THE MEMORIAL BOOK OF PÁPA JEWRY - JewishGen

mazkir, instead of the usual wine-red silk. Only the elected rabbi was entitled to speak from here;
visiting rabbis could preach only from the gallery next to the ark.
The temple was made up of three sections. From the main entrance we got into the
vestibule with the memorial tablet of local Jewish heroes from the First World War. Memorial
candles were lit here on their yahrzeit.
A Schuldiner was in charge of silence in the synagogue, his official hat bearing the
inscription Pápai aut. Orth. Izr. Hitközség, the Autonomous Orthodox Israelite Community of
Pápa.
Later on a group of the faithful started a campaign, to change the originally "neolog"
arrangement, despite the fact that for seven decades the most pious believers had been happy to
pray here, together with their rabbis and dayanim. Out of the old guard, only Spitzer Reb. Leml,
the later Szepesváralja rabbi – at the time serving at Pápa – was notedly avoiding this temple.
Finally, in 1919, they resolved the dispute by placing a bench in front of the ark and adding a
curtain to the bars of the women’s gallery; in this way lending the temple an orthodox character.
The temple was not spared during the Holocaust either. Community officials had already
made arrangements in 1942 to mark the 100th anniversary of the inauguration of the temple in
1948, on which occasion the widely respected, then 90 year-old Ig. L. Marton was invited to be
the celebratory speaker. The plans to celebrate, however, came to nothing. The temple was turned
into a stable by German bandits. The benches
were chopped up for firewood, the floor
disappeared, and the Torah scrolls were
desecrated. Only the bare walls remained.
The temple’s attic became the home of
bats and owls. Our renowned temple was
reduced to a storehouse for textile factories in
Pápa
With painful tears, we cry out with the
beginning words of Psalm 79:
א'‏
באו גויים בנחלתך טמאו היכל קד שך
"O God! The nations have entered into
Your inheritance, they have defiled the Sanctuary
of Your holiness."
Words of lamentation pour forth from us:
על אלה אני בוכה עיני ירדה מיים
"For these things do I weep; my eyes
flow with tears." (Lamentations 1:16)
Like a rainbow, the unforgettable
memory of our beloved sanctuary shines through
a cloud of tears.
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