The terrifying war against Ukraine changes, of course, the function of these pages devoted to the Jewish cultural heritage of that country. Many of the places mentioned were razed to the ground by bombs. While these pages are not intended in the present time for tourism, they may be useful to researchers and students as historical references. References to so many painful histories during the ...

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Latvia’s Jewish Cemeteries

Latvia

The number of active Jewish communities in Latvia is much smaller since the Shoah. All information concerning them is likely to quickly prove obsolete, since demographic trends in the communities leave little doubt about their dying out in the near future. The aliyah toward Israel is likewise becoming increasingly significant. Inquiries can be made at the offices of the . Despite present ...

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Rhodes

Greece

In the fourteenth century, a Jewish community settled behind the ramparts of Rhodes erected by the knights of Saint John after their flight from the Holy Land. These Jews had the strange destiny of finding common ground with the Crusaders in their war against the Ottomans, only to be forced by Grand Master Pierre d’Aubusson to convert to Christianity or flee. The waves of expulsion from ...

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Mád

Hungary > Carpathian Foothills

Built in 1795, the looms over the old Jewish quarter with its elegant white facade. With the Protestant church on the other side of the small valley, it symbolizes the religious balance of a large wine-making village, a quarter of whose inhabitants were Jews at the end of the nineteenth century. It represents a very beautiful and rare example of a Baroque synagogue in Hungary. The interior is ...

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Ljubljana

Slovenia > Central and Northeast Slovenia

The only remaining traces of a prior Jewish presence in Ljubljana are the names of two narrow streets in the city center, Street of the Jews (Zidovska ulica) and Passage of the Jews (Zidovska steza), the place of the medieval ghetto until the 1515 expulsion. The remains of a neighborhood of about thirty houses have apparently been found beneath the Baroque buildings here, constructed in ...

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Faro

Portugal > Algarve

Capital of the Algarve region in southern Portugal, the city of Faro was home to a large Jewish community, expelled in 1497. A number of them continued to live there as conversos. Jews did not resettle “officially” in the city until the 19th century. In the fifteenth century, the time of its peak, Faro was a well-known center of Hebrew printing. In 1481, Samuel Porteira printed ...

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Vitoria

Spain > Basque Country

The town of Vitoria had 300 Jews in 1290 and 900 on the eve of the expulsion -the equivalent of 6 or 7% of the total population. Their main activities were tax collecting and medicine. In 1492 they took refuge in Bayonne across the French border, where, even today, the Jews think of themselves as the descendants of those in Vitoria. The most surprising vestige of the Jewish presence is the ...

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