הסיפור של Sály Synagogue
Sály is a village in the Bükkalja hills of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county, in the valley of the Sály stream, about six kilometres from main road 3 and near Mezőkövesd. Its small Jewish community had a synagogue of its own, which Anikó Gazda's national survey of 1980-87 classed as a purpose-built synagogue and recorded as already demolished. Very little else about the building has been found, and no entry for Sály was found in the Magyar Zsidó Lexikon of 1929.
The one known image is an undated black-and-white photograph kept in the synagogue series of the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives in Budapest under the title 'Sályi zsinagóga'. It shows a low, single-storey hall under a pitched roof behind a rubble-stone boundary wall, with cracked render and a creeper on its gable, photographed in snow.
The only people of the community traced by name before the Holocaust belong to a cantor's family: Dávid Klein, later Dr Dávid Egyedi, a Budapest dermatologist and urologist, was born in Sály in 1885, the son of the cantor Benjámin Klein. In May 1944 the Hungarian authorities moved the Jews of Sály to the ghetto at Mezőkeresztes, and a memorial book lists twelve of them by name as victims. When the synagogue was pulled down, and by whom, is unknown.
Where it stood
Historic: Sály, Borsod county; street and house number unknown. Today: Unknown; placeholder pin at the centre of 3425 Sály, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county (approximate).
פתיחת מפה גדולה ←הקהילה היהודית
No population figures for the Jews of Sály could be read during this research, and the evidence found points to a community of a few families. Hungarian Wikipedia's biography of Dávid Egyedi, which cites civil and Israelite registers, says that his father Benjámin Klein (1861-1952) was a cantor, that his mother was Rebeka Heller (1864-1945), that the couple's marriage of 1884 is entered in the register of the Abaújszántó Israelite community, and that Dávid was born at Sály on 18 July 1885. The memorial book for Miskolc and its region, published at Bnei Brak in 1970, lists twelve martyrs from Sály in four families: József Grosz, born 1878, and his wife Regina, born Kellner in 1880; József Pollák, born 1900, and his wife Margit, born Stern; Mór Fried, his wife, and Éva, Tibor, Anikó and Ágota Fried; and József Schönberger and Mariska Schönberger, born Ehrmann. In 1944 the village belonged to the Mezőkeresztes district. Pinkas Hakehillot Hungary has an entry for Sály on page 515, but no translation of it was available. The rabbinate or mother community to which Sály belonged is unknown.
אדריכלות ועיצוב
The only evidence for the building's appearance is the photograph in the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives. It shows a small, free-standing, single-storey hall with rendered walls and a plain pitched roof, seen from a corner so that one gable end and one long side are visible. The gable end has two rectangular windows, one of them with small panes, a narrow ledge on the wall between them, and a small opening high in the gable. The long side is divided into flat panels, between which sit three narrow round-headed windows in lighter surrounds; the one nearest the far end is smaller and set higher than the other two. A moulded cornice runs under the eaves. There is no tower, dome or visible inscription, and no entrance can be seen on the two sides shown. The render of the gable is cracked from the apex downwards and a creeper climbs it. A low rubble-stone wall encloses the plot, and a neighbouring roof and a bare tree are visible behind. The date of construction, architect, builder, seating capacity and interior arrangement are unknown.
החיים בבית הכנסת
Nothing has been found that describes services, furnishings or customs in the Sály synagogue. The one religious functionary who can be linked to the village is the cantor Benjámin Klein, whose son Dávid was born there in 1885; the source calls him a cantor and places the birth in Sály, but does not say in so many words that he sang in this building. No rabbi of Sály is named in any source read, and it is not known whether the village had its own ritual slaughterer, school or ritual bath, or which branch of Hungarian Judaism the congregation followed. The Magyar Zsidó Lexikon's entry for Mezőkövesd, an Orthodox community from 1871, lists the villages of its registry district, and Sály is not among them. Gazda's classification of the building as a synagogue, not a prayer room, indicates a structure put up for worship. The Grosz, Pollák, Fried and Schönberger families named in the memorial book were among the congregation's last members.
הרס
Regular use of the synagogue ended in May 1944, when the Jews of Sály were removed to the Mezőkeresztes ghetto. According to the village website, Sály was a battlefield for two weeks in November 1944 until the front passed on 19 November; no source says whether the synagogue was damaged then. The photograph in the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives is undated. It shows the building standing with its roof intact but in poor repair, with a long crack down the gable and a creeper on the wall. Anikó Gazda, who surveyed Hungarian synagogue sites between 1980 and 1987, recorded the Sály synagogue as demolished and gave no date. English Wikipedia's list of synagogues in Hungary leaves the 'Built' and 'Destroyed' columns empty for Sály and only links the same photograph. No source read gives the year of demolition, names the owner of the building at the time, or says who pulled it down. It is therefore not known whether it was sold by surviving members or the national Jewish office, or taken down by the village council.
גורל הקהילה
After the Nazi German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, the Hungarian authorities concentrated the Jews of Borsod county in ghettos. Randolph Braham records that in the Mezőkeresztes district this was done between 19 and 24 May 1944 under order 2281/1944, issued on 17 May by the chief district magistrate Károly Leszkay. The ghetto was set up in the timber yard of Lajos Szántó at Mezőkeresztes, and Szántó headed its Jewish Council. It held 511 Jews, most of them from Mezőkeresztes, the others brought from Alsóábrány, Borsodgeszt, Felsőábrány, Keresztespüspöki, Mezőnagymihály, Mezőnyárád, Sály, Szentistván, Tibolddaróc and Vatta. Braham notes that the Jews of the neighbouring Mezőkövesd ghetto were taken to Miskolc for deportation by early June; the route of the Mezőkeresztes inmates is not stated in the passages read. JewishGen's Miskolc page says the transports left Miskolc in mid-June 1944 with 15,451 people, including Jews from surrounding communities, and reached Auschwitz between 13 and 16 June. The Miskolc memorial book names twelve victims from Sály. The number of survivors is unknown, and no Jewish community is recorded in the village after the war.
האתר כיום
The plot on which the synagogue stood has not been identified. No source read gives its street or house number, and no marker or memorial on the site is recorded. The photograph shows a walled plot with a neighbouring building behind it, but nothing that names the street. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Sály, near the main square, the Reformed church on Toldi Miklós utca and the village hall on Kossuth Lajos utca, and should not be read as the synagogue's location. Whether a Jewish cemetery survives in the village was not established. Fixing the site will need cadastral maps, the county archives in Miskolc or local memory; Ernő Barsi's 1965 ethnographic monograph on Sály may also help.
יש לכם משהו לתרום?
תמונות, מסמכים, סיפורי משפחה וזיכרונות מבית הכנסת ומהקהילה שלו עוזרים לשמור על ההיסטוריה שלו בחיים.
- Zsinagógák és zsidó községek Magyarországon (Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county table)
- Sályi zsinagóga (F70.367, F16.081)
- List of synagogues in Hungary (Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county table)
- A népirtás politikája: a Holocaust Magyarországon (pp. 674-675, Zone III, Borsod county, notes 53-55)
- The Martyrs of Miskolc and Vicinity: List of Martyrs in Other Towns and Villages (p. 251, Sály)
- Miskolc, Hungary: The Martyrs of Miskolc and Vicinity (title page and contents)
- Miskolc: The Holocaust
- Egyedi Dávid
- Sály
- Településünkről
- Mezőkövesd (entry in Magyar Zsidó Lexikon, 1929)
- Magyar Zsidó Lexikon (1929), headword index
- Pinkas Hakehillot Hungary: Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities, Hungary (table of contents)
- Sály: egy bükkalji falu a hagyományos gazdálkodás idején
- Sály (OpenStreetMap relation 1418456)
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