Nova Gradiška Synagogue

La comunidad judía

The Jewish community of the Nova Gradiška area grew out of the neighbouring older settlement of Cernik, where Jews are recorded from 1803; settlement in Nova Gradiška began in 1868, and the town eventually became the centre of Jewish life in the district. The JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project, drawing on data compiled by Srđan Matić, describes the organised community as established in the eighteenth or nineteenth century and ended in 1941. Figures for its size vary between sources: 338 Jews in 1910, 223 in 1925-26, 255 or 207 in 1931 (the same page gives both), 199 in 1937-38 and 199 in 1941. Like many Slavonian communities it suffered during the unrest at the end of the First World War: Ljiljana Dobrovšak, citing Vjekoslav Žugaj's history of the Jews of the district, lists Cernik and Nova Gradiška among the places where Jewish property was robbed and set on fire in 1918. The community's Jewish cemetery, dating from the eighteenth century, survives with some 50 to 70 gravestones. The names of its rabbis, cantors and presidents were not found in the sources read.

Arquitectura y diseño

No photograph, drawing or plan of the synagogue was found, so its appearance is known only from short descriptions by two architectural historians. Zlatko Karač dates it to 1923-1925 and uses it as an example of the late academic style of Croatia's last synagogues, alongside buildings in Osijek, Bjelovar and Rijeka. He names its designer as Samuel Lang, one of several local building engineers who drew synagogues in that period, and classifies it, with the synagogue of Orahovica, as a 'synagogue-house' (sinagoga-kuća): a building whose massing resembled a large house or civic building rather than a domed or towered temple. Dragan Damjanović, citing Karač's earlier work, calls it 'a rather modest synagogue' and compares it with the Vinkovci synagogue only in its choice of a classicist vocabulary for the main front. Karač also notes that it stood on the station street, a typical location for synagogues built after the arrival of the railway. Its size, seating capacity, building materials, interior arrangement and the position of the women's gallery are unknown.

La vida dentro de la sinagoga

Very little is recorded about worship in the building. The community was small, with between 200 and 260 members in the years the synagogue was in use, and the sources read do not say which rite it followed or how often services were held. The fact that the congregation waited until the 1920s to build a dedicated synagogue suggests that services had earlier been held in a rented or converted room, perhaps in Cernik, but no source says so directly. The names of rabbis, cantors, teachers and lay officers who served in the building were not found; the community's registers survive in the State Archives in Slavonski Brod, and Vjekoslav Žugaj's 2001 book on the Jews of the Nova Gradiška district probably holds these details. The Pinkas Hakehillot volume on Yugoslavia also has an entry for the town, which was not available in translation in this run. No ritual objects from the synagogue were traced.

Destrucción

In April 1941 Nova Gradiška became part of the Independent State of Croatia. Filip Škiljan records that the district's Orthodox churches were demolished in 1941-1942, and the Ustaša regime destroyed the town's central Orthodox church, the Church of the Holy Trinity on the main square, in 1941. The synagogue was put out of use in 1941, but the two sources that record its fate do not agree on what happened to the building. The description of the Nova Gradiška branch of the State Archives in the EHRI portal says it was demolished in 1941. The JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project, using Srđan Matić's 1999 survey, says it was damaged in 1941 and sold in 1949, which implies that at least part of it still stood after the war. Neither source says who damaged or demolished it, and none of the sources read names the buyer in 1949 or says when any surviving structure was pulled down. Karač's 2009 survey confirms only that it is not among the three twentieth-century Croatian synagogues still standing.

El destino de la comunidad

After the proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia in April 1941 the Ustaša authorities began at once to terrorise the Serbs and Jews of the Nova Gradiška district. According to the historian Filip Škiljan, whose study covers the Nova Gradiška district during the Second World War, the Jewish community of the district was almost completely wiped out by the beginning of 1942. The archive description in the EHRI portal states that most Jews from the Gradiška region perished in the nearby Jasenovac concentration camp. How and when they were arrested and taken there is not described in the sources read. Of the 199 Jews counted in 1941, only 23 were living in Nova Gradiška in 1947, a figure that may include survivors from elsewhere. The community was not re-established, and by 1994 no Jews were recorded in the town. The number of victims from Nova Gradiška itself is unknown.

El lugar hoy

The synagogue stood on the street leading to the railway station, which the State Archives description identifies as today's Ulica Alojzija Stepinca, running north from the station towards the town centre. The house number and plot are unknown, and no source consulted describes what now occupies the site, so the map pin marks the midpoint of the street rather than the building itself. No surviving fragment of the synagogue is recorded. The Jewish cemetery of the community survives, with between 50 and 70 gravestones; it was restored in 1990, damaged during the war in 1992, restored again in 1994 and is protected as a historical landmark. The Nova Gradiška branch of the State Archives holds wartime court and land-registry records that may document the confiscation and 1949 sale.

Nombres destacados