Chmielnik, the synagogue, 2008

Photograph of the Old Synagogue in Chmielnik, taken as part of Wojciech Wilczyk’s project “There’s no Such Thing as an Innocent Eye”. It presents Sienkiewicza Street with two-storey residential housing and, in the background, the former synagogue building covered with a hipped roof, with four semicircular-arched windows on the southern façade, with a lower extension on the west side.

The synagogue was erected in the late first and early second quarter of the 18th century. Destroyed by fires, it was rebuilt in the 1880s. It is a brick building, on a rectangular plan, with a sunken floor and a centrally placed bimah (platform for reading the Torah). Next to the main hall, where men prayed, there was a hallway and a room housing the seat of the Jewish community. On the first floor there was a section for women, the so-called women’s courtyard (see K. Piechotka, M. Piechotka, Heaven’s Gates. Masonry synagogues in the territories of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Warszawa 2017).

During World War II, the synagogue was vandalised. After 1945, it was used as a grain warehouse. In 2011–2013, the city authorities conducted a renovation of the building. Currently, it houses the “Świętokrzyski Sztetl” Education and Museum Centre.

The photograph was taken in 2008 and documents the condition of the synagogue after its re-roofing, before the renovation of the interior.Article about the synagogue in Chmielnik: https://sztetl.org.pl/en/towns/c/690-chmielnik/112-synagogues-houses-of-prayer-and-others/83450-synagogue-chmielnik-14-wspolna-street

Krzysztof Bielawski