Krakow Kazimierz Jewish District PRIVATE (4h)

Another historical municipality in the outskirts of Krakow, Kazimierz, is now one of the city's most attractive districts. Dotted with old buildings which give a special ambience to the area, Kazimierz was home to the larger part of the Jewish population of Krakow tilll 1939. Here, we find the famous Remuh Synagogue and the Alte Schule,Poland's oldest synagogue, today an important museum of the district. Worth a visit is also the Temple founded by the local Association of Progressive Jews and the Wolf Popper synagogue.

The factory at Lipowa street was launched two years before the Second World War. In the autumn of 1939 it was confiscated from three Jewish owners and taken over by a Sudeten German, Oskar Schindler (1908–74), a member of the NDSAP and most probably a collaborator of the Abwehr. Thanks to his extensive network of connections, the businessman won plenty of commissions, both civilian (pots, spoons, et cetera) and military (including mess kits, and later also ammunition shells) for his Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik commonly known as Emalia, which earned him a fair revenue.

Schindler employed Jews initially for economic reasons as they provided a cheap labour force. Most probably the establishment of the ghetto and the subsequent brutal deportations made the businessman aware that as a director of a prospering factory, he had an opportunity to help these people.

After the liquidation of the ghetto in March 1943, Schindler resorted to contacts and bribes to obtain a permit to set up a sub-camp of Płaszów labour camp on the premises of his factory. His staff now lived in barracks built around the factory, far from the sadistic commander of the camp, Amon Goeth, and his guards. The factory became a safe haven for around 1000 souls, including elderly and infirm Jews as well as children, who all lived in sanitary conditions that were much better than in the camp, and on better food rations.

The sub-camp in Emalia was forcibly liquidated when, facing a defeat in the war, the Nazis began to get ready for evacuation. Schindler reacted by opening a munitions factory in Brünnlitz (Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia), where he employed “his” Jews. This is how he saved the lives of around 1100 people.

The wartime history of the factory and its then owner, Oskar Schindler, as well as the fate of the Jewish labourers he saved, inmates of the Plaszow labour camp, became known to the world thanks to Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List from 1993. 

Today, the administrative building of the former Emalia Factory that manufactured enamelware houses a branch of the Museum of Krakow. The permanent exhibition here portrays the German entrepreneur and “righteous among the nations” together with the lives of the Kraków Jews he saved, presented as part of the complicated history of the city during the Nazi German occupation of 1939–45. This is where the tumultuous history of the Second World War collides with everyday life, and private lifelines with the tragedy that affected the whole world.

Rising up around it was a plethora of synagogues, Jewish schools, academies, and institutions. For centuries, it was one of the most important Jewish cultural and spiritual centres in Europe. This is where the famous scholar and rector of the Talmudic Academy, Moses Isserles known as Remuh, lived in the 16th century. Jews from all over the world come on pilgrimages to his grave, a site that abounds in legends. In the following century, the learned Rabbi Natan Spira studied the Kabbalah in the attic of the synagogue at 22 Szeroka Street by a small candle. The candle burnt out in 1633 and the famous Kabbalist died, of exhaustion as rumour had it.

On November 24th, 1993, under the auspices of the Judaica Foundation, the Jewish Cultural Centre was opened. The idea to create it was a public initiative of people concerned about protecting the Jewish cultural legacy in Poland, promoting this legacy among young generations, and preserving the memory of Jewish participation in and contribution to the Polish history. All these goals are pursued in hope that they will foster a harmonious development of Polish-Jewish relations and support the efforts to build an open democratic society. As laid down in the Statute of the Judaica Foundation, the Jewish Cultural Centre is open to all: its programmes are addressed to Jewish and non-Jewish populace, both Polish and foreign. The Foundation and the Centre have their seats in a nicely renovated 19th-century B'nei Emun's prayer house at 17 Rabina Meiselsa street. The renovation and upgrade works were made possible by a financial aid awarded by the US Congress and the Polish-American Joint Committee for Humanitarian Relief in Warsaw, as well as numerous other Polish institutions. The primary focus of the Jewish Cultural Centre is organising cultural events, from theatre performances, to concerts, exhibitions, talks by artists about their work, lectures and book promotions. The highlight of the Centre's programme is BAJIT CHADASZ or the Jewish Culture Month, held every autumn, in Tishri, the first month of the year in the Jewish calendar. Beside its cultural involvement, the Centre is dedicated to education, which is reflected in its monthly programmes, particularly the lectures. The key educational event, though, is the Summer Programme addressed to English-speaking students, entitled Jewish-Christian Relations in Contemporary Europe. Case study: Poland, and a programme for German-speaking students "Auf den Spuren des judischen Erbes in Galizien".

Tempel synagogue was erected in the years 1860-1862 in the round-arch style based on Ignacy Hercok' design. During several decades it was repeatedly expanded. The specificity of the progressive scheme of the Tempel Synagogue was the fact that the sermons were delivered once a week in Polish and German interchangeably. Another innovation introduced to spite tradition was giving women permission to sing next to the chanter and the choir. This made the synagogue harshly criticised by orthodox Jews associated with the Remuh Synagogue.

During World War II, the synagogue was turned into a warehouse, but the interior did not sustain as severe damage as other temples. The set of 36 stained-glass windows on the ground floor and the first floor, mainly with floral and geometric patterns, is both beautiful and unique. Many of the windows have retained signatures of their founders. The interior of the synagogue decorated in the Moorish style was thoroughly renovated in the years 1987-2000. Between 2006 and 2008, the Jewish Community Centre of Krakow was added to the back of the synagogue on the initiative of HRH the Prince of Wales.

The synagogue was built in the 1640s from the monies of the Kahal, which is why it is called Kupa, as the word means “fund”.

In the 19th century it was repeatedly extended: first in the wake of the construction of Miodowa street. At that time a garden was designed between the street and the synagogue wall, and a storeyed wing and a balcony were built leading to the women’s area. Conservation and renewal works were also carried out between the two world wars. The interior was decorated with new paintings, and the entire building was surrounded with decorative fencing.

During the German occupation the synagogue was devastated. The bimah (the raised roofed podium in the centre of the synagogue) was entirely destroyed, and so was the platform with stairs and kantor’s pulpit in front of the Aron Kodesh; the movable furnishing was also lost.

For a number of years after the war, the synagogue again assembled a congregation for prayer. It also performed other functions, as it housed a matza producer and a ritual slaughterhouse for poultry. Moreover, Jewish families who arrived in Kraków from the USSR after 1945 lived in the wing. The synagogue was also used by a production cooperative. Today, after a thorough renovation supervised by heritage preservation services, it is a place of meetings, concerts, and exhibitions conducted primarily as part of the Jewish Culture Festival. It is also the main synagogue of the Jewish community of Kraków.

The Synagogue of Isaac son of Jacob was founded by Izaak Jakubowicz (Ajzyk Jekeles), an elder of the Kazimierz Kahal, in the 1530s. The construction was completed in the 1540s to produce not only the largest of the Kazimierz synagogues but also the most lavishly furnished. The spacious interior is decorated with stucco and polychrome decorations under a vaulted ceiling. It incorporates a high hall for men and a women’s section connected to the main hall through semi-circular arcades. The external staircase leading to the women’s section received its contemporary guise in 1924.

The large square fronting the synagogue used to be a fish market until the Second World War: a frequently photographed, characteristic element in the townscape of the Jewish district. After the war, the building long remained derelict, and only after a thorough renovation early in the 1990s was the synagogue made available to visitors. It had concerts and educational meetings organised within. In recent years it has returned to religious functions, and has a kosher shop operating in one of its auxiliary rooms.

The High Synagogue was built as the third synagogue in the Jewish town of Kazimierz, after the Old Synagogue and the Remuh Synagogue. It was erected after 1556, but no later than 1563. The name of the synagogue comes from the fact that its prayer hall was located on the first floor of the building.

This atypical placement of the prayer house was a result of security concerns: the synagogue stood next to a gate to the Jewish town, which was a particularly crowded place, full of street noise and in very close proximity to Christian buildings at the time. The eastern section of the building probably contained shops from the very beginning of the synagogue's existence. At the end of the 1880s, men's and women's prayer sections were created on the first floor of a building adjoining the synagogue from the west, and added to the temple. The fate of the synagogue during World War II and in its aftermath was not documented. Undoubtedly, the building's interior underwent degradation and the furnishings, including valuable ceremonial objects, were scattered around.

Since 1966, the facility was used by the Polish Studios for Conservation of Cultural Property. The Jewish Religious Community in Kraków, which is in the course of recovering its rights to the building, is contemplating handing over the synagogue to the Historical Museum of Kraków, to arrange an exhibition dedicated to the history of Kraków Jews. Inside, only some fragments of the former décor remained: stone framing of the Torah ark on the eastern wall and remains of murals with the text of prayers, unveiled and preserved in the 1960s.

The Old Synagogue is the oldest monument of Jewish sacral architecture preserved in Poland. Built in the the 15th century as a two-aisle hall with a cross-ribbed vault supported by two pillars and covered by a gable roof, in terms of architectural style it draws upon the Gothic synagogues in Worms,Regensburg and Prague. In 1570, it was converted by a builder from Florence, Matteo Gucci. Its walls were crowned with an attic, used for the first time in the architecture of synagogues in Poland. Between 1550 and 1650, it was extended, one by one, with a porch, two prayer rooms for women and a house for the community council, known as kahal. Together with the kahal house, the synagogue formed a religious and administrative centre of the Jewish community in Kazimierz. Before and after the First World War the synagogue underwent a multi-stage renovation, throughout 1904, 1913 and 1923, according to a design by Zygmunt Hendl. During World War II, it was used by the Germans as a warehouse, and its furnishings were either destroyed or dispersed. In late 1944, its vault collapsed, maybe destroyed deliberately. In 1956-59, it was restored, and at the same time adapted to function as a museum. Based on an agreement concluded on October 30, 1959, between the Jewish religious community in Krakow and the Historical Museum of the City of Krakow, the Museum's Branch of the History and Culture of Jews in Krakow was established in the synagogue.

The permanent exhibition in the Old Synagogue presents the most precious objects of the museum's Judaica collection, related to the synagogue, Jewish holidays and annual celebrations, as well as the private life and family life of Jews.

The Remuh Synagogue and its adjoining cemetery is enclosed with five streets: Szeroka, Miodowa, Jakuba, Ciemna and Lewkowa. It is a unique complex of Jewish architecture and religious art dating back to the mid-16th century, functioning as a centre of the religious life of Jews in today's Kraków. The synagogue holds services on Saturdays and holidays and the cemetery is visited by religious Jews from all over the world who wish to pray by the graves of well-known Kraków rabbis, scholars and outstanding community seniors.

The old cemetery was mostly visited by pilgrims on the anniversary of the death of the most famous Polish rabbi, Moses Isserles (1525-1572), also known as "The Rema", falling on the 18th Ijar (April/May) of the Jewish calendar. This second oldest synagogue in the Jewish Kazimierz district, initially called the "New Synagogue", was erected in 1553 by Israel ben Josef, grandchild of Moses Auerbach of Regensburg and father of Moses Isserles, who was already the chief rabbi of the Jewish community in Kraków. In 1557, the synagogue was destroyed in a fire, but it was quickly rebuilt following a permit obtained by Israel in that same year from King Sigismund II Augustus. Its construction may be ascribed to a Kraków builder, Stanisław Baranek. The original building was lower than the present one.

The aisleless interior was probably covered by a barrel vault and light was coming through eastern and western windows, which do not exist today. The first floor of the outbuilding adjoining the northern wall of the synagogue contained the initial prayer section for women. Judging from the small size of the building, it probably served as a prayer house for the founder's family and small circle of friends. The present architectonic shape of the synagogue was formed by a complete renovation conducted in 1829. In the period of the Nazi occupation between 1939 and 1945, the building served as a warehouse for bags for corpses and fire equipment (in the women's section), the latter still functioning after 1945.

The synagogue has been denuded of valuable cult objects. The historical bimah and most of the movable equipment have been destroyed. After the war, the building was returned to the Jewish Religious Community, thanks to which it was renovated in 1957. Some details of the interior that were irrevocably destroyed during the German occupation, such as the bimah, have been carefully restored or supplemented with foreign-origin elements. Currently, the Remuh Synagogue is the only prayer house regularly open for Jews in Kraków, which is why its interior retains a unique atmosphere and is functionally and formally coherent, with properties that cannot be found in any other synagogue in Kraków.

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