Chapter Seven:
Judaica
After the war, Nandor returned to Hlohovec to visit Magda’s parents and his brother Gyula and sister-in-law Irene. Nandor found that four families had returned from Auschwitz. Two of these were Viliam and Miriam Gluck and their daughter Lotka, and Eugen and Friderika Karvan (Klein). During the war, the Nazis destroyed the Hlohovec synagogue and built a road through the property. The Jews buried the Sifrei Torah and the rimonim and breastplates. The remaining families gave Nandor a gold breastplate which they unearthed after the war. (For decades, Nandor sent them funds to live on, a fact which he told no one but for which the survivors were very grateful. I only found this out because when I went to Hlohovec for the first time in 1982, Opi gave me cash and asked me to give it to Mr. Klein. When I did, he mentioned that Nandor had been doing this for a very long time).
Over the course of the next half-century, my father searched the world over for other Jewish religious ceremonial pieces from his family’s hometowns. These pieces were scattered around the world, which is not surprising since the few Jews who had escaped the Nazis were also scattered the world over.
Although my father was interested in finding any Judaica from the Slovak region, my father’s lifelong devotion to the chevre kaddisha meant that pieces related to chevre kaddisha were the ones he cherished the most. Over the course of the next half-century, he found that almost all such pieces are in museums, in particular the Jewish Museum of the City of Vienna, the Frankfurt Jewish Museum, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and the Metropolitan Museum and the Jewish Museum in New York.
Highlights of what he was able to purchase, either privately or in auctions were:
1. A pair of silver chevre kaddisha charity containers made in Vienna in about 1880 and used in the region (not sure which town).
2. A second pair of silver chevre kaddisha charity containers inscribed “Belongs to the chevre kaddisha of Freishtat in the year 1886.” Freishtat was the German name of Hlohovec.
3. A silver charity collection dish engraved on the bottom “To the Congregation of Freishtat.”
4. A brass casket used to keep small chevre kaddisha utensils for burial preparation. The lid features an engraved design of mourners carrying a casket to the gates of the cemetery. This piece was used by the chevre kaddisha of Prague.
5. A silver goblet engraved “Chevre kaddisha Gemilut Hasadim / Congregations of Anvershaw 1887″.
6. Two glass beakers made in Czechoslovakia between 1800 and 1850 etched with scenes of chevre kaddisha.
7. A goblet made for the annual banquet of the chevre kaddisha of Schwabach in Nuremberg, Germany, made in about 1700 and engraved in both 1719 and 1791. Every burial society holds its banquet annually for all members on the 7th of Adar. The goblet’s use only once per year adds to its rarity and mystique.
Other items he prized, not from chevre kaddisha, were:
8. Two gold amulets made in Italy in 1730. My father bought these at the auction of the Michael H. Zagayski Collection at Parke Bernet Galleries in 1964.
9. A tankard made in Czechoslovakia in 1748 with the inscription in Hebrew “Wine for kiddush, havdalah, wedding, brit milah. Silver container for witness of Jeshurun of the Holy Congregation of Freishtat.”
10. A miniature Sefer Torah hand-written in Germany in 1920 and silver case for the Torah.
The collection was exhibited for a time at the Beth Tzedek Synagogue in Toronto. One of the more unusual items which attracted attention there was a black chalitza shoe. Chalitza is a rare and uncommon ceremony in which a man who is obligated to marry his late brother’s widow is exonerated from his obligation to do so. Another rare piece of Judaica in my father’s collection is a black shofar. This shofar was used to place someone in chairem, which is excommunication.
Another group of items that my father collected was modern Jewish art pieces by a goldsmith named Yossi Swed. My father spent a lot of money over the years at Swed Workshop (not sure if he got good value there!).