Mol Synagogue

OVERVIEW

The story of Mol Synagogue

Mol (Hungarian Mohol) lies on the western, Bačka bank of the river Tisza, in the municipality of Ada in Serbia's province of Vojvodina. Today it is a town of about six thousand people, most of them Hungarian-speaking, with a sizeable Serb minority. The town had a Jewish community, and in 1892 it completed a synagogue. Both that date and the date of demolition, 1960, appear in the inventory of lost synagogues of Vojvodina published by Rastislav Stojsavljević and Nikola Vujinović in a 2021 volume of the Archives of Vojvodina, which lists Mol among the demolished synagogues of the North Bačka district, and in the English-language list of synagogues in Serbia, which draws on Goran Levi's 2016 catalogue of Vojvodina's lost synagogues. Almost nothing else about the building has been found. No photograph, plan or description of it was located, and its architect, size, style and street are unknown. The 2021 study states that after the Second World War the synagogue was used as a warehouse before it was pulled down. Stojsavljević and Vujinović observe that the synagogues of Bačka were largely preserved through the war and that their disappearance began afterwards, a pattern into which Mol fits. The sources consulted say nothing about the people who built the synagogue or prayed in it.

LOCATION

Where it stood for 68 years

Historic: Mohol (Mol); street and house number unknown. Today: Unknown; placeholder pin for the settlement of Mol, Ada municipality, Vojvodina, Serbia (approximate).

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The Jewish community

Very little has been published about the Jews of Mol, and this entry rests on very thin evidence. No figures specific to the town were found for its Jewish population at any date, for when Jews first settled there, or for how the congregation was organised. No community officers, teachers, cantors or rabbis are named in any source consulted. The one firm fact is that by 1892 the community was able to complete its own synagogue, which implies a settled congregation with the means to build and maintain a dedicated house of prayer. Whether it kept its own cemetery, school or burial society is unknown, and so is the religious trend it followed. Neighbouring Ada, a few kilometres to the north in the same municipality, also had a synagogue, demolished in 1962 according to the journalist Robert Čoban; the sources read do not say whether the Jews of Mol and Ada formed one congregation or two, or how they were related. Local registers, census returns and the records of the Jewish community of Novi Sad may hold the missing details.

Architecture and design

No image of the Mol synagogue has been found, and no source consulted describes its appearance, materials, plan or dimensions. The architect and builder are unknown, as are the number of seats, the style of the building and its arrangement inside. The only physical facts recorded are that it was completed in 1892 and that after the Second World War it was still sound enough to be put to use as a warehouse. That later use suggests a free-standing hall of some size rather than a room in a private house, but this is an inference, not a documented fact. Pál Šosberger's 1998 book on the synagogues of Vojvodina, on which the 2021 inventory partly rests, and Goran Levi's 2016 catalogue, which underlies the English-language list, may contain a description or a photograph and should be checked before anything more is said about the building. Old postcards of Mohol in Hungarian and Serbian collections are the other likely place where a view of the synagogue might survive.

Life inside the synagogue

Nothing specific about religious life in the Mol synagogue has been found in the sources consulted. The names of its rabbis, cantors and lay leaders, the rite it followed, its regular and festival services, and the size of the congregation that prayed there are all unknown. The building served its community for roughly half a century, from its completion in 1892 until the congregation was destroyed during the Second World War. No source read for this entry mentions a school, a ritual bath, a rabbi's house or any other communal building connected with it, nor any notable event that took place inside it, such as a dedication, a visit or a renovation. Community records, old Hungarian and Yugoslav Jewish periodicals, survivors' testimonies and the two printed catalogues of Vojvodina synagogues by Šosberger and Levi are the most promising places to look for this missing information. Until they are read, the inner life of the congregation remains a blank in the record.

Destruction

No source found records damage to the Mol synagogue during the Second World War. The 2021 study of Vojvodina's synagogues by Stojsavljević and Vujinović states that the synagogues of Bačka were to some extent preserved during the war, unlike those of Banat and Srem, and that their decline began afterwards. The building stood empty once its congregation was gone. After the war, according to the same study, the synagogue in Mol was used as a warehouse, and it was later demolished. Both the 2021 inventory and the English-language list of Serbian synagogues give 1960 as the year of demolition, when Yugoslavia was under Communist rule. Neither source says who owned the building at that time, whether it had been nationalised, sold by the surviving Jewish community or taken over by a local cooperative or the municipality, or who ordered and carried out the demolition. Who demolished it is not recorded. In other Bačka towns the 2021 study records local people carrying off building material (Bezdan), the authorities building a cooperative hall on the site (Kula) and the Communist authorities demolishing a synagogue in 1962 (Bečej).

The community’s fate

During the Second World War Bačka, the region in which Mol lies, was annexed by Hungary, and its Jews came under Hungarian rule. The general history of the Jews of Serbia records that in the 1942 raid on Novi Sad Hungarian troops killed many Jewish and Serb civilians in Bačka; no source read here says whether any Jews of Mol were among the victims. The later fate of Mol's Jews, including when and how they were deported and where they were killed, is not documented in any source consulted for this entry, and the number of local victims and survivors is unknown. What is clear is that no congregation was left to use the synagogue after the war, since it was turned into a warehouse. More than half of the Yugoslav Jews who survived emigrated to Israel after the war, and Robert Čoban links the loss of Vojvodina's synagogues to the departure of the few who returned from the camps. No organised Jewish community is recorded in Mol today.

The site today

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. No surviving fragment of the building and no marker on the site is recorded. Mol today is a small town on the Tisza in the municipality of Ada; its best-known historic building is the Orthodox church of St Sava from the early nineteenth century, a protected cultural monument, but nothing published connects any present building to the former synagogue. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the OpenStreetMap point for the settlement of Mol and should not be read as the synagogue's location. Fixing the site will need cadastral maps or the local archives.

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