First evidence of Jewish presence in Bardejov area.

The first Jews recorded as living in the town of Bardejov are a goldsmith and a wagoner.

Two Jewish families live in Bardejov.

Habsburg Emperor Joseph II issues Edict of Tolerance, which grants Jews religious freedom, the right to attend public schools and universities, and to engage in previously closed occupations. The Edict also eliminates onerous taxes and restrictions on Jews.

Jews are required to adopt fixed German surnames and to keep vital records (birth, marriage, and death) in official registries.

Bardejov’s Jewish Community is officially founded. The nearby villages of Zborov and Kurima also establish communities; Raslavice and Lukov soon follow suit.

The Old Synagogue is established just outside Bardejov’s city walls. The stone structure becomes part of a large Jewish Suburbia compound, which later also includes a study hall (Beit HaMidrash) and ritual bath (Mikvah).

480 Jews live in Bardejov.

Jewish Congress in Pest culminates in schism of Hungarian Jewry.

Bardejov Spa, developed and operated by Jews, is visited by Austrian Empress Elizabeth (“Sissi,” wife of Franz Joseph I).

Bardejov’s town council approves expanded eruv network, enabling Sabbath-observant Jews in and near Bardejov to carry certain objects on the Sabbath. The original eruv was set up a few years earlier.

The first Czechoslovakian Republic. Bardejov’s Jews assume prominent civic leadership positions, own 90 percent of Bardejov’s businesses, and increasingly enter the liberal professions. Jews form voluntary associations dedicated to religious and charitable work, and various cultural, social, educational, sports, and Zionist activities.

A charitable association that aids the sick and needy founds the Chevra Bikur Cholim Synagogue on Klastorska Street.

Hitler’s Nazi army invades the Czech Sudetenland. Josef Tiso establishes an autonomous Slovakian government.

A nominally independent Slovak Republic, that in fact is a puppet state of Nazi Germany, is established.

Quotas restrict the number of Jewish students in public schools. Jews are later forbidden from attending public schools altogether. “Trustees” are appointed to oversee major industrial and commercial enterprises of Jews as part of process of eliminating Jews from the economy.

Jews who emigrate forced to leave assets behind.

Jews must complete two months of labor in lieu of regular army service. Jews are completely excluded from regular army service with the creation of segregated labor units in 1941.

New laws prohibit ritual slaughter and ban Jewish students from public schools. Jews’ business liquor licenses are annulled, prompting the closure of 19 local liquor businesses. Strict new banking rules require Jews to deposit their savings and jewelry in blocked bank accounts.

Second Aryanization Law enacted, extending the program to all Jewish assets, business and private. The Central Economic Office, led by Augustin Moravek, is authorized to mass liquidate Jewish enterprises as part of a systematic plan to eliminate Jews from the economy and to redistribute their assets to non-Jews.

A massive Jewish Codex with 270 individual provisions is enacted as the regime’s comprehensive “solution to Jewish issues.” The Codex is propagandized as a European-wide model for solving “the Jewish Problem.” The Codex defines the concept of race, requires Jews to wear visible labels in public, denies Jews rights of privacy and freedom of movement. The Codex bans religious practices, prohibits school attendance, and reaffirms the accelerated Aryanization policies of the Central Economic Office. A few individual Jews procure exemptions from the strictures of the Codex.

Young Jewish women are the first from the Bardejov area slated for deportation. Many elude the deportation by artificially contracting symptoms of typhoid as part of a ruse engineered by Refuel Rudolf Löwy, the longtime leader of Bardejov’s Jewish community.

The Slovak Assembly adopts a Constitutional law legalizing the mass deportation of Jews. On May 15–16, 2,401 Jews from Bardejov and vicinity are loaded unto trains and transported to transit ghettos in Konskowola, Rejowiec, and Opole Lubelskie in Poland. Many die in these ghettos, or in the Sobibor or Majdanek extermination camps, or in camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, Buchenwald, Dachau, Gross-Rosen, and Mauthausen.

Only 386 Jews remain in the Bardejov district.

German troops direct a second wave of deportations. Approximately 12,000 Jews are gathered in labor camps at Sered and deported to concentration camps in Auschwitz and Theresienstadt. Soviet troops reach the Slovak border. Jews still in Bardejov hide or flee to western Slovakia.

384 Jews, including 79 children, live in Bardejov. Local Jews are attacked. The police does little to protect them.

The Communist government bars emigration from Czechoslovakia. Jews desiring to emigrate are stuck.

“The Prague Spring,” shortly crushed by Soviet troops, introduces short-lived political reforms. During the brief thaw, many Jews leave the country or reestablish contact with Jewish relatives around the world.

The “Velvet Revolution” leads to the establishment of a free, democratic Czechoslovakia, with the first free elections since 1946.

The neo-classical portico entrance of the Old Synagogue collapses.

Jewish owners of private properties confiscated under the anti-Semitic laws of 1939-45 are given a ten-year window to apply for restitution.

The Slovak and United States governments agree to protect and preserve cultural properties in Slovakia, including many formerly owned by Jewish communities.

The BJPC sponsors a reunion trip to Bardejov. Survivors and their families meet with Bardejov’s mayor, tour the Jewish Suburbia, the restored cemetery, and the Bikur Cholim Synagogue. The effort raises awareness and promotes the restoration of the Jewish Suburbia.

Local activists and historians Peter and Pavol Hudák arrange a commemoration of the 130th anniversary of Refuel Rudolf Löwy’s birth in front of his former house on the Town Square and mark the 67th anniversary of the first deportations of Jewish girls from Bardejov with a candlelight ceremony in front of the Jewish Suburbia’s Mikvah building.

The hardware store tenant vacates the Old Synagogue and restoration work begins on the building. The hardware store’s operations are moved to the Mikvah and Beit HaMidrash buildings.

Representing the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, Emil Fish leads a BJPC delegation to a meeting with Bardejov’s mayor, representatives from UZZNO, and representatives of Slovakia’s Monument Board, to discuss the future of the Jewish Suburbia and plans for a Holocaust memorial in Bardejov. The city allots municipal land next to the Jewish Suburbia for a proposed Holocaust memorial to victims from the Bardejov area.

On March 25, construction begins of the Holocaust Memorial, including exterior walls evoking Jews’ former residences and decorative fencing around the site.