Piešťany Orthodox Synagogue

The Jewish community

Two Jewish families were recorded in Piešťany in 1728, and refugees from Moravia soon followed; by 1736 twelve families lived under the protection of Count Forgách. The community belonged to the Vrbové rabbinate until it became independent in 1795. A prayer room existed from about 1780 and a first synagogue from about 1815. The spa drew Jewish settlers and guests in growing numbers: 105 Jews in 1828, 732 in 1900, 1,254 in 1921 and 1,559 in 1940. Jews owned many shops, pensions and hotels, the Winter family ran the spa itself, and in 1921 eleven of the town's nineteen physicians were Jewish. The congregation was Orthodox from 1869. Its rabbis included David Fischer (died 1880), Josef Unger from Boskovice, Noach Baruch Fischer, who opened a yeshiva in 1900, Kalonymus Kalman Weber and, from 1932, Benzion Josef Unger. Zionist and Agudat Israel groups were both strong. In 1926 about 140 families, opposed to the rabbi's anti-Zionism, left and formed the liberal Yeshurun community. In the 1930s the Orthodox community was led by Karol Holzer, Leopold Weinberger and Nathan Nágel.

Architecture and design

Pamiatkynaslovensku.sk, summarising Ľubomír Mrňa's 1995 article in Pamiatky a múzeá, describes the synagogue as a striking example of the Moorish style, built with walls of glazed facing brick, coloured stained-glass windows and cast-iron columns that carried the women's gallery. The ceilings and the most prominent parts of the walls were painted with geometric ornament. The builder is not named; the article only says he must have been an able professional, and the town information centre calls him anonymous. The one view found, a period photograph reproduced by the regional newspaper Piešťanské noviny, shows a tall brick building seen from a street corner, with banded masonry, a large rose window with a six-pointed star tracery in the gabled side front, smaller round windows, arched openings and corner towers ending in small domed lanterns. A low railing fronts the street. Pinkas Hakehillot gives it 400 seats. The plan, the dimensions and the form of the ark are unknown.

Life inside the synagogue

The synagogue served the Orthodox community of Piešťany and the many observant Jews who came to the spa; the community also kept a kosher restaurant for spa guests and a second synagogue in the bath district. Rabbi Noach Baruch Fischer, one of the leading rabbis of the Hungarian kingdom, opened a yeshiva in 1900 before leaving for Prešov in 1902. His successor, Kalonymus Kalman Weber (died 1932), was a noted preacher, a founder in 1919 and president of the Central Bureau of Orthodox Communities in Slovakia, and a firm opponent of Zionism; he ran a yeshiva of about fifty students. The dayan Issachar Shlomo Teichtal, later author of Em HaBanim Semeichah, acted as rabbi and in 1931 opened his own yeshiva, Moriah. From 1932 the rabbi was Benzion Josef Unger, who also kept a yeshiva. Four small communities and 23 villages belonged to the Piešťany rabbinate. The community ran a five-class Jewish elementary school with about 100 pupils in the 1930s, a Talmud Torah, a mikveh, an old-age home and a soup kitchen.

Destruction

During the war the synagogue was confiscated and used as a depot for the property of deported Jews. The town information centre reports that a property appraiser who inspected it in 1949 found the building desecrated and looted, with prayer books and documents scattered inside. Survivors did not return to it: after 1945 the reunited community prayed in the former Yeshurun synagogue. According to the town information centre the Orthodox synagogue was thoughtlessly pulled down at the beginning of the 1950s, in the early years of Communist rule. Pamiatkynaslovensku.sk, citing Mrňa, adds that its materials were too good simply to demolish, so it was taken apart and the material used to build a private house. Neither source names who ordered or carried out the work, so who demolished it is not recorded. Pinkas Hakehillot instead says that the large synagogue of the Orthodox community was destroyed in 1979; no source found explains this later date, which may refer to another structure on the plot.

The community’s fate

Persecution began as soon as Slovak autonomy was declared. On 5 November 1938, 65 Piešťany Jews without Slovak citizenship were expelled to the no-man's-land on the Hungarian border, and in March 1939 the Hlinka Guard organised riots and looting. In 1941 about 260 Jewish businesses in the district were closed or handed to Aryanisers. Deportations began in March 1942: young men were sent to Majdanek, and young women via the Patrónka camp in Bratislava to Auschwitz on 1 April. About 330 people were sent through Nové Mesto to the Opole ghetto on 27 April, and 369 through Sereď on 8 May. Some 90 per cent of the district's Jews were deported in 1942. About 210 with protection papers remained until the suppression of the Slovak National Uprising, when Nazi SS units occupied the town in September 1944; most were caught and sent through Sereď to Auschwitz. Rabbi Benzion Josef Unger was murdered at Sereď. About 1,500 Jews of Piešťany and its district were killed. Some 250 survivors re-formed a united community in 1945; most emigrated in 1949.

The site today

No part of the Orthodox synagogue survives. Pamiatkynaslovensku.sk says an unsightly repair-shop hall first occupied the plot and was later replaced by a house, and the town information centre notes that the community's mikveh and caretaker's flat on the same plot stood into the early 2000s. The site lies on Winterova street in central Piešťany, close to a small park behind the Pierre de Coubertin grammar school, on the site of the former Teplice cemetery. A plaque to Rabbi Issachar Shlomo Teichtal stands in that park near where the synagogue stood. The liberal Yeshurun synagogue of 1928, used as a storehouse after the community dissolved according to Pinkas Hakehillot, is a separate building.

Notable names