Pap Jewish Cemetery
Cemetery Information
Historical overview
The Jewish cemetery of Pap was established as early as 1870, since it appears on the cadastral map of that year. This cemetery remained in operation until at least 1942 – the year in which the latest tombstone found in the cemetery was erected. The cemetery has been fenced.
Pap is a village in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county, in the Northern Great Plain region of eastern Hungary. There is no information regarding the first Jewish settlers of the village, however at the end of the 18th century, 8 Jewish people lived in the village (Sámuel Dávid and his relatives) on the estate of István Fülöp. In 1880, 33 people of the town’s total population of 891 were Jewish. The Jewish population later peaked at 76 people in 1910, after which the population began to decrease. By 1941, Jews merely accounted for 41 of the village’s total population of 1,459. The Jews of Pap were mainly merchants and cobblers, as well as land and distillery owners. The oldest families were the Kaufman, Kohn, Dicker, and Schmilovics families. At the beginning of the 20th century, prayer services were held in the house of Béni Kohn.
A local Jewish man, Bernát Frenkel, died in 1942 in forced labour service on a battlefield somewhere in Russia. The other members of the community were taken to the Kisvárda Ghetto in April 1944 and were deported to Auschwitz at the end of May. In 1949, there were only 2 Jews living in Pap, however they left the village in 1956.