The story of Rimavská Seč Synagogue
Rimavská Seč, known in Hungarian as Rimaszécs, is a mainly Hungarian-speaking village on the Rima river south-east of Rimavská Sobota. Until 1920 it belonged to the Feled district of Gömör-Kishont county, and between 1938 and 1944 it was again part of Hungary. A county monograph of about 1903 describes it as a small market village of 345 houses, famous for its fairs, with a district court, a reading circle, a volunteer fire brigade, a post office and a railway station. A small Jewish community lived here and buried its dead in a cemetery that is still kept at the back of the municipal cemetery, with gravestones from 1882 to 1943. Its synagogue was a modest free-standing hall built at the beginning of the twentieth century. The architectural historian Maroš Borský, who surveyed Slovakia's lost synagogues, notes that it closely resembled the synagogue of nearby Tornaľa, which may have served as its model. Borský records that the building was demolished after the Second World War; a published list of Slovak synagogues gives the years 1957-1958 and says a single-family house now occupies the plot. A single postcard view in the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives preserves its appearance.
Where it stood for nearly 60 years
Historic: Rimaszécs, Gömör-Kishont county; street and house number unknown. Today: unknown plot in 980 42 Rimavská Seč, said to be occupied by a single-family house; pin at the village centre (approximate).
Open larger map →The Jewish community
Very little is recorded about the Jewish community of Rimavská Seč. Borský describes it as small, and says the modest size of the synagogue reflected its needs. Its presence is best attested by the Jewish cemetery on Cintorínska Street, behind the Christian cemetery. The European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative counted 58 gravestones there, the earliest dated 1882 and the latest 1943, and concluded that the cemetery was in use by the late nineteenth century; an ohel also survives. JewishGen's Cemetery Discovery Project describes marble, granite and sandstone stones with Hebrew, German and Slovak inscriptions. The village as a whole had 1,653 inhabitants in 1910, most of them Hungarian speakers, and had held market rights since 1796, its fairs famous across the country. The number of Jewish residents, the date the congregation was founded, its officers and any rabbi or teacher who served it are unknown. A published list of Slovak synagogues describes the congregation as Orthodox; no other source read confirms this.
Architecture and design
Borský describes the synagogue as a simple free-standing building of the typical countryside type, entered through a portal in the centre of the western front and only three bays deep, with round-arched windows. The west front carried arched moulding, corner pillars topped by decorative pinnacles, a round window in the centre and a curved moulding that probably bore a Hebrew inscription. He found it strongly reminiscent of the synagogue at Tornaľa and suggests the design came from there. The surviving postcard shows exactly this: a rendered gabled hall seen from the south-west, with a row of small brackets following the slopes of the gable, slender corner pillars ending in finials above the roofline, a round window under a raised arch, two tall round-arched windows on the front and three on the side, a moulded cornice and a tiled roof. The date, architect, builder and seating capacity are unknown.
Life inside the synagogue
No description of worship in the synagogue has been found. A published list of Slovak synagogues calls it Orthodox, but no other source read confirms the congregation's affiliation. The postcard shows only the exterior, and no interior photograph, plan or account of its furnishings, Torah ark or women's gallery is known. Borský, who described the building from that single view, says nothing about its interior either. Nothing has been found about the rabbis, cantors, ritual slaughterers or teachers who served the community, about a Jewish school, or about charitable societies. The cemetery with its preserved ohel shows that the community buried its own dead in the village, with stones inscribed in Hebrew, German and Slovak, which hints at the languages its members used.
Destruction
No source read describes damage to the synagogue during the Second World War. Borský records that it was demolished after the war, and a Slovak heritage gazetteer based on his work likewise says it was pulled down after 1945. A published list of Slovak synagogues gives the date more precisely as 1957-1958, which falls in the period of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia; that statement carries no reference and has not been confirmed by a second source. No congregation is recorded as using the building after 1944. Who owned the building after the war, whether it was sold, and who ordered or carried out the demolition is not recorded in any source read. No photograph of the building in its last years or of its demolition has been found.
The community’s fate
From 1938 Rimavská Seč was again part of Hungary, and its Jews shared the fate of the Jews of Hungary. Hungarian gendarmes, under the guidance of Nazi German SS officials, deported around 440,000 Jews from Hungary between 15 May and 9 July 1944, most of them to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where SS personnel killed most of them. No source read records the deportation of the Jews of Rimavská Seč specifically, the ghetto through which they passed, or their number; the nearby district town of Rimavská Sobota was the local administrative centre. The latest gravestone in the village's Jewish cemetery is dated 1943, the last burial recorded before the deportations. How many of the village's Jews survived is unknown, and no evidence was found that a congregation re-formed after the war.
The site today
According to a published list of Slovak synagogues, a single-family house now stands on the plot where the synagogue once stood. The street and house number have not been identified in any source read, and the map pin marks the village centre given by a Slovak heritage gazetteer rather than the building itself. The Jewish cemetery survives on Cintorínska Street, behind the Christian cemetery; it is enclosed by a concrete wall, owned by the municipality, kept in good order and still holds 58 gravestones and an ohel. No marker on the synagogue site was found.
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Photographs, documents, family stories or memories of this synagogue and its community help keep its history alive.
- Synagogue Architecture in Slovakia: Towards Creating a Memorial Landscape of Lost Community (catalogue of demolished synagogues, Rimavská Seč, S0B1601, p. 194; also p. 124-125 on 'twin' synagogues)
- Rimavská Seč – synagóga
- List of synagogues in Slovakia (Banská Bystrica Region table)
- Rimaszécsi zsinagóga (postcard, F01.359; record read via collections.milev.hu/api/items/26643)
- Rimavska Sec (US Commission No. SLCE000108)
- Rimavska Sec Jewish Cemetery
- Rimaszécs (raw wikitext, quoting Borovszky, Gömör-Kishont vármegye monográfiája)
- Rimavská Seč – história
- Deportation of Hungarian Jews (timeline event, 15 May 1944)
- Rimavská Seč (OpenStreetMap relation 2274776)
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