Veľký Meder Synagogue

Die jüdische Gemeinde

According to the KehilaLinks history of Nagymegyer, Jews settled in the town in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in the nineteenth century the community had its own synagogue, cemetery and schools. Fényes counted 181 Jews among 2,380 inhabitants in 1848. Later figures given by KehilaLinks are 217 Jews in 1869 (7.7 per cent of the population), 354 in 1877, 416 in 1919 and a peak of 522 in 1941. By the end of the First World War Jews owned most of the town's businesses. The memorial list of 1944 families records tailors, butchers, grocers, shopkeepers, physicians, a teacher and a synagogue attendant. The congregation was Orthodox, strictly observant but described by Yehoshua Weiss, a grandson of one of its rabbis, as moderate. It employed a rabbi, a cantor, a ritual slaughterer, two teachers, two melamdim and a synagogue attendant, and kept a beit midrash, a Talmud Torah with two classrooms, an elementary school with two classrooms, a slaughterhouse and a mikveh. Its chairman and committee were elected every year in the beit midrash by the taxpaying members. After Hungary annexed the town in November 1938, Jews were conscripted for forced labour and their businesses were confiscated.

Architektur und Gestaltung

No plan, description or record of an architect has been found, so the building is known only from a single undated photograph published on the KehilaLinks site for Nagymegyer with the caption 'Nagymegyer Synagogue'. It shows a free-standing, rendered hall seen from a front corner. The entrance front ends in a tall stepped gable outlined with a band of small arches, flanked by slender corner pinnacles, with a small round window high in the gable. Below are paired round-arched windows on the upper level and large round-arched openings on the ground floor. The long side wall has a row of tall round-arched windows divided by pilasters. A low fence runs along the street in front. The round-arched, gabled design is typical of the Romantic historicist synagogues built in Hungary in the middle and later nineteenth century, which fits the 1870s date better than 1828; it is possible that the synagogue recorded by Fényes in 1848 was rebuilt or replaced, but that is an inference from the photograph, not a documented fact. Seating capacity, the builder and the interior arrangement are unknown.

Leben in der Synagoge

The synagogue was the centre of an Orthodox congregation whose first known rabbi, Yoseph Dov Lock, served from 1860 to 1880; he had studied under Moshe Schreiber, the Chatam Sofer of Pressburg, and his tombstone in Nagymegyer calls him a peacemaker. He was followed by his son-in-law Yehoshua-Heshl Weiss from 1880 to 1920, and Weiss by his own son-in-law Shimon Shatin from 1920 to 1938. Charity, Talmud Torah, burial (Chevra Kaddisha) and women's associations were funded mainly by pledges made by men called up to the Torah. Yehoshua Weiss's memoir describes recurring arguments over cutting the rabbi's salary. From about the mid-1930s a group of young Chareidim stopped attending services in the synagogue and prayed separately in the Talmud Torah classrooms, rejecting the rabbi's authority. The dispute ended Shatin's tenure; his successor, Pinkhas Asher Goldberger, was chosen only by the part of the community that had stayed loyal, and he was the rabbi when the community was deported.

Zerstörung

No source found records damage to the synagogue during the Second World War. It stood empty after the deportation of the congregation in June 1944, and the survivors who came back did not form a lasting community. The Hungarian Wikipedia article on Nagymegyer states that the synagogue was demolished in 1955. By then the town was again part of Czechoslovakia and under Communist rule, which had nationalised most property, but no source read says who ordered or carried out the demolition, whether the building had first been sold or handed over by a Jewish body, or what happened to its furnishings and materials. The English Wikipedia list of synagogues in Slovakia gives only 'Destroyed after WW II', with a round date of 1950 that probably stands for 'unknown'. The 1955 date therefore rests on one secondary source and should be checked against local records.

Das Schicksal der Gemeinde

Nagymegyer was annexed by Hungary in November 1938 under the First Vienna Award. After the Nazi German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, the Hungarian authorities deported all the Jews of the town and of the surrounding villages to Auschwitz in June 1944; the town's annual commemoration is held on 15 June, the anniversary of the deportation. The memorial list compiled after the war records about 110 families, and KehilaLinks gives 418 townspeople who were murdered. Rabbi Pinkhas Asher Goldberger was deported with his wife and three children, his brother-in-law and three sisters-in-law; only he and his youngest sister-in-law, Adele, survived. About 100 Jews returned. They met an unfriendly reception from the local population and gradually left; most had emigrated to Israel by 1949. No Jews live in Veľký Meder today. The walled Jewish cemetery survives and is looked after by a caretaker.

Der Ort heute

The exact plot of the synagogue has not been identified in any source read. Alexander Gerhát's map of Jewish homes in 1944 marks it as landmark 101, a rectangular building with a Star of David on the south side of the street running east from the main square (Fő tér) towards Komárom, but the map is a sketch without house numbers. What stands on the site today is unknown, and no surviving fragment is recorded. The street is probably today's Komárňanská, and the map pin is placed on it, but it marks the street, not the plot. Since June 2004 a trilingual memorial plaque in Slovak, Hebrew and Hungarian has recalled the deported Jews of the town. The Jewish cemetery, with an estimated 100 to 500 gravestones, is walled and maintained.

Bedeutende Namen

Yoseph Dov Lock

rabbi 1860-1880First rabbi of Nagymegyer, 1860-1880

Lock is named in Yehoshua Weiss's memoir as the first rabbi of the Nagymegyer congregation, serving from 1860 to 1880. He had been a pupil of Moshe Schreiber, the Chatam Sofer of Pressburg, and his tombstone in the Nagymegyer Jewish cemetery describes him as a mediator and peacemaker. His son-in-law Yehoshua-Heshl Weiss succeeded him, beginning a line of rabbis related by marriage that led the synagogue until 1938.

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Yehoshua-Heshl Weiss

rabbi 1880-1920Rabbi of Nagymegyer, 1880-1920

Weiss, son-in-law of Rabbi Lock, led the Nagymegyer congregation for forty years, from 1880 to 1920, the longest tenure recorded. He was the grandfather of Yehoshua Weiss, who wrote the KehilaLinks memoir of the community. His remains were later moved from the Nagymegyer cemetery to Har HaMenuchot in Jerusalem. His son-in-law Shimon Shatin succeeded him.

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Shimon Shatin

rabbi 1920-1938Rabbi of Nagymegyer, 1920-1938

Shatin married Beile Haye, daughter of Rabbi Yehoshua-Heshl Weiss, and followed him as rabbi of Nagymegyer from 1920 to 1938. In his last years a group of young Chareidim broke away from services in the synagogue and prayed in the Talmud Torah classrooms, rejecting rabbinic authority; according to the memoir his tenure ended as this dispute intensified. His later life is not recorded in the sources read.

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Pinkhas Asher Goldberger

UnknownLast rabbi of Nagymegyer, from c. 1938 to 1944

Goldberger succeeded Shatin, chosen only by the part of the congregation that had remained loyal to the synagogue, and was the rabbi when the community was deported to Auschwitz in June 1944. His wife, three children, brother-in-law and two of his sisters-in-law were murdered. He and his youngest sister-in-law, Adele, survived, married and emigrated to the United States, where he founded a small synagogue in Forest Hills, New York. He is buried on Har HaMenuchot in Jerusalem.

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