After years of sometimes sporadic work, the restoration of the synagogue in Čáslav is nearing full completion. The building, which is owned by the Prague Jewish community, already functions as a Jewish cultural center focusing on Jewish heritage, history, and commemoration.
To raise the funding for the final touches, the Dr. Dagmar Lieblova Foundation, which manages the synagogue and has overseen the restoration work since 2021, launched a crowd-funding campaign on December 25 and within a week had raised more than 10 percent of the goal. It says that the amount of funding needed for the final stage amounts to 600,000 Czech crowns, or approx. €24,500.
The funds, it said, will go toward the repair and restoration of windows, wooden entrance doors, and stone elements of the interior and exterior decoration. This, it said
will preserve the building’s unique heritage value. At the same time, this will facilitate social and cultural use and increase the tourist attractiveness of the monument. Completion of this phase of repairs is necessary both for making the synagogue fully accessible to the public as a unique monument of European importance, and also as a multifunctional space with an auditorium for organizing artistic, especially musical, literary and exhibition projects.
The Synagogue, with a distinctive tall, horseshoe arch over the central portal and a painted coffered ceiling, was built in 1899 and designed by the noted Viennese architect Wilhelm Stiassny, who designed several other synagogues in central Europe including the ornate Jubilee synagogue in Prague.
It was used a warehouse during and after World War II, and later served as the town gallery. Restituted to Jewish ownership in the 1990s, it underwent several phases of restoration over the years. The World Monuments Fund provided grants to the project in the early 2000s. Among other things, the facade was fully restored; the roof, ceiling, and windows were repaired or replaced (including the central round window with the Star of David motif); the interior was cleaned and decorative painting restored.
Work overseen by the Dagmar Lieblova Foundation began in the autumn of 2021, after the Foundation made an agreement with the Prague Jewish community. It has included the installation of a new electrical system and underfloor heating to enable the building to be used year-round, and restoration of the colourful coffered ceiling.
The Foundation was established in 2019, in memory of Dagmar Lieblova, a Holocaust survivor from Kutna Hora, near Čáslav, who died in 2018, aged 88. For decades she educated about the Holocaust and spoke about her experiences in Terezin, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen, and supported commemorative initiatives in the region and elsewhere.
In addition to the restoration of the synagogue, the Foundation sponsors other Jewish heritage and commemorative activities in the Kutna Hora region.
See a Centropa video from 2009 about Dagmar Lieblova: