Ózd Synagogue

PRZEGLĄD

Historia Ózd Synagogue

Ózd grew from a small village into an industrial town after coal was found nearby and an ironworks opened in the late 1840s. Jewish merchants and craftsmen settled to supply the growing workforce, and most of the shops in the new commercial quarter, called Gyújtó, belonged to Jews. The Israelite congregation of Ózd was formed in 1872, and Jews of the surrounding villages joined it. It opened a school in 1878, founded a women's association in 1897 and laid out a cemetery in 1900. According to the historian Péter Nagy, the synagogue opened its doors in 1906, followed in 1908 by a new building for the Jewish elementary school; Anikó Gazda's national gazetteer of synagogues dates the building to 1901, so it may have been begun in 1901 and opened in 1906.

No photograph or description of the building has been found, and its street is not recorded in the sources read. Its congregation was ghettoised and deported in 1944. The synagogue was in use again after the war, and on 23 February 1946 it was attacked during a Saturday service in the anti-Jewish riot that swept the Gyújtó quarter. As the shrunken community dwindled under Communist rule the building lost its purpose, and it was demolished at an unrecorded date; Gazda found it gone when she surveyed Hungarian synagogue sites in 1980-87.

LOKALIZACJA

Where it stood for nearly 70 years

Historic: Ózd, Borsod county; street and house number unknown. Today: unknown; pin at the Gyújtó neighbourhood of Ózd, 3600 Ózd, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county (approximate).

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Społeczność żydowska

Jews came to Ózd with its industry. As the ironworks and mines drew in workers, traders and craftsmen followed, and most of them were Jewish; the shops of the Gyújtó commercial quarter were mostly Jewish-owned. Péter Nagy's interviews with elderly residents recall good relations with the Catholic and Protestant workers and farmers, who could buy on credit or in instalments in Jewish shops, though the community kept somewhat to itself. The congregation was founded in 1872 and also served the Jews of nearby villages. It opened an elementary school in 1878, founded the Israelite Women's Association in 1897, laid out a cemetery in 1900, opened the synagogue in 1906 and put up a new school building in 1908. Before the villages were merged into the town, the 1930 census counted 197 Jews in Ózd itself, 480 in neighbouring Bolyok, which had its own congregation, and 110 in Sajóvárkony. In 1941 the enlarged town had 721 Jewish residents. The names of the congregation's rabbis and officers were not found in the sources read.

Architektura i projekt

No photograph, drawing, plan or written description of the Ózd synagogue has been found. Anikó Gazda's survey classes the building as a synagogue proper, as opposed to a prayer room in a house, and gives 1901 as its date; Péter Nagy, citing a manuscript family history by Béla Beri kept in the Ózd city library, gives 1906 as the year it opened. The size of the building, its seating, its architect or builder, its style and its interior arrangement are all unknown. The only physical detail recorded is indirect: in February 1946 the attackers forced its door with iron bars, and most of the worshippers escaped by jumping out through the doors. A synagogue built in a prosperous industrial town in the 1900s would be expected to show the eclectic or Art Nouveau taste of the period, but no evidence confirms this. Old postcards of Ózd, the Fortepan photo archive and the Beri manuscript are the most likely places to find a view of it.

Życie w synagodze

Little is recorded about worship in the Ózd synagogue. The congregation, founded in 1872, was the religious centre for the Jews of Ózd and the surrounding villages, and the synagogue stood alongside its other institutions: the elementary school, which got its own new building in 1908, the women's association, which held public balls reported in the local paper in 1910, and the cemetery opened in 1900. Whether the congregation followed the Neolog, Orthodox or Status Quo rite has not been established from the sources read, nor have the names of its rabbis, cantors or presidents. The one service described in detail is the last documented one. On the morning of Saturday 23 February 1946, survivors who had returned from the camps were at prayer in the synagogue when a crowd broke in. After the war the community counted 113 members with the surrounding villages in 1949, which suggests that services continued for some years, but how long the building was used is unknown.

Zniszczenie

The synagogue stood empty after the deportation of June 1944; no source read records damage to it during the war. Survivors reopened it, and on 23 February 1946 it was attacked. That morning a workers' rally at the ironworks, called after the communist chairman of the works committee had been assaulted, turned into an anti-Jewish riot. According to Péter Nagy, 80 to 100 people from the rally marched to the synagogue, where a service was in progress, forced the door with iron bars and drove out the worshippers, most of whom escaped by jumping out through the doors. Their leader was a village postman named Lahó who worked in the notary's office at Sajóvárkony. Left-wing papers at the time blamed far-right agitators; whether the leaders were Arrow Cross members is, in Nagy's words, still unresolved. The building survived the riot. The Hungarian Wikipedia article on Ózd, citing Nagy, says that by the last third of the century the congregation had ceased to exist and the synagogue had been demolished. Gazda recorded it as demolished in her 1980-87 survey. Who ordered or carried out the demolition, and in what year, is not recorded in the sources read.

Los społeczności

Anti-Jewish laws and forced labour service for Jewish men had already struck the community when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944. In May 1944 the Hungarian authorities set up a ghetto in Ózd in the Gyújtó commercial quarter, where Jews from the whole Ózd district were concentrated; the Hungarian Wikipedia gives their number as 1,034. On 5 June the Jews were forced into ten cattle cars at the railway station and deported; the Hungarian Wikipedia names the destination as Auschwitz. Several hundred men were taken for labour service, and Ózd also had a labour service camp. Nagy estimates that about a tenth of the town's Jews survived and came home, to find their houses looted and often occupied by local families. On 23 and 24 February 1946 a crowd of about three hundred plundered Jewish shops and homes in Gyújtó, including the Red Cross storeroom for returning deportees; 46 people were arrested. Many survivors then left. In 1949 the congregation still had 113 members with the surrounding villages, but under the Kádár regime it shrank to 15 or 20 families and later ceased to exist.

Miejsce dzisiaj

The plot on which the synagogue stood has not been identified in any source read, so its present use is unknown and no surviving fragment of the building is recorded. The map pin marks the Gyújtó neighbourhood, the old commercial quarter where most Jewish families lived and where the 1944 ghetto was set up; it is not the documented site of the synagogue. A memorial raised by the survivors in 1947 for about 800 murdered Jews of the Ózd area was later moved to Miskolc. The Jewish cemetery on Iskola Street survives and was reported in 2009 as needing restoration. Identifying the exact site will need the town's cadastral maps or local records in the Ózd city library.

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