The story of Orahovica Synagogue
Orahovica is a small town at the foot of the Papuk hills in Virovitica-Podravina county, about 40 miles west of Osijek. Jews settled there in the early nineteenth century, and by about 1900 the local historian Miroslav Gozda puts their number at around 400. Doctors, lawyers, economists and merchants were among them, and the community kept its own cemetery on what is now Ante Starčevića Street.
The synagogue was a latecomer. Both the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project and the architectural historian Zlatko Karač date it to 1911, which makes it one of the few synagogues built in Croatia in the twentieth century. Karač counts it among the late-historicist works of those years and classes it as a 'synagogue-house', a type he pairs with the synagogue of Nova Gradiška. No photograph, plan or description of it was found in this run.
By the time the synagogue opened, the community had already begun to shrink: after the First World War only 53 Jews were left. The building's history ended in the Second World War. The European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative (ESJF) records that it was totally destroyed on 20 December 1942, when Communist guerrillas attacked Orahovica, and that it burned to the ground. After the war the remaining building materials were stolen, and in 1948 the site was sold.
Where it stood for 31 years
Historic: Orahovica, Virovitica county (Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia); street and house number unknown. Today: unknown; placeholder pin at the centre of Orahovica, 33515, Virovitica-Podravina county (approximate).
Open larger map →The Jewish community
Jews are recorded in Orahovica from the early nineteenth century, though the ESJF survey says the exact date of their arrival is unclear and that a community is documented at least from 1900. The local historian Miroslav Gozda, quoted by ESJF, estimates that about 400 Jews lived in the town at the start of the twentieth century. ESJF describes the community as strong and influential, with doctors, economists, lawyers and merchants among its members. It built a synagogue and laid out a cemetery, which Gozda believes held at least 50 stone obelisks. The population then fell quickly. The figures compiled by Srdjan Matić for the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project give 53 Jews in 1925/26, 41 in 1931 and 35 in 1937/38, and ESJF also gives 53 for the years after the First World War. No names of rabbis, cantors or communal officers were found in the sources read, and it is unknown whether the congregation had its own rabbi or was served from a larger neighbouring community such as Slatina or Našice.
Architecture and design
Almost nothing is known about the building's appearance. Two sources agree on the date: the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project speaks of 'the 1911 Synagogue', and Zlatko Karač, in his 2009 notes on the Lower Town synagogue of Osijek, lists Orahovica (1911) with Osijek Lower Town (1901-1902) and Rijeka (1901-1903) as examples of late Historicism in Croatian synagogue building. In the same article Karač sorts the twentieth-century synagogues into four traditional types and names Orahovica, together with Nova Gradiška, as an example of the 'sinagoge-kuće' or 'synagogue-houses'. He does not define the term in that article; it probably describes a building whose outward form resembled a large house rather than a domed or towered temple, but that reading is an inference. Karač adds that all the Croatian synagogues of the twentieth century except those of Osijek, Bjelovar and Rijeka are lost and almost entirely unknown. The architect, builder, materials, size, seating capacity and interior arrangement are unknown, and no photograph, drawing or plan of the synagogue was found.
Life inside the synagogue
No account of worship in the Orahovica synagogue was found. The sources read do not say which rite the congregation followed, whether it belonged to the Neolog-style mainstream of the Slavonian communities or kept an Orthodox minyan, or who led its services. They give no information about a school, a burial society or any communal organisation beyond the existence of the cemetery, which ESJF places at 19 (possibly up to 21) Ante Starčevića Street. What can be said is that the building served a small congregation for barely three decades. When it was dedicated in 1911 the community was already declining from its peak of about 400 people around 1900, and by the late 1930s it numbered only 35. No document read in this run records any particular service, wedding or event held in the building.
Destruction
According to the ESJF survey of the Orahovica Jewish cemetery, the synagogue was totally destroyed on 20 December 1942 during what the survey calls the 'guerrilla Communist attack on Orahovica'. It was burned to the ground. The survey does not say whether the fire was set deliberately or spread during the fighting, which unit carried out the attack, or what the building was being used for at the time; by then the congregation had already been taken away. Filip Škiljan's study of the Virovitica and Slatina area shows Partisan groups forming in the hills around Orahovica from October 1941, but it does not cover the December 1942 attack. After the war the remains of the building materials were stolen, the ESJF survey says, without naming who took them. The JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project records that the synagogue was sold in 1948, at the same time as the cemetery site. Since the building had burned in 1942, what was sold was presumably the plot with its ruins; no source read says who sold it or to whom.
The community’s fate
The ESJF survey states that during the Second World War the 35 Jews who still lived in Orahovica were sent to concentration camps, where they were killed. It does not name the camps, give the dates of the arrests or say who carried them out. Orahovica lay in the Independent State of Croatia, and Filip Škiljan's study of the neighbouring Virovitica and Slatina districts documents the persecution of Serbs, Roma and Jews there in 1941 and early 1942, but the sources read give no Orahovica-specific details. Only three Jews were living in the town in 1947, according to both ESJF and the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project, and the community is regarded as having ended in 1941. One native of the town, the Sephardic Jew Robert Domany (1908-1942), fought with the Croatian Partisans and was later proclaimed a People's Hero of Yugoslavia. After the war the cemetery was abandoned and its site was sold, and by 1994 no Jews were recorded in Orahovica.
The site today
The street and plot on which the synagogue stood have not been identified in any source read in this run, so it is not possible to say what occupies the site today. No surviving fragment and no marker are recorded. The map pin is a placeholder at the centre of Orahovica and should not be read as the synagogue's location. The Jewish cemetery, at 19 Ante Starčevića Street, has fared no better: ESJF found it demolished, with a fenced pigsty on the site and the remnants of two or three tombstones, one bearing the name Einer Ana. Locating the synagogue will need the 1948 sale records, cadastral maps or the work of the local historian Miroslav Gozda.
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