Nowy Sącz Synagogue

The walls of the Nowy Sącz synagogue are only 8 m high – a privilege of 1699 stipulated that it could not rise above the smallest church in town. The Baroque Town Synagogue (Synagoga Grodzka) of 1746 stands at the heart of the former Jewish quarter, a few steps from the ruins of the royal castle. For more than three decades it housed a gallery of the District Museum, and since 2017 it has once again been a house of prayer for Hasidim linked to the Sanz dynasty.

History: a privilege, a fire and a new façade

The brick synagogue replaced an earlier wooden one, built under a privilege granted by the Nowy Sącz governor Jerzy Paweł Lubomirski on 3 February 1699. It was meant to follow the synagogues of Chełm and Chęciny. The result was a rectangular building of 25 × 19 m under a tall, shingled mansard roof of the so-called Polish type. In 1889 the painter Stanisław Wyspiański sketched the interior – his drawings are now a priceless record of the hall before disaster struck.

In 1894 the synagogue burned out completely, but its solid walls survived. The Jewish community soon rebuilt it with a new look: a flat ceiling in the main hall, a new roof and a new façade flanked by two square, two-storey towers. The openings at the top of the towers have a Moorish outline on the outside, and the entrance is framed by a horseshoe-arch recess. This blend of Moorish and Neo-Romanesque elements was fashionable in 19th-century synagogue architecture across Central Europe.

War, warehouse and gallery

During the Second World War the Germans wrecked the interior and used it to store looted Jewish property. After the war the building remained a warehouse, and the richly decorated Torah ark on the east wall was bricked up. In 1974 the congregation handed the synagogue to the town, which gave it to the District Museum. After a major renovation, from 1982 it housed the "Old Synagogue" gallery with the Judaica exhibition "They Were Among Us". On 24 July 1994 a plaque in Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew, funded by the association of Nowy Sącz Jews in Israel, was unveiled on the wall, commemorating the 25,000 Jews of Nowy Sącz and the surrounding area murdered in 1939–1945.

The return of the Torah

In 2015 the museum handed the keys to the Jewish Religious Community of Kraków, and several thousand objects stored in the synagogue moved to the museum's Galician Town (Miasteczko Galicyjskie). Restoring the religious function was entrusted to the Bonei Sanz foundation, led by New York rabbi Joel Halberstam – a great-great-grandson of the tzaddik Chaim Halberstam, whose grave in Nowy Sącz draws thousands of Hasidim from around the world. "Sanz" is the Yiddish name of the town and gave its name to an important Hasidic dynasty. Late in the evening of 23 May 2017 a Torah scroll was carried into the synagogue amid singing and dancing by some 200 Hasidim, mostly from New York.

What to look for

• The twin-towered façade with a horseshoe arch over the entrance – a legacy of the rebuilding after 1894.
• The low main hall – notice how modest it looks among the buildings of the old quarter.
• The trilingual plaque of 1994 on the wall.
• The projection of the east wall with an oculus, which once housed the Torah ark.

Tripto tip

The synagogue is at ul. Berka Joselewicza 12, a few minutes' walk from the Market Square. It now serves religious purposes and is not open to visitors like a museum, so plan to see it from the outside – 10–15 minutes is enough. The District Museum gallery no longer operates here. Combine the walk with the ruins of the royal castle next door, the Old Town with its town hall and the Galician Town open-air museum. Around Hasidic anniversaries and holidays the area can be busy, so be tactful when taking photos of people at prayer.