Trenčianske Teplice Synagogue

Die jüdische Gemeinde

Little has been published about the Jews of Trenčianske Teplice. The village belonged to the Trenčín estate, which passed from the Illésházy family to the Sina family in 1835; according to the municipal history, the new owner built part of the spa. The village was still small then, with 545 inhabitants in 1828. Borský writes that the town grew rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century as it became one of the leading spa centres in Slovakia, and that the Jewish community grew with it because the spa industry created new business and professional opportunities. Its size, its religious affiliation (Orthodox, Neolog or status quo) and the names of its rabbis and officers were not found in any source read. The community kept a cemetery on a hillside in the town, where the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project records up to twenty marble and sandstone gravestones of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with Hebrew inscriptions. The Pinkas Hakehillot volume on Slovakia has an entry for the town, but it is not available in translation online.

Architektur und Gestaltung

Borský describes the synagogue as a building of mundane appearance: a tripartite front with a higher central section, decorated with the usual repertoire of the Rundbogenstil, the round-arched style common in Central European synagogues of the period. A postcard captioned 'Izr. templom - Isr. Tempel, Trencsén-Teplicz fürdő' shows the building from a corner after its 1906 enlargement. The front has a tall central bay with a large round window above a round-arched entrance, framed by narrower side bays that end in small turrets with domed caps. The long side wall, two storeys high, is divided by cornices and pierced by rows of round-arched windows, which suggests a women's gallery inside. A low fence with gates and lamp posts closes off the forecourt from an unpaved street. A second postcard shows the interior looking towards the Torah ark. The ark stands in a tall round-arched niche hung with a curtain, framed by columns and painted ornament, with a crown and tablets above it. In front of it are a balustraded platform, two large candelabra and a chandelier, and rows of wooden pews. The architect of the original building is unknown.

Leben in der Synagoge

No account of services, rabbis or communal life in the synagogue was found. The interior postcard shows a congregation that could afford rich decoration: painted ornament on the walls and ark surround, a draped ark under a crown, brass candelabra and a hanging chandelier, and fixed wooden pews facing the ark. The rows of windows on the side wall suggest that women sat in a gallery above the main hall. The postcard of the exterior is labelled in Hungarian and German and was sold as a view of the spa, which shows that the synagogue was counted among the sights of the resort. The 1906 reconstruction and extension by the Dubnica master builder Rein indicates that the congregation was still growing, or at least prosperous, in the early twentieth century. Its religious orientation, its rabbis and cantors, and the number of seats are unknown.

Zerstörung

No source read describes damage to the building during the Second World War, and none says what became of it immediately after the deportations of its congregation. Borský's catalogue of demolished synagogues states that the synagogue of Trenčianske Teplice was demolished after World War II, and the Slovak heritage gazetteer Pamiatky na Slovensku, citing Borský, repeats this. The postcard collection on judaica.cz likewise gives 'demolished after 1945'. A published list of Slovak synagogues gives the year 1950, but that figure is unreferenced and may be a round placeholder. Taken together, the sources show that the building survived the war and was pulled down some time afterwards, but no document of the demolition was found. Who demolished it, in what year and for what purpose is not recorded in any source consulted.

Das Schicksal der Gemeinde

No record specific to the Jews of Trenčianske Teplice during the Holocaust was found. They shared the fate of the Jews of the wartime Slovak State, whose Ľudák regime carried its anti-Jewish policy to the mass deportations of 1942. According to the historian Ján Hlavinka, about 57,700 Jews were deported from Slovakia between 25 March and 20 October 1942: about 39,000 to the Lublin district of occupied Poland, where the Nazi German extermination programme known as Operation Reinhard had begun, and about 18,700 to Auschwitz. The Jewish Virtual Library records about 2,500 Jews in Trenčín and its surroundings on the eve of the deportations and states that most of them perished in the Nazi extermination camps in Poland; by 1947 only 228 Jews lived in Trenčín itself. How many Jews lived in Trenčianske Teplice in 1942, how many were deported or survived, and whether any returned to the town after the war is unknown. No organised community is recorded there after 1945.

Der Ort heute

The exact plot of the synagogue has not been identified. Borský places it in the centre of the town next to the spa compound, but no street name or house number was found, and the postcard shows only an unpaved street with a fenced forecourt. What stands on the site today is therefore unknown. The map pin for this entry follows the point given by the Pamiatky na Slovensku gazetteer, which lies in the town centre, and should be read as approximate. The Jewish cemetery survives on a hillside in the town; the JewishGen survey describes it as enclosed by a masonry wall with an unlocked gate and holding up to twenty gravestones with Hebrew inscriptions. Locating the synagogue would require old cadastral maps or the archive of the Trenčianske Teplice spa.

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