Plešivec Synagogue

PRZEGLĄD

Historia Plešivec Synagogue

Plešivec lies in the valley of the Slaná river in the Rožňava district of eastern Slovakia. In the nineteenth century it was the seat of Gemer county and later became a railway junction with ironworks, a paper mill and a magnesite works. Jews settled in the Gemer region only late: the art historian Maroš Borský notes that Jews were long kept out of the mining counties of central Slovakia, Gemer-Malohont among them.

The synagogue is known from Borský's catalogue of demolished Slovak synagogues, which dates it to the beginning of the twentieth century; a Slovak heritage gazetteer based on Borský's later book says the end of the nineteenth century, and a published list of Slovak synagogues gives 1906 and calls it Orthodox. No source read in this research confirms that affiliation, so the entry uses a neutral name. Only one historical photograph of the building is known, showing its eastern front, which faced the street. Borský called it a charming countryside synagogue.

None of the sources found mentions a second synagogue or prayer house in Plešivec. The building disappeared after the Second World War; no record of its demolition has been found. A Jewish cemetery survives on a hillside in the village.

LOKALIZACJA

Where it stood for nearly 40 years

Historic: Pelsőc (Plešivec), Gömör-Kishont county; street and house number unknown. Today: Plešivec, Rožňava district, Košice region; pin near Okružná street in the village centre (approximate).

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Społeczność żydowska

Very little about the Jewish community of Plešivec could be found in the sources read for this entry. Borský explains that the counties of Gemer-Malohont, Zvolen, Hont, Tekov and Turňa, a mountainous mining region in the centre of the country, long excluded Jews, so that on maps of Jewish population before the nineteenth century the area appears as an empty island. A community in Plešivec therefore probably formed only in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the town grew as a railway junction and industrial centre, but its founding date, its size, its rabbis and its officers are unknown. The Pinkas Hakehillot volume on Slovakia has an entry for Plešivec (Pelsőc) on page 451, but it has not been translated online and could not be read. The surviving Jewish cemetery, recorded by the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project, holds between 20 and 100 tombstones of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in marble, granite and sandstone, with Hebrew and German inscriptions, which shows a settled community with its own burial ground.

Architektura i projekt

Borský describes the synagogue from its only preserved historical photograph, which shows the eastern façade facing the street. Because the ark stood against the east wall, the street front expressed the building's interior: the position of the ark was marked on the façade and flanked on each side by a pair of windows set one above the other, the upper ones in round-arched frames. In the centre was a window glazed with four stained-glass Stars of David, with a stucco Star of David above it. The front ended in a blind-arched gable crowned by the tablets of the Ten Commandments, which together with the stars announced the religion practised inside. Two polygonal corner pillars topped with turret-like pinnacles framed the façade. Borský calls this a typical repertoire of elements; the round-arched frames and corner turrets are those of the Rundbogenstil-influenced historicism he describes for many small Slovak synagogues. The plan, the roof, the side walls, the interior, the seating, the women's gallery and the architect are all unknown.

Życie w synagodze

No account of services, rabbis, cantors or communal institutions connected with this building was found. A published list of Slovak synagogues names it the Plešivec Orthodox Synagogue, but that line has no reference, Borský's catalogue calls the building simply a synagogue, and no other source read here states the congregation's affiliation; the façade he describes would fit an Orthodox or a Neolog congregation equally well. The arrangement of the interior, including the position of the bimah and the women's section, is unknown. The building stood on a street with its decorated east front facing passers-by, so the community made its house of worship visible in the town rather than hiding it in a courtyard. Whether the congregation kept a school, a ritual bath or a burial society is not recorded in the sources found, although the separate Jewish cemetery shows that it at least buried its own dead in its own ground.

Zniszczenie

No source found describes damage to the synagogue during the Second World War. Borský's catalogue records only that it was demolished after the war, and the Slovak heritage gazetteer based on his work says the same; neither gives a year. A published list of Slovak synagogues gives 1950, but the year carries no reference and similar round dates in that list appear to be placeholders, so it is not adopted here. If the building did come down around 1950 it would have been in the first years of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, but no document shows who owned it after 1945, whether it was sold by the surviving Jewish community, or who ordered or carried out the demolition. Who demolished it is not recorded in any source consulted. No photographs of the building in ruins or of the demolition were found, and Borský knew of only one historical image of it.

Los społeczności

The fate of the Jews of Plešivec could not be documented in detail from the sources read for this entry. Borský writes that southern Slovakia was under Hungarian occupation from 1938 and that the Jews of these regions met their end in the Hungarian Holocaust of 1944-1945, unlike those of the Slovak State, who were deported from 1942. Plešivec lies in the south of the Rožňava district, but no source read here names the ghetto its Jews were taken to, the date of their deportation or the number of victims. The nearest district town was Rožňava, whose own synagogue Borský records as standing barren and unused before it was demolished in the late 1950s. How many Jews of Plešivec survived, and whether any returned, is unknown. No organised Jewish community is recorded in Plešivec after the war, and the cemetery is now unmarked and threatened by vegetation and vandalism.

Miejsce dzisiaj

The exact plot of the synagogue has not been identified. A Slovak heritage gazetteer gives coordinates for it that fall in the centre of the village, close to Okružná street, but the point coincides almost exactly with the municipality's geographic centre and is probably not a surveyed location. No remains of the building and no marker on its site are recorded in the sources read. The village's Jewish cemetery still exists on a hillside: the JewishGen survey describes it as an isolated site with no sign, entered through a gap in a wall, with tombstones still in their original positions. Locating the synagogue plot will need old cadastral maps or the photograph reproduced in Borský's dissertation and book.

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