Butchers' Synagogue, Mikulov

PRZEGLĄD

Historia Butchers' Synagogue, Mikulov

Mikulov, called Nikolsburg in German, was for three centuries the leading Jewish community of Moravia. Until 1851 it was the seat of the Moravian chief rabbis, and its yeshiva was known across Europe. A community of that size supported many places of worship: Jiří Fiedler counts three synagogues and about ten prayer rooms in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the Jewish Encyclopedia says there were about a dozen synagogues up to 1868, several of them named after the groups that founded them. One of these was the Kazowim-Schul, from the Hebrew word for butchers, known in German as the Fleischacker-Kazowimschul and in Czech as the Řeznická synagoga, the Butchers' Synagogue.

According to the Zničené kostely database, which cites Josef Šuba of the Regional Museum in Mikulov, it was a stone building put up around 1750. It stood not in the crowded streets of the Jewish town but in the Jewish gardens beside what was then the Spa Square, on two plots that now belong to the town. After freedom of residence came in 1848, families left for Vienna and Brno, and in 1868 the number of synagogues was cut to five. The Butchers' Synagogue was not kept up and was demolished before 1872. No picture of it has been found.

LOKALIZACJA

Where it stood for nearly 130 years

Historic: Jewish gardens by the former Spa Square (Lázeňské náměstí), Nikolsburg; parcels 3323/165 and 3323/108, cadastral area Mikulov na Moravě. Today: open plots owned by the town near 22. dubna 1076/9, 692 01 Mikulov (approximate).

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Społeczność żydowska

The Jewish quarter of Nikolsburg may date from the first half of the fifteenth century, and the Dietrichstein lords, who received the town in 1575, protected them. Exiles from Vienna arrived in 1670, and the Jewish quarter on the western slope of the castle hill grew to 98 houses in 1657 and later to as many as 168, then 318 by 1890. In the census taken under Maria Theresa about 620 families, some 3,000 Jews, lived there, roughly half the town. Butchers were among its oldest trades: records of the sixteenth century already name several Jewish butchers, who had to supply beef to the lord and sold kosher meat to Jews and, within limits, to Christians. The town's great rabbis included Judah Löw ben Bezalel, Menachem Mendel Krochmal, Samuel Shmelke Horowitz, Mordecai Benet and Samson Raphael Hirsch. The yeshiva declined after 1856. Once Jews could live freely in Vienna after 1848, the population fell to under a third of its peak, and there were 749 Jews in 1904.

Architektura i projekt

Very little is known of the building. The Zničené kostely database describes it only as a stone-walled synagogue, built around 1750, that stood across two plots, now parcels 3323/165 and 3323/108 in the cadastral area of Mikulov na Moravě. Its position is unusual for Mikulov. The other synagogues stood inside the Jewish quarter along today's Husova and Alfonse Muchy streets, some of them in the courtyards of houses, while this one stood in the Jewish gardens near the former Spa Square, below the quarter. That suggests a free-standing building rather than a room in a house, but no plan, view or description of its form has been found. Its size, its seating capacity, the arrangement of the bimah and the women's section, its architect or builder and its style are all unknown. The surviving Upper Synagogue of 1723 and the Michelstädter Synagogue of 1697 give some idea of what other prayer houses in the town looked like, but nothing shows that the Butchers' Synagogue resembled either of them.

Życie w synagodze

No source found describes services in the Butchers' Synagogue. Its name ties it to the Jewish butchers of Nikolsburg, and the Jewish Encyclopedia lists it among the synagogues named after their founders or after a guild, together with the Wiener Schul founded by exiles from Vienna, the Schuster Schul of the shoemakers and the Chasidim-Schul founded by Rabbi Samuel Shmelke Horowitz for Hasidic teaching. How the butchers' congregation was organised, and whether the guild kept its own fund or held its meetings in the building, is not documented. It would have followed the rite of the community, whose chief house of prayer, the Altschul, served as the cathedral synagogue of the Moravian chief rabbi. The names of its wardens, readers or members, and how long it remained in use before it was abandoned, are unknown.

Zniszczenie

The Butchers' Synagogue was not destroyed by violence. The Zničené kostely database, citing Josef Šuba of the Regional Museum in Mikulov, records that it was demolished before 1872 and gives lack of maintenance as the reason, placing its decay in the period 1849 to 1918. The background was the shrinking of the community after 1848, when Jews were allowed to settle freely in Vienna and elsewhere and many families left Nikolsburg. The Jewish Encyclopedia states that in 1868 the town's synagogues were reduced to five, which suggests that the Butchers' Synagogue was given up around that time, left to decay and then pulled down. The exact year of demolition, who ordered it and who carried it out are not recorded in any source found; the plots on which it stood are now owned by the town of Mikulov.

Los społeczności

By the twentieth century the Mikulov community was small: 437 Jews remained in 1930, 5.6 per cent of the town. In 1918 the Jewish and Christian municipalities were united, and from the mid-1930s the town housed the Moravian Jewish Museum. When Nazi Germany annexed Mikulov in 1938 the museum was moved to Brno, where its collections were later confiscated under the Nazi-controlled Protectorate; they are now part of the Jewish Museum in Prague. The interior of the Altschul was destroyed by the Nazis. According to the KehilaLinks chronology, the last Jewish residents of Mikulov were taken to Brno in 1942, deported to concentration camps and murdered. The total number of Mikulov Jews killed in the Holocaust was not found in the sources read. A community was briefly re-established after the war but did not last. Much of the Jewish quarter was damaged in the fighting of 1945, and many of its houses, the New Synagogue, the Winter Synagogue and several small synagogues were demolished, mostly between 1950 and 1975.

Miejsce dzisiaj

The site lies in the former Jewish gardens near what was once the Spa Square in Mikulov, on two plots, parcels 3323/165 and 3323/108, owned by the town. No remains of the building are recorded there, and no marker is known. The map pin uses the coordinates given by the Zničené kostely database; the nearest addressed building in OpenStreetMap is house 1076/9 on 22. dubna street. A KehilaLinks chronology says a new street, the Neugasse, was built on land of the old Jewish garden after the fire of 1926, but whether that was the same plot is unknown. Of Mikulov's synagogues, the Upper Synagogue in Husova street survives as a museum and concert hall, the Michelstädter Synagogue stands unused in a courtyard, and the Ashkenazi Synagogue survives as a ruin.

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