Trebišov Synagogue

ÜBERBLICK

Die Geschichte von Trebišov Synagogue

Trebišov, known in Hungarian as Tőketerebes, is the market and district town of southern Zemplín in eastern Slovakia. Its synagogue was a twentieth-century building: Maroš Borský, in his 2005 survey of Slovak synagogue architecture, dates it to after 1900, and a published list of Slovak synagogues gives 1905. Borský describes a modest hall with round-arched Rundbogenstil detailing. Unusually, its eastern façade, the wall behind the Torah ark, faced the street, so the projecting ark niche shaped the front of the building.

The synagogue stood on the main road, where, according to Borský, all of Trebišov's houses of worship faced one another. That arrangement disappeared during the Communist period, when the old town centre was cleared almost entirely. A Slovak heritage gazetteer places the synagogue's demolition in the 1970s, together with most of the single-storey houses of the former centre, and Borský records that its site was taken by the cultural centre called Mukačevo, which he dismisses as a typical Communist block. No photograph of the building was found online for this entry; Borský's dissertation reproduces one general view.

STANDORT

Where it stood

Historic: main road of Trebišov (Tőketerebes), Zemplén county, house number unknown. Today: Ulica M. R. Štefánika area, 075 01 Trebišov, site of the 'Mukačevo' cultural centre according to Borský (approximate).

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Die jüdische Gemeinde

Jews settled in eastern Slovakia in large numbers from the eighteenth century, many of them migrants from Galicia who crossed the Carpathian passes and, as Borský notes, clustered above all in the counties of Zemplín and Šariš. They at first lived scattered in the countryside without organised congregations; the larger communities of the region formed only in the 1780s. Trebišov belonged to this Zemplín world. Its own Jewish history is poorly documented in the sources read for this entry: the founding date of the congregation, its population figures, its religious orientation (Orthodox, Neolog or Status Quo Ante) and the names of its rabbis and lay leaders are all unknown here. The building of a new synagogue after 1900 suggests a community that was growing or prospering at the start of the twentieth century, when Trebišov was developing as a regional centre; it became the seat of a district in 1929. A Torah scroll now in the Sydney Jewish Museum testifies that a rabbi still served in Trebišov in 1951, a few years after the war.

Architektur und Gestaltung

Borský's description is the only architectural account found. He calls the synagogue a simple building with Rundbogenstil elements, the round-arched style that spread through Central European synagogue building in the nineteenth century. Its eastern façade faced the street, which was unusual, because most synagogues were entered from the west and showed their entrance front to the street. Here the street front reflected the interior arrangement: a tripartite façade had a central projection corresponding to the position of the Torah ark inside the sanctuary. As was typical of the type, the eastern façade had a round window flanked on both sides by round-arched windows. The location of the entrance, the presence and form of a women's gallery, the roof shape and the materials are unknown. Borský reproduces a general view of the synagogue looking north-west (his figure 471), but the figures are only in the printed PDF of his dissertation, which could not be consulted. The architect, builder and seating capacity are unknown.

Leben in der Synagoge

Almost nothing is recorded about the worship and communal life that took place in this building in the sources read for this entry. Whether it served an Orthodox or a Neolog congregation is not stated. The names of its rabbis, cantors and presidents were not found. One later trace survives. According to the Sydney Jewish Museum, the rabbi of Trebišov gave a Sefer Torah to Nicholas Fenyö (later Ford) when he left Slovakia in 1951, telling him that the population was gone and the scroll would have more life in Australia. The scroll was lent for a time to the Allawah synagogue in Sydney, later restored by a scribe in Melbourne, and was given to the museum by Fenyö's granddaughter. The donor family regarded it as a symbol of the community and the synagogue that once existed in Trebišov, but the museum record does not say that the scroll came from this building.

Zerstörung

No source read records damage to the synagogue during the Second World War. The building outlived its congregation: Borský lists it among the synagogues demolished after the war. He places its loss within the radical rebuilding of Trebišov in the Communist era, when most of the historic town was razed and the row of churches and the synagogue along the main road was broken up. A Slovak heritage gazetteer based on Borský's work dates the demolition to the 1970s, saying it went together with most of the single-storey houses of the former town centre. The site was then used for the cultural centre known as Mukačevo. The published list of Slovak synagogues gives 1950 as the year of destruction, but that figure has no reference and appears to be a placeholder. None of the sources consulted names the body that ordered the clearance or says when the Mukačevo centre was built, so who demolished the synagogue, and in exactly which year, is not recorded.

Das Schicksal der Gemeinde

The fate of Trebišov's Jews has to be described here from the general history of Slovakia, because no community-level figures were found in the sources read. Borský writes that the Slovak State, led by the Nazi-allied government of Jozef Tiso, stripped Jews of their civil rights and in 1942 deported tens of thousands of Slovak Jews to the death camps in occupied Poland; after the suppression of the Slovak National Uprising in 1944 Nazi German forces and their Slovak Fascist collaborators killed or deported many more. About 105,000 Slovak Jews were murdered. How many Trebišov Jews were deported, when they were taken and how many survived is unknown here. A small community re-formed after the war: the Sydney Jewish Museum records that a rabbi was still in Trebišov in 1951 and that he considered the Jewish population gone. Emigration in the following years, as elsewhere in Slovakia, left no organised congregation to use the synagogue.

Der Ort heute

The synagogue's site lies in the rebuilt centre of Trebišov, on the main road, now Ulica M. R. Štefánika. According to Borský, the cultural centre named Mukačevo was built on the plot, a large block typical of Communist-era public building. The heritage gazetteer places the synagogue at 48.6303 N, 21.7194 E, which reverse geocoding places beside the house at M. R. Štefánika 2104/20; this point has not been checked against a historic map. The present town cultural centre (Mestské kultúrne stredisko) at M. R. Štefánika 1978/53 stands about 700 metres further south, so it is not certain that it is the building Borský called Mukačevo. No surviving fragment of the synagogue and no marker on its site were found in the sources consulted.

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