The Great Synagogue: From the Polish Jews’ Prayer House to a Holocaust Memorial

From the outside it is a modest building, hidden behind ten-storey apartment blocks. Inside, a prayer hall opens up, covered with wall and ceiling paintings from 1936, and since the early 1990s it has housed the exhibition in memory of the Holocaust victims of Romania’s Jews.

The “Leși”: Bucharest’s Polish Jews

In nineteenth-century Romanian, Jews from Poland were called “leși,” and in Bucharest they formed a community of their own: Ashkenazim who had come from the north, bringing with them the prayer rite and customs of their homeland. According to Jewish Heritage Europe and a Yad Vashem report, the Ashkenazi congregation founded the synagogue in 1845. The building itself went up in 1846–1847; the FCER synagogue list and the Sector 3 City Hall website give 1846.

According to an article in the daily Jurnalul, the site had earlier held four small prayer houses belonging to craft guilds. A local history piece on B365 adds that the synagogue was dedicated by Chief Rabbi Meshulam Zalman Fränkel and Rabbi Zalman Barav. It was called “Great” because for many years it was the largest house of prayer of the city’s Jews, according to Sector 3 City Hall. Some twenty years later the Choral Temple, the synagogue of the modernizers, rose nearby, and the contrast between the two buildings mirrored the debate that divided the community.

A Building Made in Layers

The plain façade is misleading: the building that stands today is the product of many changes in the first four decades of the twentieth century. In 1903 it took its present form to designs by the architect D’Alfonce de St. Omer, and in 1909 the architect Petre Antonescu altered the area of the Torah ark. Electricity was installed in 1915. Between the wars the architect Jean Locar drew up plans for restoring the decoration free of charge, and the benefactor Harry Stein donated an underfloor heating system (Jurnalul).

Gershon Horowitz’s Ceiling

The interior work peaked in 1936, when the painter Gershon Horowitz repainted the walls and ceiling (Jewish Heritage Europe). The decoration, in a style mixing Baroque and Rococo, runs uniformly from the walls to the ceiling and gives the hall the look of an eighteenth-century ceremonial room more than of a traditional Polish prayer house. These were the community’s prosperous years, and the murals bear witness to the money and pride its members invested in it. If the gallery is open, go up and look at the ceiling up close.

Earthquake, Legionnaires and Apartment Blocks

On 10 November 1940 a strong earthquake struck Bucharest, and two months later came the pogrom. During the Legionary rebellion of 21–23 January 1941, 125 Jews were murdered, and Jewish shops, homes and synagogues were looted (Encyclopaedia Judaica). The Kahal Grande, the great Sephardi synagogue considered the most beautiful in the city, was set on fire. The Great Synagogue was devastated but, according to Jurnalul, not burned. A Yad Vashem report notes that traces of the damage are still visible at the entrance.

The building was repaired in 1945 and consolidated in 1980. In the 1980s, as the Ceaușescu regime demolished whole streets of the old Jewish quarter, it survived, but ten-storey blocks were built around it, hiding it from the street. B365 credits its survival to an international protest and to its being declared an architectural monument.

From House of Prayer to Site of Memory

Since the early 1990s the synagogue has served as a memorial to the Holocaust in Romania. The exact year is disputed: B365 gives 1991, while JGuide Europe and Uncover Romania give 1992. A Yad Vashem report calls the exhibition “The Memorial of the Jewish Martyrs” (Memorialul martirilor evrei) and says it presents written testimonies and photographs on wartime antisemitism and on the Holocaust in Romania and Transnistria.

The exhibition is arranged chronologically on the ground floor, with testimonies, newspaper clippings and photographs: the racial laws, the pogroms and the deportations. At the centre of the hall stands a monument to the tens of thousands of Jews who perished in Transnistria. According to Jurnalul, the building reopened after renovation in 2007 and was again used for prayer as well, and services were held here while the Choral Temple was being restored. On FCER’s current list it is not marked as a working synagogue.

Visiting

The synagogue stands at Strada Vasile Adamache 11, in the historic Jewish quarter, within walking distance of Piața Unirii. Tourism websites publish opening hours that differ from one another, and at least some of them are out of date. We found no hours from an official source, so it is best to arrange your visit in advance with the Jewish Community of Bucharest or with FCER.

• What to see: Horowitz’s wall and ceiling paintings, the Holocaust exhibition on the ground floor and the monument to the victims of Transnistria.
• Nearby: the Choral Temple on Strada Sfânta Vineri and the Museum of the History of the Jews in Romania on Strada Mămulari; together they are the three historic synagogues still standing in the city centre.