Before the Nazi German invasion of Poland in 1939, almost every Polish town had a synagogue or a Jewish house of prayer of some kind. The 1939 statistics recorded the total of 1,415 Jewish communities in the country just before the outbreak of war, each composed of at least 100 members (Gruber, 1995). Every one of them owned at least one synagogue and a Jewish cemetery nearby. Approximately 9.8% of all believers in Poland were Jewish (according to 1931 census).[1]
The list of actives synagogues in Poland cannot possibly include the hundreds of synagogue buildings which still stand today in about 250 cities and towns across the country – seventy years after the Holocaust in Poland which claimed the lives of over 90% of Polish Jewry. Devoid of their original hosts, many synagogue buildings house libraries and smaller museums as in Kraków, Łańcut, Włodawa, Tykocin, Zamość, Radzanów, but many more serve as apartment buildings, shops, gyms and whatever else community needs require. This isn't necessarily bad however, because the synagogues which remain empty are usually worse off due to lack of maintenance.[2]
Active synagogues in Poland
The Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland (ZGWŻ) with branches in nine metropolitan centres helps the descendants of the Holocaust survivors in the process of recovery and restoration of synagogue buildings once owned by the Jewish Kehilla (קהלה), and nationalized in Communist Poland.[3] The list of active and rededicated synagogues in the country include:
See also Synagogues of Kraków for a more complete list of 124 synagogue buildings with description of selected historical monuments of Jewish sacred architecture in the city
Łęczna is a town in eastern Poland with 19,780 inhabitants (2014), situated in Lublin Voivodeship. It is the seat of Łęczna County and the smaller administrative district of Gmina Łęczna. The town is located in northeastern corner of historic province of Lesser Poland. Łęczna tops among the hills of the Lublin Upland, at the confluence of two rivers—the Wieprz, and the Świnka. On December 31, 2010, the population of the town was 20,706. Łęczna does not have a rail station, the town has been placed on a national Route 82 from Lublin to Włodawa. And shall be considered as a start point to Kameralne Pojezierze, as the town has decided to rebrand the lakeland district, from Pojezierze Łęczyńsko-Włodawskie, or Pojezierze Łęczyńskie, to Kameralne Pojezierze.
After the fall of Communism in Poland in 1989, Jewish cultural, social, and religious life has experienced a revival. Many historical issues related to the Holocaust and the period of Soviet domination (1945–1989) in the country – suppressed by Communist censorship – have been reevaluated and publicly discussed leading to better understanding and visible improvement in Polish-Jewish relations. In 1990, there were 3,800 Jews in Poland, 0.01% of Poland’s population, compared to 3,250,000 before 1939. The number had dropped to 3,200 in 2010.
The Kielce cemetery massacre refers to the shooting action by the Nazi German police that took place on May 23, 1943 in occupied Poland during World War II, in which 45 Jewish children who had survived the Kielce Ghetto liquidation, and remained with their working parents at the Kielce forced-labour camps, were rounded up and brought to the Pakosz cemetery in Kielce, Poland, where they were murdered by the German paramilitary police. The children ranged in age from 15 months to 15 years old.
Lesko Synagogue is a synagogue in Lesko, Poland. The synagogue had functioned as a place of worship until World War II.
Stolp Synagogue was a synagogue in Stolp, Germany. It was built in 1901–1902, designed by Eduard Koch. The synagogue was set on fire by Nazis during the Kristallnacht on 9–10 November 1938. In 2006 an unveiling ceremony was held for a monument commemorating the Jewish community of the city organized by the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland.
The Synagogue in Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva is a synagogue located in Lublin, Poland, in the building of Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva, on Lubartowska 85 Street.
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews is a museum on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. The Hebrew word Polin in the museum's English name means either "Poland" or "rest here" and relates to a legend about the arrival of the first Jews to Poland.
The Będzin Ghetto was a World War II ghetto set up by Nazi Germany for the Polish Jews in the town of Będzin in occupied south-western Poland. The formation of the 'Jewish Quarter' was pronounced by the German authorities in July 1940. Over 20,000 local Jews from Będzin, along with additional 10,000 Jews expelled from neighbouring communities, were forced to subsist there until the end of the ghetto history during the Holocaust. Most of the able-bodied poor were forced to work in German military factories before being transported aboard Holocaust trains to the nearby concentration camp at Auschwitz where they were exterminated. The last major deportation of the ghetto inmates by the German SS – men, women and children – between 1 and 3 August 1943 was marked by the ghetto uprising by members of the Jewish Combat Organization.
The Virtual Shtetl is a bilingual Polish-English portal of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, devoted to the Jewish history of Poland.
The Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, is a religious association formed by Jews living in Poland who adhere to Judaism. It was originally created in 1949 as the Religious Association of Judaism, and renamed in 1992. The Association's seat is located in Warsaw, with seven administrative branches throughout the country. ZGWŻ consists of approximately 2,000 members (1998) congregating in nine municipalities. The Union operates seven active synagogues and 15 prayer houses. Also, ZGWŻ publishes its own periodicals, as well as the popular Jewish Calendar. Since 2003, the president of the Union is Piotr Kadlčik.
Albert Stankowski is a Polish historian and a member of the Jewish Historical Institute Association in Poland (2011-2015). He is a former Head of the Digital Collection Department of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews., adviser for contacts with the Jewish community, and originator and creator of Virtual Shtetl. On March 2, 2018, he was appointed by the deputy prime minister and minister of culture and national heritage Piotr Gliński, for the position of head of the Warsaw Ghetto Museum.
The history of the Jews in Łęczna, Poland is first recorded and dated to 1501. The Jewish community of the town was evident and stable until the holocaust, after which it ceased to exist. The Glincman family from Wlodawa sent some family members to live there in the late 1800s to widen their business to surrounding towns. Nowadays monuments and buildings are still visible and commemorated in town.
Miriam Gonczarska is a Jewish spiritual leader who in 2015 received her Semikhah as the first European, and in the same time the first Polish, maharat.
Synagogue in Nisko is an inactive Orthodox Jewish synagogue at Polski Czerwony Krzyż Street in Nisko, Poland.
Eleonora Bergman is a Polish architecture historian who worked on the preservation of Jewish heritage in Poland. She was director of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw from 2007 to 2011.
Prudnik Synagogue was a synagogue in Neustadt in Oberschlesien, Germany.
The Synagogue of Kłodzko was located in Kłodzko, in Kłodzko County in Lower Silesia, Poland. The synagogue was built 1884–1885 on the Grünestraße, now Wojska Polskiego Street, but was destroyed in 1938 during the Nazi Kristallnacht anti-Jewish pogrom.
The Four Denominations District is an area of the Old Town in Wrocław, Poland, between Kazimierza Wielkiego, Sw. Antoniego, Pawła Włodkowica and Sw. Mikolaja streets. The name has been used since 1995 on the initiative of Christian clergy together with Jerzy Kichler, an activist from the Polish Jewish community.
The Great Synagogue in Oświęcim was, until World War II, the largest synagogue in Oświęcim, Poland. It was destroyed in November 1939.
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