Landmark
White Stork Synagogue
Synagoga pod Białym Bocianem: built in 1829 for the liberal wing of Breslau’s Jewish community, vandalised but not burned in 1938, and restored as a place of worship and a cultural centre.
What it is
The synagogue was built from 1827 to 1829 to a design by Carl Ferdinand Langhans, as a neoclassical building, and opened on 23 April 1829. It was built on a plot where an inn, “Pod Białym Bocianem”, had stood.
Before 1938
It was built on the initiative of liberal Jews in Breslau, and from 1847 it was the main synagogue of the liberal faction of the city’s Jewish community. In 1872 the New Synagogue was built on Podwale street; the liberal Jews moved there, and the White Stork Synagogue passed to the conservative Jews. The interior was rebuilt in 1905, when reinforced-concrete women’s galleries were added, and renovated in 1929, the centenary year.
1938 and the war
The interior was wrecked. The building stood.
On the night of 9 to 10 November 1938, Nazi paramilitaries vandalised the interior. They did not burn the building, because other buildings stood close around it; the New Synagogue was burned down. During the war the interior was made into a car workshop and a store for looted Jewish property, and the courtyard became an assembly point for Jews deported to the extermination camps.
After 1945
In August 1945 the Jewish Committee in Wrocław, representing surviving Polish Jews who had settled in the city, asked for the synagogue back; it repaired the building and restored it to use for worship. The communist authorities closed it in 1966, citing its condition, and services were suspended in 1968. In 1974 it passed to the State Treasury and was transferred to the University of Wrocław. It then went through several owners and fell into ruin.
On 10 April 1996 it was handed to the re-established Jewish Religious Community in Wrocław. Restoration began in May 1996 and was completed in 2010; the final phase was paid for in part by EEA Grants and run by the Bente Kahan Foundation.
What it is for now
The synagogue is a place of worship for the Jewish community and also a cultural venue. The Centre for Jewish Culture and Education, established there on 7 May 2005 and run by the Bente Kahan Foundation, organises concerts, theatre, exhibitions and workshops in the building.
Seeing it
The City of Wrocław has a page on the synagogue, at pik.wroclaw.pl (in Polish).