Miszla Synagogue

PANORAMICA

La storia di Miszla Synagogue

Miszla is a village in Tolna county in Transdanubia, south of Pincehely and north of Gyönk, with about 330 inhabitants in 2004. Its listed sights are a Baroque Catholic church of the mid-eighteenth century, a Reformed church built in 1789-91, a Lutheran church of the 1900s and the Neoclassical Nemeskéry mansion. A fourth place of worship, the synagogue, has vanished so completely that almost nothing about it has reached print or the web.

The evidence that it existed is the gazetteer of Anikó Gazda, who surveyed Hungarian synagogue sites between 1980 and 1987. Her Tolna county table lists Miszla with a building classed as a synagogue and marked as demolished, without a construction date. Her population figures show a small rural community: 49 Jews in 1828, 60 in 1851, 37 in 1910 and 8 in 1941. A 2017 survey of Tolna county's Jewish monuments by Ferenc Elblinger on the local-history blog Régmúlt repeats her record, naming Miszla with Iregszemcse, Nagydorog and Simontornya as further places where a synagogue once stood. The Hungarian Wikipedia list of synagogues enters it as destroyed, with a tentative nineteenth-century date.

No photograph, drawing, plan or description of the building was found, and no source says when it was demolished or by whom. This entry records the little that is documented and sets out what remains to be discovered.

POSIZIONE

Where it stood

Historic: Miszla, Tolna county; street and house number unknown. Today: site unknown; placeholder pin at the centre of 7065 Miszla, Tolna county (approximate).

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La comunità ebraica

Gazda's gazetteer is the only source found that gives figures for the Jews of Miszla: 49 in 1828, 60 in 1851, 37 in 1910 and 8 in 1941. On these counts the community was at its largest around the middle of the nineteenth century and shrank steadily afterwards. The Magyar Zsidó Lexikon of 1929 has no entry for Miszla, and the village is also missing from the contents list of Pinkas Hakehillot Hungary, so neither of the standard reference works describes the congregation. Which larger community it was attached to in the twentieth century was not found; the neighbouring villages of Pincehely to the north and Gyönk to the south both had synagogues of their own, and both are also lost. The names of the founders, the officers and the families, their occupations, and the date when Jews first settled in Miszla are unknown. Whether the village had its own Jewish cemetery could not be established in this research.

Architettura e design

Nothing is known about the appearance of the Miszla synagogue. Gazda's table classes the building as a synagogue but gives no construction date, and her survey of 1980-87 found it already demolished, so she could not describe or measure it. The Hungarian Wikipedia list of synagogues gives 'nineteenth century?' as its date, with the question mark, and leaves the architect and style blank. A community that never exceeded about sixty people in any recorded count would not have needed a large building, but that is an inference from the population figures and not evidence about the structure. No photograph, postcard, drawing or plan was found: a search of the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives collection for Miszla returned no items, Wikimedia Commons holds only general views of the village, and no postcard of an 'Izr. templom' at Miszla turned up. The architect, the builder, the materials, the seating capacity, the interior arrangement and the building's position in the village are all unknown.

La vita nella sinagoga

No account of worship or communal life in the Miszla synagogue was found. Gazda's population figures suggest that its working life lay mainly in the nineteenth century, when the village had between 49 and 60 Jews; by 1910 there were 37 and by 1941 only eight. Whether regular services were still being held between the two world wars, or whether the building had already fallen out of use by then, is unknown. No rabbi, cantor, teacher or community president of Miszla is named in any source read, and no school or burial society is recorded. Whether the congregation was Neolog, Orthodox or Status Quo is also unknown. The Magyar Zsidó Lexikon of 1929, which usually supplies such details, has no entry for the village. The two county histories by Szilágyi and Schweitzer, published in 1982 and 1991 and used by Elblinger for his survey, are the most likely place to find this information, but they could not be read for this entry.

Distruzione

When the Miszla synagogue was demolished, and by whom, is unknown. The only firm fact is that Anikó Gazda, surveying synagogue sites across Hungary between 1980 and 1987, recorded the building as demolished. No source read shows it standing at any particular date, so it cannot even be said whether it survived the Second World War. Ferenc Elblinger's 2017 survey describes what usually happened in Tolna county: after 1945 religious life resumed only in Bonyhád, Paks, Szekszárd and Dombóvár, and elsewhere so few Jews were left that they could not keep up their synagogues. The national Jewish body allowed these buildings to be sold, and the prices were generally so low that it was worth buying one simply for its building material, after which the buyer pulled it down. He calls this the typical fate of the county's synagogues. Whether it was also the fate of the one at Miszla is not documented. With only eight Jews in the village in 1941, the building may equally have been given up, sold or demolished before the war. No source read reports damage or looting in 1944.

Il destino della comunità

Eight Jews lived in Miszla in 1941 according to Gazda's table. After the Nazi German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, the Jews of Tolna county were forced into ghettos under the decree of 28 April. Elblinger lists the ghetto towns as Szekszárd, Dombóvár, Paks, Dunaföldvár, Tolna, Hőgyész, Tamási and Bonyhád and gives about 5,099 Jews in the county on 5 May 1944. He writes that the deportation took place in the first days of July, by way of Kaposvár, and that 4,790 Jews arrived at the Nazi camp of Auschwitz on 9 July. Which ghetto the Jews of Miszla were taken to is not stated in the sources read, and their names, the number who were killed and whether anyone returned are unknown. After 1945 organised Jewish life in the county resumed only in Bonyhád, Paks, Szekszárd and Dombóvár, and no community is recorded at Miszla. In the 2011 census 0.4 per cent of the village's residents gave their religion as Israelite, which in a village of this size means one or two people.

Il luogo oggi

The plot on which the synagogue stood has not been identified in any source consulted, so it is not possible to say what occupies it today. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Miszla and should not be read as the synagogue's location. The list of the village's sights on Hungarian Wikipedia names the Catholic, Reformed and Lutheran churches and the Nemeskéry mansion, but no synagogue building, ruin or Jewish monument, and no marker on the site is recorded in the sources read. Fixing the address will need the nineteenth-century cadastral maps of the village, the Tolna county archives or the memory of older residents.

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Hai qualcosa da condividere?

Fotografie, documenti, storie di famiglia o ricordi di questa sinagoga e della sua comunità aiutano a mantenerne viva la storia.