Memory of the Jews of the Balkans (4/10) • The mysteries of the Apatin synagogue
Balkan Courier | From our correspondent in Belgrade | Wednesday, February 10, 2021
An esoteric fresco, Hungarian Baptists, a mad pianist, and a Muslim sailor… World War II engulfed the small Jewish community of Apatin, in Vojvodina. And with it, its archives. What remains of the synagogue? Report.
Text: Philippe Bertinchamps | Photos: Marija Janković
This article is the fourth in a series of reports on the “half-forgotten” memory of Balkan Jews, published with the support of the Swiss Embassy in Belgrade.
“What an enigma!” Rudolf Klein was born in Subotica, a Magyar town in the northern reaches of Serbia, very close to the Hungarian border. A professor of architecture at Szent István University in Budapest, he is the author of a book on synagogues in Hungary from 1782 to 1918, from the Edict of Tolerance of Emperor Joseph II to the end of the First World War and the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. A masterful work that lists and categorizes hundreds of buildings in the villages and towns of Hungary, Slovakia, Transylvania, Vojvodina, and more. The synagogues of Central Europe, from the most humble to the most magnificent, therefore hold no secrets for him. Except for one, in fact, not far from his hometown: Apatin, a town of around fifteen thousand inhabitants on the left bank of the Danube, in western Bačka, a stone’s throw from Croatia.
This modest rectangular synagogue, built in 1885, was identified by Rudolf Klein as burgher or “bourgeois” in its architectural style, and as Rundbogenstil or neo-Romanesque in its exterior decoration. But it is in its sanctuary that it reveals its secret: a ceiling fresco depicts the azure vault of the firmament where the Tablets of the Law, adorned with an acacia branch, emerge above thick clouds. “I am the Lord…” A stucco work in the pompier style, as found in abundance in the neo-Baroque churches all around Vojvodina. But here’s the thing: to decipher the words inscribed in Hebrew, you have to look at them in a mirror. And this, whatever one’s interpretations of the Scriptures, is at the very least unexpected, even bizarre, bordering on heretical—even for rabbis who claimed to be “Neolog” Judaists, as opposed to the more traditional and conservative Orthodox tradition. “The rabbis have complete freedom to choose the architectural style of the synagogue and to transform it to their whim,” explains Rudolf Klein. “On the other hand, the interior design remains sacred. It’s highly codified. As liberal and progressive as they were, the rabbis of Apatin could not afford to take this kind of liberty. We also see that the painter was not familiar with the Hebrew alphabet. His brushstroke hesitates. Whose idea was it to commission this fresco? What does it mean? I have no idea… It’s a strange mystery!”
At first glance, there is no indication that this ancient temple, located a little outside the city center, was once a synagogue: on the pediment above the facade with its two pointed windows, there is no Star of David, but a Christian cross. After the Second World War, the building was bought from the Jewish community of Yugoslavia by the Baptist congregation of Apatin, itself now defunct. In the paved inner courtyard, vines climb up the trellis: Othello, an almost forgotten black grape variety from the 19th century that produces a red wine with a foxy taste. The buildings consist, in addition to the temple (where a mikveh , or ritual bath, has been installed), of a ritual slaughterhouse, a classroom, and the rabbi’s apartment.
One inscription in Hungarian and one in Serbian hangs on the back wall: “We spread the words of Christ on the cross.” “Two old Baptist maids from the Magyar minority continued to maintain the place after the temple closed in the 1970s due to lack of worshippers.” Boris Mašić is the president of the Adam Berenc association, a German priest from Apatin who resisted Nazism and survived the Gestapo, and the coordinator of Donauschwaben Villages Helping Hands (DVHH), an NGO that collects the chronicles of the “Danube Swabians ,” the peasant-soldiers who came to exploit the Vojvodina plain at the turn of the 18th century under the influence of the Habsburgs. “Like many Catholic children, my great-grandparents, of German origin, received their primary education in the synagogue. It was a question of prestige. Jewish schools were considered the best, and even taught astronomy there.
By scouring cellars and attics in search of ancient books written in the Gothic, Hebrew, or Latin alphabet, this amateur bibliophile (he has accumulated more than 60,000 volumes, mostly liturgical works) has become the guardian of the memory of the Swabians, Jews, and Hungarian Baptists, three communities that once made up the population of Apatin. “In the 1990s, while war raged in Croatia, the temple served as a warehouse for humanitarian aid for Serbian refugees. There were mountains of clothing… Then, when the last two Baptists died, I asked the congregation to entrust me with the keys.”
In 1940, Apatin had no more than 61 Jews, or fifteen families. A tiny community in a town of about 17,000 inhabitants, the vast majority of whom were German. Apatin, which was located right in the middle of the Danube, was then a prosperous industrial center: a shipyard, some thirty factories, including a brewery (Apatinska pivara, founded in 1756 and still in operation), brickyards, spinning mills, and even shoe factories. The products sailed up the river to be exported to Budapest, Vienna, and beyond in Europe. Apatin was also a cultural city rich in a musical tradition dating back to the 18th century, with the organ builder Kašpar Fišer and the Horn family’s wind instrument workshop. The German and Jewish communities maintained relations of mutual interest, of course. “A normal, even friendly, coexistence,” assures Boris Mašić. According to Rudolf Klein: “The Germans possess the know-how, the Jews hold the capital.” In this area, which was for a long time an intermediary between two empires, doctrines and religions are more tolerant. Anti-Semitism is hardly virulent, but it is latent. In the words of the former Hungarian Minister of Justice Ferenc Deák (1803-1876), nicknamed the “wise man of the nation,” “the Jews are like salt; you need a pinch to season dishes, but too much salt spoils the food.”
It was into this atmosphere that Paul Abraham (Ábrahám Pál in Hungarian) was born on November 2, 1892. His mother, Flora, was from Mohacs, a Danube town in southern Hungary. His father, Jakab, was a wealthy merchant who became a banker. The family was well-off and cultured, and young Paul was destined for business. From Flora, he inherited a taste for music. And he had incredible talent. The cantor spotted him and soon invited him to play in the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But in this small, industrious, provincial town—where, despite everything, Catholic children went to school in the synagogue and Jewish children played the organ on Sundays at mass—Paul felt cramped. From the ages of 14 to 17, he attended the Budapest Higher School of Commerce. Then, after his father’s death, he attended the prestigious Royal Hungarian National Academy of Music, where he studied cello with Adolf Schiffer, also born in Apatin to a Jewish family, and composition under Victor von Herzfeld, a rival friend of Gustav Mahler. Despite excellent grades, he did not graduate.
In 1912, Paul made a sumptuous acquisition: a Steinway Model B made in Hamburg, the “perfect piano” as it was nicknamed. “That year, the Horns imported no fewer than 200 pianos, including 30 Steinways, by way of the Danube,” says Boris Mašić. “An exceptional haul. Never before seen!” Paul threw himself body and soul into what he called “pure music”: sacred works, string quartets, cello concertos… But at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties, after the First World War, it was in a much lighter genre that his genius shone: the operetta, then in vogue, which he enriched by introducing strong modern jazz rhythms. In 1927, he was appointed conductor of the Budapest Operetta Theatre. His first success, Viktoria und ihr Husar (1930), prompted him to settle in Berlin, where his flighty melodies hit the mark. Triumphs followed: Die Blume von Hawaii and Ball im Savoy earned him international fame. He composed film scores for many, including Cœurs Joyeux (1932) with Jean Gabin. However, little is known about this vibrant period, due to a lack of witnesses, except that this married man was a bon vivant, living the high life, an inveterate gambler, a womanizer, a mythomaniac… And that he contracted syphilis.
At the height of his fame in 1933, everything collapsed. Hitler became chancellor. Paul Abraham left Berlin. His music, now labeled “degenerate art,” was banned. Thus began a life of wandering: Vienna, Budapest, Paris, Casablanca, then Havana, where he earned money as a bar pianist. Via Miami, he finally emigrated to New York on August 20, 1940. The reception would dampen his spirits. On Broadway, operetta, even jazz, was “old-fashioned,” the Big Apple snubbed him, and Paul Abraham, a refugee among others, fell into poverty. His health deteriorated. On January 5, 1946, he was arrested in the middle of Fifth Avenue, directing traffic while waving his arms as if conducting an orchestra. He was admitted to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.
Across the Atlantic, 4,500 kilometers to the east, a lone man wanders the streets of Apatin. The city is devastated. In Boris Mašić’s story, this man, a Holocaust survivor, is a close relative of Paul, a certain “Alexander” (Sándor). In April 1941, when the Axis Powers invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Bačka became part of Admiral Miklós Horthy’s Hungary. In March 1944, power passed into the hands of the Nazis. The Jewish community of Apatin did not escape the catastrophe. With the Axis already sinking into defeat, it was transported by train to Auschwitz, Poland, where it was gassed. Six months later, Tito’s Partisans liberated Vojvodina. German civilians were evacuated in the wake of the Wehrmacht to the ruins of the Third Reich. Those who remained, and who survived the reprisals, were interned for three years in ghost towns guarded by armed sentries. Today, inside the Apatin synagogue, the names of the victims of Auschwitz are displayed. Under the letter A, ten Abrahams.
The large family home was not given over to looting: the glossy black lacquered Steinway was intact. “Alexander” Abraham (he would commit suicide in 1949, Boris Mašić specifies) sold it to the music academy, which had just opened its doors and was desperately short of instruments. As for Paul, his friends in Germany, who had not forgotten him, collected money to repatriate him. On April 30, 1956, he landed at Frankfurt airport under the flashbulbs of reporters, before being interned in a sanatorium in Hamburg. The master of “jazz operetta” died there on May 6, 1960, dreaming of his next triumph on the New York stage. His grand piano (serial number 155928) rests in the corner of a music classroom on the first floor of the Apatin academy, like a luxury liner in dry dock just waiting to be repaired.
“It’s still sad to see all this abandoned, soon there will be nothing left!” In the neighborhood, everyone calls her baba , “grandmother.” At 77, this Serb from Banja Luka in Bosnia-Herzegovina has been the guardian of the “new Jewish cemetery” for more than two decades—the one that, unlike the old one, is not entirely outside the city limits. The last Abraham to be buried in the family mausoleum was in February 1944, two months before the deportations. “Now I’m too old. It saddens me that I can no longer work. Look at my hands… The cemetery was so well maintained.” The site belongs to the municipality of Apatin, and the restoration of Jewish heritage is not a priority. “We never saw the public works workers. They just put up a sign in three languages, and then goodbye!” » Before her, another Hungarian baba took care of the cemetery. “And the day it became too hard for her, she gave me the key.”
Inevitably, visits are becoming rarer. “The last time was a year ago. An old man… In the old days, we still saw people from Israel. But the old people are dead and the children don’t come anymore.” And then there’s the vandalism: “The young people are a real problem. They made a hole in the wall and desecrated graves. They were looking for gold…” At the entrance to the cemetery, barely isolated from the other tombstones, a half-buried stele with inscriptions erased by time recalls the memory of a Muslim sailor. A foreign traveler, far from his country, who received at the supreme moment the rabbi’s blessing so that his ashes could rest in peace beneath this earth.
The old Jewish cemetery is found about two kilometers further along a rutted path in the open countryside. It’s a clump of shrubs and wild plants surrounded by a fence, a patch of unkempt vegetation exposed to the four winds. In 2017, the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative (ESJF) began clearing it. But nature quickly reclaimed its rights. The upright Ashkenazi headstones have become invisible again under the undergrowth. There are thought to be no more than ten in all. According to the ESFJ, the oldest matzevah still standing dates back to 1893, the most recent to 1921.
“How much of this is true?” asks Sandra Papo-Fišer, the president of the Jewish community of Sombor, whose jurisdiction extends to Apatin. “Since World War II, nothing remains in the archives. Everything has disappeared. And there is not a single witness left.” The Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade, closed due to the pandemic, also acknowledges that it has “very, very little” documentation on the community: “After the Holocaust, the Jewish community of Apatin ceased to exist, and we are not sure that many archives were saved,” says Barbara Panić, the museum’s curator. “As for the neo-Baroque fresco, we are aware of its importance, but unfortunately we have no documentation on it.” » Even Paul Abraham’s piano seems to escape history: “In the Steinway archives from before World War II, the company has no information about this piano, except the year and place of manufacture,” writes Ana Vrbanec on behalf of the legendary brand.
Finally, in early autumn 2020, representatives of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of Serbia visited the Apatin synagogue. It must be said that it had recently been offered for sale and had ended up among the real estate classifieds. In the Bačka region, out of a total of 53 synagogues, at least 44 have been razed since the end of World War II. Apart from the one in Subotica, a marvel of the Hungarian Secession style completely renovated in 2018, the others have been transformed into churches, libraries, residential buildings, schools, or sports halls. The disappearance of the Apatin synagogue would be an irreparable loss. To this day, no one, not even among scholars and scholars, has solved the mystery of the fresco, unique in Serbia and Hungary. But its strangeness never seemed to trouble the rabbis.
This article is published with the support of the Swiss Embassy in Belgrade.
Case
Also read
- David Albahari, Memory of the Jews of the Balkans: “A labyrinthine feeling of freedom”
- Memories of the Jews of the Balkans (2/10) • Architectural heritage, vestige of an ephemeral splendor
- Memory of the Jews of the Balkans (3/10) • Pristina-Jerusalem-Belgrade: Hanukkah donuts
- Serbia: The disappearance of the Germans from Vojvodina
- Serbia: In Vojvodina, the painful memory of the Danube Swabians
- Vojvodina: The Jews of Subotica