Sopron

The oldest remains of Jewish culture along the Western borders of Hungary can be found in Sopron. The Új utca (New Street) synagogue was built around 1300 – 1320 CE by the Jewish community residing in the 16 residential buildings of the street. Not only did the synagogue serve as a prayer room but also functioned as study room and assembly hall. The building also catered for the needs of those who only spent a couple of days in the town as transiting merchants or travelers. According to a Papal decree also applied in Hungary synagogues were not supposed to have their entrance directly facing the street and therefore the temple was built behind a small court in between two residential buildings. One of the adjacent buildings was the living quarters and hospital for needy transiting travelers, a type of service Jewish communities provided everywhere. Connected to the building, the ritual bath can also be found in this block and it is one of Europe’s oldest. Only very little remained of the interior decoration and arrangement of the synagogue. The Torah Ark is carved in the Eastern Wall surrounded by a carved frame decorated with vines and enclosed on the top by a pediment. Women were allowed to stay in the smaller prayer room connected to the Western section of the hall during times of prayer, and could look through a window to see the Bimah, the Torah stand and the Torah Ark, the closet in which the Torah, the five books of Moses were kept. Jews had used the synagogue until 1526 when they were expelled from Sopron and the city sold the building and its original function was forgotten. Following archeological excavations in 1957-8 the synagogue was restored as a national monument.
Both the Neologue and the Orthodox communities built their synagogues in Sopron during the second half of the nineteenth century. Most of the Jewish community was destroyed by the Holocaust, out of 1800 Jews, only some 200 survived the Shoah. The Neologue synagogue was razed to the ground by a bomb in 1945. The Orthodox synagogue has been abandoned and mouldering for decades by now.