Memorial plaque commemorating the soldiers who fell in World War I

This modest plaque from Bratislava’s Neolog synagogue features evocative patriotic lines from the Hungarian poet Mihály Vörösmarty’s 1836 Szózat (Appeal), followed by a listing in golden letters of local Jewish soldiers who fell on the battlefields of the First World War. Its design and message place it among other similar, simple pieces arising from a painful dilemma of commemoration. The sons and husbands of Jews in Slovakia had fought and died for the Monarchy as Hungarian Jews. Yet the state in which their community now lived depended on the collapse of the Monarchy, and its continued existence depended on securing its borders against the revisionist ambitions of the interwar Hungarian government. When the Jewish community in Budapest initiated a memorial project to create a Heroes’ Temple (Hősök Temploma) memorial to honor all fallen Jewish soldiers from the entire territory of the former Kingdom of Hungary, the Czechoslovak administration closely followed potential Slovak Jewish participation in the project, deeply suspicious of a project extending beyond Hungary’s Trianon borders. As Budapest Jewry sought to engage Neolog Jewish communities in Slovakia with the project, Slovak Jews pulled away. Rather than participate in the Budapest-based memorial, Jews in Slovakia chose to commemorate their dead locally: in their towns, and in their synagogues and cemeteries. Plaques such as this one allowed Jews in Slovakia to honor their war dead without incurring political stigma.

Bratislava

1920s

HUN

ŽM-D 1291 D-19

Subject

25.5 x 80 cm

cast iron

And our best fell
During the long war

KLEIN-PEJŠOVÁ, Rebekah: Memorial Plaque for Fallen Jewish Soldiers. IN: BORSKÝ, Maroš - ŠVANTNEROVÁ, Jana et al.: The Jews of Bratislava and Their Heritage. Bratislava: Jewish Heritage Foundation - Menorah 2012, p. 46.