Jewish Heritage

Detailed information can be found on the website of our tourist presentation: Synagoga Slatina | Jewish Cultural Heritage in Slatina

Perhaps no nation has undergone such a complex development throughout its existence as the Jewish people. The millennium-long denial of their historical claim to a homeland, as well as persecution and pogroms in other countries, culminated in the recent effort by Hitler's Germany to exterminate the Jews entirely. Yet few nations have preserved such great vitality, an innate sense of belonging, and the ability to assert themselves not only in their homeland but anywhere else in the world. It is therefore entirely natural that considerable attention has been devoted to the study of Jewish settlement in many countries, particularly in Europe — though the results have not always been presented in a fully historically accurate and unbiased manner. A certain shortcoming of research to date is that it has mostly focused on towns, while villages have been neglected. One such village, in which a Jewish community existed for almost three hundred years, is the village of Slatina near Horažďovice. In terms of the extent of its Jewish settlement (ghetto, synagogue, school, cemetery), Slatina is in its own way unique.

History of the Jews in Slatina

The village of Slatina was founded around 1150. Around 1220 a small church manor was founded and built. St. George's Convent, which played a major role in the colonisation of this area, owned the manor in Slatina for 56 years, until 1284, when Bishop Tobias sold it to Lord Bohuslav, castellan of Zvíkov Castle, for 170 marks of silver. Several families then held the manor and village of Slatina in succession, and in 1691 Václav Lev Jindřich Kunaš of Machovice purchased Slatina. The Kunaš family's ownership of Slatina also brought a significant change to its character. Following the example of many other nobles, the Kunaš family began the gradual settlement of Jews on their Slatina estate. They allowed them to rent certain abandoned cottages and provided land for the construction of their own dwellings, which formed the basis of the Slatina ghetto. These Jews were engaged primarily in the grain and cattle trade, door-to-door trading and moneylending. Enjoying the Kunaš family's protection as "Schutzjuden" (protected Jews), they were required to pay their protector a considerable share of their income. Jewish religious services were already being held at that time, as evidenced by the establishment of the Jewish cemetery, which Václav Ferdinand Kunaš of Machovice authorised by a deed issued in 1723.

Ghetto, Synagogue, School and Cemetery

The original cemetery, according to the founding deed measuring 8×8 fathoms (15×15 metres), was later extended to the present 58×28 metres and enclosed by a stone wall. Above the entrance was placed a slab with a Hebrew inscription: "BAIS MOUEVITS L`CHOLCHAI. KHI UFOR ATHU VAEL UFOR THOŠUF" (House of assembly of all the living. Dust and earth you are, and to dust and earth you shall return). At present approximately 172 gravestones of two types are preserved in the cemetery. The granite ones are mostly plain, without ornamentation, now difficult to read. The second group consists of limestone stelae, mostly crowned with an arch decorated with stylised floral folk motifs. Twelve villages were part of the Slatina Jewish community, but Jews from a wide surrounding area were buried in the cemetery. The actual number of those buried there will be considerably higher.

The original synagogue was of wooden construction, on four supporting wooden columns, very small, measuring approximately 8×6 metres. It stood in the centre of the ghetto. In 1868 the Jewish community purchased a new plot from J. Podlešák for 500 guilders and built a new, brick-built building — grand by village standards — in the form in which it has now been restored. It contained a school, a flat and a prayer hall. The Jewish school, whose beginnings date back to the end of the 17th century, closed due to falling pupil numbers in 1893, when the last rabbi, Gottlieb Schlessner, also departed. Of the teachers let us name at least Michael Kohn, Filip Weiskopf and Izák Schwarz, who worked here until 1872 and was much beloved not only for his services to the Jewish community but also to the village of Slatina. Jewish teachers were in general frequently advisers and helpers to the Slatina village judges and mayors. The religious community was headed by a self-governing committee composed of elected representatives and led by a chairman. This committee at its meetings dealt with the affairs of the Jewish community — the annual budget, maintenance of the synagogue and school, contributions to the district rabbinate in Blatná, support for poorer co-religionists, donations and other matters.

The creation of a new Jewish community in 1868 in Lažany Enisovy weakened the Slatina community, and emigration to America followed — in 1894 this amounted to 134 persons, and in total almost 250 from Slatina alone. From a historical perspective the most interesting element is the ghetto, of which only the houses marked in the 1837 cadastral map as numbers 19, 29 and 31 have survived to the present day, and even these have been considerably rebuilt (they now serve recreational purposes). The main core of the Jewish ghetto in Slatina consisted of a row of small stone-clay cottages measuring approximately 6×5 metres. For example, in 1846 a total of 19 families comprising 110 persons lived in 11 cottages, representing one third of the village's population. A further 19 Jews lived with 'Christians'. After 1850 the emigration of Slatina Jews began — primarily to the United States of America, but also to the Balkans (Bosnia-Herzegovina) — and the last Jewish family left Slatina in 1917. During the renovation of cottage no. 29 carried out around 1980, the stone-clay core of one of the original ghetto cottages was discovered, confirming the information in the local chronicle that the cottages were 'clay-built'. It was a combination of stone and large unfired clay bricks. The ghetto was built in part of the village on inhospitable, boggy ground (on the marshes — slatinas), where at that time there still bubbled a spring, possibly medicinal, with a high magnesium content. In 1834 seventeen families lived here, always in a single room — in some cases even two families sharing one room. It is hard today to imagine the conditions of this housing, given that families were large, sometimes with ten or more children. The cottages were mostly wooden, in combination with stone and large unfired clay bricks.

The Significance of Jews in the Life of Slatina

The main reason Kunaš of Machovice settled Jews in Slatina was an economic one — for himself personally. The Jewish element, however, gave the village a certain distinctive character. For example, Jewish balls were held here, mainly in the tavern of the Jew Hasterlik. Slatina also had a second, demesne tavern. On the Jewish Sabbath, the village came alive with dozens of Jews from the entire surrounding area in their characteristic black kaftans, hats and long beards. The funeral processions passing through the village to the cemetery at Na Hradcích also provided an interesting spectacle. Despite the two ethnic groups living side by side, the local inhabitants and the Jews lived in harmony and peace. Poor inhabitants helped the Jews with their trade as cattle drovers to surrounding markets, as far as Prague and Bavaria. Porters, messengers and farmers offered their wagons, livestock and grain. It can therefore be said that in this respect the period of the flourishing of Slatina's Jewish community was significant for the village as a whole.

As the number of Jews declined, the costly prayer hall emptied, teaching in the 'shul' ceased, and the growing Jewish generation sought livelihood in the towns and emigrated to America. The God-fearing Mojse Hasterlik, wishing to preserve at least the synagogue for future decades, deposited 2,000 guilders with the administrator of the religious community in Horažďovice in 1898, so that the building would not be sold and repairs could be carried out from the interest on the deposit. On 20 September 1917 the last Jew, Karel Sabath, left Slatina and moved to Kasejovice. That same year the synagogue was purchased for 10,800 crowns by the merchant and music teacher Mr. Karel Volmut. Enterprisingly, he converted the 'shul' into a shop and the prayer hall into a barn.

After the Second World War he moved away and the deserted building served various municipal and cooperative purposes. When the cooperative began using the synagogue for storing artificial fertilisers, its fate seemed sealed. Fortunately, following the merger of cooperatives, the then-owner — the Svéradice Agricultural Cooperative — sold it and the new owners restored it to its present form. As part of documentary research for ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites — a non-governmental organisation of UNESCO) headquartered in Paris, Rivka and Ben Zio Dorfman from the Israeli branch of ICOMOS visited Slatina. The outcome of their visit was a recommendation that, with the assistance of organisations, institutions and sponsors, the Jewish cemetery should be saved in the same manner — as a unique complex of rural Jewish settlement — while there is still time.

Compiled using materials by Mr. Josef Smitka