Exhibition prepared by: The Association of Conservators of Historic Monuments Poland, 00-464 Warszawa, Szwolezerow 9
Click here to see the exhibition in Boston
Authors: Marek Baranski, Dominik Maczynski
Consultant: Dr. Eleonora BergmanSponsors of the exhibition:
Conservator-General of Historic Monuments of Poland
Pracownie Konserwacji Zabytkow (Ateliers for the Conservation of Historic
Monuments) ,,ZAMEK"Historical wooden architecture is an important element of the landscape of Poland baring witness to the richness and originality of the cultural heritage. Among the sacral buildings constructed of this material in Poland (alongside Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical and Uniate churches, mosques and religious buildings of other faiths), were also synagogues which were constructed since the 14th century by Jews settled in Poland. There were also mosques where muslim Tartars prayed. The synagogues, throughout the centuries were an interesting component of the architecture of many Polish towns and villages. With their high roofs of characteristic profile they were a conspicuous element of the landscape. Their form was often interesting and the architectural detail was often inventive and connected with local tradition. But at present, historic wooden synagogues only survive in the memories of older people.
In the period between the two World Wars, the number of citizens of the Jewish faith in the Polish Republic is estimated at about 3.5 million. Apart from the United States, this was the second largest concentration of Jews in the world. It is worth emphasiing that the Jews of Poland had a tradition of many centuries of peaceful existence alongside the other inhabitants of the Republic. They lived and worked together with Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Belarussians and Germans, creating an original culture of special richness and diversity. After the slaughter of the Jewish population in the Second World War and the calculated destruction of their heritage, this part of Poland’s cultural richness was lost for ever. This is especially true in the case of wooden synagogues which were completely destroyed together with their interior fittings. Today, religious services are conducted in a small number of the few synagogues masonry walls which survived the Nazi occupation, but with the loss of the local Jewish community, the remainder now have been converted to other uses, or left as ruins. Their exterior form is today the only reminder of the former variety of the cultural heritage of Poland. Many more have vanished, and we are able to envisage the form of only the most notable among the many hundreds of these structures which once existed only due to the survival of drawings, old photographs and documentation of historical monuments made before the War.Of especial importance is the documentation, measured drawings and photographs made in the period between the First and Second World Wars by the Department of Polish Architecture of the Polytechnic of Warsaw. Due to the efforts of Professor Oskar Sosnowski and the group of architects, art historians and students which he led, we have in Poland today a unique collection of documentation which may bring us closer to this part of the lost heritage. This knowledge is also -supplemented by documentation which was created by foreign researches who saw and appreciated the importance of the architectural and artistic values inherent in Polish wooden synagogues. The fullest study of the subject is presented in the work of the authors Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka.
Synagogues (more accurately in Polish boznice) were a characteristic element of the architecture of the towns and villages on the great area of central Europe within the borders of the former Kingdom of Poland and the Great Duches of Lithuania, fulfilling both a religious and social role in the lives of the Jewish communities. They were places for prayer, for discussion of matters affecting the community, judging the guilty, teaching and for study of the Torah (the five books of Moses written on scrolls of parchment). The synagogue was surrounded by the buildings of the Jewish community. The building itself was oriented towards the east, with external structures on three sides. Only the east wall, in accordance with the directives of the Talmud, remained free of outbuildings. The synagogue contained a central prayer room for the men and a separate area (called in Poland the babiniec) for women and a vestibule. In the center of the main room was a raised bimah with a pulpit for reading the Torah. It was surrounded by a decorative balustrade and had an architectural baldachin. The second important element of the interior of a synagogue was the aron hakadesh, a niche in the east wall in which the scrolls of the Torah were kept. It was often very richly decorated. In the decoration of the interior, there were no representations of people, but the walls were often covered with highly ornate polychrome decoration incorporating representations of animals and liturgical equipment. A specific characteristic of the decorative schemes of Polish synagogues was the incorporation of elements inspired by oriental motifs. In the daytime; the interior was illuminated by the large windows, but at night by candles in elaborate candelabras and candlesticks. In the period from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century in the areas of the Republic now in Poland, Belarussia, Ukraine and Lithuania, there were more than 180 valuable and historically important wooden synagogues. We may, on the basis of the characteristic plan and the construction of the walls, vaulting and roofs, define several types based either on an elongated aisled plan, or a central one.
Twenty kilometers southeast of Bialystok lies the small town of Zabludow which had one of the most interesting and oldest synagogues in Poland. It was built of spruce in 1635. The main room was soon enlarged with a second chamber for women on the ground floor. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the polychrome decoration of part of the structure was renewed, and in 1765 the whole building was restored. In surviving photographs one can see a external vestibule was added with an additional women’s galley added above it and this had an external gallery which was clearly an architectural embellishment. Each room had a separate external entrance. There were separate galleries for members of the community council and for studying the Torah. The main room had a barrel vault made of wooden planks and the floor was slightly lower than that of the surrounding galleries. The decoration of the central chamber was of elaborate polychrome painting and the internal fittings, the bimah and aron hakodesh were beautifully made. The bimah visible in photographs can most probably be dated to the beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1923 measured drawings of the synagogue were made by Czeslaw Duchowski and Jerzy Jerzego Pankowski and in 1929 the structure was included on a list of registered historical monuments (landmarks) of culture of Poland. In June of 1941 however the Nazis blew up the historic Zabludow wooden synagogue, and in November 1941, the Zabludow Jewish community was deported to Treblinka death camp.
For many years in all of Europe there has been a lively interest in Jewish art and culture, for example, in Germany, students of architecture of the Polytechnic in Darmstadt have been trying to reconstruct in virtual form synagogues destroyed by the Nazis. In 1996, there was a pilot program using the CAD graphic tool to create reconstructions of three synagogues from the region of Frankfurt.
In Poland, the architect and conservator of historical monuments Dominik Maczynsski has proposed re-creating within the open air museum in Bialystok a wooden synagogue which would be representative of those characteristic elements of wooden architecture, recreating an integral part of the cultural heritage of Poland which was lost as a result of the Nazi occupation. It was decided to reconstruct the synagogue of Zabludow. This idea met with the approval of Museum of Podlasie in Bialystok which assigned a space in the open air museum for the future reconstruction. The concept also met with interest from the Jewish Historical Institute. The Association of the Conservators of Historical Monuments also supports this initiative, seeing it as an international project being important in connecting the conservation of historical monuments with the creation of a modern approach to the preservation of the World heritage. The rebuilding of the synagogue of Zabludow should be executed not only as an international restoration project, but also to create opportunities for international meetings and an exchange of experiences concerning the protection and preservation of monuments to a common heritage. The project foresees for the synagogue reconstruction a use of historical building technology common in the 16th and the 17th centuries. This implies recovery of the historical timber trade. The mutual efforts of skilled carpenters, timber framers, craftsmen, as well as architects, historians, and civil engineers acquainted with the historical timber architecture will be essential for project realization. The Project is open for everyone from the international community who sees the benefits of mutual collaboration and participation in its realization. The reconstructed Zabludow synagogue will be in the future a splendid place for special exhibition of the existing, but dispersed all over the world documentation, historical photographs, and architectural inventories of the many no longer existing wooden synagogues.
Photos of the Exhibition in Warsaw Web: 2003 Tilford Bartman
