Sereď Synagogue

PRZEGLĄD

Historia Sereď Synagogue

Sereď lies on the river Váh in the Galanta district of the Trnava Region; under Hungarian rule it was called Szered. Jews are recorded in the town as early as 1410, and in the nineteenth century the community grew quickly, from 333 to 1,354 people by 1880 according to the architectural historian Maroš Borský. Jews were active in business in the town and owned its sugar refinery, opened in 1845.

The synagogue described here was built after the First World War, in the 1920s. Borský, whose survey of Slovak synagogue architecture is the only detailed source on it, counts it among the synagogues 'of higher artistic standard' of that decade: its street front rejected the conventional facade schemes of the nineteenth century in favour of clear, basic forms and very little decoration. It stood on Hlavná Street, set back deep in its plot behind a fence and a small courtyard, on ground cleared by the demolition of an older building. Borský knew it from a single photograph, reproduced as figure 404 in his book.

After the Second World War the synagogue was heavily altered and served as a gym of the local sport union. It was pulled down in 2001, when new sports facilities were built in the town.

LOKALIZACJA

Where it stood

Historic: Hlavná Street (Hlavná ulica), Sereď (Szered), house number unknown. Today: central Sereď near M. R. Štefánika street and the sports hall on Kostolná street, 926 01 Sereď, Galanta district (approximate).

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Społeczność żydowska

Borský lists Sereď among the roughly 36 medieval Jewish communities known in historic Hungary, with a first mention in 1410. Like many towns in western Slovakia it gained a much larger Jewish population in the nineteenth century: Borský gives a rise from 333 to 1,354 Jews by 1880, while the English Wikipedia article on the town says Jews made up 27 per cent of its 5,004 inhabitants in 1880. In the 1910 census, which Borský uses to rank the largest Jewish communities in Slovakia, Sereď had about 1,600 Jews, whom he puts at 34.5 per cent of the population; this placed it among the dozen largest communities in the country, after Trnava and before Nové Zámky. Jews were prominent in the town's commerce, and the sugar refinery opened in 1845, the town's main industry, was in Jewish ownership. The rite the congregation followed (Orthodox, Neolog or Status Quo), the names of its rabbis and lay leaders, and its size in the interwar years when the new synagogue was built are not recorded in the sources read.

Architektura i projekt

Maroš Borský describes the synagogue from its only known photograph, a view of the facade. The building stood deep in a plot that had been created by demolishing an older structure, and it was reached through a fence and a small forecourt. The street front was divided into three bays. A central doorway led into the vestibule, while two side entrances gave access to the women's gallery, so the interior had at least one gallery for women. Horizontal mouldings divided the facade into three zones, a ground floor, an upper storey and an attic, and these were kept in geometric balance with tall, narrow windows and a sober scheme of ornament. Borský sees the design as a deliberate rejection of conventional nineteenth-century synagogue facades and as part of a search for new architectural forms in the 1920s, reducing decoration in favour of clear and basic shapes. The architect, the builder, the exact year of construction, the materials, the seating capacity and the arrangement of the prayer hall are unknown, and no interior view or plan was found.

Życie w synagodze

Almost nothing is known of the services held in this building. The sources read name no rabbi, cantor, president or other officer of the congregation and give no description of its furnishings, its Torah ark or its seating. What the architecture shows is that the synagogue was planned for a traditional congregation with separate seating for women: the facade had its own side doors leading to the women's gallery, apart from the central doorway into the vestibule used by the men. The building would have been in use for less than two decades, from its completion in the 1920s until the wartime deportations. Whether the community also kept older prayer rooms or a study house elsewhere in Sereď, and whether the earlier building cleared from the plot had itself served the congregation, is not stated by Borský or by any other source found in this research. No testimony from former members describing worship in the synagogue has been located.

Zniszczenie

No source read reports damage to the synagogue during the Second World War; after the deportations it was left without a congregation. Borský writes that after the war the building was heavily altered and was last used as a gym of the local sport union. Who carried out the alterations, and when the building passed out of Jewish ownership, is not recorded. The synagogue survived the whole Communist period in this altered form. It was demolished in 2001, the year given both in Borský's gazetteer entry and by the heritage website Pamiatky na Slovensku, which cites him; in his text Borský says the structure was pulled down when new sports facilities were built. Neither source says who ordered or carried out the demolition, whether the town, the sport club or another owner, and no local press report or council record of it was found. The demolition took place twelve years after the end of Communist rule and was not connected with the war or with the wartime persecution.

Los społeczności

Under the Slovak State the Jews of Sereď were stripped of their rights by the Jewish Code of 1941, which also created labour camps for Jews. One of the three such camps was set up near Sereď, run by the Hlinka Guard under the command of Imrich Vasina. Some 4,500 Jews were deported from the Sereď camp to Poland in five transports. After the Slovak National Uprising of August 1944, during which many prisoners escaped to join the partisans, Nazi German forces took over the camp; the SS officer Alois Brunner enlarged it, and in the winter of 1944 and the spring of 1945 about 13,500 more Jews were deported from Sereď to Auschwitz and Theresienstadt. The Red Army liberated the camp on 1 April 1945. The English Wikipedia article on the town states simply that the Jewish community of Sereď was wiped out in the Holocaust; how many of the town's own Jews were deported and how many returned is not recorded in the sources read. In the 2021 census five residents gave their ethnicity as Jewish and four their religion as Jewish.

Miejsce dzisiaj

The synagogue stood on Hlavná Street, a historic street name in Sereď; the exact plot has not been identified. Pamiatky na Slovensku places it at 48.286203, 17.737556, on present-day M. R. Štefánika street, about 100 metres north-west of the Športová hala Alberta Kudelu, the town sports hall on Kostolná street. That location fits Borský's statement that the building was demolished to make way for new sports facilities, but no source read says that the present hall stands on the synagogue's plot. Nothing of the synagogue survives above ground. The wartime camp, now the Holocaust Museum in Sereď, is a separate site.

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