Tápióbicske Synagogue

Еврейская община

The Magyar Zsidó Lexikon of 1929 has no entry for Tápióbicske itself, but its Nagykáta entry calls the village the centre of the Jewish population of the surrounding area. Before the 1848 revolution Jews could not live in Nagykáta, where, according to a 2018 study, the landowning Keglevich family restricted every faith except the Catholic one. Tápióbicske therefore held the region's congregation. The same study says that Jews formed 15.2 per cent of the village's inhabitants in 1825. Gazda's gazetteer gives 334 Jews in 1828 and 254 in 1851. Once the toleration tax was abolished, families began to move to Nagykáta, where a congregation formed in 1860, and the study names Tápióbicske and Tápiószele as the villages many of them left. By 1910 Tápióbicske had 79 Jews, and the 1941 census counted 38 among 3,993 inhabitants. In 1929 the village belonged to the registry district of the Nagykáta mother community together with Tápiószentmárton, Tápióság, Pánd, Tápiószecső, Kóka, Tóalmás, Szentlőrinckáta and Szentmártonkáta. The names of the congregation's founders and of its lay officers are unknown.

Архитектура и дизайн

The only view found is an undated black-and-white photograph, 13 by 17.5 centimetres, in the synagogue series of the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives. It shows one gable end of a free-standing, rendered building under a steep pitched roof. A plain horizontal band divides the wall from the triangular gable, which has two small round openings side by side and, below them, what looks like a blank rectangular panel. The wall beneath has two tall windows with arched heads; a third opening of the same shape at the right-hand edge appears to be walled up. On the left a lower lean-to or porch with a sloping roof adjoins the side of the building. There is no tower, dome or other outward sign of the building's use. Shrubs and a fence stand in front, beside an unpaved road. The plainness would suit a village synagogue of 1840, the date Gazda gives, but the photograph cannot confirm that date. The architect, the builder, the seating capacity and the interior arrangement are unknown, and no interior view was found.

Жизнь в синагоге

Almost nothing is recorded about worship in the building. Until 1868 Tápióbicske was the seat of the district rabbi, and a 2018 study of the region says the village held the area's congregation, its synagogue and the rabbi's house. In its first decades the building would therefore have served as the main synagogue of the district, where the district rabbi officiated. That ended when Rabbi Ábrahám Jakab Lichtenstein transferred his seat to Nagykáta in 1868. Afterwards the Jews of Tápióbicske came under the Nagykáta rabbinate, whose later rabbis were Márk Fischer, killed in a railway accident in 1893, and, from 1904, Soma Breuer; the post was vacant for eleven years between them. With 79 Jews in 1910 and 38 in 1941, the village can have supported only a small congregation in its last decades. Whether it followed the Congress (Neolog) or the Orthodox rite is unknown, as is whether it kept a school, a cantor or a burial society of its own. The community had its own cemetery, which is mapped today as abandoned.

Разрушение

No source found describes the end of the building. Nothing read for this entry reports damage during the Second World War, and it is not even documented that the synagogue was still in use in the spring of 1944, when the Hungarian authorities moved the Jews of Tápióbicske to the ghetto at Nagykáta. The photograph in the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives is undated, so it does not show how long the building stood. Anikó Gazda, who surveyed Hungarian synagogue sites between 1980 and 1987, recorded the Tápióbicske synagogue as demolished, and a 2018 study of Nagykáta's Jewish heritage lists it with those of Tápiógyörgye, Tápiószele, Szentmártonkáta, Kóka and Tápióság as synagogues of the Tápió region that were all pulled down. Neither gives a year. Nobody is named: it is unknown who ordered or carried out the demolition, whether the building was first sold by survivors or by the national Jewish office, and whether it came down under Communist rule or earlier. All that can be said is that it was gone by the time of Gazda's survey of 1980-87.

Судьба общины

The 1941 census counted 38 Jews in Tápióbicske among 3,993 inhabitants. After Nazi Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944, the Hungarian authorities set up a ghetto at Nagykáta in May. Randolph Braham lists Tápióbicske among the villages whose Jews were brought there, with Gyömrő, Kóka, Maglód, Tápiógyörgye, Tápiósáp, Tápiósüly and Tápiószele. The ghetto lay in and around Gróf Tisza István and Damjanich streets and held 628 Jews, about 200 of them from Nagykáta; its Jewish Council was headed by Rabbi Soma Breuer. Braham writes that at the beginning of June the inmates were moved to Kecskemét for entrainment, where 5,413 Jews were concentrated and deported in two transports that passed the border station at Kassa on 27 and 29 June 1944. A 2018 study of Nagykáta says instead that the ghetto's people were taken in early July to the entrainment centre at Monor and from there to Auschwitz. How many Jews of Tápióbicske were killed, and whether any returned, is unknown. No Jewish congregation in the village after the war is recorded in the sources consulted.

Место сегодня

The plot on which the synagogue stood has not been identified in any source consulted, so it is not possible to say what occupies it today. The one photograph shows the building behind a fence beside an unpaved road but gives no street name. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Tápióbicske and should not be read as the synagogue's location. No marker on the site is recorded. The village website's pages on local history and on the churches describe the Catholic and Reformed congregations and do not mention the Jewish community. OpenStreetMap shows an abandoned Jewish cemetery ('Izraelita temető (elhagyatott)') about 1.2 kilometres east-south-east of the village centre. Fixing the synagogue's address will need cadastral maps or local archives.

Значимые имена