Follow
This project seeks to collect all of the Jewish families from the town of Nove Mesto nad Vahom, Slovakia.
NOVE MESTO NAD VAHOM (Slovak: Nové Mesto nad Váhom; Hungarian: Vágúhely; German: Neustadt an der Waag, Neustadtl, Waag-Neustadtl, Waagneustadtl, Waag-Neustadt), town in western Slovakia, since 1993 Slovak Republic. Located at the northern edge of the Danubian Hills at the foothills of the northern end of the White Carpathians, on the Váh river, Nové Mesto is 27 km from Trenčín and 100 km from Bratislava (Pressburg in German). Until the end of World War I (1918), the district was mostly part of the county of Kingdom of Hungary of Nyitra, with an area in the north forming part of the county of Trenčín.
Lands around today's Nové Mesto nad Váhom were inhabited in the prehistoric era; many artifacts from the Stone and Bronze Ages have been found. In the local area Mnešice, a prehistoric settlement was discovered.
The first written record of Nové Mesto nad Váhom comes in 1263, when King Béla IV of Hungary granted freedoms for the loyalty shown during the Mongol invasions. The area belonged to the Benedictine order, later to Matthew III Csák, and others. It received its town privileges in 1550. Industry developed in the 19th century and was focused mainly on processing agricultural products.
During the reign of King Luis the Great (1342–1382), Jews lived at Nové Mesto, were later expelled, and still later permitted to return. In 1465 there were 10 Jews; the community was expelled again in 1514.
In 1683, when many Jews died in the Kuruc massacre in the nearby Moravian city of Uhersky Brod, the 11 families who survived were given permission to settle in Nové Mesto and engage in trade and craft. Being from the Uhersky Brod congregation, they were obliged to pay taxes. The community continued to grow, with more Moravian Jews arriving. They were subject to the "Familiants" law of Emperor Charles VI (1711–1740), which permitted only one Jew per family to marry and limited the number of Jews who could live in a given town. The others emigrated to upper Hungary.
By 1735 there were 372 Jews in Nové Mesto. In 1780 they built their first synagogue. In 1785 there were 2,320 Jews; Nové Mesto nad Váhom was the second most important Jewish city in upper Hungary after *Pressburg (Bratislava). In 1830 there were 2,495 Jewish residents; in 1840 there were 2,050; in 1880 there were 1,850; and in 1910 they numbered 1,553. In 1930 there were 1,581; in 1940 the number had fallen to 1,209.
In 1754 the community hired its first rabbi, Moses Hamburger (served 1754–1764). In 1780 a talmud torah was opened. Following the order of Emperor Joseph II (1780–1790), a school was founded in 1783, with German as the language of instruction. During the Hapsburg Empire, the Jews lived undisturbed until the Spring of Nations (1848–49).
In May 1848, a massive pogrom claimed many Jewish lives. During the Magyar war of independence, nine Jews enlisted in the Magyar army. Thus Jews clashed with the Slovak national interest, which wanted self-rule. A fire in 1856 destroyed a large part of Nové Mesto nad Váhom. In 1848 a primary school opened, still using German; in the 1860s it switched to Magyar.
In 1856 Rabbi Joseph Weisze (1855–1897) founded a government-supported Jewish high school, the first of its kind in Jewish Hungary. When support was lost in 1919, the school was taken over by the authorities and ceased to be Jewish. In 1860 a school for girls was established, operating until 1919.
After the 1868 Hungarian Jewish Congress many congregations split, but Nové Mesto nad Váhom continued its old tradition, called "Status Quo Ante." In 1921, several families established an Orthodox congregation. They hired a rabbi, built a synagogue, and founded a ḥevra kaddisha and a talmud torah.
In 1928 Rabbi Lipmann Donath established a small yeshivah. The two rival congregations made peace in 1932.
During World War I dozens of Jews were recruited into the army. At the end of the war there was a wave of pogroms in Slovakia, and Nové Mesto nad Váhom was one of the hardest hit. Jews tried to defend themselves, using the rifles they had kept from the army; Hungarian soldiers came to their rescue. Nationalist and Catholic elements continued to persecute Jews. Pro-Czechoslovak and Social-Democratic figures protested, serving to calm the situation.
In the New Czechoslovak Republic, Jewish entrepreneurs helped industrialize Nové Mesto. They established food, metal, wood, and textile industries; Jewish physicians, lawyers, and teachers contributed to intellectual life, and Jews played a major role in retail and handicrafts.
The Jewish party was prominent in local political life, and its members were regularly elected to the municipal council and as deputy mayor. The Zionist movement was well established.
With the support of the Third Reich, Slovakia proclaimed independence on March 14, 1939. A wave of antisemitism ensued, culminating in 1942 with the deportation of 1,300 of the 2,215 Jews in Nové Mesto to Sobibor and Treblinka. In August 1944 there was an anti-Nazi uprising in Slovakia in which Jewish youth participated, but the invading German army deported the surviving Jews to Auschwitz.
In 1947 there were 266 Jews in Nové Mesto; most emigrated. In 1965 there were 25. In 1975 the Communist authorities destroyed the ancient cemetery. The synagogue was destroyed during the war, and Jewish communal buildings were expropriated.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
J.J.(L.) Greenwald (Grunwald), Mekorot le-Todedot Yisrael (1934), 53–72; L. Rothkirchen, in: Yad Vashem, Pinkas ha-Kehillot (1963), 35–39; Y. Toury, Mehumah u-Mevukhah be-Mahpekhat 1848 (1968), index; M. Lányi and B.H. Propperné, Szlovenskói Zsidó Hitközségek Története (1933), 279–80; E. Bàrkàny and L. Dojč, Židovské náboženské obce na Slovensku (1991), 225–32.
[Yeshayahu Jelinek (2nd ed.)]