Gyergyádesz László, ifj.: Kecskemét és a magyar zsidó képzőművészet a 20. század első felében (Kecskemét, 2014)
Jegyzetek
Falfestmény a kecskeméti ortodox zsinagógában / Mural painting in the orthodox synagogue of Kecskemét Rákóczi Street for the offices of the religious community. Most of the Jews of Kecskemét were perished in the Second World War (1944) ‘At the end of May all the Jews were confined to a ghetto where they could take with themselves only some furniture and clothes, but they were there just for a couple of days, because all Jewish people from the neighbourhood were relocated to the local brickyard and from here they were deported to Germany All these innocent tears and blood demand revenge to the skies - who are going to pay for this?" In the memorial hall - originally built as a ceremonial hall and can be found at the Flebrew cemetery of Budai Street - 1222 names are graved into the marble walls (from the 1431 deported Jewish people only 209 returned) and on the small vault underneath the following text can be read: “Here lies the handful of ashes of our loved-ones destroyed during the nights of 28th and 30th June 1944 in Auschwitz that were returned at our reverential pilgrimage on 23rd August 1948. We buried them with the torn torah scrolls on 12th June 1949.” From 12th November 2004 there is a memorial tablet on the Rákóczi Street side of the great synagogue as a reminder of the Holocaust. “The desperately few Jewish people of Kecskemét who returned had to give up the further use of their synagogue, because only some religious Jews remained, and the Germans desecrated the church, moreover, they had no money for conservation. Therefore, they offered the town council of Kecskemét the perilous synagogue to purchase for cultural utilization. The agreement was negotiated by the executive committee of the town council of Kecskemét at its session on the 18th August 1960. Meanwhile on the suggestion of the elected (appointed!) new president of the local council the executive committee nullified the previously declared purchase intention on the 19th May 1961. In accordance with the ‘hacker’ town planning programme this national monument was listed among the buildings to be demolished. The photo of the scale-modell of the office building to be constructed on its site was published in a publication of the Bács-Kiskun county Designer Corporation in honour of the six-hundred-year-old Kecskemét. One of the most important buildings of the county town would have been destroyed if during a walk after a Sunday lunch the president of the local council of good memory would not have boasted to his guest, Rezső Trauttmann, Minister of Construction, deputy chairman of the presidential committee about the new office building. Luckily the member of the Cabinet undid the politically unacceptable decision probably due to the expectable unfavourable foreign reactions.” Eventually, the town bought the former synagogue from the local Jewish community on the 13th De41
