Reconstructing the Past: The Jewish Community of Murska Sobota in Slovenia

The Jewish presence in nowadays Slovenia is relatively unknown, even though we can track the Jewish community in the city of Maribor (ger. Marburg) from the middle of the 13th century. After the medieval expulsion of Jews from the territory of nowadays Slovenia, the Jews started settling again in the beginning of the 18th century, mostly under the patronage of the noble families of Esterházy and Bátthyany that owned several possesions in the northeastern part of nowadays Slovenia, around the towns of Muraszombat (nowadays Murska Sobota), Alsólendva (nowadays Lendava) and Bellatinc (nowadays Beltinci), where the Jewry represented around 15% of the total population, and was a leading force behind the cultural and economical development of the region.

In the lecture, the methods and possibilities for researching microlocal Jewish communities will be presented. At its peak, the Jewish community of Murska Sobota had around 400 members, together with the surrounding villages and towns, there were around 1.150 Jews living in the vicinity of Murska Sobota. From three synagogues and dozen of small-to-medium scale Jewish cemeteries, only the Synagogue and cemetery in Lendava have survived.

The once flourishing community of Murska Sobota had ceased to exist, the Synagogue and the Cemetery have been destroyed, the Jewish presence is limited to a handfull of families, guarding their Jewish past as a family secret. By using several modern tools and methods, the knowledge about the Jewish heritage, presence and the families that lived in the region before the Holocaust is starting to get the place it deserves. Because of its specific positioning in the territory that was part of seven different states in the past 100 years, the recounstruction of the past of the Jewish community of Murska Sobota provides an excellent case study for micro-local Jewish communities.