Lausanne. Synagogue and Orthodox Church
Once Jews settled in Lausanne again in the nineteenth century, worship initially took place in private rooms and it would seem that only in 1900 was the community able to take up dedicated facilities in the newly erected Maison Mercier on Rue du Grand Chêne. When Daniel Osiris Iffla, whom we previously met as the patron who funded the construction of the Sephardi synagogue on Rue de Buffault in Paris, died, it transpired that among the various bequests he had made in his will—including, rather bizarrely, funds for a Wilhelm Tell monument in Lausanne—were 50,000 Francs for a purpose-built synagogue in the city. Back in 1874, he stipulated that the synagogue on Rue de Buffault should be built on the model of the house of worship that had burned down the previous year in his home town of Bordeaux. His bequest now was conditional on the prospective synagogue in Lausanne following the inspiration of the synagogue on Rue de Buffault. Located at what were at the time the outskirts of the city, it was inaugurated on 7 November 1910 with local, regional and state dignitaries in attendance. When the new Greek Orthodox church constructed adjacent to the synagogue was inaugurated 1922, it was not the first time that this community followed in the footsteps of its Jewish counterpart. On 27 September 1912, the Zürcherische Freitagszeitung reported that the former synagogue in Maison Mercier had been refurbished as a Greek Orthodox church.
Published by Schnegg Fils & Co., Lausanne. Posted on 23 August 1933.
Postcard from the book: Jews in Old Postcards and Prints