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The exhibition of lithographs Synagogues, arquitecturas de memoria (Synagogas, arquitecturas de memoria), by Dora Szampanier (Jaroslaw, 1922 – Haifa, 1997) can be visited until October 2 at the Museum of Jewish History in Girona.
All the works show synagogues that throughout history were meeting places for Jewish communities in Europe with the mention of the city in which they were located.
In passing we can see the projection of a recording in which the writer and researcher Ruth Ellen Gruber tells us about the importance of this type of religious building in Europe throughout history and before the Xoà, as well as those that still exist. They survive, either as synagogues or with other functions.
The Xoà or holocaust, literally the “catastrophe”, is the Hebrew term used to refer to the Jewish annihilation in Europe by Nazi Germany.
In Girona, the last synagogue that functioned, between 1435 and 1492, stood where the Jewish history museum is now located. It was a fundamental space for Jewish life.
It was the place where the community met, not only to carry out Jewish ritual and prayer, but, above all, to learn and debate religious texts. For this reason, in Catalan documents synagogues are called “schools.”
The synagogues represented in the lithographs in the exhibition had been landmarks in the landscape of many cities. They were an architectural and cultural heritage, but were destroyed or transformed for other uses.
