JACOB JR, MY JEWISH WORLD. BRATISLAVA/SLOVAKIA

- May 12, 2013

Hatam Sofer Mausoleum

Shalom! World.

Bratislava is the youthful, dynamic and busting capital of Slovakia. At the same time, however it is a historical town full of tradition, nostalgia and music, and proud of its rich past. This is where the languages, traditions and cultures of three different countries meet, (Hungary, Czech Republic and Austria) to produce something very pleasant and attractive, a veritable microcosm of Central Europe.

However the beauty of the city, the people keep a dangerous sin, the antisemitism. I was a victim of this sick.

By 1944, three-fourths of the Jewish community had been exterminated, and more than ninety percent of Jewish youth had been deported. Less zeal on the part of the Slovaks would have saved many Jewish lives. As early as 1941, Slovaks leaders Tuka, Tiso, and Mach negotiated the question of deporting the Jews. Documents attest that in 1941, "Slovakia was the first state whose Jews the German Reich was prepared to take over." Adolf Eichmann gave Slovakia five hundred marks for each Jew as guarantee that the Jews would not be returned.

The irony of it all: the first deportations from West Europe to the concnetration camp Belzec took place on March 24, 1942. Two days later the first Jews were deported to Auschwitz. They came first from Slovakia. On the following day, other Jews arrived from France. In her book, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jews, 1932-1945, Leni Yahil writes that between March and November 1942, nearly 60,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz and other concentration camp.

According to the book, Tragedy of Slovak Jewry, prepared by the Documentation Center of CUJCR, in Bratislava, and published in 1949, Slovak Jews "were exterminated so thoroughly and mercilessly during the years 1939-1945, that not one of the once happy and prosperous community has lived through the murderous storm without the irreplaceable loss of part or all of his falily, without severe mental schok, or gravely impaired health."

Slovak Jewry lost about 110.000, including those deported in the spring of 1944 from territories that had been annexed by Hungary, according to Leni Yahil.

The Hatam Sofer Mausoleum is a rarity among the sites of Slovakia. Here rests perhaps the greatest Jewish scholar of the nineteenth century. He is Rabbi Moses Sofer, known as Hatam Sofer, rabbi, halachic authority, and leader of Orthodex Jewry. He was indeed the leader of pre-modern Orthodox Jewry. Twenty-three graves and 41 separete tombstones are in the mausoleum today. The mausoleum itself is part of the former Jewish cemetery that dates back to the years 1670 to 1847.

Jewish Museum, Zhidovska ul.

Synagogue, Heydukova St., 11-13. During the forty years of Communism, as an act of defiance, many brave Jews, upon entering this Synagogue, would wave at the hidden cameras of the secret police. Now we see the phenomenon of "anti-Semitism without Jews". Sorry, was just one! Me!!!!

BRATISLAVA, SOME POINTS TO VISIT:

The Slovak National Theatre. Designed by Viennense architects Fellner and Helmer (1884-1886), the Opera House of Slovak National Theatre is a renowned stage attracting music lovers from home and abroad.

House of the Good Shepherd. This exceptional Rococo burgher's house from 1760s (the same street of the Jewish Museum) is so compact that it has only one small room on each floor. Today it houses the Clock Museum displayin a colletion of timepieces.