Turzovka Synagogue

הקהילה היהודית

Individual Jews are recorded in Turzovka in the census of 1724. A tax list of Trenčín county in 1746 names two Jewish families, one from Poland and one from Moravia, and in 1767 a single family of six lived there, headed by a shopkeeper who paid a special toleration tax of 17 florins. The organised community dates from 1798, when Jews from neighbouring villages joined it; it kept a prayer group, a ritual bath and a cheder with a hired teacher. About 170 Jews belonged to it in the 1880s. In the 1869 schism of Hungarian Jewry it chose the Status Quo position, and some years later it declared itself Neolog. In 1922 the town had only 70 Jews, or 120 with the surrounding villages, in 30 tax-paying families. They were mostly traders and craftsmen: they ran six grocery and general stores, two textile shops, timber, fuel and building-material yards, two taverns, a butcher's shop and a barber's, and Hugo Fränkel's sawmill employed dozens of workers. A doctor, a pharmacist, a lawyer and notary and a dental technician were also Jewish.

אדריכלות ועיצוב

Very little is known about the building. The only description found is a single phrase in the Hebrew Wikipedia article on Turzovka, which says the synagogue was built in a classical style; it gives no further detail and no source for that phrase other than its general reference to Pinkas Hakehillot Slovakia. No photograph, postcard, plan or drawing of the synagogue was found in this research, although the English-language list of Slovak synagogues links to a postcard gallery on judaica.cz that may include one; that page could not be opened. The architect, the builder, the materials, the size of the hall, the seating capacity and the layout of the interior, including whether it had a women's gallery, are all unknown. The fact that the municipal council contributed to the cost suggests that the building was a public, free-standing structure in the town centre rather than a prayer room in a house, and the heritage website Pamiatky na Slovensku places it on the present Obchodná street, but its exact plot and appearance remain unknown.

החיים בבית הכנסת

Turzovka never had its own rabbi in the period for which records were found. In 1922 the community's only paid employee was the shochet (ritual slaughterer), who also served as cantor and led the prayers in the synagogue, and the congregation belonged to the rabbinate of Žilina; in 1928 the Žilina rabbinate joined the liberal Yeshurun association of communities. The community was headed at that time by Jakob Taub. Beside the synagogue it maintained a burial society (Chevra Kadisha) and a Jewish women's association, and there was Zionist activity in the town; in local elections the Jewish party won 53 votes and one seat on the council. The Jewish elementary school next to the synagogue taught five classes in German and Slovak and also took Christian pupils. In 1908 the community revised its statutes. On 4 November 1918, at the end of the First World War, violent riots broke out against the Jews of Turzovka: shops were looted and houses burned, and the Jews fled the town for a time, returning under the protection of the new Czechoslovak army.

הרס

No source found reports that the synagogue was damaged during the Second World War, although the Hlinka Guard desecrated the Jewish cemetery after March 1939 and Nazi troops wrecked it again in 1944. The building stood empty after the deportations of 1942. According to the Hebrew Wikipedia account based on Pinkas Hakehillot Slovakia, it was used as a warehouse after the war and was later taken down, and a residential building was put up on its site. Pamiatky na Slovensku, citing the 2013 book Synagógy published by DAJAMA, says it was demolished in the 1960s, when Czechoslovakia was under Communist rule. Neither source says who ordered or carried out the demolition, whether the building had been sold or confiscated first, or in which year it was pulled down. The community house and the school beside it survived longer and were converted into a commercial building and a house.

גורל הקהילה

After the Slovak State was declared on 14 March 1939, persecution began at once. In 1940 the Jews of Turzovka were placed under the Jewish centre in Čadca, and in 1941 most of their businesses, Fränkel's sawmill among them, were confiscated and handed to Slovak 'Aryanisers'. Unemployed Jewish men were put to forced labour, first in the town and then at the labour centre in Strážov. Deportations began on 24 April 1942: the Jews were taken to the collection camp in Žilina and on 29 April sent to Auschwitz. On 4 June 1942 most of those remaining went through Žilina to the Lublin district, the able-bodied men to Majdanek and the rest to their deaths at Sobibor. Their property was auctioned in the street. In the autumn of 1942 seventeen Jews were left, some protected by exemption papers. When Nazi troops entered Slovakia after the uprising of August 1944, seven fled to farmers, one family hid with a Slovak neighbour, and five were caught and deported through Ilava and Sereď to Auschwitz. Some fought with the partisans. The town's history counts more than 70 people deported from Turzovka. A few survivors returned in 1945 but soon left.

האתר כיום

According to the Hebrew Wikipedia account of the town, a residential building was erected on the site of the synagogue after it was dismantled. The heritage website Pamiatky na Slovensku places the synagogue at 49.403159 N, 18.624039 E, which falls on Obchodná, a pedestrian shopping street in the centre of Turzovka; it does not explain how the position was established, and the exact plot has not been confirmed from a cadastral map or a dated photograph. No surviving fragment of the synagogue and no marker at the site was found in the sources consulted. The former Jewish community house and school became a commercial building and a residence. The Jewish cemetery, damaged in 1939 and 1944, is a separate site.

שמות בולטים