Szany
Cemetery
The Jewish cemetery of Szany can be
reached on a servitude road crossing the Rákóczi u.16 property.
We then reach a Jewish cemetery of 1000 m2
holding 26 tombstones. Three of them no longer have the actual stone, merely the
foundations remain. Of the names on the tombstones 35 are Hebrew, two are
Hungarian, Farkas and Hegedûs. There had been three great Jewish dynasties in
Szany: Weiss, Krausz and Steiner.
At the beginning of World War II there had been around 50 Jews living here,
roughly 8 families. All of them were deported, only a few returned. Among them
the Jewish doctor of the village but he could not cope with the trauma of the
atrocities and committed suicide.
Jews first settled in Szany towards the end of the 19th century. The famous
Szany costume would be unimaginable without them, it was the Jewish merchants
that delivered the fabrics of which the costumes were sewn. The exact date the
cemetery opened can only be guessed, it must have been some 30 years after the
begin of Jewish settlement in Szany, when the first generation to live here died
out. It is estimated to be in the 20s to 30s of the 20th century.The Szany
orthodox Jewish cemetery was evidently no longer used after the Second World
War, the Jewish doctor who had returned from the concentration camps and then
committed suicide is buried at the Catholic cemetery. There had also been a
synagogue in Szany, nowadays there is a residential building on its former site.
Only the elderly remember the synagogue.
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