Objects in the Town
Town on the Trail of Borderland Cultures
Synagogue
We are faced with an extraordinary task. We plan to recreate a craft condemned to oblivion. Biłgoraj gives Voŭpa a new lease of life. We can make it even fuller.
The Synagogue was rebuilt in the middle of the Jewish Market as a faithful replica of the 17th-century wooden Synagogue of Voŭpa, located in present-day Belarus. The synagogue, built in 1648, was burnt down by the Germans during the Second World War. The synagogue was restored thanks to a thorough inventory carried out in the 1930s. The project was initiated in the 1970s by Szymon Zajczyk on the initiative of Prof. Oskar Sosnowski of the Warsaw University of Technology.
The Voŭpa Synagogue has been called the finest in Europe. The ornate synagogue, built in a style known as Jewish Baroque, served as a model for such buildings. The initiative to restore it is all the more important as not a single wooden synagogue in Poland survived the war – all were burnt down.
The Foundation is seeking EU subsidies for the finishing touches to the interiors, including the rich interior polychrome and the bimah (elevations for reading the Torah), the aron qodesh (cabinet for storing the Torah) and its other furnishings. The synagogue is 16 m high and over 370 m 2. The restored polychromes are to cover an area of 1.2 thousand m2.
A museum of Biłgoraj Jews is planned to be opened in the faithfully reconstructed interior