Zwartsluis Synagogue

PANORAMICA

La storia di Zwartsluis Synagogue

Zwartsluis is a small port town in the north-west of Overijssel, where the Zwartewater meets the waterways towards Meppel and the Zuiderzee. Jews settled there at the end of the seventeenth century, and an organised congregation existed by the early eighteenth century, when it had its own burial ground on the Leeuwarder or Kleine Schans; the Jews of Meppel also buried their dead there. The congregation belonged to the ring of Kampen and in 1789 employed its own cantor.

The first synagogue, whose founding date is unknown, was in use in the eighteenth century but was in poor repair by the middle of the nineteenth. The congregation therefore built a new synagogue with a study house on the Baanstraat, dedicated in 1851, and laid out a new cemetery directly behind it in the same year. The old building was sold in 1852. The new synagogue served the community through its peak of 120 members in 1869 and its decline to 25 by 1930.

During the Nazi occupation the building was used as a depot for household goods taken from deported Jews. After the war the congregation was dissolved and the synagogue was sold, used by a carpenter, and pulled down in 1969. Its bimah survives in the synagogue of Winterswijk.

POSIZIONE

Where it stood for 118 years

Historic: Baanstraat, Zwartsluis, Overijssel, in front of the Jewish cemetery laid out behind the synagogue in 1851; house number unknown. Today: Baanstraat, 8064 Zwartsluis, municipality of Zwartewaterland (approximate).

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La comunità ebraica

Jews are recorded in Zwartsluis as early as 1669, and the encyclopedia of the Jewish cultural quarter dates their settlement to the end of the seventeenth century, with an organised congregation forming early in the eighteenth. A cemetery is mentioned in 1722. The congregation was part of the ring of Kampen under the chief rabbinate of Overijssel, and in 1851 it was one of eight congregations that abstained in the vote on the appointment of Chief Rabbi Fränkel, fearing higher costs for the chief rabbinate. Numbers were modest: 35 Jews in 1795, 37 in 1809 and 54 in 1840, rising to 120 in 1869, after which they fell to 59 in 1899 and 25 in 1930. Until the mid-nineteenth century most Jewish men were butchers and ritual slaughterers; by the end of the century most worked in the textile trade. A recent local history notes that the Jakobs family of Zwartsluis traded nationally and internationally.

Architettura e design

No photograph, drawing or plan of the Baanstraat synagogue was found in this research, so its appearance cannot be described. The sources say only that it was a synagogue combined with a study house (leerhuis), built to replace an older, dilapidated prayer house and dedicated in 1851, and that the congregation's new cemetery lay directly behind it. The architect, builder, materials, style and seating capacity are unknown. The building was evidently sturdy and spacious enough to serve as a furniture store during the war and as a carpenter's workshop afterwards. One fitting from its interior survives: the Dutch national monuments register records that the bimah, the raised reading platform, in the protected synagogue at Spoorstraat 32 in Winterswijk dates from the second half of the nineteenth century and came from the synagogue at Zwartsluis. A mizrach, a decorated plaque marking the direction of prayer, from the Zwartsluis synagogue is in the collection of the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam.

La vita nella sinagoga

The congregation was led by two parnassim and kept a cantor from at least 1789. It ran a religious school, founded in the 1840s, which moved into a purpose-built schoolhouse in 1873. A women's society supported the synagogue, and a society for the study of Torah met, presumably in the study house that formed part of the 1851 building. A circumcision register kept by the congregation survives for the later eighteenth century in the archive of its board, now in the provincial archives of Overijssel. The bimah now in Winterswijk is the one physical trace of services in the building: from it the Torah was read on Sabbaths and festivals. The mizrach preserved in Amsterdam once hung in the synagogue to show worshippers the direction of Jerusalem. The names of rabbis, cantors, teachers and board members who served in the building were not found in the sources read.

Distruzione

No source records damage to the synagogue during the Second World War. During the Nazi German occupation it was used to store the furniture and household goods taken from the homes of the town's deported Jews; the sources read do not say which office ran the depot. The building stood empty of worshippers from then on. In 1948 the surviving remnant of the congregation was too small to continue and was placed under the Jewish community of Zwolle, and the synagogue was sold. The new owner used it as a carpenter's workshop for about two decades. In 1969 the building was demolished. Who ordered or carried out the demolition, and why, is not recorded in the sources found. Before that the bimah had been removed and later installed in the synagogue of Winterswijk, and the mizrach reached the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam; when and by whom these were taken out is unknown.

Il destino della comunità

The Jewish community of Zwartsluis numbered 25 in 1930. During the Nazi German occupation of the Netherlands, which began in May 1940, the Jews still living in Zwartsluis were deported, apart from a few who went into hiding. According to the encyclopedia of the Jewish cultural quarter, only one of those deported returned; all the others were murdered in the camps. The exact number of victims was not found in the sources read, nor the dates and routes of their deportation. A recent local history of Jewish life in Zwartewaterland traces three Zwartsluis families, among them the family of Salomon Brest. Those who survived in hiding were too few to sustain a congregation, and in 1948 the Jewish community of Zwartsluis was formally dissolved and joined to that of Zwolle. The local government now maintains the Baanstraat cemetery.

Il luogo oggi

The synagogue stood on the Baanstraat in front of the Jewish cemetery of 1851, which still exists with 32 gravestones and is maintained by the municipality of Zwartewaterland. The exact plot of the synagogue has not been fixed from a map or register in this research, so what occupies it today is unknown. A monument to the murdered Jews of Zwartsluis has stood in front of the cemetery since 1984. The former Jewish school of 1873 has been restored and carries a plaque recalling its earlier use; it is a separate building and not the synagogue. The older cemetery in the village centre was cleared. The bimah of the synagogue can still be seen in the Winterswijk synagogue.

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