Small Synagogue of Velența, Oradea

PRZEGLĄD

Historia Small Synagogue of Velența, Oradea

Velența, known in Hungarian as Velence, is a quarter on the eastern side of Oradea, the city called Nagyvárad in Hungarian and Grosswardein in German. It was the first home of Oradea's Jews. According to the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, drawing on Tereza Mozes's history of the Jews of Oradea, a synagogue is said to be attested in Velența as early as 1749, and a drawing of 1769 shows one there beside an arm of the Criș river and the ruins of the church of the Poor Clares. The source does not say whether that prayer house was the same building as the later one.

Around 1803, the same source says, the community built in Baroque style 'the first synagogue in the true sense of the word', which came to be called the small synagogue. The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901-1906 likewise dates the first synagogue of Grosswardein to 1803. By 1815, 33 Jewish heads of family in Velența lived in houses of their own. Later a much larger synagogue with 1,000 seats was built next to the small one; it is the subject of a separate entry.

Both Velența synagogues were demolished in 1950, in the early years of Communist rule in Romania. No source read names who ordered or carried out the demolition, and no photograph or plan of the small synagogue has been found.

LOKALIZACJA

Where it stood for nearly 150 years

Historic: Velence (Váradvelence), Nagyvárad, Bihar county; street and house number unknown. Today: Velența district, Oradea, Bihor county, Romania (approximate: district centre).

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Społeczność żydowska

Jews were settled in Velența, on the eastern edge of Oradea, by the middle of the eighteenth century. The Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, summarising Tereza Mozes's book Evreii din Oradea (1997), says a synagogue there is attested from 1749 and that a drawing of 1769 shows it near an arm of the Criș and the ruined church of the Poor Clares. By 1815, 33 Jewish heads of family in Velența owned their own houses, which suggests a settled and growing community at the time the small synagogue was in use. The Jewish Encyclopedia records that the community later divided into Orthodox and Reform congregations and names a line of chief rabbis. Which congregation used the small Velența synagogue in its later decades is unknown from the sources read. A 2010 report for the US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad counts 27 synagogues in Oradea in all.

Architektura i projekt

Almost nothing is known about the building's appearance. The Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania describes it as built in Baroque style around 1803 and calls it the small synagogue, to distinguish it from the 1,000-seat synagogue built beside it later. Its dimensions, materials, seating capacity, plan and the name of its architect or builder are unknown. No photograph, postcard, drawing or measured plan that can be securely identified as this building was found. A guild certificate engraved by Jos. Schütz in 1817, now in the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives in Budapest, shows a panorama of Nagyvárad whose numbered legend includes 'Der Judentempel', the Jewish temple, but the building cannot be picked out with certainty in the engraving, and it is not certain that the temple meant is the Velența one.

Życie w synagodze

No description of services, rabbis or customs specific to the small Velența synagogue was found in the sources read. As the first purpose-built synagogue of Oradea's Jews, it would have been the place of worship of the community's founding families in Velența in the early nineteenth century, when 33 heads of family there owned their own houses. The Jewish Encyclopedia notes that Oradea's first synagogue dates from 1803 and that, around 1900, 'the old synagogue remains, though no longer used for worship'; if that refers to this building, it had been replaced as the main house of prayer by the end of the nineteenth century, perhaps by the large synagogue next to it. A sermon preached by Jacob Steinhardt in 'the Nagyvárad synagogue' in March 1853 for the recovery of Emperor Franz Joseph survives in print in Budapest, but the record does not say which building it was delivered in. Who led prayer in the small synagogue, and whether it served Orthodox worshippers in its later years, is unknown.

Zniszczenie

No source read records damage to the small Velența synagogue during the Second World War. The Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania states plainly that the small synagogue and the 1,000-seat synagogue beside it were 'both demolished in 1950'. Romania had been under Communist rule since the end of 1947, so the demolition took place under the Communist regime, but the source does not say who ordered it, whether the state or the city took the buildings, or whether the depleted Jewish community sold or gave them up first. No newspaper report, municipal decision or eyewitness account of the demolition was found. The building had possibly been out of regular use for decades: the Jewish Encyclopedia, writing around 1904, says Oradea's old synagogue was no longer used for worship, though it places that building in Katonaváros near the fortress rather than in Velența. The 2010 report for the US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad notes that of the 27 synagogues Oradea once had, only two still stood as synagogues.

Los społeczności

In 1944 Jews made up about 30 per cent of the population of Oradea, then under Hungarian rule. After Operation Margarethe, the Nazi German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, the Hungarian authorities confined them in a ghetto that held about 27,000 people, with a second ghetto holding nearly 8,000 Jews from the surrounding countryside. Hungarian gendarmes under Lieutenant-Colonel Jenő Péterffy searched the inmates for valuables, while a Jewish Council headed by Sándor Leitner handled internal affairs. Between 23 May and 27 June 1944 nine transports took 27,215 people to Auschwitz. The artist Tibor Jankai's series Martyrs, published in 1947, depicts the ghetto and the driving of Jews to the wagons, and the Jewish Guide Europe describes the old community as exterminated during the war. Survivors who returned re-established a community and erected a Holocaust monument in a synagogue courtyard. A small community still exists, and in 2018 a restored synagogue was reconsecrated for its use.

Miejsce dzisiaj

The exact plot of the small synagogue has not been identified in the sources read. The Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania places it in Velența, the eastern quarter of Oradea, beside the large 1,000-seat synagogue and near an arm of the Criș river and the ruins of the Poor Clares' church, both of which disappeared with it. Neither building survives. What stands on the plot today, and whether any trace of the foundations remains, is unknown. The map pin marks the centre of the Velența district as recorded in OpenStreetMap and should not be read as the synagogue's exact position. Old cadastral maps of Oradea and Tereza Mozes's book Evreii din Oradea would be the best places to fix the address.

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