Námestovo Synagogue

הקהילה היהודית

According to the Jüdische Gemeinden website, which draws on the Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust, Jewish families from Moravia settled in Námestovo at the end of the eighteenth century and founded an Orthodox community. The local history site namestovo.estranky.sk says they had a prayer house by 1785 and at first belonged to the rabbinate of Dolný Kubín. By 1825, with 176 Jews, Námestovo had the largest Jewish population in Orava (e-obce.sk). The figures given are 176 in 1828, 286 in 1880, 135 in 1921, 125 in 1930 and 114 in 1940. In the 1860s the town gained its own rabbinate, covering the Jews of upper Orava; its rabbis were Herman Deutsch, Šmaja Lőwy, Dov Ber (Bernát) Dušinský from 1866 to 1920, and Jozef Reich from 1922 until 1942. From about 1850 the community kept a Jewish school. Late in the nineteenth century many members emigrated, some encouraged by Zionist organisations.

אדריכלות ועיצוב

The main evidence is a plan of 1810 drawn by Michael Dlholucký, held in the state archive at Bytča, which the cemetery society's website describes as the design of the synagogue as built; the same site reproduces a ground plan and a later, unexecuted proposal to extend the building. The 2017 student reconstruction treated it as a building of square plan. One small historic photograph, reproduced on the Jüdische Gemeinden website from the local history site namestovo.estranky.sk, shows a plastered building with a steep roof and a tall stepped and curved gable on its street end, pierced by a small window. The long side has a large round-headed window, a smaller arched opening near the corner and a door, with a low wing or adjoining building to the right. A wooden fence and gate stand at the left and the street in front is unpaved. The architectural style, the seating capacity, the arrangement of the women's section and the interior fittings are unknown, and no interior photograph has survived.

החיים בבית הכנסת

The congregation was Orthodox from its foundation, and its stamp read 'Aut. Orth. židovská cirkevná obec Námestovo'. The synagogue was the seat of a rabbinate that from the 1860s served the Jews of upper Orava. Its longest-serving rabbi was Dov Ber (Bernát) Dušinský, who held the post from 1866 to 1920, more than half a century, and founded a yeshiva in Námestovo, which made the small town a place of Torah study for young men from the region. He was followed in 1922 by Jozef Reich, the last rabbi, who led the congregation until 1942. Beside the synagogue the community ran a Jewish elementary school from about 1850. The sources read describe no specific customs, cantors or events in the building, and the cemetery society notes that little information about the synagogue has survived; the graves in the restored Jewish cemetery are the best remaining record of the families who prayed here.

הרס

The synagogue was emptied of its congregation by 1942. According to the Slovak text of the Námestovo Jewish cemetery society's website, it was bombed in 1945, during the Second World War, and never resumed operation; the English version says it was damaged during a bombing raid and was never restored. The town's history on e-obce.sk records that the liberation fighting of 1945 left Námestovo heavily damaged, with about 60 per cent of its houses destroyed. Neither source says which air force carried out the raid, on what date, or how badly the synagogue was hit, so the perpetrator of the bombing is unknown. The memorial on the site describes the building as having stood there until 1945. What happened to the ruin afterwards is not recorded: no source read gives a date for the clearing of the remains or names who removed them, although the cemetery society notes that photographs and drawings of the building were made before 1953.

גורל הקהילה

In the Slovak State the community was stripped of its rights in stages: Jews were pushed out of public life, their businesses were confiscated and they were conscripted for forced labour. In 1942 about 85 per cent of the district's Jews were deported, some to Majdanek and Auschwitz and others to camps in the Lublin area, where most were murdered; Rabbi Jozef Reich and his family were among those deported. In November 1944, after Nazi German forces had occupied Slovakia, a Security Police unit murdered more than ten Jews in the area, and according to the Jüdische Gemeinden website the Jews still in the town were shot or fled. It is said that only two Jewish inhabitants of Námestovo survived. A few survivors returned after liberation and briefly revived the community, but by 1949 most had left for Israel or larger towns and it ceased to exist. The restored old cemetery was vandalised in December 2019.

האתר כיום

The synagogue stood diagonally opposite the Roman Catholic church of SS Simon and Jude in the centre of Námestovo; no historic street address has been found. An 1871 cadastral map reproduced on namestovo.estranky.sk marks its footprint across the stream from the church. Nothing of the building survives, and the plot has not been precisely identified in the sources read, so its present use cannot be stated. A marble memorial plaque was installed in 2012 to mark the place where it stood. The pin for this entry uses the coordinates given by the pamiatkynaslovensku.sk gazetteer, which lie a few hundred metres from the church and should therefore be treated as approximate. The Jewish cemetery of Námestovo still exists and is maintained by a local association.

שמות בולטים