Fourth Synagogue of Novi Sad (1826)

The Jewish community

Jews were living in Novi Sad soon after Habsburg rule began in 1699, mostly families from Moravia, and the Encyclopaedia Judaica notes that they were exceptionally allowed to settle in the new town of Neusatz while being barred from owning real estate and paying a special Jewish tax until the end of the eighteenth century. A Chevra Kadisha, described as a holy welfare society, existed from 1729, and a Jewish school was built in 1802. Pinkas Hakehillot records about 213 Jews in 1804 in a town of 13,000, 360 in 1816, 727 in 1830-35, 1,136 in 1844 and about 1,320, some six per cent of roughly 30,000 inhabitants, in 1848-49. The community chose a judge or head, among them Herman ben Simon Hirsch from 1844 to 1861; Wolff Shussberg, Jacob Offner and Jacob Weigenfeld are named as leaders around the revolution. Jews took part in the Hungarian uprising of 1848, at a cost of many lives, and in 1850 the community was fined by the Austrian authorities for having supported Hungarian national aims.

Architecture and design

No description, plan or picture of the 1826 synagogue was found. None of the sources consulted gives its size, its building material, its style, its seating or the name of its builder, and no view of it has been identified in the postcard and photograph collections searched; the early postcards captioned 'Ujvidék, Izr. templom' that survive date from after 1909 and show its successor. What can be said is limited to its setting. Like its predecessor and its successor it stood on the plot now numbered Jevrejska 11 in today's Jevrejska (Jewish) Street. Pinkas Hakehillot treats the building used after 1859 as the same synagogue renovated rather than a new one, which suggests that at least part of the 1826 structure survived the bombardment of 1849. How much was rebuilt in 1851 or 1859, and what the renovated building looked like, is unknown.

Life inside the synagogue

The synagogue was the community's only house of worship during the years of its greatest growth. Its rabbis in that period, according to Pinkas Hakehillot, included Pinchas Leib Monk, a pupil of the Hatam Sofer in Pressburg, who served from 1834 to 1848, and Zvi Isaac (Herman) Hirschfeld, who began serving in 1843 and, by one count, remained until 1861. Philipp Schön, the community's long-serving cantor, began his service in 1845. After the repairs of the 1850s the rebuilt synagogue was led by Jacob Shalom Freier, apparently the first rabbi in Novi Sad with formal certification, from about 1861 to 1880, and from 1881 by Rabbi Dr. Ignatz Papp, who went on to dedicate the new building in 1909. The community also maintained a school and a small clinic, which, like the synagogue, burned in 1849 and was rebuilt, having eight beds by 1855. Nothing is recorded of the synagogue's rite, furnishings or ritual objects.

Destruction

During the Hungarian revolution of 1848-49 the fortress of Petrovaradin was held by the Hungarian revolutionary army, while Novi Sad across the river was occupied by Austrian and Serbian troops of Ban Jelačić. On 12 June 1849 the fortress commander, General Pál Kiss, ordered the garrison's artillery to open fire on the town, which was shelled for several hours and largely destroyed. Pinkas Hakehillot states that in this bombing most of the Jews' homes were destroyed, as well as the synagogue and the school; the European Days of Jewish Culture guide says the cannonade from the fortress ruined most of the town's buildings, the synagogue among them, and the Encyclopaedia Judaica says all Jewish property was destroyed. The building was not abandoned. The Encyclopaedia Judaica says the synagogue was rebuilt in 1851, and Pinkas Hakehillot records a renovation in 1859, but adds that the building did not last long. It was replaced on the same site by Baumhorn's synagogue, built from 1905 to 1909, so the old building was cleared from the plot to make way for it, probably about 1905; no record of the demolition itself was found.

The community’s fate

Hungarian troops occupied Novi Sad on 12 April 1941. The military government confiscated Jewish property and fined the community 50 million dinars, and Jewish men aged 16 to 65 were conscripted into Hungarian labour battalions, many of them sent to clear minefields in Ukraine. From 21 to 23 January 1942 Hungarian gendarmes and army units carried out a raid in which more than 800 Jews and some 500 Serbs were killed, most of them shot on the Danube bank at the Strand and pushed through holes cut in the ice. In March 1943 some 6,000 Jews from Hungary, Novi Sad and Subotica were drafted to the mine at Bor in Serbia, and more than 2,000 were murdered on the march back, many at Crvenka. After Nazi Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944, about 1,600 Jews were gathered and sent through camps at Bačka Topola and Baja to Auschwitz. When the city was liberated in October 1944 about 1,000 Jews remained; some 700 emigrated to Israel in 1948-49.

The site today

The plot of the 1826 synagogue is occupied by the synagogue designed by Lipót Baumhorn and dedicated on 8 September 1909, which still stands in Jevrejska Street together with the former Jewish school and community offices of the same complex. Since 1966, with too few worshippers left to hold regular services, the building has been used mainly as a concert and lecture hall, while the Jewish Community of Novi Sad keeps its offices next door at Jevrejska 11. Nothing of the 1826 building is known to survive above ground, and no source consulted reports any archaeological find from it beneath or around the present synagogue. The map pin marks the present synagogue, which stands on the same plot.

Notable names