История Sabinov Synagogue
Sabinov, known in Hungarian as Kisszeben and in German as Zeben, is a small town on the Torysa river north of Prešov. Until the Second World War it had a sizeable Jewish population, and its synagogue was the community's main building. Very little about the building itself has been published online. The Slovak Nation's Memory Institute (Ústav pamäti národa) states that it was built in 1870, while the English Wikipedia list of synagogues in Slovakia gives 1864; no source read here explains the difference, and no architect, plan, seating figure or description of its style was found. No photograph of the synagogue was located in the postcard and photo collections searched.
What is documented is its end. After the Jews of Sabinov had been taken away, the empty synagogue was used as a store for agricultural produce. In January 1945, as the front approached the town, the retreating Nazi German army burned it. The ruin did not survive into the postwar townscape, and the place where the synagogue stood is today part of the town park. The fullest description of the community, in the Slovak volume of Pinkas Hakehillot, has not been translated online and was not read.
Where it stood for 81 years
Historic: Kisszeben (Sabinov), Sáros county; street and house number unknown. Today: site within the town park (mestský park), Sabinov, 083 01, Prešov region; pin is approximate (town centre).
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Jews lived in Sabinov by the nineteenth century at the latest. The town's Jewish cemetery, surveyed by the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative (ESJF), appears on an Austro-Hungarian military map of the 1880s, which suggests it was in use in that century; its exact founding date is unknown. The cemetery still holds about 60 gravestones and an ohel, with legible dates between 1912 and 1935. The congregation was large enough to build a purpose-built synagogue in the 1860s or 1870s. The Nation's Memory Institute describes the Jews of Slovak towns such as Sabinov as an organic part of local society before the war. The community's size at its peak, its religious orientation (Orthodox or otherwise), its rabbis and its lay leaders were not found in the sources that could be read. Pinkas Hakehillot Slovakia, which has an entry on Sabinov (Kisszeben), is not available in English translation online.
Архитектура и дизайн
No description, plan or photograph of the Sabinov synagogue was found in this research, so its appearance, size and style are unknown. The two dates given for its construction, 1864 in the English Wikipedia list of Slovak synagogues and 1870 in the Nation's Memory Institute report, place it in the 1860s or 1870s. During the war it was used to store grain, but its dimensions are not recorded. It stood on ground that is now the town park; how it was oriented, whether it had a women's gallery and what materials it was built of are not recorded in the sources read. The architect and builder are unknown. Maroš Borský's gazetteer of Slovak synagogue architecture, which probably records the building, could not be read.
Жизнь в синагоге
The religious life of the congregation in this building is almost undocumented in the sources available online. No rabbi, cantor, community president or other office holder of Sabinov could be identified from a source that ties him to this synagogue, and no account of services, festivals, schools or associations attached to it was found. The Jewish cemetery, with its ohel, survives as the only physical trace of the congregation's institutions; who is buried in the ohel was not established. What is certain is that the synagogue remained the community's house of prayer until the deportations of 1942, after which it ceased to be used for worship and was turned over to economic use as a warehouse. Testimonies held by Yad Vashem, the USC Shoah Foundation may preserve memories of the interior and of the town's religious life.
Разрушение
After the deportations of 1942 the synagogue stood empty of worshippers. According to the Nation's Memory Institute, between 1942 and 1945 it was used as a warehouse for agricultural purposes, and grain was stored in it. In January 1945 troops of the Soviet 4th Ukrainian Front and the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps were advancing on Sabinov, which they entered on 21 January. Before they arrived, the retreating Nazi German forces plundered the town. Because they had not managed to remove the grain stored in the synagogue, Nazi German troops set the building on fire on 19 January 1945, two days before the town's liberation. The Institute's account, given at a public commemoration in 2017, is the only detailed one found; the English Wikipedia list of synagogues in Slovakia likewise says the synagogue was burnt down in January 1945. What happened to the burnt-out shell afterwards, when its remains were cleared and by whom, is not recorded in the sources read.
Судьба общины
The deportation of the Jews of Sabinov began in 1942, under the wartime Slovak State. The Nation's Memory Institute states that between 1942 and 1945 more than 500 Jewish residents were forcibly taken from Sabinov; many of them died in concentration camps. Photographs of Jewish families deported from Sabinov in 1942 were shown in the town's cultural centre in 2017, and descendants of several local Jews killed in the camps attended the commemoration. The exact dates of the transports, their destinations, the number of victims and the number of survivors are unknown from the sources read. No organised Jewish community is recorded in Sabinov after the war; the 2021 census counted one resident of Jewish ethnicity and two members of the Jewish religious community in the town.
Место сегодня
The synagogue stood on ground that is now part of Sabinov's town park (mestský park). Nothing of the building is recorded as surviving. A memorial plaque on a stone in the park, unveiled in 2017, marks the place where the synagogue stood. The exact plot and its relation to the present paths and planting were not established, and the street address of the synagogue is unknown. The map pin for this entry is placed at the centre of Sabinov and does not mark the synagogue site precisely. The Jewish cemetery of Sabinov survives and is maintained, with about 60 gravestones and an ohel.
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Фотографии, документы, семейные истории и воспоминания об этой синагоге и её общине помогают сохранить её историю.
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