Old Wooden Synagogue of Turnov

The Jewish community

A Jewish hatter named Moses and his son-in-law Jakub appear in the Turnov town books in 1527, the first record of Jews in the town. Ferdinand I's expulsion decree of 1557 ended this first settlement; new Jewish families came only from 1622 or 1623, invited by Albrecht von Wallenstein. They bought land for a cemetery in about 1625 and, according to Jüdische Gemeinden, set up a school in 1627. The Jews at first lived in houses around the square, which Jakubec reads as a sign of commercial sense rather than of any rule by the council. After the fire of 1643 most Jewish houses began to gather in one district on the bank of the Malá Jizera. House histories name some of the families of the wooden synagogue's time: Marek Enoch and his wife Salomena, who repaired a half-derelict house in 1653; Vít, owner of another house from 1655 to 1660; and the bookbinder Šalamoun, who moved to the edge of the quarter soon after 1647. The Encyclopaedia Judaica says the community grew during the seventeenth century, and by 1717 there were 23 Jewish houses.

Architecture and design

Almost nothing is known about the building itself. The town's history and the guide published by the town of Turnov in 2013 agree that it was built of wood, like the two synagogues before it, and that it stood in Jizerní Street, now Krajířova Street, on the plot later numbered 481 (Jewish house number X) on the south side of the street. The community did not build on empty ground. It bought an existing house in 1647, and the synagogue was erected on the site of that house, with the Jewish school next to it. No drawing, plan, inventory or description of the interior has been found, so its size, plan, roof form, the position of the ark and bimah, and whether it had a women's section are all unknown. No architect or builder is recorded. The Encyclopaedia Judaica notes that after the fire the authorities ordered the community to rebuild in stone, which suggests that a timber synagogue was seen as a fire risk in the crowded town.

Life inside the synagogue

The sources say little about worship in the wooden synagogue. It was the religious centre of a community that was only beginning to live together in one quarter, and Jakubec calls it the first new building of that quarter, an institution without which no Jewish community could exist. The synagogue and the Jewish school stood side by side, so the same site served for prayer and for teaching boys. The elders who bought the land, Lebl Marek and Beneš, are the only office-holders named for these years. No rabbi, cantor or beadle of the period between 1647 and 1707 is named in the sources read, and no record of the congregation's rite, seating or income survives in them. The building's last decades fell in what Jakubec calls a period of official antisemitism, when Bohemian towns and the Crown were pressing Jews to live apart from Christians; soon after the fire Turnov began moving its Jews into a single block of houses.

Destruction

In 1707 a great fire swept through Turnov, a town often hit by fire: Lusatian forces had burned it in 1468 and Swedish troops in 1643. The town's history of its Jews states that the synagogue and the Jewish school both burned in this fire. Jakubec's house histories show how far the damage reached in the Jewish part of town: the widow of the Jew Vít sold the burnt-out site of her house to the Christian smith Jindřich Čejka, and Jewish buyers were still acquiring plots to rebuild in 1717. No source read gives the day the fire broke out, its cause, or anyone responsible for it. Nothing of the wooden synagogue was rebuilt on its plot. Instead the authorities, according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, ordered the community to rebuild in stone, and the Jews bought the burnt-out site of a burgher house nearby. The new stone synagogue was completed and entered in the property books in 1719.

The community’s fate

The community recovered after the fire. Its houses were gathered into one block, and by the 1780s the Turnov ghetto had its final layout. After emancipation in 1848 Jews moved freely in the town, and the gem trade and glass cutting drew Jewish craftsmen and dealers. There were 280 Jews in 1880, 478 in 1910 and 110 in 1930. After the Munich Agreement nearly 450 Jewish refugees from the Sudeten areas came to Turnov. In 1941 the Nazi occupation authorities closed all synagogues in the Protectorate. In January 1943 all Jews still living in Turnov were called up for transport and taken through Mladá Boleslav to the Terezín ghetto. On 20 January 1943 transport Cq took them from Terezín to Auschwitz, where the Nazis murdered most of them. About nineteen Jews returned after the war. Most left after the Communist coup of 1948, and the congregation was formally dissolved in 1961.

The site today

The plot of the wooden synagogue is house number 481 on the south side of Krajířova Street, in the historic centre of Turnov, which is a protected town zone. After the fire it was not rebuilt as a synagogue. A house for the Jewish cantor stood there later; in 1746 the butcher Abraham Markus lived there, and the 1880 census found the Prager family in it. House 481 still stands and is entered through a classicist doorway, but no source dates any part of it to before 1707 or records a marker for the synagogue. The stone synagogue that replaced the wooden one stands nearby in the same quarter; restored by the town and reopened in 2008, it is used for exhibitions and concerts.

Notable names