A former synagogue in the town of Dziatlava (Dyatlovo), Belarus that has long been used as a fire station will be sold at electronic auction on August 10. The asking price (which includes a garage built in the 1970s) is the equivalent of around €21,000.
Virtually nothing remains to indicate the building’s original use.
The synagogue dates from the 1880s, when the town, halfway between Minsk and Bialystok, Poland, was a shtetl with a more than 75 percent Jewish population, according to the Historic Synagogues of Europe/Center for Jewish Art web site, which provides a detailed description of the building.
It functioned as a synagogue until 1939 and was converted into a fire station after World War II.
However the sale description on the web site of the Belarusian Universal Commodity Exchange, which conducts electric auctions, makes no mention of the building’s original use and in fact claims that it dates from 1930.
It states:
Fire station: two-storey building, built in 1930. The foundation is rubble concrete, the walls are brick, the ceilings are wood, the roof is asbestos-cement corrugated sheet, the floors are concrete, board, fiberboard, the windows are wood.
The material posted on the Center for Jewish Art web site tells a different story, stating that the synagogue was built in 1884 and rebuilt after a fire in 1899.
The building was surveyed in 2002 by Vladimir Pervishin and Vladimir Starostin and includes measured drawings and a detailed description, with photographs, of its condition at that time.
See the sale page on the «БУТБ-Имущество» web site
See the 2002 description, drawings, photos, and history on the centre for Jewish Art web site