Die Geschichte von Rokycany Synagogue
Rokycany is a district town in the Plzeň region of West Bohemia, about fifteen kilometres east of Plzeň. Jews are recorded there from 1589, but for centuries only a few families were allowed to live in the town: before 1848 there were just four. An independent congregation is dated to 1781. After the restrictions on Jewish settlement were lifted in 1848, Jews also moved into the villages around the town, and the community grew to its largest size around 1900.
Its synagogue was completed in 1871, at the time when the congregation was growing. No description, plan or photograph of the building was found in the sources consulted, so its appearance, its architect and its size are unknown. The community also kept a ceremonial house with a hall, and from the 1890s it had its own cemetery north of the town; before then its dead were buried at Osek.
Numbers fell again after 1910, as members moved to Plzeň, Prague and Vienna, and the community came to an end in the Holocaust. The synagogue outlived the congregation by four decades. It was pulled down in 1981, while Czechoslovakia was under Communist rule. The ceremonial house survives and has been rebuilt for private use.
Where it stood for 110 years
Historic: Rokycany (Rokitzan), Bohemia; street and house number unknown. Today: unknown; placeholder pin on Masarykovo náměstí, 337 01 Rokycany, Plzeň region (approximate).
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According to the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project summary, which draws on the censuses of 1724, 1830 and 1930, on the Jahrbuch für die israelitischen Cultusgemeinden Böhmens of 1894-1895 and on Hugo Gold's 1934 volume on the Jews of Bohemia, Jewish settlement in Rokycany goes back to 1589. Under the restrictive laws of the period only four Jewish families were permitted in the town before 1848. An independent congregation is dated to 1781. After 1848 Jews were free to settle in the surrounding villages, and the community reached its peak around 1900. It counted 98 people in 1910 and 59 in 1930, the decline being due to members moving to the larger cities of Plzeň, Prague and Vienna. Until about 1890 the community buried its dead in the old Jewish cemetery at Osek, a village near Rokycany; a cemetery of its own was laid out at the northern edge of the town after 1893. The names of its rabbis, cantors and presidents were not found in the sources read.
Architektur und Gestaltung
Very little is known about the building. The only source found states that the original synagogue was built in 1871; it gives no architect, builder, style, capacity or address, and no photograph, drawing or plan of it was located. The year places it in the period of growth that followed 1848, when Jews were first free to settle in the villages around the town and the community expanded towards its peak around 1900. Whether it stood on its own or within a group of community buildings is unknown. The same source mentions a separate ceremonial house with a hall, which has since been reconstructed for private use, and a small pre-burial house with a chimney at the cemetery, sold in the 1970s. The architect, the style, the interior arrangement and the seating capacity of the synagogue are all unknown and will need the records of the Jewish Museum in Prague, the State District Archive in Rokycany or the local museum to establish.
Leben in der Synagoge
No account of services or community life in the Rokycany synagogue was found. What the sources do show is a small congregation that was at its strongest between the building's completion in 1871 and the First World War, with 98 members in 1910, and that was already shrinking in the interwar years, when 59 Jews were counted in 1930. The community maintained a ceremonial house with a hall alongside the synagogue and, from the 1890s, a cemetery of its own at the northern edge of the town, where the burial practice recorded is described as Conservative. Before that, funerals had to travel to the old Jewish cemetery at Osek. The community appears in the Jahrbuch für die israelitischen Cultusgemeinden Böhmens of 1894-1895, cited as a source for the town's Jewish history, but that volume was not read for this entry, and the names of the rabbis, cantors, teachers and lay leaders who served the synagogue remain unknown.
Zerstörung
No source found describes damage to the synagogue during the Nazi occupation or the Second World War, and the building evidently survived the war, since it is recorded as standing until 1981. It stood empty of its congregation after the community came to an end in 1940. How it was used in the following decades, and who owned it after 1945, is not documented in the sources consulted. The JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project, drawing on information gathered in Czechoslovakia up to 1992, states only that the original synagogue built in 1871 was pulled down in 1981. That date falls under Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, a period in which the town was being rebuilt with uniform blocks of flats, from the 1960s in concrete panels. Who ordered or carried out the demolition, whether the building had first been sold, and why it was removed are not recorded in any source found. The community's pre-burial house at the cemetery was sold in the same period, in the 1970s.
Das Schicksal der Gemeinde
The JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project gives the Jewish settlement of Rokycany as lasting from 1589 until the Holocaust, and dates its end to 1940, during the Nazi German occupation of the Czech lands. In 1930 the community had 59 members. The sources read do not say how many Rokycany Jews emigrated before the war, how many were deported, by which transports or to which camps, or how many were murdered or survived. The cemetery records show that its last known burial took place during the Second World War. No congregation was re-established after 1945. The cemetery was vandalised at various times between 1945 and 1981 and was restored in 1975 and again in 1989-1990; it is owned by the Jewish community of Plzeň, which pays a local caretaker. Fewer than ten Jews were living in Rokycany at the time of the survey. The Terezín and Holocaust victim databases, which would give the names and fates of individual victims, were not consulted for this entry.
Der Ort heute
The exact plot on which the synagogue stood has not been identified in any source consulted, so it is not possible to say what occupies it today. The building was removed in 1981, and no surviving fragment is recorded. The community's ceremonial house with its hall still stands, rebuilt for private purposes, but its address was not given. The Jewish cemetery survives about 1.5 kilometres north-north-east of the main square, beyond the hospital on Voldušská street, with between 20 and 100 gravestones. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder on Masarykovo náměstí, the town's main square, and should not be read as the synagogue's location.
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