Browse Items (128 total)
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Verschleppung 1944 [Abduction 1944]
According to a detailed census, some 15,102 Jews lived in Bratislava in December 1940. The Slovak state that existed during World War II was a loyal ally of Nazi Germany and adopted harsh anti-Jewish legislation that effectively stripped Jews of their basic civil and human rights, excluded them from jobs, Aryanized their businesses, and stole their homes and properties. In 1942, after looting them of everything, the Slovak authorities deported most of the country’s Jews to death camps. The Jews of Bratislava and its surrounding region were first sent to the Patrónka compound, which served as one of seven Slovak assembly camps for transports. The first transport from Bratislava left on March 27, 1942 – it consisted of one thousand single women, who were deported to Auschwitz. By October 1942, around fifty-nine thousand Slovak Jews had been deported from Slovakia. The deportations were suspended in 1943, but were resumed again in October 1944 after the Germans suppressed the Slovak National Uprising against the Nazis. Many Bratislava Jews were rounded up for deportation during the “big catch” night, September 28, 1944. 11,719 Slovak Jews were concentrated in the Sereď camp, and most of them were deported. One of these was the artist Adolf Frankl (1903-1983). He survived the Auschwitz camp and after the war used his memories of the Holocaust as the basis for his cycle of paintings called Visions from the Inferno – Art against Oblivion. Frankl settled in Vienna after the war, but he often returned to the Czechoslovak border to observe the silhouette of Bratislava with its Castle and Cathedral that appear in his artworks as symbols of pain and tragic memories. -
Synagogue board
with times of services -
Memorial panel commemorating the contributors to the rebuilding of the Jewish hospital
The Jewish hospital, which provided for the social needs of the Jewish community in Bratislava’s Castlemount, was founded in October 1710 in a leased building in Zuckermandel owned by the Bratislava burgher Andreas Naszvády and his wife Maria Elisabeth, neé Harrein. The contractual lease between him and the Jewish community was set for 12 years on the condition that after expiry of the lease period and its subsequent prolongation, the real estate would become the property of the community after 1726. The Chevra Kadisha, the society caring for the sick and providing burial services, whose origins dated back to the 1690s, was in charge of the hospital. Daily care for ill members of the community and the allocation of necessary medication was free of charge; the hospital was used not only by locals, but also by strangers passing through the town. The hospital’s rooms were also allocated to the poorest families in distress as a temporary solution to their problems. In 1756 the building underwent an unspecified adaptation. Jewish doctors who had studied at foreign universities in Germany and Italy worked here, among them Marcus Menzer, Michael Hirschel, Israel Walmarin and Marcus Moses. At the time of the great fire of Bratislava Castle, on 28 May 1811, the hospital building was destroyed. Thanks to an extensive charitable drive among Jewish community members, the hospital was quickly restored. In order to commemorate this event, the secretary of the Jewish community, Ber Halevi Frank, painted a memorial chart depicting the tragic event, and an alphabetical list of all donors (299 names in total, the original version containing one more donor). Owing to the damage of the paper material, the graphic letter was restored by Zalman Leib Abeles on the occasion of the event‘s 70th anniversary. -
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