Old Synagogue of Senec

OVERVIEW

The story of Old Synagogue of Senec

Senec, called Szenc in Hungarian and Wartberg in German, is a market town in the Bratislava region. Its Jewish community grew in the early nineteenth century, and in 1825 it built its first synagogue, described as the only synagogue in the surrounding district. Following the custom of the period before Jewish emancipation, the building did not face the public square; it stood deep inside its plot behind the houses on the south side of today's Mierové námestie, within a group of communal buildings. A field sketch of the town made in 1894 still shows it there.

Around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a large fire struck the building. The building-historical survey made in June and July 2005 by Elena Sabadošová and Marian Havlík found a burnt layer of soil, potsherds and charcoal under the present synagogue and concluded that the older synagogue was probably demolished as a result of that fire. Between 1904 and 1907 the Orthodox congregation put up a new, much larger synagogue 'on the site of the old one', designed by the local builder Jozef Halzl. Some popular accounts describe the 1904 work as a renovation of the 1825 building, but the survey's probes found no building material of an older structure in the present walls. The new synagogue still stands and is not the subject of this entry.

LOCATION

Where it stood for nearly 75 years

Historic: synagogue courtyard off the main market square of Senec (Szenc), set back from the south side of the square, as shown on the 1894 field sketch. Today: Mierové námestie 16/12, 903 01 Senec, site of the present synagogue (approximate for the old building).

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The Jewish community

Sources differ on when Jews first settled in Senec. Róbert Büchler's encyclopedia of Jewish communities puts the first record in 1410, Eugen Bárkány gives 1715 and Júlia Suslová 1746. The Jews of the town lived mainly from farming, crafts and trade, especially at the regular fairs that also drew Jews from the surrounding villages. In the 1820s, when the first synagogue was built, the community had over 60 members; in 1851 it numbered about 20 families with 69 people. It grew steadily during the century. The Orthodox community was formally constituted in 1871, Senec became the seat of a Jewish registry district in 1885, and by 1900 the community had 414 members. That growth, together with the loss of the old building, led to the decision to build a larger and more representative synagogue facing the square. The cemetery, a walled plot of 45 by 65 metres outside the town beyond the former brickworks, was established around 1900.

Architecture and design

No photograph, drawing or written description of the 1825 synagogue has been found. Its form is known only from maps. On the 1894 field sketch of Senec it is marked in blue as a compact block set back from the building line of the square, unlike the houses around it, with a projecting bay (risalit) on its west side. Sabadošová and Havlík note that there are no archival records about the building itself. The arrangement of buildings on the map shows that it formed part of a complex that also included a ritual bath (mikveh) and a slaughterhouse. The Monuments Board's record of the present synagogue adds that, according to surviving cadastral maps, the old 'Jewish church' was one of several community buildings on the plot, together with a smaller winter prayer room, a study room (beit midrash) and rooms for the burial society (Chevra Kadisha). The architect, builder, size, materials and interior of the old synagogue are unknown.

Life inside the synagogue

Almost nothing is recorded about worship in the old synagogue. It served the local Jews and, according to popular histories of the town, those of the surrounding villages, which had no synagogue of their own. The complex around it shows the full range of communal life of a traditional congregation: a separate small winter prayer room, a beit midrash for study, rooms for the burial society and a mikveh. The remains of the mikveh survive in the courtyard behind the south-eastern row of houses on Mierové námestie; an archaeological investigation in 2013 dated the oldest layer of finds connected with it to the eighteenth century, so the bath may be older than the 1825 synagogue. The community that used the old building was formally organised as an Orthodox congregation in 1871 and became the centre of a registry district in 1885. The names of its rabbis, cantors and wardens before 1904 were not found in the sources read.

Destruction

The old synagogue was destroyed by fire, not by war or persecution. The record of the present synagogue kept by the Regional Monuments Board in Bratislava, as summarised by Alexandra Vávrová and Martin Hoľma, says the new building replaced an older synagogue destroyed after a fire at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The 2005 building-historical survey by Elena Sabadošová and Marian Havlík reached the same conclusion from physical evidence. An engineering-geological investigation of the plot in 1989 had found that the youngest layer of made ground beneath the synagogue was soil burnt red, with potsherds, charcoal and clayey sandy earth baked into lumps. Because their probes found no material of an older structure in the present walls, the authors concluded that the older synagogue was probably demolished as a result of a previous large fire. The exact year of the fire, its cause and who cleared the ruins are not recorded. The congregation built its new synagogue on the site from 1904.

The community’s fate

The congregation that had used the old synagogue moved into the new building in 1907 and flourished between the wars; a Jewish party sat on the town council from 1921 and a Jewish elementary school opened in 1934. After Senec was annexed by Hungary in 1938, its Jews were persecuted. In 1944 they were gathered in front of the Lúčny majer farmstead and deported to concentration camps. The last rabbi, Emanuel Menachem Breznitz, served until 1944, when he was deported with his family to Auschwitz, where he and his wife were murdered. Only a fraction of the community returned after the war. Two Jewish families lived in Senec in 1961, and according to the regional proceedings no Jewish family lives in the town today.

The site today

The site of the old synagogue is occupied by its successor, the synagogue of 1904-07 at Mierové námestie 12 (registry number 16), which was listed as a national cultural monument in 1981. After the war it was nationalised and used as a granary and later as a store for chemicals and Christmas trees. The Bratislava Self-Governing Region leased it in 2005, later took ownership and has restored it as a cultural centre with an exhibition on Jewish heritage. Nothing of the 1825 building is visible: the only trace found is the burnt layer under the present floor. The remains of the community's old mikveh were uncovered in the courtyard behind it during the restoration.

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