The Bratislava Community After the Holocaust
Commemoration
In the 1990s a museum for Jewish cultural heritage was opened in the old Jewish Quarter in Bratislava. A memorial plaque was placed inside the Orthodox cemetery, commemorating the 13,000 Jewish residents of the city who were murdered during the Holocaust. A monument in memory of the Slovakian Jewish victims of the Nazi regime was erected on the site of the former Pressburg Yeshiva in 1997.
Municipal authorities and Jewish organizations renovated the tomb of the Chatam Sofer as well as other rabbis buried in Bratislava, and opened them to the public.
Today the Jewish community in the city numbers several hundred members.
A group of former Czechoslovakian immigrants is active in Israel; every May they hold an annual memorial ceremony in the Forest for the Martyrs of Czechoslovakia.
The Chatam Sofer, 1762 – 1839
Rabbi Moses Sofer (Schreiber), born in Frankfurt, was known as the ‘Chatam Sofer’ (a Hebrew acronym for Chidushei Torat Moshe, meaning ‘Novellae in Mosaic Law’). He was considered among the leading Orthodox rabbis of his generation, and his students went on to become leading rabbis themselves and heads of important rabbinical institutions (yeshivas), which they established across all of Hungary. Between 1806 and 1839 Rabbi Sofer was the chief rabbi of the Jewish community in Bratislava; he founded the Pressburg Yeshiva in the city, and was the institution’s first director. Under his leadership the Jewish community of Bratislava flourished spiritually, becoming one of the most important Jewish religious centers in central Europe. Rabbi Sofer was one of the leading figures opposed to the Enlightenment and Reform Movements. He was known for his motto, “The Torah forbids innovation.” Rabbi Sofer’s children went on to lead the community in Bratislava and stood at the head of the Pressburg Yeshiva until the Holocaust.