Mělník Synagogue

The Jewish community

The earliest record of Jews in Mělník dates from 1402, but until the middle of the nineteenth century no more than about three Jewish families lived in the town at any one time, because larger settlement in the town and its surroundings was not permitted. After 1848 Jewish families moved in, mainly to the northern suburbs of Záduší, Podolí, Okrouhlík and Pšovka; a second prayer room is recorded in Pšovka in the later nineteenth century. The religious community was based in Záduší from 1864 and received official approval of its statutes in 1878. By the early 1870s it numbered almost 200 people, and in 1880 there were 120 Jews in Mělník and its suburbs, making up 15 per cent of the population of Záduší. Numbers then fell: around 1930 the community had about 85 members, and the 1930 census counted 84 Jews, 0.7 per cent of the town. Its leaders included Emanuel Mendl, a school inspector and chairman of the religious community, and its members included the hospital's chief physician, Dr Samuel Treulich. Small prayer rooms existed in nearby villages such as Byšice, Liběchov, Liblice, Mšeno and Všetaty.

Architecture and design

Fiedler describes the synagogue as neo-Romanesque and dates it to 1861-62, which places it among the many small synagogues built in Bohemian towns in the decades after Jews gained freedom of settlement, when the round-arched Romanesque revival was the usual choice for new synagogues. It stood in Bezručova Street in Záduší, the suburb where the community had its seat, rather than in the old town. Beyond the style and the date, nothing of its form is recorded in the sources read: the architect or builder, the size of the building, the number of seats, the arrangement of the women's gallery and the furnishing of the interior are all unknown. No historical photograph, postcard, drawing or plan was found. That the building could later serve as a cowshed and hayloft suggests a simple hall with a large open interior, but this is an inference, not a documented fact. The site was surveyed by a geodesist in 2014 on behalf of the Jewish Community in Prague, so its footprint is now known to that body even though it has not been published.

Life inside the synagogue

Very little is recorded about worship in the Mělník synagogue. It was the religious centre of a small community of a little over a hundred people at its height, whose religious community was formally constituted in Záduší in 1864 and whose statutes were approved in 1878. The congregation maintained its own cemetery from 1878 in Dobrovského Street, about a kilometre north-east of the town square, with a ceremonial hall used for funerals; 168 gravestones from 1878 to 1942 survive there. The names on the stones and the community's officers give a glimpse of its members: Emanuel Mendl, a local school inspector, chaired the religious community, and Dr Samuel Treulich was chief physician of the town hospital. The synagogue remained in use for services until the Second World War. The names of its rabbis and cantors, the rite it followed and the organisation of its religious school were not found in the sources consulted.

Destruction

Fiedler records that the synagogue was used for worship until the Second World War. No source read describes damage to the building during the Nazi German occupation, when services ended with the persecution and deportation of the congregation. After the war no Jewish religious community was re-established in Mělník, and the empty building was put to agricultural use as a cowshed and hayloft. It was later demolished; Fiedler gives only the bound 'before 1970'. The sources consulted say neither who owned the building after the war, nor who ordered or carried out the demolition, nor in which year it took place. Because the end date is given only as a limit, it is not certain whether the building came down under the Communist regime, which ruled Czechoslovakia from 1948, though that is likely. A geodetic survey of the plot in 2014, paid for by the Jewish Community in Prague, shows that the site had by then to be traced afresh.

The community’s fate

In 1930 the community numbered about 85 people. After the Nazi German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939, the Jews remaining in Mělník were subjected to the anti-Jewish measures of the Protectorate and were then deported to the ghetto of Theresienstadt (Terezín). From there most of them were sent on to extermination camps in occupied Poland. Of the 83 Jews of Mělník, only five survived the Nazi period. The last burials in the Jewish cemetery took place in 1942. One later gravestone carries the name of Dr Emanuel Kantor, who died in Santiago de Chile in 1987, a trace of the members who emigrated. After the war the survivors did not re-establish a religious community, and the cemetery and its former ceremonial hall passed out of community use: the hall became private property in 1956 and was converted into a bakery and flat.

The site today

The synagogue stood in Bezručova Street in Záduší, the northern suburb of Mělník; the exact plot has not been published, although the Jewish Community in Prague had it surveyed in 2014. No part of the building survives. A small memorial recalling the synagogue and the former Jewish community has recently been set up in Mělník. The Jewish cemetery in Dobrovského Street, about a kilometre north-east of the square, survives with 168 gravestones and was cleared and restored in the 2010s; its former ceremonial hall at No. 1743/30 is now a privately owned bakery and flat. The map pin marks a segment of Bezručova Street and should be treated as approximate.

Notable names