Synagogue (Wołpa)

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Wołpa Synagogue (around 1920)

The Wołpa Synagogue was a wooden synagogue in what is now Woŭpa (Воўпа), Waukawysk Raion , in Belarus . It was famous for its architecture and is considered the most important representative of a group of baroque wooden synagogues in which an elegant dome was combined with an overall rural construction.

history

Wołpa village, in the background the synagogue (before 1939)

A Jewish community existed in Wołpa since the second half of the 16th century. Until the construction of the railway line (which bypassed Wołpa), Wołpa had regional importance as a market place. The synagogue was built after Alois Breyer and others in the early 17th century. It testified to the prosperity of the community at that time. After the synagogue was preserved when the place was destroyed by the Swedes in 1656, the Sejm declared it a monument in 1781. A Hebrew inscription shows that the roofing was renovated in 1781. Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka suggest that the synagogue was built in the early 18th century; In any case, the roof renovation in 1781 is the terminus ante quem for synagogue construction.

Since the railway was built in the late 19th century, Wołpa began to decline economically. The crisis worsened after the First World War due to high taxes and state monopolies. The majority of the population of Wołpa was Jewish at that time (1897: 1151 of 1976 inhabitants). The children usually went to a Hebrew school. Many of them emigrated to Palestine as members of Zionist youth groups.

Wołpa was under Soviet rule for two years. In June 1941, German bombardment destroyed the synagogue as well as many of the town's houses. The Jewish population had to do forced labor under German occupation. On November 2, 1942, the elderly and frail people were murdered in the Jewish cemetery and the rest were deported to the Waukawysk transit camp and from there to the Treblinka extermination camp .

architecture

Dome (around 1910/13)
Bima (before 1939)
Torah Shrine (before 1939)

The main building of the Wołpa synagogue was built using a block construction. Coupled windows segmentförmigem fall illuminated the central Männerbetraum. Its ceiling was an imitation of stone synagogues in that four pillars were built in to support the vault. "In wooden structures, there was no structural need for supporting pillars under the dome, but stone buildings had more prestige and were more durable, so they served as models for carpenters and joiners."

The octagonal dome was transformed into a square by five superimposed galleries. A three- story mansard roof covered this main room, which had a baroque gable on the top floor.

The women's rooms were extensions on the north and south side of the men's bed room: one-story rooms on a narrow rectangular floor plan with pent roofs of the same length as the men's bed room . They had their own doors on the long sides through which they could be entered from the outside, while the male bed room was entered through two doors and a vestibule. This vestibule was in front of the male bed room on the west side and was covered by a two-part mansard roof with a front and gable. On the north and south sides, the vestibule was flanked by two corner buildings that were adorned by exposed galleries. Richly profiled pillars alternated with hanging pillars, a traditional decorative motif of Polish and Russian wooden architecture. The corner buildings each had a two-part tent roof with a knob at the top.

Interior decoration

It is possible that the synagogue originally had the lively painting with flowers and animals that the wooden synagogues of Chodoriw and Hwisdez had and that can be seen in the synagogue paneling that has been preserved and painted by Eliezer Sussmann . This painting would later have been replaced by the trompe l'œil painting seen in the historical photographs , which imitated walls made of stone and marble as well as oriental silk fabrics. Compared to other synagogues, there were few Hebrew text fields in the painting in Wołpa. A text distributed over several medallions, which contained a prayer for Tsar Alexander II, deserves special mention .

The place where the Torah was read was architecturally emphasized as the focal point of the synagogue: the equivalent to the octagonal dome was the bima , which stood in the center of the male prayer room . The four pillars of the dome were also cornerstones of the bima. The square was transformed into an octagon by inserting two columns between the supporting pillars. Stairs led up to the Bima from the north and south sides, the parapet showed carvings in the Empire style . At the top, the columns were connected by round arches and finished off with a richly profiled serration. Apparently the interior was restored in the 19th or early 20th century; traces of revision can be seen especially on the bima.

The Torah shrine on the east wall, made entirely of oak, 10 m high and up to 4.50 m wide, showed rich baroque carvings (including animals and plants). Five broad steps led up to the ark, which was closed by a double door on which the relief of a large menorah could be seen. On either side of the ark there were two pairs of ornamented columns entwined with vines. The menorah was a relatively unusual motif for the doors of the Torah shrine. It combined a protective symbolism with the motif of the tree of life , because its shape and inscription was a takeover of the menorah from the Kabbalistic work Menorat zahav tahor (“candlestick made of pure gold”), and numerous branches with flowers and fruits sprout from its trunk. The multi-part structure and design of the Torah shrine can be compared with that in the former synagogue of Hrodna as well as the synagogue of Janów Sokólski and the synagogue in Berlin-Heidereutergasse .

literature

  • Alois Breier, Max Eisler, Max Grunwald: Wooden synagogues in Poland . Sohar, 1934. ( digitized version )
  • Maria Piechotka, Kazimierz Piechotka: Heaven's Gates: Masonry Synagogues in the Territories of the Former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth . Warsaw 2004.
  • Carol Herselle Krinsky: Synagogues of Europe: Architecture, History, Meaning . Dover Publications, Mineola / New York 1996.

Web links

Commons : Synagogue (Wołpa)  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
  • Biłgoraj XXI: Synagogue from Wolpa . Information about the historical synagogue and the faithful replica in Biłgoraj.

Coordinates: 53 ° 22 ′ 0 ″  N , 24 ° 22 ′ 0 ″  E

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Don Hanlon: Compositions in Architecture . Wiley, New Jersey 2009, p. 154.
  2. ↑ Shmuel Spector (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust , Volume 3, Jerusalem / New York 2001, pp. 1461 f.
  3. ↑ Carol Krinsky Herselle: Synagogues of Europe: Architecture, History, Meaning . Dover Publications, Mineola / New York 1996, p. 55.
  4. ↑ Alois Breier: Wood Synagogues in Poland , 1934, p. 228 f.
  5. ↑ a b Carol Krinsky Herselle: Synagogues of Europe: Architecture, History, Meaning . Dover Publications, Mineola / New York 1996, p. 229 f.
  6. ^ Alois Breier: Wood Synagogues in Poland , 1934, p. 62.
  7. ↑ Carol Krinsky Herselle: Synagogues of Europe: Architecture, History, Meaning . Dover Publications, Mineola / New York 1996, p. 55.
  8. ^ Alois Breier: Wood Synagogues in Poland , 1934, p. 64 f.
  9. ^ Ilia M. Rodov: The Torah Ark in Renaissance Poland: A Jewish Revival of Classical Antiquity . Brill, Leiden / Boston 2013, p. 202.
  10. ↑ Carol Krinsky Herselle: Synagogues of Europe: Architecture, History, Meaning . Dover Publications, Mineola / New York 1996, p. 230.