The devastating series of earthquakes in Turkey and Syria earlier this month reduced cities to rubble, obliterated centuries-old cultural heritage, and left more than 50,000 dead and as many as 1.5 million or more homeless. The toll — both in lives and in physical infrastructure — is overwhelming.
Among the dead, sadly, were the head of the tiny Jewish community in Antakya and his wife, Saul and Fortuna Cenudioglu, who were killed when their apartment building collapsed. The other dozen or so community members were safely evacuated to Istanbul.
Tangible Jewish heritage in the affected region, however, appears largely to have escaped total destruction.
Rabbi Mendy Chitrik, the Istanbul-based Chairman of Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States, visited the region soon after the February 6 quakes and tweeted on February 11 that while the synagogue buildings in Antakya and Kilis suffered damage, the restored synagogue building in Gaziantep “appears to be standing in good shape.”
He later confirmed to JHE that there was “Some damage in Antakya synagogue. Some damage in Kilis. No damage in Gaziantep.”
Antakya is the only one of the cities where there was an active, if tiny, Jewish community that used the synagogue for religious purposes. Chitrik reported that the synagogue’s Torah scrolls were rescued and brought to Istanbul for safekeeping.
Chitrik and media reports described cracks in the synagogue’s walls. A report February 25 by the U.S. National Public Radio published a photo of the apparently intact facade of the building and said that the synagogue had suffered only “minor damage.”
The synagogue buildings in both Kilis and Gaziantep had long stood as ruins but had undergone full restoration as cultural spaces in recent years. Rabbi Chitrik visited both in 2021 and described them.
The synagogue in Kilis, abandoned when the last Jewish residents moved out of the city in the 1950s, was restored in 2019 by a local branch of the Turkish government’s Directorate of Foundations. It had stood empty for “more than 60 years after it was abandoned when Jews left the province for Israel or other cities in Turkey,” the Daily Sabah wrote on the occasion of a special Hanukkah ceremony in 2021.
We don’t have details of what damage the Kilis synagogue suffered in the earthquake — but here you can watch a video of the Hanukkah celebration in 2021.
The synagogue in Gaziantep had been renovated in 2010-2012.
The Daily Sabah newspaper wrote, in 2015:
The synagogue was abandoned when the city’s remaining Jewish community left the region in the 1970s and traveled to either Israel or Istanbul. A significant part of the building collapsed due to negligence. With the contributions of the Jewish community, the General Directorate of Foundations carried out the project at the two-story synagogue that originally could seat up to 500 people. The official date of its construction is unknown, but certain local resources suggest it was built in the 19th century.
A Hanukkah ceremony was held there in 2019, gathering some 200 Gaziantep Jews and descendants from Europe, North America, Israel, and elsewhere.