If a stranger wants to know where Dunaszerdahely can be found, it is not easy to give an unambiguous answer to a person thinking in nationwide or even in European dimensions. We have to relate... For example: if we show the interested Mapperson the Pozsony /Pressburg, Bratislava/ - Komarom line and then the Pozsony-Budapest line and we also inform him/her that our town is on the halfway between Gyor /Raab/ and Pozsony, near the left bank of the Danube, then we explain Dunaszerdahely’s position in European dimensions. After that it is easy to locate the town in respect of European cities. It is necessary to know about Dunaszerdahely that its existence is first recorded in a document from 1256. Regarding its regional location, it is built in the middle Csallokoz. If we look at the map of the Carpathian Basin we can see that Dunaszerdahely arose in Kisalfold. Kisalfod stretches up to the northern side of the Danube. The territory of the region starts from the promontories of the Bakony Mountains and spreads to the Tribec Mountains touching Nyitra, while it includes the both geographically and climaticly identical Csallokoz and Szigetkoz.The history of the town

The oratory of Israelites was built at the end of the 1860s. Its western side was divided by three gates, two galleries were available for women, its floor was made of marble and its windows were made with colour glass inlay. In 1945 it was hit by a bomb. At the same time a similar end befell the Adasz Jiszrael Synagogue in Nemesszeg built in 1927, in the time of “great dispute”. Though the latter was renewed after the war, due to the fact that even the fraction of the Jews who returned from the war left the town later on and due to neglect of buildings both synagogues got dilapidated and between 1950-53 /the sources differ about this date/ the synagogues were pulled down. Today only the memorial unveiled on 23 October 1991 commemorates the former Jewish quarter and the almost three thousand Jews of the town and its neighborhood, who became victims of the terrors of war.

    Dunajska Streda /Dunaszerdahely/ is an ancient settlement, a regional seat lying in the heart of Csallokoz /Corn Island/; its history has always been closely connected with the whole history of Csallokoz.
The present-day town was formed by the union of four once separate localities lying closely near each other: the original first Szerdahely, then Ujfalu, Nemesszeg and Elotejed - according to the cronicle these were united in 1874 and got the name The Agricultural Town of Dunaszerdahely. The name of the town then occured in the following forms: Svridahely in 1254-55, Zeredahel in 1270, Zerdahel in 1283, Zredahel in 1358, Szerdahel in 1786, and Dunajska Streda since 1920. Szerdahely’s name origins from its first privilege, which is that on Wednesdays markets could be and were held here. Later the day of the weekly markets was moved to Fridays. The Roman Catholic church of the town is first mentioned in 1341 in one of our sources. The Evangelical church was built in 1883. The synagogue was one of the largest Jewish oratories in Csallokoz; it was built in 1870 in the Main Street of the town; it was damaged by a bomb in 1945 and in 1951 it was pulled down. Even, according to the above mentioned census from 1646 there was a school in Szerdahely. It was a parochial elementary school with one class in the neighbourhood of the Catholic church and the parsonage; in 1931 the teaching was forbidden there for hygienic reasons. The Jewish elementary school was founded in the 18th century and it was abolished in 1944. Leopold Goldstein was the founder of the town’s first printing house, which functioned until 1938. In 1922 Izsak Rimstein’s printing house was founded and in 1933 a third one, David Weinberger’s; both functioned until 1939.

http://www.dunajinfo.sk/dunajskastreda/en/Default.asp

_____________________

Dunajská Streda (Hungarian: Dunaszerdahely; German: Niedermarkt) is a town in southern Slovakia (Trnavský kraj). Dunajská Streda is the most important town of the Žitný ostrov (Csallóköz) region. It has a Hungarian ethnic majority and it's population is 23,562 (2004 census)

Name
The name of Zerda was first mentioned in 1250 in a document issued by Palatinus Lórant. Other early orthographic forms of the name were Svridahel (1254), Zeredahely (1270), Zerdahel (1283) and Zredahel (1358). Szerdahely means "Wednesday (market)place" in Hungarian and it indicates the town had the privilege to hold a market on Wednesdays (although it was later changed to Fridays). The attribute Duna- (Dunajská; i.e. Danubian) was added in the 19th century. The modern Slovak name means the same as the Hungarian (streda means Wednesday in Slovak). The German name Niedermarkt means "Lower Market".

The population of the town has been predominantly Hungarian at least since the late Middle Ages. The town was under the feudal jurisdiction of the Pálffy family between 1600 and 1848. Many Jews came in the 18th century. In 1880 the town had 4182 inhabitants out of which were 3,531 Hungarian and 416 German by mother tongue. The number of the Jewish population was 1,874.
In 1930, the town had 5,706 inhabitants, including 2,944 Hungarians, 2,186 Jews (mostly Hungarian-speaking) and 503 Slovaks.
In 1919 it became part of Czechoslovakia. It became part of Hungary again in the First Vienna Award in 1938, but was returned to Czechoslovakia in 1945 after World War II. In 1947-48 part of the population was forced to emigrate to Hungary according to the Hungarian-Czechoslovakian population exchange agreement.

Today, it is one of the centres of the Hungarian national minority in Slovakia. According to the 2001 census, 18,756 Hungarians, 3,588 Slovaks, 353 Roma people, 147 Czechs and 24 Germans live in the city. Over 80% of the population are ethnic Hungarians, the highest proportion of any municipality in the country. It is the fastest growing city of Southern Slovakia.

Source : Wikipedia