Somotor Synagogue

ÜBERBLICK

Die Geschichte von Somotor Synagogue

Somotor, known in Hungarian as Szomotor, is a village on the left bank of the Bodrog river in the Trebišov district of eastern Slovakia. Until 1918 it belonged to Zemplén county in the Kingdom of Hungary, and most of its people have always been Hungarian-speaking Calvinists, whose classicist church of 1801 still dominates the village. Jews were a small minority: Elek Fényes's gazetteer of 1851 counted 17 Jewish inhabitants beside the Reformed, Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic majority. In 1890 the community put up a modest synagogue of its own. Maroš Borský, whose doctoral survey of Slovak synagogue architecture catalogues the building, describes it as a small structure resembling a rural dwelling house with a Baroque gable, with two entrances on its front, one into the prayer hall and one to the women's gallery. He reproduced a drawing of its west front and a plan, which show that the building was surveyed or photographed before it disappeared. The village's own history page says that in the first half of the twentieth century Somotor had a smaller prayer house of the Jewish community, and that it was destroyed after the community ceased to exist in the second half of the century. Borský and a Slovak heritage gazetteer both date the demolition only to the years after the Second World War. No rabbi, officer or member of the congregation is named in any source found, and no photograph of the building has been located outside Borský's dissertation.

STANDORT

Where it stood for 55 years

Historic: Szomotor, Zemplén county, street and house number unknown. Today: Somotor, okres Trebišov, Košický kraj, 076 35; plot unknown, pin in the village centre (approximate).

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Die jüdische Gemeinde

Very little has been published about the Jews of Somotor. The village appears in the Hungarian statistical literature of the nineteenth century as a Hungarian Calvinist settlement on the Bodrog, about an hour from Nagykövesd (Veľký Kamenec) and some three hours from Sátoraljaújhely, its market town. Fényes's gazetteer of 1851 gives 17 Jews among a population that also included 63 Roman Catholics, 100 Greek Catholics and 200 Calvinists. Later Hungarian censuses quoted in the Hungarian Wikipedia article on the village record its population by mother tongue only, so the number of Jews around 1890, when the synagogue was built, and in 1910 or 1941 is unknown. The existence of a purpose-built synagogue with a women's gallery shows that the community was able to hold regular services with a quorum. Its religious affiliation, its rabbi, its links to the larger community at Kráľovský Chlmec or Sátoraljaújhely and the names of its leaders are all unknown. A Jewish cemetery survives in the village and is photographed in the Hungarian Wikipedia article.

Architektur und Gestaltung

The only description of the building comes from Maroš Borský's 2005 catalogue of demolished Slovak synagogues. He records it under the code S0K1701 as a synagogue built in 1890 by an unknown architect. In his words this small synagogue resembled a countryside residential house with a Baroque gable: it was a plain rectangular building whose street front ended in a curved, Baroque-style gable rather than in the monumental façade of town synagogues. The front was divided into four bays. The two central bays held windows, and each outer bay held an entrance portal. One door led into the men's prayer hall; the other gave access to a stair to the women's gallery, so that men and women entered separately, a common arrangement in the small rural synagogues of eastern Slovakia and north-eastern Hungary. Borský illustrated the west façade and a ground plan (his figures 467 and 468), which were not available for this entry. The materials, roof form, interior fittings, position of the Torah ark and seating capacity are unknown.

Leben in der Synagoge

No account of worship in the Somotor synagogue has been found. The building's plan, as Borský describes it, provides the only evidence: a prayer hall entered directly from the street front and a separate entrance for women going up to a gallery above it. This means that the women sat apart, overlooking the men's hall, as was usual in traditional congregations in the region, and that the community expected enough worshippers to justify a gallery at all. The village's history page calls the building a smaller prayer house (modlitebňa) of the Jewish community and places its use in the first half of the twentieth century. Whether the congregation was Orthodox, as most Bodrogköz communities were, whether it kept a teacher, ritual slaughterer or prayer leader of its own, and whether Jews from neighbouring villages such as Véč or Kisújlak prayed there, is not recorded in any source read. The Jewish cemetery in the village suggests a burial society, but its records have not been found.

Zerstörung

No source read reports damage to the synagogue during the Second World War. After the deportations of 1944 it stood without a congregation. Maroš Borský records that it was demolished after the Second World War, and the Slovak heritage gazetteer Pamiatky na Slovensku, which follows his published book, says it was pulled down after 1945. Somotor's municipal history adds only that the Jewish prayer house was destroyed after the Jewish community ceased to exist in the second half of the twentieth century. A published list of Slovak synagogues gives 1950 as the year of destruction, but it cites no source for that year and its round dates are unreliable. Who demolished the building, whether it was first sold by a surviving Jewish body, or whether the local national committee ordered its removal under the Communist regime is not recorded in any source found, and the exact year remains unknown.

Das Schicksal der Gemeinde

Under the First Vienna Award of November 1938 the southern part of Zemplén, including the Bodrogköz, was returned to Hungary, and the Hungarian census of 1941 counted Somotor as a Hungarian village. Its Jews therefore came under Hungarian anti-Jewish laws rather than the Slovak deportations of 1942. After the Nazi German occupation of Hungary in March 1944 the Jews of the district were rounded up. According to Pinkas Hakehillot, Hungarian policemen began concentrating the Jews of the district town Kráľovský Chlmec in a temporary ghetto on 16 April 1944; they were then taken to the large ghetto at Sátoraljaújhely (Újhely) and deported to Auschwitz in the second half of May. The Sátoraljaújhely ghetto, fenced in on 15 April and guarded by Hungarian gendarmes, held 13,000 to 15,000 people, about 11,000 of them from the surrounding villages, and was emptied in four transports to Auschwitz between 16 May and 3 June 1944. No source read names the Jews of Somotor in these transports, but they very likely shared this route. How many were killed and whether any returned is unknown; the village history says only that the Jewish community ended in the second half of the twentieth century.

Der Ort heute

The site of the synagogue has not been identified in any source consulted. Borský gives no street, and neither the village website nor the heritage gazetteer names the plot or says what stands on it now. The map pin for this entry follows the coordinates given by Pamiatky na Slovensku, which fall in the centre of the village and do not appear to mark the actual plot. No fragment of the building is known to survive. The Jewish cemetery of Somotor still exists. Locating the synagogue would need the cadastral maps of the village or the drawings reproduced in Borský's dissertation.

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Fotos, Dokumente, Familiengeschichten oder Erinnerungen an diese Synagoge und ihre Gemeinde halten ihre Geschichte lebendig.