Slovakia Opens First-Ever Jewish Museum
The Jewish community in Bratislava has inaugurated a community-run Jewish museum in the women’s gallery of the only synagogue in the Slovak capital.
Officially opened this week, the museum displays Judaica and other items owned by the Jewish community or donated by individual members.
“It tells a story, our story, that dates back centuries,” Jewish community vice president Maros Borsky, who conceived and curated the museum, told JTA.
About 600 Jews live in Bratislava today. Converting the women’s gallery into a modern museum, Borsky said, was part of an overall long-term strategy to preserve and maintain the synagogue, which is still used by the community.
Exhibits include silver and other Judaica items collected after World War II by the late Eugen Barkany, as well as photographs, paintings, documents and other objects relating to Jewish life and history before, during and after the Holocaust. These include a decades-old bottle of locally produced kosher wine, a collection of postcards documenting the correspondence from the Communist era between Jews who remained in Bratislava and their relatives who had left after the Shoah, and items documenting the post-communist Jewish revival.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
