Old Synagogue of Trenčín

The Jewish community

Jews are recorded in Trenčín from the early fourteenth century. Larger groups arrived after the anti-Jewish violence of 1663 to 1689, when refugees fled mainly from Uherský Brod, and more came at the end of the seventeenth century when Moravian Jews were allowed to settle. For about a century the Trenčín Jews belonged to the community of Uherský Brod; the Encyclopaedia Judaica entry on the Jewish Virtual Library says they swore in 1734 to take their disputes only to its court. The community kept a burial society, a ritual bath and, by 1736, a school. It appointed its first rabbi, David Kahn Casid, in 1760, when, Semančík writes, an independent rabbinate was set up in Trenčín. Local authorities taxed the Jews heavily and restricted marriage and the employment of Christian servants. Jews traded in hides and bones, produced spirits and from 1703 ran a tanning-oil works. The community numbered 388 in 1785 and 688 in 1848. After the Hungarian Jewish Congress of 1868 to 1869 it joined the Status quo ante branch, according to Semančík and the Slovak Jewish Heritage Route. By 1900 there were 1,275 Jews, 21.8 per cent of the town.

Architecture and design

No photograph, drawing or plan of the old synagogue was found in this research, so its appearance is unknown. Semančík describes the building of 1790 as being 'of the so-called nine-domed type' but gives no further description of it. The building was enlarged and renovated in 1873. It stood by the Lower Town Gate near the western town walls, apparently in a hollow: at the consecration of its successor in 1913 the community chairman spoke of the new building as 'enlarged and raised from the depression' so that sun and air could enter freely. Its plot was too small for the new synagogue, and in 1911 the community bought a strip of about 28 by 7.9 metres from the neighbouring owner, István Lange. In September 2021, during restoration of the present synagogue, archaeologists led by Roman Kos found at a depth of about 2.5 metres the masonry platform of an older synagogue from the end of the eighteenth century, which they believed had a wooden structure, together with a sixteenth-century fortification wall. Whether these remains belong to the building of 1781 or that of 1790 is not settled.

Life inside the synagogue

Very little is recorded about worship in the old building. It was the community's main synagogue for more than 120 years, from 1790 to 1912, and so housed services through the period of the community's growth from a few hundred members to well over a thousand. From 1760 the congregation had its own rabbinate in Trenčín. After the split of Hungarian Jewry in 1868 to 1869 the congregation followed the Status quo ante branch. The building was evidently crowded and inadequate by the early twentieth century: on 23 October 1905, after a police inspection ordered alterations for health and fire safety, the board resolved that patching it would be costly and short-lived and appointed a committee to plan a new synagogue. The chairman elected in 1910, Henrik Kátser, and the banker Béla Friedman, head of the building commission, led the project that ended the old building's use. On 10 March 1912 the board resolved unanimously that the last services in the old synagogue would be held on 9 April 1912 and that demolition would begin after Passover. No source found names the rabbis who served in the building.

Destruction

The old synagogue was not destroyed by war or persecution. It was demolished in 1912 on the decision of its own congregation, which wanted a larger and more modern building on the same, long-consecrated site. On 5 November 1911 the community board accepted the building committee's proposal to build the new synagogue where the old one stood. Bids for the construction were opened on 10 March 1912, and the same day the board agreed unanimously that the last services would take place in the old building on 9 April and that demolition would begin after Passover. The contract for the new synagogue went to the local firm of Béla Niegreisz and Albert Fuchs; whether the same firm pulled down the old building is not recorded. Structural drawings for the new dome were supplied on 10 April 1912, the day after the last service, and the new shell was standing by the autumn of 1912. The new synagogue was consecrated on 23 September 1913.

The community’s fate

The congregation itself moved into the new synagogue in 1913 and continued there. In 1930 Trenčín had 1,539 Jews. Under the wartime Slovak state the new synagogue was damaged in 1941 by the Slovak Hlinka Guard. In 1942, on the eve of the deportations, about 2,500 Jews lived in Trenčín and its surroundings, 1,619 of them in the town. That year most were deported, and the majority were murdered in the extermination camps in occupied Poland. Most survivors emigrated or settled elsewhere in Czechoslovakia; 228 Jews lived in Trenčín in 1947. After the war the new synagogue passed to the state and served as a store, and the remaining Jews prayed in a nearby room, where the names of the victims were inscribed on the walls. Another wave of emigration followed in 1968. A small Jewish community still exists in Trenčín today.

The site today

The site of the old synagogue is occupied by its successor, the large domed synagogue of 1912 to 1913 on Hviezdová Street (some guides give Vajanského Street), just west of Štúrovo námestie and close to the line of the old town walls. After the war that building was used as a store and, from the late 1970s, as a cultural centre; it has since been restored and is again used. Nothing of the old synagogue is visible above ground. During the restoration in 2021 archaeologists found, about 2.5 metres below the present floor, the masonry platform of an older synagogue of the late eighteenth century, together with a sixteenth-century fortification wall.

Notable names