Quotes Tagged "wroclaw"
The noble old synagogue had been profaned and turned into a stable by the Nazis, and left open to the elements by the Communists, at least after they had briefly employed it as a 'furniture facility.' It had then been vandalized and perhaps accidentally set aflame by incurious and callous local 'youths.' Only the well-crafted walls really stood, though a recent grant from the European Union had allowed a makeshift roof and some wooden scaffolding to hold up and enclose the shell until further notice. Adjacent were the remains of a mikvah bath for the ritual purification of women, and a kosher abattoir for the ritual slaughter of beasts: I had to feel that it was grotesque that these obscurantist relics were the only ones to have survived. In a corner of the yard lay a pile of smashed stones on which appeared inscriptions in Hebrew and sometimes Yiddish. These were all that remained of the gravestones. There wasn't a Jew left in the town, and there hadn't been one, said Mr. Kichler, since 1945.
Tags: yiddish, wroclaw, world-war-ii, women-in-judaism, women-and-religion, white-stork-synagogue, vandalism, tombstones, synagogues, rituals, religion, relics, obscurantism, nazis, mikvahs, judaism, jews, jerzy-kichler, hebrew, european-union, desecration, communism, animals, animal-slaughter, animal-sacrifice, abattoirs, 1945
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