Zisu Herman Synagogue, Iași

ОБЗОР

История Zisu Herman Synagogue, Iași

Iași was one of the great Jewish cities of Eastern Europe. Jews made up about half of its population in the late nineteenth century, and the city was filled with synagogues and prayer houses, many of them belonging to particular crafts or named after rabbis, founders or Hasidic leaders. The president of the community gave a figure of 140 synagogues in 1944. The Zisu Herman Synagogue was one of these small houses of prayer. Mircea Moldovan's inventory of Jewish places of worship in Romania lists it as number 110 of the Iași synagogues, at Strada Labirint 10, and records that it functioned until 1979, 'when it was demolished because of the systematization of the area'.

That single entry is almost everything known about the building. Its date of construction, its founder, its appearance and its size are unknown; the name suggests that it was called after a person, Zisu Herman, perhaps its founder or donor, but no source read says so. It is notable that it survived the looting of Iași synagogues in 1940 and 1941, the pogrom of June 1941 and the bombing of 1944, and continued to serve the much reduced postwar community for more than three decades. It was then pulled down under Nicolae Ceaușescu's Communist regime, whose redevelopment of old Iași the same inventory names, together with bombing and emigration, as the cause of the disappearance of the city's synagogues.

МЕСТО

Where it stood

Historic: Strada Labirint 10, Iași (exact historic address, street location not identified). Today: unknown; the street appears to have disappeared in the systematization of the 1970s-80s. Placeholder pin at the centre of Iași (approximate).

Открыть большую карту →

Еврейская община

Iași was the capital of Moldavia from the sixteenth century, and its oldest synagogue, the Great Synagogue in the Târgu Cucului quarter, dates from 1657 to 1682. According to Pinkas Hakehillot, the community grew from 2,420 heads of households in 1803 to 17,570 people in 1831, 31,015 in 1859 (47.1 per cent of the population) and 39,441 in 1899 (50.8 per cent). It numbered 43,500 in 1921 and 35,465 in 1930. The city also had a lively Yiddish literary and lecture life. Its religious life was spread across a very large number of small synagogues. Pinkas Hakehillot lists prayer houses belonging to hatters, tailors, carpenters, barrel makers, tanners, shoemakers, butchers, musicians, stone cutters, carters, bagel sellers, rag traders, wood cutters and painters, besides synagogues named after rabbis and Hasidic leaders. KehilaLinks gives 127 synagogues in the city by 1930, and Moldovan's inventory of Iași synagogues runs to more than a hundred named buildings, many of them identified only by a person's name and a street address, as the Zisu Herman Synagogue is.

Архитектура и дизайн

No photograph, drawing, plan or description of the Zisu Herman Synagogue has been found, so nothing can be said with confidence about its architecture. The inventory entry gives only its name, its address at Strada Labirint 10 and the date and reason of its demolition. The year of construction, the architect or builder, the building material, the size, the seating capacity and the arrangement of the interior are all unknown. Many of the small synagogues in the same inventory were prayer houses of a craft guild, a Hasidic following or a family, but whether the Zisu Herman Synagogue was of this kind is not documented. Another synagogue on the same street, the Merari synagogue at Strada Labirint 17, is listed separately in the inventory as decommissioned and used as a community storage depot in 1995. Old photographs of the streets around Labirint, city plans held in the Iași county archives, or the files of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania might show the building, but none were found or read in this research.

Жизнь в синагоге

Nothing specific is recorded about worship in the Zisu Herman Synagogue: its rite, its rabbis, its cantors and the families who prayed there are unknown. The most that can be said is that it belonged to the dense network of small prayer houses that served the Jews of Iași, where congregations formed around a trade, a neighbourhood, a Hasidic rabbi or a benefactor whose name the building carried. Pinkas Hakehillot describes how the city's craftsmen kept their own prayer houses, the tailors and builders alone having four or five, and how synagogues were named after rabbis and Hasidic leaders such as the Zwolower and the Tversky rebbes. The Zisu Herman Synagogue is notable for its long survival. According to the inventory it was still functioning in 1979, which means it served the postwar community of Iași, about 38,000 people in 1947 and much smaller after decades of emigration, for more than three decades. It was thus among the last of the small neighbourhood synagogues of Iași to remain in use before the systematization of the city's old districts.

Разрушение

The building came through the most violent years of the community's history. Pinkas Hakehillot records that forty synagogues of Iași were looted in 1940 and 1941, and that during the pogrom of late June 1941 Jews were shot by Romanian soldiers and policemen, armed civilians, Legionnaires of the Iron Guard and Nazi German soldiers; in 1944 the mayor turned synagogues into stables. Whether the Zisu Herman Synagogue itself was damaged in these years is not recorded. It is known only that it was still functioning in 1979. In that year, according to Moldovan's inventory, it was demolished because of the systematization of the area, that is, the Communist state's clearance and rebuilding of old Iași neighbourhoods under Nicolae Ceaușescu, which the same source names as one of the causes of the disappearance of the city's synagogues. Other synagogues of Iași were also pulled down in this redevelopment: the Beit Yaakov temple, bombed in 1944, and the Cahane synagogue on Ștefan cel Mare Boulevard, whose site was built over with apartment houses. No source read names the particular authority or contractor that carried out the demolition of the Zisu Herman Synagogue, and no record of the decision has been found.

Судьба общины

On 29 June 1941 the Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu ordered the removal of the Jews of Iași. In the pogrom that followed, Romanian soldiers and police, Legionnaires, armed civilians and Nazi German soldiers killed Jews in the city, and thousands more were packed into two sealed trains. Of 2,430 people on the first train to Călărași, 1,411 died on the way; of 1,900 on the second, 1,194 died in the wagons on the 20 km run to Podu Iloaiei. Romanian authorities counted 13,266 victims; a community list has 14,850. Despite these losses, a census of May 1942 still counted 32,364 Jews in Iași, and about 38,000 lived in the city in 1947. Emigration in the following decades, which Moldovan names as one cause of the loss of the synagogues, reduced the community sharply. Today the Jewish community of Iași numbers between 300 and 600 members and keeps two working synagogues, including the Great Synagogue on Strada Sinagogilor.

Место сегодня

The site of the Zisu Herman Synagogue has not been located. Strada Labirint 10 is the address given by the inventory, but the street does not appear under that name in the central districts of present-day Iași in OpenStreetMap, which knows a Strada Labirint only in the suburban commune of Valea Lupului, outside the old town; that street is not believed to be the historic one. The area around the old Labirint street was redeveloped under the systematization programme of the 1970s and 1980s, so the plot is most likely covered by later blocks or roads. No marker or surviving fragment is recorded. The map pin for this entry is a placeholder at the centre of Iași and does not mark the synagogue's location. Fixing it will need a pre-1979 city plan or the archives of the Iași Jewish community.

Помогите сохранить память

Вам есть чем поделиться?

Фотографии, документы, семейные истории и воспоминания об этой синагоге и её общине помогают сохранить её историю.