Malacky Jewish Cemetery

It is not known when the Jewish cemetery in Vysoká pri Morave, which is located at the end of the village, was established. The date of the last burial in the cemetery is also unknown. For 70 years, the cemetery was largely abandoned. Undoubtedly, the main reason was that none of the Jews from the village who were deported to concentration camps survived. Entire families, including children, were murdered. All the tombstones were lost during the socialist era. Abraham Kon and his wife Sally (maiden name Frisch) are buried in the cemetery. Their names became known when their great-grandson, Jan Schober from Sweden, visited the cemetery in 2016.

Vysoká pri Morave (German: Hochstädten / Hochstetten; Hungarian: Nagymagasfalu) is a village located by the Morava River, which marks the border between Slovakia and Austria. Fisherman exploited the river’s abundant resources and built the first houses there. Fishing, as well as the lucrative crayfish trade, brought good profits for traders. One Hungarian source states that 15 Jews lived in the village as early as 1840, 26 in 1880, and 34 in 1910. According to a Slovak source, there were 33 Jews living in the village in 1927. There is no other information about the local Jewish community.

Since Vysoká pri Morave is in the Malacky district, we can assume that its Jewish inhabitants suffered the same fate as the Jews in the surrounding villages and towns during World War II:

They were first affected by various bans, which gradually removed them from political, economic, social, or cultural life, deprived them of their functions, closed their shops and businesses, and confiscated their property. In April 1942, the first young Jews and later families were deported. Most had intermediate stops in concentration camps in Sered, Nováky and Patrónka, and were subsequently deported to extermination camps and makeshift ghettos in Poland. In total, in 1942, almost 80% of Jewish citizens were deported from the Malacky district. Deportations temporarily stopped in October 1942, during which time some Jews were temporarily protected. However, after the Slovak National Uprising, the Germans deported many more Jews to the Sered concentration camp. Several families allegedly hid before the arrival of the Germans. After the liberation, only few Jews returned. Most of the survivors moved to larger cities after the war or emigrated abroad, mostly to Israel. From the village of Vysoká pri Morave in particular, it is likely that no Jews survived.