TORAH ARK CURTAIN FROM THE ABANDONED SYNAGOGUE / Ibolya Beleznay
I had never before seen such a thick layer of guano as in 1984, at the gallery of the abandoned synagogue in Pannonhalma.
My trip there was part of a job that lasted for several weeks and took me to several towns and villages all over Győr-Sopron County, including Pannonhalma. Schools, cultural centres, temples, cemeteries – these were the main sites of my survey.
It turned out that there was one single Jewish family left in Pannonhalma, and they possessed the key to the synagogue. Entering, I saw a sorry sight: a devastated, empty space surrounded by walls with saltpetre; among other functions, the place had also served as a storage room for the local cooperative farm. I went up to the gallery fully covered with the above-mentioned bird excrement. Under that layer, I found many torn and dusty pages from books and registries, a few letters by a rabbi from the early 1900s, and a silk Torah ark curtain, which I found beautiful, even though it was dirty, stained and torn.
For forty years, it occurred to nobody to save what could be saved, so I had the opportunity to be the first one who recognized the value in these few worn objects. A couple of years later Rabbi Tamás Raj told me that this piece of silk is priceless, since there had remained hardly any of its type in Hungary for the well-known reasons.
