История Želiezovce Synagogue
Želiezovce, known in Hungarian as Zselíz, is a small town on the lower Hron river, long the centre of a large aristocratic estate that passed from the Esterházy family to the Counts Breunner. It had a modest Jewish population: the 1930 Czechoslovak census counted 146 people of the Jewish faith among 3,116 inhabitants, and 101 of them declared Jewish nationality. An English-language list of synagogues in Slovakia names a Želiezovce Synagogue and marks it as destroyed, giving no year of construction, no date of destruction and no reference. No other source read for this entry describes the building, so its appearance, size, address and age are not recorded here. What is documented is the community around it. The Jews of the town were Hungarian speakers, as the Hebrew and Hungarian inscriptions in their small cemetery show, and they belonged to the wider Jewish world of the Levice district. In May 1944 the Hungarian authorities removed them to the Levice ghetto, from where they were sent to Auschwitz in June. Their cemetery survives, with burials until 1988. The Pinkas Hakehillot encyclopaedia of Slovak Jewish communities has an entry on Želiezovce that is not translated online, and a 2009 Hungarian-language history of the Jews of Zselíz by Helena Zubčeková is the most likely place where the synagogue is described.
Where it stood
Historic and present address unknown; pin at the centre of Želiezovce, Levice district, Nitra region (approximate).
Открыть большую карту →Еврейская община
Jews in Želiezovce are recorded in the sources read here only from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries; when they first settled is unknown. The town was then a Hungarian-speaking market and estate centre of about two thousand people (1,972 in 1880, 2,367 in 1900), with a railway station, post office and savings bank, as the Bars county monograph describes it. In the census of 1930 Želiezovce had 3,116 inhabitants, of whom 146 were of the Jewish faith; 101 people registered their nationality as Jewish, the rest of the Jewish population presumably declaring Hungarian or Czechoslovak nationality. The community therefore numbered between one and two hundred people in the interwar years, a small congregation by the standards of the region. Its rite (Orthodox, Neolog or Status Quo), the names of its rabbis and leaders, and whether it was an independent congregation or a branch of a larger one in the district are not stated in any source read. The Pinkas Hakehillot Slovakia entry on the town (page 231 of the Hebrew original) would answer these questions but has not been translated online.
Архитектура и дизайн
Nothing is known about the architecture of the Želiezovce synagogue from the sources read for this entry. No description, plan, photograph or address was found: the list that records it gives only the name and the word 'destroyed', the online pages of the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project and the Hungarian-language encyclopaedia article on the town say nothing of a synagogue, and the heritage portal pamiatkynaslovensku.sk has no page for it. Its date, building material, size and style therefore remain unknown, and it is not even certain from these sources whether it was a purpose-built synagogue or a prayer house. A postcard of the town in the judaica.cz collection of Jewish postcards from Slovakia is reported as a possible view of the building, but the gallery could not be read, so no image is included here. The most promising sources for the building are the 2009 history of the Jews of Zselíz by Helena Zubčeková and the untranslated Pinkas Hakehillot entry.
Жизнь в синагоге
No account of services, rabbis, cantors or festivals in the Želiezovce synagogue has been found. What survives of the community's religious life is chiefly its cemetery, a narrow plot of about 6 by 30 metres near the town's other cemeteries, with somewhere between twenty and a hundred marble and granite gravestones of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their inscriptions are in Hebrew and Hungarian, which shows a traditional congregation whose members spoke Hungarian in daily life, like most Jews of the lower Hron valley. A congregation of one to two hundred people could have supported a prayer house, a burial society and religious instruction for children, but none of these is documented for Želiezovce in the sources read. For larger matters the town looked to Levice, the district seat, which had a substantial community with its own synagogue, ritual bath and Jewish school. How the people of Želiezovce related to that community before 1944 is not recorded.
Разрушение
The only evidence that the Želiezovce synagogue existed and was destroyed is a single unreferenced row in the English Wikipedia 'List of synagogues in Slovakia', which names the building, leaves the years of construction and destruction blank and records its fate in one word, 'Destroyed'. No second source read for this entry confirms the building, its loss or a date. The building would have stood empty from May 1944, when the town's Jews were taken away. Whether it was damaged in the fighting of spring 1945, when retreating German troops blew up the tower of the Catholic church and the Reformed church in the town, is not recorded; no source links the synagogue to that destruction. It may equally have been sold or pulled down in the post-war decades. When it was demolished, by whom and why are not recorded. Until a fuller source such as the Pinkas Hakehillot entry or Zubčeková's local history is read, the loss can only be described as a demolition of unknown date and by an unknown actor.
Судьба общины
In the spring of 1944 Želiezovce lay within Hungary, and its Jews were persecuted under the Hungarian anti-Jewish measures of that year. At the end of April the governor of the region ordered Jewish businesses closed, and on 4 May he decreed a ghetto in Levice. From 8 May 1944 the Jews of Želiezovce were taken there together with those of Vráble, Tekovské Šarluhy and smaller settlements of the area, 572 people in all; some were housed in the Jewish school, and many were put to forced labour in the town and on farms. In early June all the ghetto inmates were concentrated in a state tobacco factory on the edge of Levice, where Hungarian guards robbed them of the little money and valuables they still had. On 14 June 1944, 1,695 Jews of Levice and the whole district were deported on a transport of 2,678 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, where most were murdered. How many Jews of Želiezovce survived and whether any returned is not recorded in the sources read; about 300 survivors came back to Levice after liberation. No organised Jewish life is known in Želiezovce after the war.
Место сегодня
The site of the synagogue has not been identified. No source read gives its street or plot, and no marker for it is known in the town, so it cannot be said what stands on the place today. The map pin is placed at the centre of Želiezovce only to locate the town. The Jewish cemetery is the one visible trace of the community. It is a flat urban plot near the town's other cemeteries, open through an unlocked gate and without a sign, with stones carrying Hebrew and Hungarian inscriptions; some graves are fenced, and individuals occasionally clean the stones and clear vegetation.
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