THE MEMORIAL BOOK OF PÁPA JEWRY - JewishGen

THE LIGHT WENT OUT…
After the Shoah, a few former forced labor servicemen and some survivors from
Auschwitz and other death camps returned to Pápa. They were looking for their families, waiting
for their beloved. Only one child of school age returned. Religious life was restarted with
difficulty. Posen - the former Sopron rabbi and the grandson of Uncle Marton – tried to raise the
spirits of the despairing, abandoned believers, whose number was slowly decreasing. Most people
could not bear staying where their parents or other relatives had been so cruelly destroyed. The
houses, each and every stone, reminded them of the dead. They could not bear for long this
depressing mental state. The harrowing shadow of the past sent them in search of a new
Homeland. Some of them moved to the capital, but the majority set out for the Holy Land of
Israel, to find comfort for their painful memories in the land where the hopes of 2000 years were
realized. Others left for America or Australia in order to forget the past in their work or business.
In Brooklyn, there is a holy congregation, led by the Popener Rov, made up of former members
of Adas Yisroel in Pápa and their descendents. Migrating Pápa Jews reached Paris, Stockholm,
Canada, Mexico, Chile; even in Kenya you can find Jews with memories of Pápa.
The number of believers in Pápa decreased. Even Rabbi Posen left his congregation. He
was suceeded by Rav Michael Lőwinger from Jánosháza, then by an Israeli rabbi, after whose
return to Israel there was no longer a need for a spiritual leader. The community was abandoned.
Please do not ask me questions; it is painful for me to write down the facts. The big temple was
turned into a storehouse for the textile factory; our school became an apartment for workers. In
the 1970s, 20 Jewish families lived in Pápa, about 50 people, they did not have a minyan, not
even for Shabbat. Jewish education also became history. On holidays, three men and the
precentor had to come from Budapest in order to have services.
The holy congregation of Pápa, which had been a light guiding us on our way, ceased to
exist, the light of the Torah went out in Pápa.
Even though Jewish life came to an end in our home town, the light of the Torah and the
torch of secular sciences still show the way to Jewry and to the benefit of mankind, thanks to the
descendants of Pápa Jews.
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