I was overwhelmed by the feelings and actions of Slovaks of responsibility, goodwill and curiosity about their lost local Jewish communities
December 3, 2024 09:25
Before flying to Slovakia, I was warned how very upsetting my first ever visit would be. This lizard shaped, mountainous country has five million inhabitants, about two thousand Jews and some six to nine hundred Jewish cemeteries. Most are in places such as Namestovo, where no Jews remain. In others, such as Zilina, where there are two synagogues – one a large, magnificent example of Gropius-style architecture completed in 1931- the Jewish community retains only 42 members. A state report written some years ago asserted the residual congregation mainly consisted “of elderly members whose only interest in life was burial in the Jewish cemetery.”
To make matters worse, my visit to Namestovo and the surrounding villages of Orava near the Polish border was to coincide with anniversaries of events showing that antisemitism neither started nor ended with the Holocaust. In 2019, 75 Jewish gravestones were desecrated. This drew such international attention that Slovakia’s president felt obliged to make a sympathetic visit. The culprits were not discovered. The second anniversary was of November 4, 1918. Following the break-up of Austro-Hungary as the First World War ended, many of Namestovo’s Jews were driven out by a pogrom. They included the rabbi of 51 years, my great grandfather Dov Ber Duschinsky and his wife, grand daughter of the famed Rabbi Koppel ‘Charif’ Reich and sister of the chief rabbi of Budapest. After thugs discovered their hiding place in the mikveh, my great grandmother broke her femur as she escaped. Shortly afterwards they both died in Budapest, where they had found refuge with their children.
The remnant of the Jewish community which stayed or returned to Namestovo and its surroundings after the 1918 pogrom perished in the Holocaust. A few fortunates who survived moved elsewhere. They include the now retired Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor of Islamic studies Johanan Friedmann. a child survivor of Theresienstadt.
The last Namestovo rabbi, also my relative, had come to the town 12 years after the 1918 pogrom. Records of the concentration camp at Majdanek in Poland show that he, Rabbi Yossef Reich Prisoner number 10679, was executed by shooting on 10 September 1942. Local researchers are continuing investigations into the brutal murders committed during the winter of 1944-45 by German sonderkommando 7a in the nearby forest at Horka. There they massacred Jews some of whom had been in hiding and were betrayed.
Against this background, it was indeed realistic that I should be cautious about stepping into this ancestral place.
Yet, the visit gave much hope. I met groups of people, both official and voluntary, who were exceptionally warm. They had laboured devotedly for years to preserve, research, understand and honour the memory of Jews who once had lived in their midst.
While the 2019 desecration of Namestovo’s Jewish graves attracted prominent international press publicity, much less attention has been given to the activities in the town and neighbouring districts of Orava of PAMATAJ! This is Slovak for ‘Remember!’ And in Hebrew for ‘Zachor!’ The group has been led for many years by Karol Kurtulik.
It was sunset when we arrived at the Jewish cemetery. Amid the calm, I said Kaddish. Karol showed us the architect-designed monument he had commissioned at the edge of the cemetery to list and respect the known local Jewish victims of the Holocaust who have no graves. Also visible was a piece of electronic equipment to record any unauthorised entry into the cemetery and to deter and detect any further vandalism [a lesson for the UK perhaps?]
The next morning, Karol’s daughter and a friend of hers introduced me to a gathering of English-speaking 17-18 year old history students at the local Gymnasium [grammar school] with an emotional and beautiful violin serenade. They played the musical accompaniment of the poem ‘Eli Eli’ by the Hungarian-Israeli wartime heroine Hannah Szenes.
By coincidence, Hannah and I – then just a year old - had been physically close during July to October 1944. Following her arrest after her clandestine entry into Hungary from Croatia in June 1944 where she had landed as a British parachutist, she was held for months in a Budapest jail before being tried and executed in late 1944.
From about 8 July, following a side deal between the Jewish Vaada [Relief Committee] in Budapest and Adolf Eichmann, I was one of under a hundred Jews out of some 11,000 released from a series of cattle-train transports from Budakalasz to Auschwitz. We were held instead at a ‘privileged’ camp at Columbus Street. This was only some three miles from Hannah’s prison.
For me, the chance to speak with sympathetic, interested and lively teenagers was the highlight of Namestovo. It is my strong wish to have them meet Jewish and non-Jewish British counterparts before too long.
Other features of the stay included the exhibition at the House of Culture titled They Lived Among Us. This consisted of a set of carefully researched photographs and explanatory panels depicting aspects of the town’s Jewish history. One of the panels showed my great grandparents – the smartly attired rabbi and rebbetzin - and two sons, my great uncles Charles and Max. Charles came to live and marry in England. During each of the world wars, he resided in or near Oxford where he prepared his pioneering 1922 book on the Oppenheimer collection of Judaica at the Bodleian Library.
Lucia Zustiacova guided our party, which included the British Deputy Ambassador, to the site of the home of my great grandfather. This had been destroyed along with many other parts of the town during clashes between Nazi and Soviet forces in the final stages of fighting in 1944-45.
Together with Israeli scholar and genealogist Mattan Segev-Frank, Lucia has carried out detailed, highly original research into the history of Namestovo Jews. Their yet unpublished work, prepared with PAMATAJ! and with support from leading scholars, will bring a wholly new level of understanding about the Jews of the town. We also saw a monument to the tragedy of the Klein family and various memorial stones set into pavements.
In nearby Trstena, Mayor Magdaléna Zmarzláková received us. She gave news of a cooperation with a Jewish community just across the border with Poland for restoration of their synagogues and Jewish cemeteries. This had been agreed just that morning and was to be funded by the European Union.
In Namestovo, Mayor Jan Kadera and his cabinet had met us. Both in Namestovo and Trstena we met a variety of local historians, teachers, senior schoolchildren.
Together with designers and architects, they had particpated as volunteers in activities devoted to remembering and respecting their lost Jewish communities.
Later meetings in the Slovakian capital, Bratislava, showed that Namestovo and Trstena were by no means exceptional in such efforts. Not only had the British Ambassador seen similar volunteer projects elsewhere (including a town where Roma students participated in the upkeep of the local Jewish cemetery) but a number of former students at British universities with whom I was introduced at the Embassy reported their similar projects in other places.
All is not rosy for the small Jewish remnant in Slovakia. Yet we Holocaust survivors must not permit ourselves to let deep feelings of loss and anger about the past to drown gratitude and solace.
I was overwhelmed both in the rural, mountainous north and then in the capital city, Bratislava, by the feelings and actions of a considerable section of Slovaks of responsibility, goodwill and curiosity about their lost local Jewish communities.
The tightness of his embrace and obvious regret of Karol Kurtulik when it was time to depart left little doubt about that.
Michael Pinto-Duschinsky was the honorary academic advisor to Claims for Jewish Slave Labour Compensation. He was a guest in Namestovo, Slovakia, of PAMATAJ! Civic Association and in Bratislava of the British Ambassador. The author’s follow up review of the ongoing problems of Slovak Jewry will appear shortly