Old Synagogue of Mezőkövesd

Społeczność żydowska

A history of Mezőkövesd's Jews published by zsido.com in 2022 dates the organised community to its first minute book, begun in Hungarian on 12 October 1850; a 2019 summary on Lili Groszmann's local-history blog says a community had formed in the town by the end of the eighteenth century. The congregation at first belonged to the rabbinate of Ábrány and became an independent Orthodox community in 1871. Most of its members were merchants and craftsmen. The community grew strongly in the later nineteenth century, which is why the 1853 synagogue was replaced by a larger one in 1896. By 1941 Mezőkövesd had 798 Jews, about four per cent of the population, and the Orthodox community counted 801 people in April 1944. The 1940 census figure quoted by zsido.com is roughly 900 Jews among about 20,000 inhabitants. Gazda's survey of 1980-87 records 67 Jews in Mezőkövesd in 1828, 85 in 1851, 669 in 1910 and 798 in 1941, so the congregation that built the first synagogue in 1853 numbered fewer than a hundred people.

Architektura i projekt

Nothing is known about the appearance of the 1853 synagogue. No photograph, postcard, plan or written description of it was found, and the postcards of Mezőkövesd's synagogue held by the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives and by auction houses show the larger building of 1896, with its rose window, stepped gable and corner turrets, not the first one. The architect or builder, the materials, the size of the hall, the seating capacity and the arrangement of the interior are all unknown. The only facts recorded are that the community paid for the building itself and that it stood on the community's plot at Arany János utca 1, the address later used for the 1896 synagogue and its courtyard. Whether the two buildings ever stood side by side on the plot, or whether the old one was demolished or rebuilt when the new one went up, could not be established. Cadastral maps of the town from the second half of the nineteenth century would be the most likely place to find its footprint.

Życie w synagodze

Very little is recorded about religious life in the first synagogue. For its first eighteen years the congregation belonged to the rabbinate of Ábrány, so it was served from outside and probably had only lay leaders and a prayer leader of its own; their names are unknown. In 1871 the community declared itself Orthodox and became independent, and its first rabbi was Soma Wechsler. He was rabbi before Samu Ehrenfeld, who took office in 1896, the year the new synagogue was built, so Wechsler's years in office fell in the period when the 1853 building was the community's only recorded synagogue. The yeshiva and Talmud Torah for which Mezőkövesd later became known were founded only in 1908, under Rabbi Izidor Jungreisz, after the old building had been replaced. No minute-book entries, inscriptions or accounts of particular services or events held in the 1853 synagogue were found.

Zniszczenie

No source consulted records when the 1853 synagogue was demolished or who demolished it. The 2022 history on zsido.com places both the first synagogue and its 1896 successor at Arany János utca 1, which suggests that the old building was taken down, or rebuilt beyond recognition, when the congregation built its larger synagogue on the plot in 1896; however, no document of such a demolition was found, and the old building may instead have survived for a time as a study house or other community building. Anikó Gazda, whose team surveyed Hungarian synagogue sites between 1980 and 1987, recorded the 1853 synagogue as demolished by the time of her survey. Nothing read for this entry shows that it was standing after 1945. The 1896 synagogue on the same plot was in ruins by the 1960s and was later demolished, as zsido.com reports; that building is described in its own entry.

Los społeczności

Mezőkövesd's Jews were persecuted well before the German occupation: in the summer of 1941 the Hungarian authorities expelled three Jewish families who could not prove citizenship to occupied Ukraine, where they were murdered at Kamenets-Podolsk on 27-28 August 1941. After Nazi Germany occupied Hungary on 19 March 1944, the Hungarian administration carried out the ghettoisation. On 17 May 1944 the county prefect, Béla Péterffy, ordered the Jews of the town and district into a ghetto in Mezőkövesd and the formation of a six-member Jewish Council. The ghetto held 931 people in 37 apartments, 818 of them local Jews. In early June they were taken to the brick factory on Tatár utca in Miskolc, some by way of the Diósgyőr ghetto, and were deported to Auschwitz on 12, 13 and 15 June 1944. Most were murdered there, among them Chief Rabbi Izidor Jungreisz. A small number of survivors returned, but the community did not recover and has since ceased to exist.

Miejsce dzisiaj

The plot at Arany János utca 1 where the first synagogue stood, and where its 1896 successor was later built, no longer holds any synagogue building. According to the present-day descriptions of the site, the area is now part of the grounds of the Bárdos Lajos primary school near Hősök tere, and no fragment of either synagogue is known to survive. Because the footprint of the 1853 building on the plot is not known, the map pin marks the school grounds at the northern end of Arany János utca, the same approximate location used for the 1896 synagogue, and not the exact position of the old building. A memorial plaque on the school wall recalls the synagogue.

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