Huncovce (; , , , ''Unsdorf'', , ) is a

village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...

and

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

Kežmarok District Kežmarok District (Slovak: ''okres Kežmarok'') is a Districts of Slovakia, district in the Prešov Region of eastern Slovakia. Its seat, cultural and economic center is Kežmarok, the traditional center of the historic Spiš region. The Kežmaro ...

in the

Prešov Region The Prešov Region (, ; ), also Priashiv Region (, ), is one of the eight Slovak administrative regions and consists of 13 districts (okresy) and 666 municipalities, 23 of which have town status. The region was established in 1996 and is the mos ...

of north

Slovakia Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's m ...

Geography

The

lies at an

altitude Altitude is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum (geodesy), datum and a point or object. The exact definition and reference datum varies according to the context (e.g., aviation, geometr ...

of 639 metres and covers an

area Area is the measure of a region's size on a surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape or planar lamina, while '' surface area'' refers to the area of an open surface or the boundary of a three-di ...

of 13.262 km². It has a

population Population is a set of humans or other organisms in a given region or area. Governments conduct a census to quantify the resident population size within a given jurisdiction. The term is also applied to non-human animals, microorganisms, and pl ...

of about 2,400 people.

History

Huncovce was first mentioned in 1257 as a farming settlement, the property of Hungarian noblemen. German craftsmen and lumberjacks later settled there, and the town received rights to become a city. At the beginning of the 19th century, about half of the residents were Jews, and the rest Christian Germans and Slovaks, who were generally either Lutheran or Catholic. The village belonged to a German language island. Before the establishment of independent

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

in 1918, Huncovce was part of

Szepes County Szepes (; , , ) was an administrative county of the Kingdom of Hungary, called Scepusium before the late 19th century. Its territory today lies in northeastern Slovakia, with a very small area in southeastern Poland. For the current region, see S ...

within the

Kingdom of Hungary The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from 1000 to 1946 and was a key part of the Habsburg monarchy from 1526-1918. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the Coro ...

. From 1939 to 1945, it was part of the

Slovak Republic Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's ...

. On 28 January 1945, the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

dislodged the

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the German Army (1935–1945), ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmac ...

from Huncovce in the course of the Western Carpathian offensive and it was once again part of Czechoslovakia. The German population was expelled in 1945.

Jewish community

The first Jews to reside in Huncovce were from Moravia, settling there in the latter half of the 16th century. Later, survivors of the Khmelnitsky pogroms of 1648-1649 arrived, essentially as refugees. Jewish settlement in the region was technically prohibited by law, and therefore nearly all Jews in the Spis region resided in or around Huncovce during this period. The community continued to grow through the 18th and into the 19th century; though it remained small with only 30 families in the 18th century, by 1828 it had grown to 939 members (though this did include Jews from several other nearby settlements and villages). In the 19th century, Huncovce became an important regional centre of Torah learning, and a renowned

yeshiva A yeshiva (; ; pl. , or ) is a traditional Jewish educational institution focused on the study of Rabbinic literature, primarily the Talmud and halacha (Jewish law), while Torah and Jewish philosophy are studied in parallel. The stu ...

, where in the mid-century up to 350 boys studied, was built and led by Rabbi Yechezkel Wolf Segel. In the

interbellum period In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period, also known as the interbellum (), lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days) – from the end of World War I (WWI) to the beginning of World War II ( ...

, the Jewish population had begun to dwindle; by 1919, there were fewer than 275 Jews remaining (the entire community, including non-Jews, numbered less than 500 at this time). During this period, most of the Jews made a living in commerce and small business (e.g., grocers and butchers), and some tradesmen (e.g., tailors and carpenters). WWII and the Holocaust essentially put an end to Jewish life in Huncovce. On March 14 and 15, 1939, many of the German residents of the village (who had joined Nazi organizations) rounded up about 200 Jews and drove them out of the village to the no-man's land on the Slovakian-Hungarian border. They were held without shelter and in cramped and difficult conditions for two weeks, after which they were allowed to return to their homes. Two years later, the Jews' businesses were expropriated from them by Nazis and collaborators, with the young men sent to perform forced labour. Deportations began in 1942, with most Jews sent to concentration camps and extermination camps, though some were sent to

Lublin Lublin is List of cities and towns in Poland, the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the centre of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin i ...

-area ghettoes. Some hid in the forests, alone or with Slovaks – some of these were able to return to the village after the war, but the Jewish community could not rebuild its social structure, and its community buildings were damaged. Today no Jewish community exists, but the local government declared the remaining cemetery a protected historical site, and the yeshiva building still stands.

People

David Friesenhausen David ben Meir Cohen Friesenhausen (1756–1828) was a German-Hungarian astronomer, '' maskil'', mathematician, and rabbi. Friesenhausen was one of the first proponents of ''Torah im Derech Eretz'', a philosophy of Orthodox Judaism that formalizes ...

(1750, Friesenhausen - 1828, Gyulafehérvár/Alba Iulia), a Jewish Bavarian-Hungarian Talmudist, scientist, mathematician, Hebrew-language writer; lived here"FRIESENHAUSEN, DAVID BEN MEÏR"

Jewish Encyclopedia ''The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day'' is an English-language encyclopedia containing over 15,000 articles on the ...

, accessed 27 February 2014. * Solomon Winter (; 1778, ?, in the Szepes - ), Jewish Hungarian philanthropist; lived and died here

References

Genealogical resources

The records for genealogical research are available at the state archive "Statny Archiv in Levoca, Slovakia" * Roman Catholic church records (births/marriages/deaths): 1675-1899 (parish A) * Lutheran church records (births/marriages/deaths): 1784-1944 (parish B)

External links

of living people in Huncovce
Villages and municipalities in Kežmarok District Spiš Hungarian German communities Historic Jewish communities in Slovakia {{Jewish-hist-stub