Mazel tov! The restoration of the 18th century rural synagogue in the village of Police u Jemnice has won a national award for monuments preservation!
The National Heritage Institute (NHI) awarded its 2021 Patrimonium Pro Futuro Prize in the category of restoration of a monument to the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic, which owns the building and carried out the restoration.
The NHI said the jury “appreciated not only the sensitive implementation of the restoration itself, but especially its precise scientific method, responding to ongoing findings and findings.”
It noted that the synagogue “represents a unique example of a rural Baroque synagogue, which is not documented or preserved elsewhere in the Czech Republic.”
The award ceremony took place in November, with a live broadcast on public television from the National Theatre in Prague. The award was presented to Jaroslav Klenovsky, who oversees Jewish heritage in Moravia for the Brno Jewish community, by the outgoing Minister of Culture Lubomir Zaoralek.
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.
It was re-inaugurated in 2020 following a fullscale restoration begun in 2012. It 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 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 earlier this year, and also in 2018, when renovation work was going on.
The Patrimonium Pro Futuro Prize, subtitled “Social recognition of examples of good practice,” has been presented each year since 2014 “in an attempt to evaluate and highlight successes in heritage conservation and management, and to show recognition of those who have been instrumental in this success.”
Read the NHI description of the synagogue, with before and after pictures
Read our article about the synagogue when it was reinaugurated in 2020
Read Ruth’s report from 2018 during restoration of the synagogue.
1 comment on “CZ: Mazel tov! Restoration of rural synagogue in Police u Jemnice wins national heritage award”
Congratulations to the very professional restoration!!