Visiting the site in Delos is quite easy throughout the summer, the island being accessible by boat from nearby Mykonos. If one place attests to the presence of a Jewish community in Ancient Greece, it is certainly that of Delos, an arid island of the Cyclades. The existence of Jews here is referred to in the Book of Maccabees, while Flavius Josephus mentions them as well. Too tiny to flex ...
Plus d'infosContenus associés au mot-clé “jewish life”
Corfu
In the late twelfth century, Jewish traveler Benjamin de Tudela encountered a lone Jew on Corfu. Three centuries later, however, Jews had become so numerous here that the Venetians, then in control of this much-coveted, strategically important Adriatic island, had them confined to ghettos. A local Christian legend, which, strangely, spoke of Judas as a native of Corfu, made Jewish life here ...
Plus d'infosIoánnina
Ioánnina, one of the most ancient Jewish communities in Europe, still bears the deep imprint of the long Ottoman presence in Greece. At the heart of the mountainous Epirus region, Ioánnina (280 miles from Athens near the Albanian border, the two city connected by a difficult road) still harbors a small Jewish community. Hellenized Romaniote Jews were present for over 2300 years, Ioannina ...
Plus d'infosThessaloníki
When David Ben Gurion moved to Thessaloníki to learn Turkish in 1910, he was surprised to discover a city like none found in “Eretz Israel”: The Shabbat marked the day of rest here, and even the dockworkers were Jewish. He was advised not to admit he was Ashkenazic (all the procurers were). Jewish and Sephardic, Thessaloníki had been called “Mother of Israel” for over ...
Plus d'infosAthens
3,2,1… go! Set off on a marathon walk through time, 2500 years to be precise, to discover the monuments of Athens and its Jewish cultural heritage. Starting with the Panathenaic Stadium. An ancient stadium dating back to 330 BC, it was renovated in 1896 to host the first Olympic Games of the modern era, with 28,400 spectators cheering the athletes. Then, cross over. Either to the right, ...
Plus d'infosIstanbul and Surrounding Areas
Sumptuous and decadent, immense and frenetic, Istanbul is “the world in one city”, as it is often described by Western travelers overwhelmed by the city’s splendor. The skyline of Istanbul is punctuated by hundreds of minarets, majestic onion domes, and bell towers. “An aged hand covered with rings held out toward Europe”, according to Jean Cocteau, the great ...
Plus d'infosBurgas
The synagogue here has been transformed into an art gallery. Built at the turn of the century following plans of the Italian architect Ricardo Toscani, during the 1960s it was completely remade into an exhibition space for some 2500 works by contemporary Bulgarian painters, as well as for a collection of old icons. A terrorist attack was carried out against Israeli tourists in Burgas in 2012.
Plus d'infosBulgarian Plains
In the Plains region, Jewish life is maintained by the people of Plovdiv, which boasts a beautiful, colourful synagogue for its few hundred worshippers. Efforts are being made to revive synagogues in Ruse, the birthplace of Elias Canetti, and Burgas, which has been transformed into an art gallery. Even more surprisingly, recent archaeological excavations have uncovered a synagogue dating back ...
Plus d'infosTimisoara
The first Jews probably settled in Timisoara in the 17th century. Gravestones were found in the city dating from that era. At the end of the conflict between the Austrians and the Turks, a Jewish Community life quickly developed. Both Sephardic and Ashkenazic. Places of worship were created but also cultural establishments as well as schools. Facing regular waves of anti-Semitism, the results ...
Plus d'infosBucharest
Jewish Bucharest has almost completely disappeared. Of a population estimated at 158000 souls in 1948, there remain only 2000 people today. Spread out across the four corners of the capital, the are doubtlessly too old or in too precarious an economic situation to contemplate emigration. The old Jewish quarter The old Jewish quarter was located near the Unirei (Union) Square on the other side ...
Plus d'infosWlodawa
Jews began settling in Wlodawa in the seventeenth century. By the turn of the twentieth century, they numbered 3670 (66% of the population), then 4200 (67%) in 1921, and 5650 (75%) in 1939. The Germans created a ghetto to which they deported 800 Jews from Kraków and 1000 from Vienna, before exterminating them all in the camp near Sobibór, a mile or two from here in the forest, beside the Bug ...
Plus d'infosUkrainian Border
In this region, the town of Wlodawa boasts a particularly interesting Baroque synagogue, built at the end of the 18th century. Nearby is the Sobibor camp, where many victims of the Holocaust were massacred.
Plus d'infosJozefów
The city of Jozefów possesses a beautiful late-seventeenth century synagogue. It can be seen almost immediately upon arriving in the village, on the right and set back a bit in relation to the city center and the intersection of Górnicza and Krótka streets. It was rebuilt in the 1990s and converted into a public library with one distinctive feature: upstairs, a doctors office and hotel are ...
Plus d'infosSzczebrzeszyn
A jewish community sprang up in Szczebrzeszyn in the sixteenth century, while the synagogue was built here in the seventeenth century. In the nineteenth century, the community experienced important growth, jumping from 1083 members (31% of the population) in 1827 to 2450 (44%) in 1897; it also became a center of Hasidic influence centered around the tsadik Elimelech Hurwitz. Before the war, ...
Plus d'infosZamosc
Zamosc is a magnificent example from the Polish Renaissance era. Built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Italian architects in the service of Kings Sigismund and Casimir, the city offers a distinctive architectural unity, with its wide-stepped city hall, central square lined with beautiful Renaissance and Baroque mansions, and its crisscrossing of old, narrow streets arranged ...
Plus d'infosKazimierz Dolny
If one stop along the road from Lublin to Warsaw is a must, it is in the city of Kazimierz Dolny on the Vistula, first because it is a tourist city, with old houses, a magnificent rynek lined with Renaissance or Baroque facades, a large church, and castle, but also because it has been marked by an important Jewish presence, of which there remain a few remarkable traces, most notably the ...
Plus d'infosLublin
An important city in eastern Poland, Lublin has preserved a very picturesque old quarter that offers a glimpse of what life was like here in the seventeenth century, with a city hall in the middle of the rynek, a Dominican church, fortifications, and various city gates. Lublin also features a castle surrounded by a park plucked straight out of a tale from The Thousand and One Nights. The ...
Plus d'infosLublin Plateau
The Lublin Plateau bears witness to ancient traces of Jewish life, as evidenced by the presence of 17th-century synagogues in Jozefow, Zamosc and Szczebrzeszyn and an 18th-century one in Kazimierz Dolny. Of course, it is in Lublin that you will find the most places to visit in reference to the region’s Jewish cultural heritage. Its synagogue, its mikveh, its little streets and its long ...
Plus d'infosLancut
Lancut is a small, pleasant city known for its Renaissance castle once belonging to the Lubomirskis. The town also possesses a Baroque synagogue, one of the most beautiful in Poland. Built in 1761, destroyed during the war, and rebuilt during the 1960s, it has long served as a regional museum. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was completely restored once more, including the magnificent interior ...
Plus d'infosRymanów
Jews settled in Rymanów so long ago that there exists no document mentioning their arrival. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the inhabitants of the city lived mainly from the cultivation of the vines and the wine trade, activity in which the Jewish community held a preponderant place. In 1765, a thousand Jews lived in Rymanów, or 43% of the population. In the eighteenth century, ...
Plus d'infosLesko
The small city of Lesko possesses one of the most beautiful fortified synagogues in the region, built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with a turret that gives it the look of a little castle. Destroyed during the war, it was rebuilt in 1980; the interior mannerist decor had been redone, as well as the eighteenth-century iron gate and aron kodesh. The Lesko cemetery is almost across ...
Plus d'infosRzeszów
Jews began to settle in Rzeszów in the fifteenth century and, in the seventeenth century, built two synagogues, both of which remain, almost side by side. They are fairly easy to find, located right in the city center. , dating from the first years of the seventeenth century, today houses the city archives. It is rather small, but well restored on the outside. A Star of David can still be ...
Plus d'infosTarnów
In Tarnów, half of the population was Jewish: between 20000 and 25000 people worked principally in the clothing and hat industries (sixty or so businesses), arts and crafts, and trade. Some were rich merchants, lawyers, and doctors who owned beautiful houses still dominating Walowa Street. The others, poorer, were concentrated mostly in the populated districts around Zydowska, Warynskiego, ...
Plus d'infosKraków
In 1335, King Casimir the Great founded an independent city near Kraków, Kazimierz, in which he permitted Jews to settle around Sukiernikow (Clothier) Street (now called Jozefa Street), next to the Christian quarter. They built the Stara Synagogue, a mikvah, hotel, and wedding chapel on the main street called Szeroka (Wide) Street. In the sixteenth century, a large number of Jews arrived here ...
Plus d'infosGalicia
This vast region includes ancient traces of Jewish life in Lancut, Lesko, Przemysl, Rymanow, Rzeszow and Tarnow, the Ulma family museum in Markowa, major cities such as Krakow, but also the camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau.
Plus d'infosBialystok
From Treblinka, rather than return to Warsaw in the evening, you can travel on to Bialystok, near Belarus, a city with a Jewish tradition so strong that in 1913, Jews numbered 61500, or 70% of the population. Of the one hundred synagogues and houses of prayer -the three main ones being the Groyse Shul on Szkolna Street, the Chorszul (Choral Street) on Zydowska Street, and the Pulkowa ...
Plus d'infosPodlasie
You’ll be amazed to discover on our page dedicated to the town of Bialystok the impressive number of synagogues it was home to, even if its name is best known today in popular Jewish culture for the name of the main character in Mel Brooks’ gave it in’ The Producers. The community of Tykocin dates back to the 16th century!
Plus d'infosChelmno
Located on the bank of the Ner, a tributary of the Warta in the region the Germans called Wartheland, Chelmno is where “gas trucks” were tested beginning 1941, an early form of what later became the gas chambers. Jews were assembled in the Catholic church and from there sealed in trucks, with the exhaust pipe turned inward. The number of miles between the village and forest and ...
Plus d'infosLower Vistula
The Lower Vistula region is infamous in Jewish history for the many massacres perpetrated during the Holocaust, particularly in Chelmno. It is in this town that Claude Lanzmann’s film begins.
Plus d'infosLodz
Lodz is a large Polish industrial city where a significant Jewish working class, along with merchants and rich industrialists, were concentrated in the nineteenth century. A fine representation of the reality of life in nineteenth-century Lodz can be seen in Andrezej Wajda’s 1974 film Ziemia Obiecana (Promised Land). Under the occupation, the Lodz ghetto (with more than 150000 people) ...
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