La storia di Pécsvárad Synagogue
Pécsvárad is a small town in Baranya county in southern Hungary, east of Pécs. Very little has been published about its synagogue, and this entry rests on a handful of sources. Anikó Gazda's gazetteer of Hungarian synagogues records 160 Jews in the town in 1910 and 120 in 1941, classes their building as a synagogue rather than a prayer house, and marks it as demolished at the time of her site survey between 1980 and 1987. She gives no construction date, street or builder.
The only image found is a photograph in the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives, dated 1956 and titled 'interior of the Pécsvárad synagogue when it ceased'. It shows a small vaulted hall with an arched Torah ark niche, a wooden reader's enclosure and peeling plaster. The congregation it had served no longer existed: in 1944 the Jews of Pécsvárad were taken to Pécs, where 5,963 Jews were concentrated, and deported on 4 July. The town's own website says that the local Jewish community of about 107 people was killed with few exceptions.
The building must therefore have been pulled down at some point between 1956 and the 1980s, under Communist rule. No source found says who demolished it, whether it had first been sold, or what stands on the plot today.
Where it stood
Historic: Pécsvárad, Baranya county; street and house number unknown. Today: Unknown; placeholder pin at the centre of 7720 Pécsvárad, Baranya county (approximate).
Apri la mappa grande →La comunità ebraica
The size of the community is known mainly from census figures. Gazda's table gives no figure for Pécsvárad in 1828 or 1851 and records 160 Jews in 1910 and 120 in 1941. The town's website gives a total population of 2,760 in 1934, so Jews were a small minority, roughly one inhabitant in twenty. A 2016 newspaper report on the research of the Pécs historian István Károly Vörös names Pécsvárad first among the Baranya towns, outside Pécs and Mohács, where the county's remaining two thousand or so Jews lived in 1941. The community kept an Israelite denominational elementary school. In 1922 ten Jewish children shared it with twenty Roman Catholic children, and it was still open in 1943 with three pupils taught by one woman teacher. No separate entry for Pécsvárad was found in the Magyar Zsidó Lexikon of 1929, and the names of the community's rabbis, presidents and other officers were not found in any source read. Its date of foundation and its religious affiliation, whether Neolog, Orthodox or Status Quo, are unknown.
Architettura e design
No exterior view, plan or written description of the synagogue was found, so its outward appearance, date, architect and builder are unknown. Gazda classed it as a synagogue proper, not a prayer house. The 1956 photograph shows one end wall of the interior. The wall is plastered and plain. At its centre is the Torah ark, a tall round-arched niche framed by two slender columns with simple capitals; in the photograph the opening is filled with plain vertical boards. A tall standing candelabrum with curved arms is placed to the right of it. In front stands a wooden enclosure with a balustrade of thin colonnettes carrying small round arches, and at its centre a curved, panelled reading desk. A large round-arched window opens on each side of the ark. The ceiling is a low plastered vault that curves down to the walls, with a flat rectangular panel in the middle; it is cracked and has holes in it. The lower walls are stained and the paint is flaking. The room looks small, in keeping with a congregation of 120 to 160 people. Seating, a women's gallery and any painted decoration are not visible.
La vita nella sinagoga
Almost nothing is recorded about worship in the building. No rabbi, cantor or teacher of the congregation is named in the sources read, and it is not known whether Pécsvárad had a rabbi of its own or was served from a larger community such as Pécs. What can be said is that the community was large enough to keep a synagogue and a denominational elementary school. The school taught ten Jewish and twenty Roman Catholic children in 1922 and survived, with three pupils and one woman teacher, until at least 1943. The furnishings visible in the 1956 photograph give the only picture of how the room was arranged: the Torah scrolls were kept in an arched ark on the end wall, a wooden reading desk stood inside a railed enclosure directly in front of it, and a tall candelabrum stood beside the ark. Regular services must have ended in 1944, when the town's Jews were removed to Pécs. Whether the few survivors prayed there again before the building was given up in 1956 is unknown.
Distruzione
No source found describes damage to the synagogue during the Second World War. It lost its congregation in 1944, when the Jews of Pécsvárad were taken to Pécs and deported. The Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives holds a photograph dated 1956 whose title reads 'interior of the Pécsvárad synagogue when it ceased'. It shows the ark opening boarded, the vault cracked and holed, plaster peeling and debris lying in one corner, so the building was already in poor condition when it was given up. Anikó Gazda, who surveyed Hungarian synagogue sites between 1980 and 1987, recorded the Pécsvárad synagogue as demolished. The demolition therefore took place between 1956 and the 1980s, under Communist rule. The exact year is unknown. No source read in this research says who owned the building after 1956, whether the national Jewish office or the remaining community sold it, or whether the council, a state body or a private buyer pulled it down. Nobody is named, and the entry does not assign the demolition to any actor.
Il destino della comunità
Gazda's figures give 120 Jews in Pécsvárad in 1941. After the Nazi German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, the Jews of Baranya county were concentrated in Pécs. According to Randolph Braham, the Jews of Pécs were ordered into the ghetto on 9 May and it was sealed on 21 May; of the 5,963 Jews eventually held in the city, about 3,500 were residents and the rest were brought in from neighbouring places, among which he names Bonyhád, Mohács and Pécsvárad. On 28 and 29 June the ghetto population was moved to the Lakits barracks, and on 4 July 1944 they were loaded into wagons and deported. Braham does not say on which day the Pécsvárad Jews were brought to Pécs. The town's website states that the local Jewish community of about 107 people fell victim with few exceptions. How many survived, and whether any returned to live in Pécsvárad, is unknown. That the synagogue ceased in 1956 suggests that no congregation remained by then. JewishGen recorded in 2009 that the Jewish cemetery was in the care of the mayor's office.
Il luogo oggi
The street and plot of the synagogue are not named in any source consulted, so it is not known what stands there now. Gazda's table, which gives addresses for many Baranya synagogues, leaves that column blank for Pécsvárad. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of the town and should not be read as the synagogue's location. No marker on the site is recorded. The Jewish cemetery of Pécsvárad survives and was reported in 2009 to be looked after by the mayor's office. The Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives also holds an undated photograph of a stone memorial with wreaths, catalogued with a question mark as a memorial at Pécsvárad. Old cadastral maps or the Baranya county archives should make it possible to fix the plot.
Hai qualcosa da condividere?
Fotografie, documenti, storie di famiglia o ricordi di questa sinagoga e della sua comunità aiutano a mantenerne viva la storia.
- Zsinagógák és zsidó községek Magyarországon (Baranya county table, PDF p. 19; key to symbols in the introduction)
- Pécsváradi zsinagóga belső képe, amikor megszűnt (F73.161)
- Pecsvarad.jpg (image linked from the Wikipedia 'List of synagogues in Hungary')
- A népirtás politikája: a Holocaust Magyarországon, vol. 2, chapter 22 (Zone V: Pécs), pp. 731-732
- Városunk története (history of Pécsvárad)
- Tradíció és integráció a pécsi izraelita elemi népiskolában (Diké 9/2, 2025, pp. 251-272, at p. 255)
- A baranyai zsidóság krónikása
- Pécsvárad (Cemetery Discovery Project)
- Emlékmű Pécsváradon (?) (F14.163)
- Pinkas Hakehillot Hungary: table of contents
- Pécsvárad (OpenStreetMap relation 575323)
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