Die Geschichte von Zemianske Sady Synagogue
Zemianske Sady is a village in the north of the present Galanta district, about 15 km north-east of Sereď and 12 km south of Hlohovec, the town once called Galgóc. Until 1918 it belonged to the Galgóc district of Nyitra county in the Kingdom of Hungary, and its Hungarian name was Nemeskürt, after the lesser nobles who made up much of its population. Elek Fényes's geographical dictionary of 1851 describes Nemes-Kürth and the neighbouring Puszta-Kürth as two adjoining Slovak villages, the first with 334 Catholics and 151 Jews, 'who have their synagogue', the second with 410 Catholics and 14 Jews. That makes the Jews of Nemeskürt almost a third of the village in the middle of the nineteenth century, a sizeable rural community in the hinterland of Sereď and Galgóc. Nothing else about the synagogue's foundation, appearance or later use has been found. The Hungarian Wikipedia article on the village, in its list of sights, states only that the Jewish prayer house was destroyed in 1943. No source read says whether the building Fényes counted in 1851 was the same one that was lost in 1943, whether it was free-standing, or what happened to it. A Jewish cemetery survives at the southern edge of the village. This entry is therefore deliberately thin, and its gaps are listed in full.
Where it stood
Historic: Nemeskürt (Nemes-Kürth), Galgóc district, Nyitra county; street and house number unknown. Today: Zemianske Sady, 925 54, Galanta district, Trnava region; site unknown, pin at the municipality centre (approximate).
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The earliest figures found come from Fényes in 1851: 151 Jews in Nemeskürt and 14 in neighbouring Puszta-Kürth, beside 334 and 410 Catholics respectively. The community was large enough to keep a synagogue and a burial ground; the cemetery, surveyed by the European Jewish cemeteries foundation, lies at the southern part of the village, entered next to house number 201. Its best-known son is Benjamin Szold, born in Nemeskürt on 15 November 1829 according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, who studied at the Pressburg yeshiva, went to Vienna and Breslau, and from 1859 served the Oheb Shalom congregation in Baltimore; he was the father of Henrietta Szold. The sources read say nothing about his family's part in the village congregation. The community seems to have shrunk sharply later in the century. The county monograph of Nyitra, published around 1899, describes Nemes-Kürt as a Slovak village of 589 Roman Catholic inhabitants and mentions no Jews at all, and the 1910 census figures quoted by Hungarian Wikipedia give only mother tongues. No figure for the Jewish population in the twentieth century, no list of officers and no rabbi's name has been found.
Architektur und Gestaltung
Nothing is known about the building's architecture. No photograph, plan, postcard or description of the synagogue of Nemeskürt has been found, and it does not appear in Maroš Borský's survey of synagogue architecture in Slovakia, in the Pinkas Hakehillot index for Slovakia, or in the lists of lost and standing synagogues kept by synagogyslovenska.sk and pamiatkynaslovensku.sk. The two written sources use different words for it. Fényes in 1851 wrote that the Jews had their 'synagógájok', their synagogue. The modern Hungarian Wikipedia line calls the building lost in 1943 an 'imaház', a prayer house, a Hungarian word used both for small free-standing village synagogues and for prayer rooms. Whether the Nemeskürt building was purpose-built and free-standing, or a room in a house, cannot be settled from these sources. A congregation of some 150 people in 1851 would normally have had a building of its own, but that is an inference, not a documented fact. Its size, date, builder and style are unknown.
Leben in der Synagoge
No account of worship in the synagogue has been found. The sources read do not say whether the congregation followed the Orthodox or the Neolog line after the Hungarian Jewish schism of 1868-69. Nor do they name a rabbi, cantor or teacher, or say whether a school was attached to the synagogue. A community of 151 people in 1851 would have needed a ritual slaughterer and a teacher for the children, and the burial ground at the southern edge of the village shows that it maintained its own cemetery, but none of its religious officers is known by name. Benjamin Szold, born in the village in 1829, received his early religious education from rabbis elsewhere, at Shalgaw, Werbau and the Pressburg yeshiva, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia; whether he first prayed in the Nemeskürt synagogue is not stated. If the Jewish population fell as steeply after 1851 as the county monograph of about 1899 suggests, services may have become irregular well before the twentieth century, and the building may have stood little used, but there is no direct evidence for this.
Zerstörung
The only statement found about the end of the building is a single line in the list of sights in the Hungarian Wikipedia article on Nemeskürt: 'A zsidó imaház 1943-ban elpusztult', the Jewish prayer house was destroyed, or perished, in 1943. The line gives no source, no month and no cause. The Hungarian verb used covers demolition, collapse, fire and deliberate wrecking alike, so it does not reveal whether the building was pulled down, burnt or allowed to fall in. No source read links the loss to any wartime event, fighting or air raid in 1943. Who destroyed the prayer house is not recorded in any source read, and no local chronicle, municipal history or newspaper report confirming the date was found. The village's own history page, taken from the Slovak regional gazetteer, says nothing about the Jews or their buildings. The date of 1943 therefore rests on one unsourced line and should be treated as provisional until a local record is found.
Das Schicksal der Gemeinde
What became of the Jews of Zemianske Sady in the Holocaust is unknown. No source read gives their number in the 1930s or 1940s, and the county monograph of about 1899 already lists no Jewish inhabitants, so it is possible that few or none remained by the Second World War. Those who did live there, or who had moved to nearby towns such as Sereď and Hlohovec, would have come under the anti-Jewish measures of the wartime Slovak State. According to the general history of the Jews in Slovakia, deportations from Slovakia began on 25 March 1942 under an agreement between the Slovak government and Nazi Germany, and about 58,000 Jews had been deported by 20 October 1942, more than 99 percent of whom were murdered. Deportations resumed on 30 September 1944 after Nazi German forces occupied the country, through the Sereď camp under Alois Brunner; Einsatzgruppe H and the Hlinka Guard emergency divisions murdered about 2,000 Jews inside Slovakia. No names of victims or survivors from Zemianske Sady have been found, and no postwar Jewish community in the village is recorded.
Der Ort heute
The site of the synagogue has not been identified. No source read gives its street, house number or plot, and no surviving remains are recorded. The village today is a small farming community of about 870 people, and the location of the building cannot be fixed without the cadastral maps of the nineteenth century or local memory. The Jewish cemetery still exists at the southern part of the village, with its entrance next to house number 201, and is listed by the European Jewish cemeteries foundation. The map pin for this entry marks the centre of the municipality as given by OpenStreetMap and should not be read as the synagogue's location. The Slovak regional archive in Galanta or Hlohovec, and the parish and municipal records of Zemianske Sady, are the most likely places to find the address and the circumstances of the building's loss in 1943.
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