Nová Ves nad Váhom Synagogue

סקירה

הסיפור של Nová Ves nad Váhom Synagogue

Nová Ves nad Váhom, known in Hungarian as Vágújfalu, is a small village in the Nové Mesto nad Váhom district of the Trenčín region. It is first recorded in 1419 as Wyfalw and belonged to the Beckov estate; its people lived mainly from farming and vineyards. In 1784 it had 78 houses and 597 inhabitants, and in 1828 85 houses and 810 inhabitants. Among its buildings was a synagogue that the Slovak heritage gazetteer pamiatkynaslovensku.sk dates to the end of the eighteenth century, specifically 1796, and describes as built on the basis of the Toleration Patent. Its source for this is the national inventory of monuments edited by Alžbeta Güntherová and published in 1968, which still listed a 'toleration synagogue from the end of the 18th century' in the village. The gazetteer, citing the municipal website, gives 1953 as the year it was pulled down. Almost nothing else is documented. No photograph, plan or description of the building has been found, the plot on which it stood is not identified in any source read, and the size and history of the Jewish community that used it are unknown. The Jewish cemetery east of the village, with tombstones dated 1890 to 1916, is the community's main surviving trace.

מיקום

Where it stood for 157 years

Historic: Vágújfalu (Nová Ves nad Váhom), Trencsén county; street and house number unknown. Today: within the built-up village of Nová Ves nad Váhom, 916 31, okres Nové Mesto nad Váhom, Trenčiansky kraj (approximate).

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הקהילה היהודית

Little has been published on the Jews of Nová Ves nad Váhom. The village appears in no community entry of the Pinkas Hakehillot volume on Slovakia, and the local histories read, the municipal website and the village entry of the Vlastivedný slovník obcí na Slovensku reproduced on e-obce.sk, give population totals but no figures by religion and do not mention Jewish residents. The existence of a synagogue built in 1796 implies a resident community large enough to hold regular services by the late eighteenth century, but its size, its founders and its leaders are unknown. The Jewish cemetery is the only other documented trace. It lies about 800 metres east of the village on the road towards the forest; the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative recorded eight gravestones there, five standing, with the oldest dated 1890 and the newest 1916, and the JewishGen cemetery survey describes up to twenty marble, granite and sandstone stones with Hebrew and German inscriptions. The burials suggest Jews still lived there during the First World War. Whether the community later dwindled, merged into the large congregation of nearby Nové Mesto nad Váhom, or remained independent is not recorded in the sources found.

אדריכלות ועיצוב

No photograph, drawing, plan or written description of the Nová Ves nad Váhom synagogue has been found, so its appearance is unknown. The only architectural information is the dating: the heritage gazetteer pamiatkynaslovensku.sk gives the end of the eighteenth century, specifically 1796, and calls it a building erected under the Toleration Patent, and the 1968 national inventory of monuments, as quoted on e-obce.sk, lists it as a toleration synagogue of the late eighteenth century. Neither source gives its building material, dimensions, roof form, window arrangement or orientation. The architect or builder, the seating capacity and the style are therefore all unknown. Borský's survey of Slovak synagogue architecture does not include the building, and no figure of it is known from any collection consulted.

החיים בבית הכנסת

No account of worship in the synagogue has been found. The heritage gazetteer calls it a building erected under the Toleration Patent, which places it among the first generation of synagogues that Jewish communities in the Kingdom of Hungary were able to build openly in the late eighteenth century, but it gives no description of the interior. The 1968 national inventory of monuments, as summarised on e-obce.sk, records only the phrase 'toleration synagogue from the end of the 18th century'. Nothing is known of the position of the ark or reading desk, of a women's gallery, of the number of seats, or of any rabbi, cantor or teacher who served the congregation. The religious orientation of the community after the split of Hungarian Jewry in the 1860s and 1870s, whether Orthodox, Neolog or Status Quo, is also unknown. The Hebrew and German inscriptions on the gravestones in the village cemetery, dated between 1890 and 1916, are the only surviving writing from this congregation that has been recorded, but none has been published in a form read for this entry. Any further detail will depend on archival records of the Nové Mesto nad Váhom district or the Güntherová inventory itself.

הרס

No source read records damage to the synagogue during the Second World War or says how it was used after the war. The 1968 inventory of monuments edited by Alžbeta Güntherová still listed the toleration synagogue among the village's monuments, but the heritage gazetteer pamiatkynaslovensku.sk, citing the municipal website as it stood in September 2016, states that the synagogue was demolished in 1953. That date falls in the first years of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, when the state and its local national committees controlled most property decisions, but none of the sources read names the body or person who ordered or carried out the demolition, or says whether the building had first been sold or transferred. The current municipal history page no longer mentions the synagogue, so the original wording of the municipal statement could not be checked. The two dates are in tension: if the building was pulled down in 1953, the 1968 inventory listing was probably compiled from earlier survey data and not from a site visit. Who demolished the synagogue, and why, is not recorded.

גורל הקהילה

What happened to the Jews of Nová Ves nad Váhom during the Holocaust is not documented in any source read, and it is not known how many Jews still lived in the village by 1938. The Slovak State, independent from March 1939 under the Hlinka Slovak People's Party, deported most of the country's Jews in 1942. For the nearby district town of Nové Mesto nad Váhom, the Encyclopaedia Judaica, as reproduced by the Jewish Virtual Library, states that 1,300 of its 2,215 Jews were deported in 1942 to Sobibor and Treblinka, and that after the Slovak National Uprising of August 1944 the invading Nazi German forces deported the remaining Jews to Auschwitz. The Slovak Spectator gives a figure of 2,900 Jews deported from Nové Mesto nad Váhom in 1942, of whom only 112 returned. Whether any Jews of Nová Ves nad Váhom were among them, or had moved to the town before the war, is unknown. No Jewish community was re-established in the village after 1945, and the small cemetery east of the village is now unmarked and threatened by vegetation and vandalism.

האתר כיום

The plot on which the synagogue stood has not been identified in any source read, and no fragment of the building is known to survive. The map pin uses the coordinates published by the heritage gazetteer pamiatkynaslovensku.sk, which fall on a short residential street within the built-up village; the gazetteer does not say how it fixed this point, so it should be treated as approximate. No marker or memorial on the site is recorded. The Jewish cemetery about 800 metres east of the village, on the road leading to the forest, still holds a handful of gravestones from 1890 to 1916; it has no sign or wall. Identifying the exact plot would need the cadastral maps of the village or the Güntherová inventory.

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