Warsaw Synagogue

Warsaw. Synagogue. Posted on 8 February 1905.

This card offers a startling demonstration of the fact that colorized cards by no means invariably offer a realistic representation: the basic colour of the Great Synagogue’s cupola was in fact green. It has been suggested that the ark was placed at the southern end of the prayer hall on the grounds that Warsaw was much further north than west of Jerusalem. Then again, the layout of the lot on the southwestern corner of Tłomackie Street and what is now Solidarność Avenue (formerly Leszno Street) would not have permitted the synagogue to be built in the usual direction anyway. While the synagogue was generally known as the Tłomackie Street Synagogue, its monumental front was in fact located on Leszno Street. Following conflicts between the congregation and Stanisław Adamczewski, the winner of the design competition of 1872, Leandro Marconi took over the commission. He adopted an innovation apparently pioneered by Eduard Knoblauch’s design for the New Synagogue in Berlin. To ensure it was clearly visible from the street the cupola was placed not above the main prayer hall but above the weekday prayer room. (Hence, many assume that the New Synagogue in Berlin has been preserved when what they see is merely the section of the building that stood in front of the actual synagogue.) While an organ was installed, it was not used on shabbat. The synagogue was also equipped with state-of-the-art central heating and gas lighting systems. Inaugurated on Rosh Hashanah 1876, it was clearly designed to stand out as a proud symbol of Polish Jewry’s willingness and ability to integrate and acculturate, a vision arguably shared only by a minority of the city’s Jews at the time. The German occupiers ransacked the synagogue and then turned it into a warehouse for furniture looted from the ghetto. On 16 May 1943, Jürgen Stroop, the SS commander tasked with crushing the ghetto uprising, personally detonated the explosives installed to bring down the Great Synagogue.