Synagogue facade illuminated. Photo: Wikicommons
By Ruth Ellen Gruber
The large Moorish-style synagogue in the southwest-central Polish town of Ostrow Wielkopolski, originally built in the late 1850s, has been under restoration this year -- and the town's web site has an ample set of pages documenting the process, including photographs, description in English as well as Polish, and also a video.
The 7 million zloty ($2.1 million) project is being financed primarily by the European Union, which is providing 70 percent of the funding, as well as by the city according to the web site. The city obtained ownership of the building in 2006, when the city paid 225,000 zloty (c. $75,000) to the Jewish community of Wroclaw in exchange for the community withdrawing its claim on the building. For its part, the city agreed to create lapidary memorials at the sites of the town's two destroyed Jewish cemeteries.
The exterior restoration has been completed (or nearly so) and work on the building's interior goes on.