The story of Markvarec Synagogue
Markvarec (German Markwaretz) is a small village in the municipality of Český Rudolec, in the Jindřichův Hradec district of South Bohemia, close to the Moravian town of Slavonice and the Austrian border. Jews settled here after 1670, when refugees expelled from Vienna and Lower Austria arrived, and the community was at its strongest in the 1830s; it still numbered 212 people in 1857. Its members lived in about twelve single-storey cottages grouped round the synagogue in the south-eastern part of the village, by the creek, an area of about 0.8 hectares that was set apart from the large farmsteads of their Christian neighbours.
The synagogue was built in 1784-1786 in the Baroque style, probably replacing a simpler earlier prayer house on the same spot, and the community's cemetery in the forest south-east of the village followed in about 1794. Migration to the towns emptied the village during the nineteenth century, and the congregation was dissolved in 1888, its remaining members joining the community of Písečné (Piesling) in Moravia. The building was then sold and put to secular uses. It decayed through the twentieth century, lost its roof in the mid-1980s, and its remaining walls were taken down in 1992. Accounts of when it disappeared differ, as the research gaps explain.
Where it stood for nearly 210 years
Historic: centre of the Jewish quarter in the south-eastern part of Markwaretz/Markvarec, near the creek; house number unknown. Today: Markvarec, municipality of Český Rudolec, 378 83, Jindřichův Hradec district, South Bohemian region (approximate).
Open larger map →The Jewish community
According to the Prague Jewish Community's heritage inventory, which draws on Jaroslav Klenovský's encyclopaedia of Jewish monuments, Jews came to Markvarec after 1670 as refugees from Vienna and Lower Austria, following the expulsion of the Jews from Vienna. The regional tourist board's guide dates the first written references to the first half of the eighteenth century and the founding of an organised community to the second half of that century, while Jüdische Gemeinden places the first Jewish families in the second half of the seventeenth century. The community was largest in the 1830s and had more than 200 members until the middle of the nineteenth century; JewishGen's cemetery survey gives 212 Jews in 1857. They lived in modest single-storey cottages in a compact quarter around the synagogue. Like many rural communities in the Bohemian-Moravian borderland, it lost its members to the growing towns, and in 1888 (1890 in the heritage inventory) it was dissolved as an independent religious community. A short-lived religious association followed, and the few remaining Jews belonged to the congregation of Písečné. Only seven Jews were counted in 1921.
Architecture and design
The heritage inventory describes the synagogue as a Baroque building of 1784-1786 standing in the middle of the Jewish quarter, probably on the site of an older and simpler prayer house; Jüdische Gemeinden dates it, with the cemetery, to about 1785-1795. No photograph, drawing or plan of the building was found in this research, so its size, its roof form, the arrangement of the prayer hall and any women's gallery, and the furnishings are unknown. The architect and builder are not recorded, and the seating capacity is unknown. Its later history shows that it was a solid masonry structure: it could be converted into a workshop making concrete roofing tiles after 1916, survived two fires in the 1920s, served as a hay barn in the 1930s and 1940s, and its outer walls still stood after the roof and roof truss were removed in the mid-1980s.
Life inside the synagogue
Very little is recorded about religious life in the Markvarec synagogue. The heritage inventory states that it was used for worship until the end of the nineteenth century, which matches the dissolution of the congregation in 1888. No rabbi, teacher, cantor or community officer of Markvarec was named in any source read in this research. The community maintained its own burial ground in the forest about one kilometre south-east of the village, founded in about 1794, which received the dead of Markvarec and later of Jewish families in the surrounding district, especially Dačice. The oldest legible gravestone there, of 1802, belongs to a man named Moshe. A stone mortuary was built at the cemetery entrance in 1908, two decades after the congregation itself had ceased to exist, a sign that Jews from the surrounding area continued to use the Markvarec burial ground.
Destruction
Once the congregation had been dissolved, the synagogue lost its religious function. The heritage inventory records that in 1911 it was sold to Sigmund Schulz, himself a Jew, who sold it on in 1916 to be converted into a workshop producing concrete roofing tiles; JewishGen's cemetery survey also gives the sale in 1916 and the later use as a cement works. In the 1920s the building was twice set on fire by arsonists and burned; who set the fires is not recorded. In the 1930s and 1940s it was used as a hay barn. According to the heritage inventory, its roof and roof truss were removed in the mid-1980s, while Czechoslovakia was under Communist rule, and the remaining outer walls were demolished in 1992. The tourist board's guide says that the building collapsed after the war and the remnants of its walls were removed in 1992. None of the sources says who carried out the removal of the roof or the final demolition, or on whose orders.
The community’s fate
The Jewish community of Markvarec did not survive into the twentieth century as an organised body: it was dissolved in 1888 and its last members joined the congregation of Písečné. JewishGen's cemetery survey counts seven Jews in Markvarec in 1921 and none by 1929-1930; the last Jewish family, the Schulz family, left the village in 1927. Burials of Jews from the surrounding area, especially from Dačice, continued in the Markvarec cemetery until December 1939. What happened to the descendants of Markvarec families during the Holocaust is not recorded in the sources read here; many had long since moved to towns in Bohemia, Moravia and Austria, and their individual fates would have to be traced through the Holocaust victim databases. No Jewish community has existed in Markvarec since.
The site today
Nothing of the synagogue remains above ground. The heritage inventory notes that part of the Jewish quarter itself decayed and was demolished after the Second World War, while the tourist board's guide states that most of the original twelve Jewish houses were reconstructed and still stand as village houses in the south-eastern part of Markvarec near the creek. The exact plot of the synagogue in the centre of this quarter was not identified in any source read, so the map pin marks the village rather than the building. The Jewish cemetery, about one kilometre south-east of the village in the forest, survives with about 240 gravestones and the 1908 mortuary, which was renovated in 1998-1999.
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