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03 December 2021
"Scattered throughout Poland are synagogues in various architectural styles that once served a large and venerable Jewish community. Found in towns ranging from Zamosc and Orla to Krasnik and Lancut,
01 December 2021
Synagogues: The State of Preservation and Future Prospects- possible approaches and challenges in heritage protection. A conversation with author and journalist Ruth Ellen Gruber, architect, artist and designer Natalia Romik,
"Scattered throughout Poland are synagogues in various architectural styles that once served a large and
Synagogues: The State of Preservation and Future Prospects- possible approaches and challenges in heritage protection.
"Not traveling? Visit great Jewish sites across the country from home. Visitors of all ages
Synagogues: Historic Buildings โ€“ on their cultural and educational potential. A conversation with Helise Lieberman

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the virtual tour

Synagogue in Zamoล›ฤ‡

The history of the Jewish community in Zamoล›ฤ‡ begins in 1588. Jews were invited to Zamoล›ฤ‡ by the founder of the city, the chancellor and the great crown hetman, Jan Zamoyski. The settlement privilege, however, applied only to the Sephardim, i.e. to the community originating from the Iberian Peninsula. The high property status of this group and numerous trade contacts with the Middle East were to help in the economic development of the newly created city. ...

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the virtual tour

Cemetery in ลaล„cut

Synagogue in ลaล„cut

It was established at the beginning of the 17th century and covers an area of 0.87 ha, with fragments of broken tombstones and two ohels hiding the remains of the tzadikim: Naftali Horowitz and Eleazar Szapiro. 

Jews began to settle in Lancut in the 16th century. In 1707 the Council of Four Lands met there which shows that the kehilla grew in importance. After the wooden synagogue burnt down, the brick building was erected in 1761 owing to the funding by the town's owner Stanisล‚aw Lubomirski who was aware of the beneficial impact the presence of the Jews had on the town's development. The strength of the relationship and peaceful cohabitation manifested in hiring of a Jewish factor to keep the accounts of the estate, and the proximity of the synagogue to the market square and magnateโ€™s residence...

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the virtual tour

Synagogue in Kraล›nik

The city, already mentioned in the 13th century, was granted city rights in 1377. It developed as a trade center on the route from Silesia to Kievan Rus. The first information about Jewish merchants from Kraล›nik comes from 1530. They lived here despite the de non tolerandis Judaeis law, in force until 1584, forbidding Jews from settling within the city walls. The dynamic development of the community took place at the end of the 16th century. From that time, Jews began to live in the vicinity of the market square. In the 1690s, in the town lived 20 Jewish families. At the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, the community had its own wooden synagogue (founded in 1593 at the latest and located in a different place than the currently preserved synagogue complex), a cemetery, a rabbiโ€™s house, a cantorโ€™s house and a public mikvah. ...

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the virtual tour

Synagogue
in ลฤ™czna

Soon after ลฤ™czna was granted city rights, Jews began to settle there. They mostly lived in the area north of the market square. In this part of the city, at the end of Boลผnicza Street, stands the Great Synagogue. ...

 

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the virtual tour

Cemetery in Przysucha

The Jewish cemetery in Przysucha was established in the mid-18th century. It was devastated during the occupation by the Germans: its fence was pulled down, the matzevot were destroyed and used as building material, among others, for a construction in the backyard of the fire station. After 1945, the necropolis continued to deteriorate.  ...

Synagogue in Przysucha

โ€žMagnificentโ€ - this is how visitors coming to Przysucha once described its synagogue. Even today, despite the fact that it requires renovation, the building is impressive. It is one of the few preserved late Baroque synagogues in Poland and the only one in the region. It was erected in the years 1775โ€“1790, on a rectangular plan with sides of 35 by 19 meters. External and internal walls were made of split limestone jointed with lime mortar; the building is oriented to the east, the entrance is in the southern wall, and it is covered with a hipped, stepped roof. The facades are divided with pilaster strips, the corners of the building are rounded. ...

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Pre-funeral house in Olsztyn

The project made in 1913 at the request of the local Jewish community, was the first realization of the architect Erich Mendelsohn and heralded great talent and fame. An integral part of Mendelsohn's project in Olsztyn is a smaller building next to the funeral home, designed as a gardener's house, which together with the surrounding cemetery constitute a unique historical and artistic complex of monuments. ... 

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Yeshiva in Sejny

Sejny's "White Synagogue"


The yeshiva building is located opposite the "White Synagogue". This Talmudic school, famous throughout Lithuania, was founded in the second half of the 19th century by an outstanding theologian and philosopher, rabbi from Sejny, Mojลผesz Icchak Awigdor. Thanks to its folk-revolutionary character, the school was highly appreciated by the supporters of the Jewish Enlightenment. Thanks to her, Sejny briefly became the center of the Haskalah movement for Lithuania. Among other things, conferences of prominent Lithuanian rabbis were held here ...

Sejny's "White Synagogue", which owes its name to the color of the facade, is located on the main street of the town, the center of which is located on the axis between the Basilica and the synagogue. It was built in 1885 in place of a wooden "shingled roof with an exhibition at the front and a colonnade." It is a three-nave structure, on a rectangular plan. Architecturally, the interior of the synagogue is a combination of a Gothic six-square with a baroque central solution, which is emphasized by the arrangement of four richly profiled pillars supporting the ceiling ...

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virtual tour

Synagogue in Orla

The synagogue building, surviving to the present day, bears witness to the high status held by the local Jewish community. Until the mid-20th century, the synagogue was one of a few stone buildings in Orla. According to the local legend it was converted from the building of a Calvinist church that once existed in the town. Princess Radziwล‚ล‚ is rumoured to have enabled the Jews to purchase the building if they collected 10.000 coins overnight. The Jews were so determined that they collected that amount within an hour. This tale, however, bears no relation to the historical reality. The stone synagogue built in the 2nd quarter of the 17th century, but archaeological research revealed that a small wooden synagogue had stood in the same place earlier. ...

ลฤ™czna

Zamoล›ฤ‡

ลaล„cut

Synagoga w Kraล›niku

Kraล›nik

Przysucha

Olsztyn

Orla

Sejny

Dom Oczyszczenia Bet Tahara - projektu Ericha Medelshona

Synagoga w Kraล›niku

Synagoga w Przysusze

Synagoga w Zamoล›ciu

Synagoga w ลฤ™cznej

Synagoga i Jesziwa w Sejnach

News

Blog about Jewish heritage in Poland. Interesting articles, fascinating photo reports presenting the beauty and symbolism of Jewish monuments.

Webinars

A series of three webinars, organized in late autumn 2021, inaugurating a discussion on the historical and cultural value of tangible Jewish heritage in Poland, as well as the challenges facing Polish and Jewish partners involved in its protection.

Virtual Tours

The opportunity to get acquainted with selected monuments of Jewish heritage in Poland (synagogues, cemeteries and a funeral home) and visit them without leaving home.

Public task financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland within the grant competition โ€œPublic Diplomacy 2021โ€

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