History of the Library of Nagytétény

Brief historical overview

The building of the library was a Jewish house of prayer for two centuries; it was the religious and social centre of the Jews living in Tétény and around it, in the neighbourhood. In this period,  the life of local Jews strongly interwove with everyday life of other inhabitants in the municipality.

The landowners of the village, György Száraz and József Rudnyánszky allowed the Jews to move in the settlement in the first half of the 18th century; it was populated mainly by German Catholics after Turkish era. Jewish census of 1737 contained 3 families with 12 people; in the census of 1746  8 families with 31 Jewish people were mentioned.
They lived on land in villein tenure, the heads of households dealt with mongering (trading), leases or worked in distilling industry. The community was enlarged with immigrants from Moravia; the house of prayer was rebuilt from a farm building provided by Száraz-Rudnyánszky family.
By a source of the Catholic Church, remained from 1759, believer inhabitants of municipality, including Germans, Slavic and Jewish people, lived together, the Jews had a synagogue and rabbi; the parish register of their church was recorded from 1760, the oldest gravestone can be dated back to 1750.

In the middle of the 19th century number of local Jews was 326. After the separation of religious movements (or tendencies) within Jewish religion (1868-1871) traditionalists of ortodox community belonged to the church of Nagytétény and it became dominant in the neighbourhood.
The Jews of Albertfalva, Törökbálint és Budafok were registered by the parish register here in Nagytétény; the graveyard of Tétény covered the burial places of the Jews living in Batta, Tárnok, Érd, Sóskút, Etyek and Tököl. The number of Jewish inhabitants was the highest in 1880, 498 Jewis lived in Nagy-Tétény, that was more than 22 percent of total number of inhabitants. 
Two rabbis Salamon Tauber and Rezső Ungár were their leaders till 1934. After that period, the rabbis were invited from Budapest to lead the community especially on the occasions of bigger holidays and festivals; other religious activities were led by the worship leader László Hochstätter. The Jews of Nagytétény professed to be Hungarian in the beginning of the 20th century despite holding ortodox practice of religion and the use of German language partially. They lived in a co-operative and peaceful relationship with inhabitants of other nationalities and religions. The prominent citizens of Jewish community became important members of the community of Nagytétény, they had key role in local social and economic life. The male members of Jewish community took part in WW I; the monument of the victims was inaugurated by the representatives of Catholic, Calvinic and Jewish churches in 1934.  Even in the period between the two WWs, several mixed marriages and friendships were made, for example the friendship of the priest and the rabbi was known publicly.
The nearly 200-year-old Jewish house of prayer needed to have outer and inner renovation. The formal opening of the house of prayer (synagogue), which was fixed up in the middle of the 1930s,  was on 20th August 1936. It was refurbished somehow but the main characteristics of the building remained. Among others, the pulpit for reading the Torah remained in the middle of the room; its baldachin and the trellisworks made of iron were constructed probably in the first decades of the 19th century. The cupboard holding and saving the scrolls of Torah and the columnar construction around it gave the view opposite the entrance.

The Anti-Jewish Laws and other cruel restricting regulations, followed one another, made the living conditions of local Jews quite difficult and hard from 1938.
From 1941 many of the male members of local Jewish community were drafted to be forced labourers, some of them died. From 5th April 1944, all Jewish people of local community were obliged to wear yellow star. Some of them could escape from threatening dangers by certificate of baptism given by the local priest, but most of local Jews were forced to the getto located in Halom street in Budafok. Then they had to suffer from the hard and awful circumstances of the temporary camp located at the brickyard of Budakalász; it was the limbo of Auschwitz. Those who could return (some survivors of only 5 families),  planted a tree, one by one, each of them, in the courtyard of the house of prayer.  Religious life within the Jewish community ceased.
Both the graveyard and the house of prayer became derelict. Its furnishings were taken away; altough the house was pronounced a listed building, it was used as a warehouse.

The heritage of one-time Jews became well-thought-of by provincialists ("local patriots") and volunteers of Jewish organizations, among others.
They cleaned up the graveyard and placed a metal plate on the pavement at No. 13 of Szentháromság utca; the metal plate reminds everyone of local victims of Holocaust.
The self-government of Budafok-Tétény committed itself to saving and utilizing the building of the synagogue. As part of the development and rehabilitation project of the center in Budafok-Tétény, the one-time house of prayer was renovated, fixed up and expanded. Since 2013 it has been operating as a public library.