Siebengemeinden (Burgenland)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Prince Paul Esterhazy (1635–1713)

Under the term Siebengemeinden ( Hebrew שבע קהילות Schewa Kehilot ) also Esterházysche Sieben-Gemeinde , formerly Jewish communities in what is now Northern and Central Burgenland are grouped together, which emerged under the Esterházy rule in what was then Hungary . The Siebengemeinden are:

Often they are contrasted in the regional historical debate with those communities that developed under the protection of the Batthyány family in what is now southern Burgenland. These include Rechnitz , Schlaining and Güssing . Another former Jewish community in the south of the country is Oberwart , where the majority of the Schlaininger Jews migrated in the interwar period.

Neufeld originally belonged to the seven communities as the eighth community. It was dissolved in 1739 by a stately decree against which no objection was possible. The designation "eight municipalities" does not appear in the documents.

Formation of the communities

The first Jewish settlers existed in these communities as early as the 14th and 15th centuries , but Jewish life only flourished in these villages when, after 1670, Prince Paul I, Prince Esterházy, took in Jews who had been expelled from Vienna by Leopold I were. Around 3000 people, who mostly professed Orthodox Judaism , settled in the seven communities. The most pious among them lived in Mattersdorf and Deutschkreutz, where important yeshivot were located. The great Rabbi Moses Sofer also worked in Mattersdorf .

For protection by the Esterházy they had to pay protection fees to the respective prince. In return, they proudly called themselves High Princely Esterházy Protective Jews .

Destruction of the communities by National Socialism

Gauleiter Tobias Portschy

The seven communities fell victim to the persecution of the Jews during the Nazi regime . Their destruction is inextricably linked with the name of Gauleiter Tobias Portschy , who declared Burgenland to be free of Jews in November 1938 after the Jewish residents were forced to give up their homeland within a few days. Many fell victim to a wild wave of “Aryanization” in which party members, followers or neighbors enriched themselves. Of course, there have also been cases where the displaced were supported by former non-Jewish neighbors and friends. People were shipped to Vienna and initially left to their fate there, where Viennese Jews organized temporary accommodation for their expelled fellow believers. About two thirds of Burgenland Jews managed to emigrate. They emigrated to London , Manchester , New York , Ramat Gan , Tel Aviv , Budapest , Buenos Aires , Shanghai and other places. All others were deported from 1939 to ghettos and concentration camps such as Riga , Buchenwald , Ungvár , Miskolc , Kielce , Minsk , Nisko , Izbica or Oppeln and murdered there.

Of the former synagogues, only the Kobersdorf synagogue and a private synagogue in today's Austrian Jewish Museum in Eisenstadt have been preserved. The other synagogues in Burgenland were destroyed by the National Socialists.

consequences

Of the around 4,000 Jews in Burgenland, including the Jewish residents of the three southern communities and individual families in more than 100 Burgenland villages, at least 1,300 fell victim to the Holocaust. After the war, only a handful of survivors or displaced persons returned to their old homeland. No more than a dozen people of the Jewish faith live in the communities today.

Today only the preserved cemeteries, the Kobersdorf synagogue , which was in need of renovation, and the Austrian Jewish Museum in Eisenstadt, founded in 1972, are reminiscent of the Jewish history of the Siebengemeinde, which lasted more than 300 years .

Personalities

literature

  • Hans Eichner: Kahn & Engelmann. A family saga. Picus, Vienna 2000 ISBN 3-85452-437-4 pp. 163-169
  • Tobias Portschy - Biography of a National Socialist - The years up to 1945. Land Burgenland Book, 2006 ISBN 3-901517-53-7
  • Setting boundaries in coexistence -locating Jewish history in the Hungarian / Austrian provinces using the example of Oberwart / Felsöör. (= Writings of the Center for Jewish Studies. Volume 20). Studienverlag Bozen-Innsbruck-Vienna 2011 ISBN 978-3-7065-5104-5
  • Philip V. Bohlman : How do we sing His song on the soil of the stranger! Ashkenazi Jewish music between tradition and modernity . Lit Verlag, Berlin, 2019, ISBN 978-3-643-13574-2

Web links

notes

  1. ↑ Jewish Community Kobersdorf (PDF; 895 kB) accessed on May 5, 2014.
  2. ↑ a b c d History of the Jews in Burgenland , website regiowiki.at, accessed on February 8, 2015.
  3. ↑ Jews in Burgenland (PDF; 858 kB) in Allerlei über das Burgenland, page 4, accessed on February 28, 2010.
  4. ↑ In addition to historical information, the author gives an autobiographical description of life in the seven communities around 1900 and then in Vienna. For his person see briefly: Eugen Banauch, Fluid exile. Jewish exile writers in Canada 1940 - 2006. Winter, Heidelberg 2009, pp. 237f. (engl.)