Die Geschichte von Onga Synagogue
Onga lies on the plain south-east of Miskolc, in present-day Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county; before 1950 it belonged to Abaúj-Torna county and the district of Szikszó. Its Jewish community was never large. Gazda's survey of 1980-87 records 39 Jews at Onga in 1851, 76 in 1910 and 57 in 1941. Pinkas Hakehillot Hungary, the Yad Vashem encyclopaedia of Hungarian Jewish communities, counts 77 in 1880 and 62 in 1930, in a village of 2,517 inhabitants in 1941. The same source says the first Jews arrived in the first half of the eighteenth century to work on the estates of a Jewish landowner named Guttmann, and that the Orthodox congregation kept a synagogue, a cemetery, a cheder and a mikveh, with a shochet in its service.
Little is known about the synagogue building itself: no photograph, plan, description, construction date or address has been found. Anikó Gazda's gazetteer of Hungarian synagogues, published in 1991 from that site survey, classes the building as a synagogue rather than a prayer house, gives it no construction date and marks it as demolished. Nothing read says when it was pulled down, by whom, or whether it was first sold. The congregation did not re-form after the Second World War, and the building was removed at some point before the survey.
Where it stood
Historic: Onga, Szikszó district, Abaúj-Torna county; street and house number unknown. Today: unknown; placeholder pin at the centre of 3562 Onga, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county (approximate).
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According to Pinkas Hakehillot Hungary, Jews first came to Onga in the first half of the eighteenth century as labourers on the estates of a Jewish man named Guttmann; the early date sits oddly with a Jewish estate owner and may be a slip in the source. Over time most of the community became merchants and tradesmen. Two Jews ran inns, several kept small shops or businesses, and two owned large estates. For a period the village notary was also Jewish, an unusual position for a Jew in a rural Hungarian community. The population was small: Gazda's survey of 1980-87 records 39 Jews in 1851, 76 in 1910 and 57 in 1941, and Pinkas Hakehillot counts 77 in 1880 and 62 in 1930. Religiously the congregation was Orthodox and did not have its own rabbi; it was subordinate to the larger Orthodox community of Szikszó, the district seat a few kilometres to the north. Its own institutions were the synagogue, a cemetery, a cheder for the religious schooling of boys and a mikveh, and it employed a shochet, a ritual slaughterer. No names of community officers, shochetim or prominent families other than Guttmann have been found.
Architektur und Gestaltung
No photograph, drawing, plan or written description of the Onga synagogue has been found, so nothing can be said with confidence about its appearance, size, materials or layout. Anikó Gazda's gazetteer classes the building as a synagogue rather than a prayer house. In her usage a synagogue is a free-standing building put up for communal worship, larger and more ornate than the houses around it, while a prayer house is a smaller building resembling a larger dwelling. She gives no construction date and no details of form. The architect or builder, the year of construction, the seating capacity, the style and the arrangement of the interior, including the places of the bimah, the Torah ark and the women's section, are all unknown. The Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives (MILEV) holds no catalogued photograph of the building under the town's name, and no postcard of it was found.
Leben in der Synagoge
The congregation followed Orthodox practice and stood under the religious authority of the Szikszó Orthodox community; according to Pinkas Hakehillot Hungary, Onga had no rabbi of its own, and a shochet served the community. Alongside the synagogue the congregation maintained a cheder, where boys received their religious schooling, and a mikveh for ritual immersion; together with the cemetery these were the institutions of the community. With between about forty and eighty Jews living in the village in the century before the Second World War, children included, the synagogue served only a small number of worshippers. No names of prayer leaders, teachers, shochetim or community officers have been found in the sources read, and there is no account of services, festivals or other events held in the building. Whether the shochet also led prayers or taught the children is not recorded for Onga.
Zerstörung
No source found records damage to the synagogue during the Second World War or describes what happened to it after its congregation was deported in the spring of 1944; it presumably stood empty from that time, since only a few survivors came back and they soon left the village. The only evidence that the building no longer exists is Anikó Gazda's gazetteer of Hungarian synagogues and Jewish communities, published in 1991 from a site survey carried out between 1980 and 1987, which lists the Onga synagogue as demolished. Gazda gives no date for the demolition, names no one responsible, and warns that her data are 80 to 90 per cent accurate. No other source consulted for this entry confirms the demolition. Who demolished the synagogue, when, and whether it was first sold by the survivors or by the national Jewish office to a private buyer, is not recorded in any source found. The demolition therefore cannot be dated more closely than to some time before 1987.
Das Schicksal der Gemeinde
Pinkas Hakehillot Hungary records that in 1941 young Jewish men of Onga were taken into forced labour service, and that most of them died there. After the Nazi German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, the Jews of Onga were moved in April 1944 to the ghetto at Kassa (now Košice in Slovakia), the collection centre for the region. From Kassa the ghetto's inmates were deported to Auschwitz in four transports, the first leaving on 15 May and the second on 19 May 1944. Most of Onga's Jews were on the second transport. The great majority of the deportees were murdered at Auschwitz. The exact number of Onga Jews deported and killed is unknown; the community had numbered 62 people in 1930. After the war only isolated individuals returned to Onga, and they too soon left, so no congregation was re-established and the synagogue and cemetery were left without owners in the village. What became of the Jewish cemetery is unknown.
Der Ort heute
The site of the Onga synagogue has not been identified in any source consulted. Neither Pinkas Hakehillot Hungary nor the town's own website gives a street or plot, and the town's published history does not mention the Jewish community. No surviving fragment of the building and no marker on its site is recorded. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Onga, which became a town in 2013, and should not be read as the synagogue's location. Fixing the address would need the cadastral maps of Onga from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, held in the Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county archives in Miskolc, or local memory.
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