(JHE) — Urgent steps have been taken to protect the roofless ruin of the former Great (Summer) Synagogue in Kalvarija, a town in southern Lithuania on the border with Poland whose two former synagogues and Jewish school form one of the country’s most important complexes of Jewish heritage sites.
The baroque style Great (Summer) Synagogue was built in 1795-1803 to replace an 18th century wooden synagogue. It was used as a warehouse after World War II. It was abandoned in 1981, and its roof collapsed in the mid-1990s; it has stood as a ruin since then.
Lithuania
Emergency maintenance and protective measures to safeguard the building from rain and snow and forestall further deterioration have just been completed, according to an announcement by the Department of Cultural Heritage of the Lithuanian Culture Ministry.
The measures included installation of a temporary roof structure, installation of wooden poles inside and outside the building perimeter, bricking up windows to seal them, and conservation of other masonry elements. The building was also cleared of debris and vegetation.
Over the years the interior of the building suffered much damage: Two of the four pillars of the bimah had collapsed. The surviving bimah arch is bent and broken, and as part of the emergency conservation works, the bimah was reinforced and clamped.
A draft of urgent conservation and emergency response was prepared in 2016, but works were not undertaken until now. Lack of funding has been a major issue in undertaking fullscale renovation.
The emergency work was carried out with €87,000 in funding allocated from the heritage management program implemented by the Department of Cultural Heritage.
“As the condition of the building was in an emergency state, it was very dangerous to access the building, and even more so to get inside,” Violeta Kasperavičiutė, Adviser of the Alytus-Marijampolė Division of the Department of Cultural Heritage, said. “At the start of the works, there were fears that moving the masonry might cause individual parts of the building to collapse. Mixed stone and brick masonry walls (a large part of which are made up of fairly large stones) are barely adhered in many places above the windows. However, after cleaning the interior of the building, an impressive scene opened up: inside, the walls are divided into three planes by pilasters; two bimah columns and fragments of polychrome have survived.”
In addition to the Summer Synagogue, the Jewish communal complex, recognized as a cultural monument, includes:
- the Beit Midrash, or “winter synagogue,” built in 1865; it was also used as a warehouse in the Soviet period and was partially restored with funds from the German Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius Zeit Foundation and the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Department, but work halted in 2004 after the foundation ceased financial support and it has stood empty since then.
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The former Jewish school in Kalvarija) a red brick former Jewish school, that stands between the two synagogues. It is marked with a star of David and dates from the turn of the 19th-20th centuries.
- Nearby the remains of a mikveh also still exist, near the river. (A remnant of the Jewish cemetery also remains.)
Read the announcement and details on the Lithuanian Jewish Community web site
See our 2018 article about possible restoration of the complex