Memorial to the murdered Jews of Subotica

Spomenik holokaustu ispred sinagogi u Subotici / Szabadkai holokauszt-emlékművek és a zsinagóga

In Subotica (Hungarian: Szabadka, German until 1918: Maria-Theresiopel) several monuments remember the deported and murdered Jews from Subotica and the Bačka region.

History

After Novi Sad (Hungarian: Újvidék) Subotica is the second largest city in the autonomous province of Vojvodina. Before the First World War, the city belonged to Austria-Hungary under the name of Maria-Theresiopel, then to Yugoslavia. The first Jews in Subotica settled in the middle of the 18th century. By 1830 the number of Jewish inhabitants had increased to 464. In 1848-49, many Jews from Subotica took part in the Hungarian war of independence against Habsburg. In 1902 the magnificent synagogue, built in Art Nouveau style, was inaugurated. With its Hungarian style elements, it was also a symbol of the strong identification of many Jews with Hungary.
In April 1941 the Axis powers attacked Yugoslavia. At that time 3,549 Israelites and 360 inhabitants with Jewish roots who had converted to Christianity lived in the city. The region of Bačka again became part of Hungary, so the anti-Jewish laws of Hungary applied immediately to the Jews of Subotica. Many Jewish men were drafted into forced labour in the Hungarian army, which for some of them ended in death.
In March 1944 Hungary was occupied by the German Wehrmacht. In the following months almost the entire Jewish population of Hungary was deported with the help of the Hungarian authorities. In Subotica, a ghetto for the Jews was established as early as April 27, 1944, which was finally sealed off on May 10. In the beginning, some Christian inhabitants of the city tried to supply the people in the ghetto with food, which was stopped soon. At the beginning of May, all previously interned Jews from the Bačka region were deported to the Subotica Ghetto or to Baja in Southern Hungary. After about 500 men were sent to conduct forced labour on June 7, 1944, the number of prisoners in the ghetto dropped to 2,234. On June 20 all Jews from the Subotica ghetto were deported to Bácsalmás and six days later from there to German labour and extermination camps.

Maria-Theresiopel, about 1905, The synagogue a few years after its opening, public domain

Subotica, 2018, Subotica, 2018, The façade of the restored Art Nouveau synagogue, Pannon RTV

Victims

German and Hungarian authorities deported up to 4,000 Jews from the entire Bačka region. Of the approximately 3,500 Jews from Subotica, about 2,000 were murdered in the Holocaust.

After the First World War, the Kingdom of Serbia became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In 1929, King Alexander I (1888–1934) from the Serbian Karađorđević dynasty established a dictatorship with the overall support of Serbian officers. The state was now known as Yugoslavia. In April 1941, it was occupied by German troops and their Italian, Hungarian and Bulgarian allies and split into a number of annexed and occupied territories serving as puppet states of the Nazi regime. The Bačka region of Serbia was occupied by Hungary and southern Serbia by Bulgaria, with the remaining Serbian territory falling under German occupation. The resistance was led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (partisans) and the royalist Serbian militia (Chetniks) led by General Dragoljub Mihailović (1893–1946); there was also fighting between these two groups. From autumn 1941, the German military administration extended its campaign against these underground groups by launching a full-scale war against the civilian population. A hundred Serbs were to be killed for every murdered German soldier and fifty for every wounded German soldier. Within a few weeks, Wehrmacht soldiers had killed nearly all of the Jewish men and thousands of male Roma in these »reprisal measures«. The communist resistance in Serbia was also destroyed or driven out, with the result that the Chetniks now fought alone against the enemy regime. The Red Army entered Serbia in October 1944, closely followed by units of the »People’s Liberation Army« led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980). Serbia became one of the six states in the new Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. As the communist leader of Yugoslavia, Tito had tens of thousands of former opponents and civilians – including Chetniks – persecuted and murdered. State commemoration of the Second World War focused on the partisan campaign. Monuments to the partisans were put up all over the country, also at the sites of mass shootings of civilians such as Kragujevac. At the same time, Tito used national commemoration to bridge the differences between the various ethnic groups in Yugoslavia as well as between different forms of resistance, terror and collaboration. The memorialization of the victims of the Holocaust and the mass murder of Roma is still incomplete. After the death of Tito, and especially under the regime of President Slobodan Milošević (1941–2006) between 1989 and 2000, the »Croat« Tito fell out of favour in Serbian memory. Monuments dedicated to Tito and his communist partisans were removed and streets were renamed. Instead, there was a strong revival of support for the royalist Chetniks and their leader Mihailović, who had been shunned since 1944-45. In summer 1991, whilst the break-up of Yugoslavia was still underway, the Serb-dominated Yugoslavian People’s Army launched a war against Croatia, which was to last until th e end of 1995. During this war, the Croatian memorial site at Jasenovac was occupied and badly damaged by Serbian troops and the museum was looted. January 2009 saw the first Serb-organised seminar on the history of the Holocaust. This event was held in conjunction with a commemoration at which Christians and Jews remembered the massacre of at least 3,775 Jews, Roma and Serbs by Hungarian units in Novi Sad at the end of January 1942. The most important historical site of the Holocaust in Serbia is the former fairgrounds Sajmište in Belgrade, where up to 7,500 Jews had been murdered in 1942 and later the »Anhaltelager Semlin« had its premises. In 2020, Serbian parliament voted to create an adequate memorial site on the decrepit compound.

Remembrance

After 1945 Subotica belonged again to Yugoslavia, and since its disintegration to Serbia. The town of about 100,000 inhabitants, directly on the border with Hungary, is still multiethnic today: Hungarians and Serbs each make up about a third of the population, and besides them there are Croats, Bunjevci and Roma living there. The Jewish community has about 250 members.
In 1948 a first memorial to the victims of the Holocaust was inaugurated in the city's Jewish cemetery. In 1994, fifty years after the deportations, a memorial stone was placed in Pal Pap Street in memory of the estimated 4,000 Jews imprisoned and deported in the ghetto. Also in 1994, a memorial in the form of a tombstone was erected in the courtyard of the synagogue, in memory of the 4,000 Jews deported from Subotica or the Bačka region.
In 2015, a commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the deportation of the Jews from Subotica took place, attended among others by representatives of Jewish communities, the city of Subotica and the Republic of Serbia. Between 2014 and 2018, the magnificent and internationally renowned synagogue was completely restored after it had been in severe danger of collapsing for decades. The necessary funds were provided by Jewish organizations, the European Union, the Republic of Serbia and Hungary. The synagogue was jointly handed over to the public in March 2018 by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán during a grand ceremony.
Today there is no rabbi in Subotica, but the Jewish community remains very lively and multi-ethnic, while the exchange with other Jewish communities in the border region is very intensive.

Subotica, 2018, View of the altar in the synagogue, Pannon RTV

Subotica, 2019, Memorial stone for the victims of the ghetto in Pal Pap Street, Magyar Nemzeti Tanács

Open

Opening hours of the synagogue:
Tuesdays to Fridays 10.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.
Saturdays and Sundays 10.00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m.

Contact

http://www.szabadkaizsinagoga.rs/

info@szabadkaizsinagoga.rs

+381 (0)65 2 788 416

Subotica, 2018, Details of the Art Nouveau façade of the synagogue, Pannon RTV

Subotica, 2018, Interior view of the dome, Pannon RTV

Subotica, 2019, Interior view of the synagogue, Attila Rajnai

Subotica, 2005, Holocaust memorial in front of the synagogue, Stefan Dietrich

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