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	Kežmarok, Slovakia
	Also spelled or known as: Kezmarok (without the special character) Kesmark/Käsmark (German) Késmárk (Hungarian) Kesmarkium (Latin) (Hebrew) קזמרק (Yiddish) קעזמארק

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Location and Maps

Slovakia lies in the heart of Europe. Using Mapquest, you can see that Kezmarok is located toward the northeastern border of Slovakia, northeast of Poprad and south of the Polish border, at Latitude 49°8ֲ´, Longitude 20°25ֲ´. The current population of Kezmarok is about 17,000, and is located on the Poprad River.

• Map of the Spis Region of Slovakia, with Kesmark in the middle (Johann Loisch,1939)
• Where Jews lived in the in the 19th Century on the same map. Mikulas Liptak, who lives in Kezmarok, collaborated with this page's compiler (Madeleine Isenberg), since 2004. He painstakingly indicated with colored dots where Jews once lived in the Spis Region. For some of the towns, some dots indicate Jewish cemeteries that have already been documented there, or are in process.

Background Information

Other Sources of Information

• Books

  Some of these books are rare and difficult to find, but have invaluable infomation about the life and times of Jews in Slovakia and/or Austro-Hungary, of which it was once a part.

  • Toldot Yehudei Kezmarok v'Hasviva, The History of the Jews of Kezmarok and its Surroundings, by Mr. Shmuel Dov Gvaryahu-Gottesman, published, Jerusalem, 1992 (in Hebrew). An on-line library copy can be found in the New York Public Library in their Yizkor (Holocaust Memorial) Books collection.
  • Toisent Yor Yiddish Leben In Ungarian - A Thousand Years of Jewish Life in Hungary, by Yekutiel Yehuda (Leopold) Greenwald, Columbus, Ohio, 1945 (in Yiddish). A PDF version exists at HebrewBooks.org. At that website, add the following after the URL: /03383 to bring up the Greenwald Book.
  • Jews in the Spis Region, I. Kezmarok and its Surroundings, by Mikulas Liptak and Madeleine R. Isenberg, 2nd edition, Kezmarok, Slovakia, 2010. (ISBN 978-80-89264-48-9). This is a dual language book, in Slovak and English and some copies are still available for purchase. Contact Madeleine Isenberg for more information.

• Websites

  Here are some websites with more information about Slovakia and Kezmarok:

  • Wikipedia's page for Kezmarok
  • A Brief History of Slovakian Jewry from JewishGen's Yizkor Book translations.
  • Kezmarok from Encyclopaedia of Jewish communities, Slovakia. This is a translation of the "Kezmarok" chapter from Pinkas Hakehillot Slovakia, edited by Yehoshua Robert Buchler and Ruth Shashak, published by Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 2003.
  • Another Kezmarok site, with information about the Kezmarok castle and permanent exhibitions to be found in it.
  • A Virtual Tour of Kezmarok This site has some wonderful photos that rotates to give you a 360 degree panoramic view of places in Kezmarok, as if you are standing and slowly turning around to see all around you. This particular link is to a street scene that rotates and lets you also see part of the Thokoly Castle. This is now a museum and it even houses a section dedicated to the Jews who once lived in Kezmarok.
  • A History of Kezmarok by Dr. Nora Barathova, translated from Slovak into English.

Dedication of Holocaust Memorial, 18 November 2013

Thanks to the suggestion by Shaul GASSNER that some kind of memorial should be created to the Jews who once lived in Kezmarok, a plan 13 years in the making came to actualization on the 18 November 2013. A special memorial service took place in Kezmarok very close to where the town's synagogue, Adas Yeshurun, once stood. This was to dedicate a memorial to the Jews who once lived in Kezmarok, 90% of whom were killed in the Holocaust.

15 people, descendents of Rabbis Meir Grünberg and Yisrael Meir Glück, and of families Vogelmann, Gassner, Goldman, and Goldstein traveled and converged from Los Angeles, New York (in the USA), and from Rechovot, Israel to attend.

This was part of an all-day event, coinciding with Kesmarok's periodic, "Days of Jewish Culture," in which local historian, Dr. Nora Barathova, and book-publisher/tour guide Mikulas Liptak, give talks with slide presentations to enlighten the local gentry and visitors about the once thriving community of Jews who made Kezmarok their home and contributed to the daily life of the town.

In a great demonstration of ecumenism, the effort to collect funding for the design, fabrication, and final actualization was undertaken by Kezmarok's local Lutheran Church, under the leadership of Mgr. Roman Poruban. In reciprocation and appreciation, funds were donated and collected by descendents and relatives of those martyred Jews and given back to the church. Two special people who took the 5-hour train ride from Bratislava, were Chabad Rabbi, Boruch Myers who officiated as the rabbinical presence and the German chargé d'affaires, the Honorable Reinhard Wiemar. Others came from Kosice and various other parts of Slovakia for the day.

Rabbi Myers also brought a Torah for the morning services, since miraculously, this was the first time in 65 years that a minyan (a quorom of 10 men) had gathered for prayers in Kezmarok! Rabbi Myers also brought with him banquet-worthy food prepared by his wife, Chanie, to ensure our festive luncheon was kosher!

Officials from the town council also spoke and a respectful crowd of Kezmarok's residents attended as well.

As part of the days events, the visitors from abroad sought the locations of homes where their ancestors lived; visited the cemetery where loved ones were buried pre-World War II; and viewed the displays in the Jewish section of the museum that is now in housed in the former Thokoly Castle. The group photo below was taken in the museum as the parting commemorative photo.

Below are just a few photos and hopefully a more detailed collection in PDF form will be added.  Parts of the day were captured in the news and on video by visiting TV and newspaper journalists but these are in Slovak. One such program appeared on January 12, 2014, but may be hard to view.  You may also see a brief portion of the Kezmarok News that was broadcast on TV on  20 November 2013, by clicking on the third item to the right of the screen. But it is almost entirely in Slovak.

The Presenters Top L to R: Mgr. Roman Poruban, Rabbi Baruch Myers, Bottom L to R:  Dr. Nora Brathova, Ingr. Mikulas Liptak	Guests at the Kosher Luncheon held at Hotel Hviezdoslav, L to R: Robert Burger, assistant to the architect, Architect Miloslav Neumann,  Ing. Ladislav Faix, Mayor Igor Sajtlava, Rabbi Baruch Myers, Mgr. Roman Poruban, German Chargé d'Affaires Reinhard Wiemar.
Last chance to pray with a quorum, as the the men gather for Mincha (Afternoon) service.	Speakers at the Dedication and Unveiling: L to R Rabbi Boruch Myers, Mayor Igor Sajtlav, Pastor Mgr. Roman Poruban
A group called "Christian Friends of Israel" showed thier support.  Many believe they might have some Jewish ancestry also!	Group Photo taken inside the Thokoly Castle's Room with Jewish artifacts, L to R: Jack FRIEDMAN (great-grandson of Rabbi Yisrael Meir GLÜCK), Peter NURNBERG (in back), Gity CHARNAS (granddaughter of Rabbi Meir GRÜNBERG), her husband Kalman CHARNAS, bending in front of her, Jeff FRIEDMAN (Jack's son), Dovy FRIEDMAN (kneeling below, son of Mayer FRIEDMAN), Thomas VOGELMANN, Mikulas Liptak (in back), Madeleine ISENBERG, Michael FRIEDMAN (Jack's brother), Michael's sons Steven and Alan next to him, Hagit TSAFRIRI and her sister, Ilana EYAL, Yitzchak GASSNER, and his wife Yael.  Inset of Yehudit and David BAREKET, who missed being in this photo.

Contributors of Content

At the time this website was first created (10 December 2010), many people had contributed information, photographs, and letters, over the past 20 years that they had either from the time they themselves lived there (pre-World War II) or from their ancestors who once lived in or near Kezmarok. Many contributors were related to some degree to Madeleine Isenberg who created this Kehilalinks page, in part as a memorial to our family who once lived in Kezmarok, and to so many who were killed during the Shoah.

The following is a list of the family names from Kezmarok that are common to these contributors. More family names may be added as more information comes to light. Family names from other contributors will be added as more information becomes available.

The major contributor, not related in any way to the above, but who currently lives in Kezmarok and has been an invaluable source of information and support since 2004, is Mikulas Liptak.

Additional Contributors, Their Material, and Family Names

Contributions in the form of assistance from Mr. Marshall KATZ in preparing these webpages, has been greatly appreciated.