85 Founding Document of the Synagogue in Kunmadaras

Kunmadaras, 1941

Paper, ink, handwriting

Gift of the Kunmadaras Jewish Community, 1958        

‘It’s 1941 and we, the Jews of Kunmadaras, build a temple for the glory of the Lord...’ this is what the members of the Jewish Community of the Great Plane wrote on the scroll which they placed in the foundation stone of the Synagogue. The Synagogue built in 1880 had collapsed by that time, so the community decided that despite the trying circumstances, they would start building a new one.  The document written in both Hungarian and Hebrew languages, in defiance of the anti-Jewish legislations, sets an optimistic tone:‘we want to keep living in the rebuilt temple’.

On May 24, 1944, all members of the community were deported and only a hundred of them survived the Holocaust. Those who returned found sacked flats and shops, yet tried to continue their old professions. In May 1946, a squabble at the market place triggered a bloody pogrom against the Jews, during which three people lost their lives and several were seriously injured.  The survivors moved out from the village and placed the founding document of the former Synagogue in the museum.