La storia di Zbraslavice Synagogue
Zbraslavice lies in the hills of Central Bohemia, about 11 kilometres south-south-west of Malešov and south-west of Kutná Hora, in the district that German speakers called Kuttenberg. It was a market town, first mentioned in 1260, and in German it was Zbraslawitz or Sbraslawitz. Jews lived there at least from the late seventeenth century: a burial society is dated to 1692 and the community appears in the census of 1724.
The synagogue was built in 1832, according to the historian Jiří Fiedler, whose town-by-town inventory of Jewish monuments in Bohemia and Moravia is the only source found that describes the building at all. It was put up when the community was near its peak; in 1850 Zbraslavice had 215 Jewish inhabitants. In the second half of the nineteenth century families moved away to Kutná Hora, Prague and other larger towns, and by 1930 only 19 Jews remained. The independent congregation had already been dissolved before 1921, so the synagogue had lost its purpose well before the Second World War.
Fiedler records that the building was afterwards rebuilt as a garage and that it was demolished after 1990. No photograph, plan or description of its appearance was found. The community's Jewish cemetery, founded at the end of the eighteenth century, survives on a hillside north of the town.
Where it stood for 158 years
Historic: Zbraslavice (Zbraslawitz), Kutná Hora district; street and house number unknown. Today: unknown plot; placeholder pin on the town square (náměstí), 285 21 Zbraslavice (approximate).
Apri la mappa grande →La comunità ebraica
The Jewish settlement in Zbraslavice probably goes back to the seventeenth century. The JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project, drawing on notes of the State Jewish Museum in Prague and on Hugo Gold's 1934 handbook of Bohemian Jewish communities, dates the founding of a Chevra Kadisha burial society to 1692 and gives a record of Jews in the town in 1724. An older burial ground was destroyed in the eighteenth century, and a new cemetery was laid out on a slope about 800 metres north of the town, reportedly in 1797. The community grew in the first half of the nineteenth century, built its synagogue in 1832 and reached its largest size in 1850, with 215 members. Like many small Bohemian rural communities it then declined as families moved to towns where trade and schooling offered more. The congregation stopped existing as an independent body before 1921, and the census of 1930 counted only 19 Jews. The ancestors of the Prague writers František Langer and Jiří Langer are among those buried in the cemetery.
Architettura e design
Almost nothing is known about the building's appearance. Fiedler gives only its date, 1832, and its later fate; he does not describe its form, materials, decoration or interior, and no historical photograph, postcard or plan of it was found. The date places it in the period of Biedermeier and late Classicist design, when many small country synagogues in Bohemia were plain rendered halls with tall round-headed windows, but whether Zbraslavice followed that pattern is unknown and should not be assumed. The architect, the builder, the seating capacity, the position of the women's gallery and the arrangement of the ark and bimah are all unknown. The building was substantial enough to be adapted later into a garage, which suggests a free-standing hall with a wide open interior, but the size of the plot and the exact street are not recorded in the sources read.
La vita nella sinagoga
No source found describes services, rabbis, cantors or teachers at the Zbraslavice synagogue. What survives of the community's religious life is mainly its cemetery. The burial society, dated to 1692, is older than the synagogue itself, and the cemetery contains about 150 gravestones from the early nineteenth century up to 1932, of granite and sandstone, with Hebrew and German inscriptions. The oldest legible stone, of Zelig son of Gershon, dates from 1815, and that of Shelomo Freund from 1834, two years after the synagogue was finished. The Cemetery Discovery Project notes that rabbis are buried there, but their names were not found. Remains of the walls of the ceremonial hall used for preparing the dead still stand in the cemetery. The community reached 215 members in 1850, but its numbers fell steadily afterwards and it was dissolved before 1921.
Distruzione
The synagogue did not perish in a single event. After the congregation was dissolved before 1921 the building passed out of religious use, and Fiedler records that it was rebuilt as a garage. When and by whom it was sold or converted is not stated, nor whether the change happened before or after the Second World War. No source mentions damage to the building during the Nazi occupation, although the Cemetery Discovery Project reports that the Jewish cemetery was frequently vandalised during the war. The converted building survived the Communist period. According to Fiedler it was demolished after 1990, that is, after the fall of Communism; the year, the owner at the time and the reason for the demolition are not recorded in any source read. Who demolished it is not recorded.
Il destino della comunità
By the time of the Nazi occupation of Bohemia in March 1939 very few Jews still lived in Zbraslavice; the census of 1930 had counted 19. Their names and fates were not found in the sources read for this entry. Whether any of them still lived in the town when the Nazi authorities began deporting the Jews of the Protectorate, and how many were murdered, could not be established from the sources consulted; no list of Zbraslavice victims was found. Many descendants of Zbraslavice families had long since moved to Kutná Hora, Prague and other towns, and their fate belongs to the history of those communities. After the war no Jewish community was re-established in the town, and the Cemetery Discovery Project records that it has no Jewish inhabitants today. The cemetery is owned by the Jewish Community of Prague and maintained through its company Matana.
Il luogo oggi
The building no longer exists, and the sources consulted do not give its address or say what now occupies its plot, so the map pin marks only the town square of Zbraslavice. The Jewish cemetery, about 800 metres north of the town on a slope near the road to Kateřinky, is the community's only surviving monument. Its wall was dismantled after the Second World War and some newer stones were stolen; in summer 2008 a tornado uprooted most of its trees and toppled many gravestones, which were reset in 2009. About 150 stones remain, and the cemetery is freely accessible.
Hai qualcosa da condividere?
Fotografie, documenti, storie di famiglia o ricordi di questa sinagoga e della sua comunità aiutano a mantenerne viva la storia.
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