Thursday (July 9) sees the inauguration of the 18th century rural synagogue in the tiny village of Police u Jemnice, following a fullscale restoration over the past eight years. The synagogue now hosts a small exhibit on local Jewish history and together with the well-maintained Jewish cemetery nearby forms a key rural Jewish heritage complex.
The inauguration of the synagogue coincides with the launch of a new book on Rural Synagogues in the Czech Lands, by Jaroslav Klenovsky, who oversees Jewish heritage in Moravia for the Brno Jewish community.
Police lies amid rolling hills near the town of Jemnice, almost on the border with Austria.
The compact little synagogue was built in folk baroque style in 1759, on the site of an earlier wooden synagogue destroyed by fire the previous year.
Klenovsky, the acknowledged expert on Jewish built heritage in Moravia, notes that the construction of the new synagogue was paid for by the head of the Police Jewish community, Isak Landesmann (1727-1797) and was carried out by the builder Matyas Kirchmayer of nearby Kdousov. It was later rebuilt several times.
Joseph Prager, a seventh generation descendant of Isak Landesmann, notes that Landesmann’s house still stands on what was the town’s Jewish street — a few houses down from the synagogue. It is designated today as number 114.
His gravestone can be seen in the Jewish cemetery.
The synagogue was used for worship until around the year 1900 (the Jewish community was dissolved in 1890 and the last Jew in the village is believed to have died in 1913); then it was sold, and in the early 20th century its interior was reconstructed for use as a gymnasium — a door was cut into where the Ark had been located.
The building was taken over in devastated condition in 2003 by the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic.
Gradual restoration started in 2012, and, according to Klenovsky, total costs amounted to 6.5 million Czech crowns(€250,000), with funding from Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the Vysocina Region, the Holocaust Victims Endowment Fund and the Zecher Endowment Fund.
JHE director Ruth Ellen Gruber visited the synagogue in 2018, when interior work was going on. Click to read her report.
The synagogue, with its small permanent exhibition on the history and monuments of the Jewish community in Police, and Jewish cemetery a few steps away, will form a major attraction for the tiny village. The sites are already located on a big public map.
The Jewish cemetery, owned by the Federation, is walled, well maintained, and has a restored pre-burial hall and an information plaque. Many of the 260 stones bear fine baroque and classical carving. The oldest legible is that of one Moshe son of Yosef, dated 6th Cheshvan 5441, or 29th October 1680.
The cemetery has been mapped and documented, with photos of each stone and name and dates of the deceased accessible online.
The village also has a small castle, now the site of a tourism office and a new museum about Czech airmen in the Royal Air Force in World War II.
Here are some more pictures of the renovated synagogue and restoration process.
See a history of the Jewish community in Police
Documentation of the Jewish cemetery, Police
Our article during the reconstruction of the synagogue, 2018
1 comment on “CZ: Mazel tov! Village synagogue in tiny Police u Jemnice is being inaugurated after an eight-year restoration process. It will anchor a historic rural Jewish heritage complex”
Fascinating……….hope to see it one day….