Great Synagogue (Plungė)
The Great Synagogue in Plungė , a town in the Telšiai district in northwest Lithuania , was the religious center of the large local Jewish community and was part of a complex ( Shulhoyf ) with a total of six synagogues . The synagogue was built in the middle of the city center at the beginning of the 19th century and demolished in December 2008.
Until the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Plungė had a large Jewish community. The beginning of the settlement by Jews is unclear, but tombstones from the 16th century were found in 1937. Jews are mentioned in writing in the early 18th century by Bishop Motiejus Valančius in his History of the Diocese of Samogitia : In 1719, Bishop Aleksander Horain allowed the construction of a synagogue as long as it was less high than the Christian church. In fact, it got higher and the town priest asked for the roof to be removed. To prevent this, the Jews paid an annual tax of 30 tynfs . The synagogue is mentioned again for the year 1769.
A Yiddish newspaper reported about the Great Synagogue in Plungė in 1894: It was built eighty years ago for 50,000 silver rubles. In addition to the Great Synagogue, called Shul , there were five more in the city that belonged to the community complex , the Shulhoyf : the Beit Midrash , the Hayei Adam kloyz , the Gmilat Hasadim kloyz , the yellow (kloyz) of the craftsmen and the Schammes kloyz . The synagogue building was used as a gym until its demolition, which also included the other buildings of the Shulhoyf . Today there is a fallow land or parking lot on the former site. Access to the area for pedestrians from J. Tumo-Vaižganto g. is preserved.
Web links
- Pictures of the synagogue and the Shulhoyf on the pages of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Aliza Cohen-Mushlin: Synagogues in Lithuania N-Ž. VDA Leidykla, 2010, ISBN 978-6-094-47004-2 , p. 37 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
Coordinates: 55 ° 54 ′ 42.5 " N , 21 ° 50 ′ 44.8" E