Great Synagogue of Păcurari, Iași

PRZEGLĄD

Historia Great Synagogue of Păcurari, Iași

Iași, the historic capital of Moldavia, was one of the great Jewish cities of Romania. Before the Second World War it had more than a hundred synagogues and prayer houses; a local press account puts the figure at about ninety. Abraham Ghiltman, speaking for the Iași community in 2018, recalled that among them there were three large synagogues, one in each quarter: Podu Roș, Târgu Cucului and Păcurari. The Târgu Cucului building, the Great Synagogue begun in 1657, survives and is still used. The other two do not.

The Păcurari synagogue stood in the western part of the city, in the quarter that also held the Jewish cemetery of Păcurari. A 2022 article in the Iași newspaper Bună Ziua Iași calls it the Great Synagogue of Păcurari and says that its purchase deeds date from 1852 and that it functioned from 1898. No description, plan or photograph of the building has been found, and its street address has not been established. The city's tourism website states that it was demolished during the Communist systematization of Iași, the same fate as the Great Synagogue of Podu Roș, but gives no year, and no document of the demolition has been found.

LOKALIZACJA

Where it stood

Historic: Păcurari quarter, Iași; street and house number unknown. Today: Păcurari district, western Iași; pin on Strada Păcurari (approximate, neighbourhood only).

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Społeczność żydowska

Jews lived in Iași from at least the seventeenth century, when the Great Synagogue of Târgu Cucului was begun in 1657, and the community grew until the city had more than a hundred synagogues. The community was spread over several quarters, each with its own synagogues and prayer houses, some of them belonging to trades, such as the Tailors' Synagogue, and the Hasidic movement had its own following in the city. Păcurari, in the west of the city, was one of these quarters. The Jewish cemetery of Păcurari was established there, and its gravestones, together with those of the older Ciurchi cemetery, are among the sources historians have used for the history of Iași Jewry. The historian Itic Svart-Kara records that the Jews of the Păcurari district asked for a modern school to be built for them, a sign of a settled local community large enough to support its own institutions. The size of the congregation that used the Păcurari synagogue, and the names of its rabbis and lay leaders, are unknown.

Architektura i projekt

Nothing is known about the appearance of the Great Synagogue of Păcurari. No photograph, postcard, drawing or plan of it was found in the sources consulted, and no source gives its architect, builder, building material, size or seating capacity. The date of construction is also uncertain. The only dated information is the statement that purchase documents for the synagogue go back to 1852 and that it functioned from 1898, which could mean that the plot was acquired in 1852 and a new building opened in 1898, or that an older building was in use from 1852 and was rebuilt or reopened later. Its description as one of the three great synagogues of Iași suggests that it was a substantial free-standing building rather than a small prayer room in a house, but that is an inference, not a documented fact. Its style, layout and interior are unknown.

Życie w synagodze

Very little is recorded about worship in the Păcurari synagogue. As the main synagogue of its quarter it served the Jews of the western part of Iași, who otherwise had to walk to the synagogues of the old centre around Târgu Cucului or to Podu Roș in the south-east. The interwar list of synagogues and prayer houses compiled by I. Kara names two other places of worship with Păcurari addresses, the Strul Aron prayer house at Strada Păcurari 24, which was taken out of use in 1975, and the Toiras Moișe prayer house at Șoseaua Păcurari 12. Whether either of these was the building later remembered as the Great Synagogue of Păcurari is unknown. No record of the rabbis, cantors or officers of the congregation, of its rite, or of any events held in the synagogue was found.

Zniszczenie

The Iași tourism website, describing the city's Jewish heritage, names the synagogue in Păcurari as one of the three most important synagogues of Iași and states that it and the Great Synagogue of Podu Roș were demolished during the Communist systematization of the city. Systematization was the Communist state's programme of clearing old neighbourhoods for new streets and apartment blocks; the same digest records that the Zisu Herman synagogue in Iași was demolished in 1979 for the systematization of its area. A digest of Iași synagogues by Romanian Jewish researchers attributes the disappearance of the city's synagogues to wartime bombing, emigration and the systematization of the city under the Ceaușescu regime, and records that in September 1995 only four synagogue buildings remained. No source consulted gives the year in which the Păcurari synagogue was pulled down, which body ordered it, or whether the community had already given up the building. The demolition under Communist rule therefore rests on the tourism website alone. Two prayer houses stood on Păcurari streets between the wars, Strul Aron at Strada Păcurari 24, closed in 1975, and Toiras Moișe at Șoseaua Păcurari 12; whether either was the building meant is unknown.

Los społeczności

The Jews of Iași were the victims of one of the worst massacres of the Holocaust in Romania. From 28 to 30 June 1941, at the start of the invasion of the Soviet Union, Ion Antonescu's regime ordered the city to be cleansed of Jews. Romanian soldiers, police and gendarmes, armed Iron Guard members, agents of the Romanian Special Information Service and local civilians, with the Nazi German military intelligence service sharing in the organisation, killed at least eight thousand Jews in the city. More than five thousand others were arrested and sent away on trains to Călărași and Podu Iloaiei; of perhaps 5,000 on the Călărași train only 1,011 arrived alive. Romanian authorities counted over 13,266 victims; the community itself estimated nearly 15,000, about a third of the Jews of Iași. After the war emigration further reduced the community, and by 1995 only four synagogue buildings were left in Iași. Today only two synagogues in Iași still serve a small community.

Miejsce dzisiaj

The exact plot of the Great Synagogue of Păcurari has not been identified, so it is not possible to say what stands on it now. The demolition is linked to the Communist rebuilding of the quarter, but what replaced the synagogue is not recorded. No surviving fragment of the synagogue and no marker on its site is recorded in the sources consulted. The map pin for this entry is placed on Strada Păcurari, the main street of the quarter, and marks the neighbourhood only, not the building. The old Jewish cemetery of Păcurari, which served the same part of the city, is recorded in the sources but was not examined for this entry.

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