We are happy to share a call from the Pakruojis Region Museum for photographs, memories, and other material relating to the Jewish community, heritage, and history of the town and surrounding areas. The 225-year-old Pakruojis wooden synagogue is administered as a branch of the museum.
The museum is collecting “any information we can find about the Jewish community of Pakruojis, the shtetl, and personal stories,” Gedas Jurevičius, a staff member at the synagogue branch, has advised JHE.
In addition, the museum staff offers help to genealogists and family historians.
“We would be very happy to search for information about your ancestors, and we would also gladly accept copies of their photographs,” Jurevičius writes. “We would be extremely grateful for any possible photographs of Pakruojis and the surrounding area as well.”
If you can provide material or have questions, please contact the synagogue branch of the museum at [email protected]
The wooden synagogue in Pakruojis dates from 1801 and is the oldest wooden synagogue in Lithuania. After World War II it was transformed into a movie house; it was also used as a sports hall, for storage, and then eventually abandoned.
It was reopened in 2017 after a roughly €750,000 project carried out over nearly three years by the Pakruojis Regional Administration, with more than €568,000 in financing from Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein under the European Economic Area and Norway financial grants mechanism.
The restoration used old photos to recreate the whimsical polychrome images on its walls and vaulted ceiling.
The synagogue (known as a the summer synagogue) once anchored a synagogue complex, or shulhoyf, that included three synagogues. In 2020 archaeologists announced the discovery of elements of this complex.
See the Museum page on the Synagogue
We posted a number of times about the synagogue on this web site — Click HERE
Watch a video of the restored synagogue:
1 comment on “Lithuania: A call for photos, memories, and other material relating to local Jewish heritage and history by the Pakruojis Region Museum branch in the restored, 225-year-old wooden synagogue”
Very well done. I appreciate the effort to restore the past.