Greetings from Bielitz

Greetings from Bielitz. Tunnelstraße. Hermann Seibt, Meissen. Posted in 1900.

Jews were admitted to Bielitz (now the Polish city of Bielsko-Biała) in the eighteenth century because of their useful role in sourcing raw materials for the city’s textiles industry. In 1828 they were granted permission to establish a prayer facility, but the Jewish congregation was not officially recognized until 1865. As the city and its Jewish population rapidly grew, a new synagogue was soon needed. The emphatically neo-Moorish design by the (apparently Protestant) Vienna-based architect Ludwig Schöne (1845–1935) was almost identical to the plans he had developed for the synagogue that was erected at the same time in the west Hungarian town of Steinamanger (Szombathely). (At the time, both Bielitz and Steinamanger were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. With the exception of the period of German occupation during the Second World War, Bielsko-Biała has been Polish and Szombathely Hungarian since the end of the First World War.) The card shows the synagogue from the northeast. It had 400 places on the ground floor and a further 400 places on the women’s galleries. The synagogue was inaugurated on 21 September 1881, apparently in the presence of pretty much everyone who was anyone in the city and region. The head of the regional administration effusively complemented the congregation on its virtuous conduct and the wonderful building it had added to Bielitz’s cityscape. The organ was installed on the gallery above the tall, domed ark by the organ builder Klais (op. 77), who was then based in Jägerndorf (Krnov). It consisted of two relatively low towers for the great and the pedal constructed either side of a large arched window that let in plenty of light. The Germans blew up and razed the synagogue within a fortnight of invading Poland in September 1939.