46°40′N 16°10′E / 46.667°N 16.167°E / 46.667; 16.167, Prkmurje region. Murska Sobota in the local Prekmurian regional language is usually referred simply as Subouta. German is Olsnitz, from the old Slovene name Olšnica. The modern Slovene name is a translation of the Hungarian Muraszombat, which was the official name of the town until 1919. Murska Sobota was a district (Hungarian: járás) town of Vas in the Kingdom of Hungary until 1918 and occupied by Hungary again during WWII. Between 1944 and 1945 it was under Nazi German occupation and liberated by Soviet troops in May 1945. It was also part of Balatin sanjak which belonged at first Budin Eyalet, later Kanije Eyaleti before Treaty of Carlowitz. Once a significant Jewish community from Austria and Hungary, the community was eliminated by Nazi Germany. Before WWII, a synagogue stood, dedicated on August 31, 1908 and demolished in 1954 by the local Communist authorities, after purchasing the building from the decimated Jewish community. The last rabbi in Murska Sobota was Lazar Roth, born in Jalšva in the Czech lands He was murdered in Auschwitz. On April 26, 1944, all Jews were gathered in the Murska Sobota synagogue and locked up over night without food or water. The next morning, all Jews of Murska Sobota were transferred to Čakovec and then to Nagykanizsa, the main concentration camp before going to Auschwitz. On January 29, 2010, the first Holocaust memorial in Slovenia was unveiled at the Murska Sobota railway station. Jewish history. photo.[September 2010]
Jewish Cemetery: "Murska Sobota is the main town in the Prkmurje region. The Jewish cemetery, at the corner of Malanova and Panonska streets, dates from the 19th century. Overgrown and untended after W.W.II, it was demolished in the late 1980s. Some 38 stones were standing at the time of which thirty were auctioned off. The town chose eight of the more elaborate stones of differing types from which to create a simple but striking and very dignified memorial to the town's murdered Jews on the site of the cemetery. The site, a grassy park with the dead still buried there, dotted with trees, is a rectangular plot with a housing development on one side that encroaches on some of the former cemetery territory. On the back of a marble stone, (one of the tombstones) is an engraving that indicates that this is a Jewish Cemetery and Memorial Park to the victims of Fascism and Nazism." Source: Jewish Monuments in Slovenia. Gruber, Ruth Ellen and Samuel D. Jewish Heritage Research Center: November 1996. The US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad.
- BOOK: Gruber, Ruth Ellen. Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to East-Central Europe. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1992. Page 238 has town and photo information for Murska Sobota. Extracted by Elaine B. Kolinsky