The story of Tiszaföldvár Synagogue
Tiszaföldvár lies on the left bank of the Tisza in the Kunszentmártoni district of Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county, in the Great Plain of central Hungary. It had a Jewish community large enough to keep its own cemetery and to build a monumental synagogue. Gazda's survey of 1980-87 records 100 Jews there in 1851, 153 in 1910 and 95 in 1941; it dates the synagogue to 1903 and records it as demolished.
The only image found is an undated photograph in the collection of the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives (MILEV), catalogued as 'Tiszaföldvári zsinagóga', inventory number F01.381. It shows an unusually picturesque building for a small town: a long rendered hall whose entrance front is flanked by two round towers capped with bulbous onion domes and spires, with a curved gable between them and a low porch with pointed-arched openings in front.
Almost nothing else about the congregation or the building is recorded in the sources read. The founding date of the community, its rabbis and officers, its religious affiliation, the street on which the synagogue stood and the circumstances of its demolition all remain unknown. The Jewish cemetery survives in part; by 2009 a supermarket stood on part of its ground.
Where it stood for 84 years
Historic: Tiszaföldvár, Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county; street and house number unknown. Today: unknown; placeholder pin at the centre of 5430 Tiszaföldvár (approximate).
Open larger map →The Jewish community
The history of Tiszaföldvár's Jewish community is poorly documented. Gazda's survey of 1980-87 records 100 Jews in Tiszaföldvár in 1851, 153 in 1910 and 95 in 1941, so the community was never large and was shrinking by the Second World War. It was nevertheless substantial enough at the turn of the twentieth century to build a new, architecturally ambitious synagogue in 1903, and it maintained its own cemetery in the town. The JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project lists the Tiszaföldvár Jewish cemetery and reports, from a note of March 2009, that its tombstones were in disarray and that a Penny Market supermarket stood on part of the cemetery ground. The founding date of the community, its occupations, its religious affiliation (Neolog, Orthodox or Status Quo) and the names of its rabbis, presidents and other officers are unknown.
Architecture and design
The MILEV photograph shows the synagogue from the front corner. The hall is a long, rendered block with a pitched roof; its side wall has a row of tall round-headed windows. The entrance front is framed by two cylindrical towers, rising above the eaves and capped by large bulbous onion domes with finials. Between the towers the end wall of the hall rises into a curved, stepped gable with small round openings and a rectangular window. In front of the entrance stands a lower, hip-roofed porch with two tall pointed-arched openings; a Hebrew inscription runs across the porch below the eaves, and further lettering appears around the arches. The mixture of onion domes, curved gable and Gothic-style arches suggests the eclectic manner common in provincial Hungarian synagogues around 1900, but that is a reading of the photograph, not a documented attribution. The architect, the builder, the seating capacity and the interior arrangement are unknown, and no plan or interior view was found.
Life inside the synagogue
No account of religious life in the Tiszaföldvár synagogue was found in the sources read. It is not known whether the congregation followed the Neolog, Orthodox or Status Quo rite, whether it employed its own rabbi or was served from a neighbouring town, or whether it kept a Jewish school, a burial society or other associations beyond the cemetery. The Hebrew inscription across the entrance porch, visible in the MILEV photograph, shows that the building announced its purpose in Hebrew to the street, as was common, but the text is not legible enough in the available copy to transcribe with confidence. The Magyar Zsidó Lexikon of 1929 and the Pinkas Hakehillot volume on Hungary may hold details of the congregation's rabbis, institutions and officers, but neither was read for this entry. A dedicated search of local newspapers and the county archive in Szolnok would be needed to recover this side of the building's history.
Destruction
No source read for this entry records damage to the Tiszaföldvár synagogue during the Second World War or describes its condition after 1945. The MILEV photograph that shows it intact is undated. The only evidence for its loss is Anikó Gazda's gazetteer of 1991, whose authors visited the synagogue sites of Hungary between 1980 and 1987 and recorded this building as demolished. Gazda gives no date for the demolition and names nobody responsible. Who demolished the building, when, and whether it was first sold or taken over is not recorded in any source found. Nothing read proves that the building was still standing after 1945, so the demolition can only be placed before the survey of 1980-87.
The community’s fate
Gazda's survey records 95 Jews in Tiszaföldvár in 1941, the last count before the deportations. What happened to them in 1944 is not documented in any source read for this entry. No figures were found for the number of people deported, for how many were killed or for how many survived and returned. It is also unknown which ghetto and which entrainment centre the Tiszaföldvár Jews passed through and on what dates. Randolph Braham's study of the Holocaust in Hungary, which normally gives these details for each county, was not consulted. No organised Jewish community is recorded in Tiszaföldvár after the war in the sources read. The community's cemetery remains, in poor condition: in 2009 its tombstones were reported to be in disarray and part of the ground was occupied by a supermarket.
The site today
The synagogue's plot has not been identified in any source read, so what stands on it today is unknown. No surviving fragment of the building and no marker on its site is recorded. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Tiszaföldvár and should not be read as the synagogue's location. The Jewish cemetery, the community's other surviving trace, still exists in the town, though in 2009 its tombstones were reported to be in disarray and a supermarket stood on part of the ground. Fixing the synagogue's address will need cadastral maps, the 1944 community data sheets or the local-history collection of the town library.
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