná Hora community, which had its own synagogue, so regular services in Malešov probably ended at that time; the date when the building was last used for prayer is not recorded. The Malešov cemetery remained in use by the Jews of Kutná Hora as well as by the remaining local families, and JewishGen's survey records the last known legible burial there in 1956. In the early 1930s only eight Jews lived in the town, too few to form a prayer quorum on their own.

Разрушение

No source consulted records damage to the synagogue during the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia between 1939 and 1945, and none says how the building was used after the congregation dissolved in the later nineteenth century. Jüdische Gemeinden states only that the synagogue building, probably of the late eighteenth century, was demolished in the 1980s. That places the demolition in the last decade of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, more than forty years after the end of the war and about a century after the congregation had begun to decline. Whether the Malešov building had been sold, who owned it at the time, whether the demolition was ordered by the local national committee or another state body, and the exact year are not recorded in the sources read, so who demolished it is not known. No photograph taken before or during the demolition was found.

Судьба общины

By the time of the Second World War the Jewish community of Malešov had long since ceased to exist as a separate congregation. Its last members had joined the Kutná Hora community in the later nineteenth century, and the census of 1930 counted only eight Jewish residents in the town. What happened to these eight people, or to their descendants, during the Nazi occupation and the deportations from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia has not been established from the sources consulted; no list of victims from Malešov was found. The town's own heritage plan states that after the Second World War the Jewish community in Malešov disappeared. A burial in the Jewish cemetery is recorded as late as 1956, but no Jews lived in Malešov at the time of JewishGen's survey in 1992. The cemetery is owned by the Jewish Community of Prague.

Место сегодня

The site of the synagogue has not been identified in any source consulted. The Jewish Street where most Jewish families lived around 1840 is named in Jüdische Gemeinden but not located, so it cannot be said what stands on the plot today. No surviving fragment of the building is recorded. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder on Žižkovo náměstí, the main square and historic core of Malešov, and should not be read as the synagogue's location. The Jewish cemetery survives on the edge of the town towards Roztěž, across the Vrchlice valley opposite the fortress; it is a listed monument enclosed by a wall, with about 210 gravestones from the mid-eighteenth to the twentieth century, and was restored by Jewish organisations after 1985.

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