Case study: lost identity and the New Synagogue in Częstochowa

Architecture of the houses of prayer as contemporary places of non-memory in culturally homogeneous cities

Abstract

WIKTORIA MORAWSKA (Polish Academy of Sciences) / Lost identity and difficult heritage on the example of the New Synagogue in Czestochowa. The post-war transformation of Polish society into a homogeneous construct and the issue of non-memory of the Jewish community

The aim of the article is to show the social context of synagogue architecture on the example of the hitherto unexplored New Synagogue in Czestochowa. The analysis is an attempt to show the relationship between the location of the monument in the urban structure and the experiences of the minority, the history of the community and the Jewish community in the city. Due to the nature of the topic, the analysis was based on the research of archival materials, which is the basic method of work within the art history discipline. In addition to the study of the inventory materials and the object itself, the content of the article refers to the theses of the most important researchers of synagogue architecture and town planning in Poland. An important context of the work were ethnographic and memory-related themes, which are an attempt to present the topic of synagogue architecture in a wider, social context. The greatest value of the paper is the original, so far unprecedented attempt to implement an interdisciplinary perspective in the analysis of synagogues. Moreover, the article deals with the subject of the New Synagogue in Czestochowa, which has not been subject to any systematic study so far. This article was written as part of over six years of research that I am conducting on this subject (research mainly in the context of the architecture of the New Synagogue in Czestochowa).