Zamość: Renaissance Synagogue and the Birthplace of I.L. Peretz

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Zamość is the work of one of the great urban experiments of Europe. In 1580 Hetman Jan Zamoyski, Grand Chancellor of the Crown and one of the most powerful figures of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, commissioned the Italian architect Bernardo Morando to design an ideal Renaissance city — modelled on the concepts of Vitruvius and Padua. The result was the Padua of the North — a planned city with a geometric street grid, a central market square surrounded by arcades, three smaller squares and powerful fortifications. In 1992 Zamość was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as one of the best-preserved Renaissance cities in Europe. The Hetman vision also extended to settlement policy — Zamoyski brought merchants from across Europe to Zamość to make the city a centre of trade between Poland and the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire and the Near East. In 1588 he issued a privilege for Armenians; in 1601 for Greeks. In 1602 he brought the first group of Sephardic Jews from Salonika, offering them commercial and religious privileges. The first Sephardic rabbi, Yosef ben Yitzhak Halevi, settled in Zamość the same year. Within a few decades an Ashkenazi community joined the Sephardic — Zamość became the only Polish city with two distinct Jewish communities, two synagogues, two cemeteries. In 1610 the Renaissance Ashkenazi synagogue was founded — a massive building with a four-column bimah supporting a cross-vault. The interior was covered with polychrome depicting Hebrew Psalm inscriptions and liturgical symbols. The synagogue is among the oldest preserved in Poland and is one of the finest examples of Jewish Renaissance architecture in Europe. The Sephardic community, much smaller, prayed in a separate prayer house on Bazyliańska Street. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Zamość prospered as a centre of foreign trade. Jewish merchants of Zamość maintained commercial contacts with Salonika, Istanbul, Constantinople, Frankfurt and Vienna. The community grew to about two thousand by 1750. The Sephardic tradition gradually disappeared through assimilation with the dominant Ashkenazi, but traces of Sephardic cuisine and some prayer customs survived into the twentieth century. The nineteenth century brought dramatic changes. In 1809 Napoleon transferred Zamość to the Duchy of Warsaw, and after 1815 the city came under Russian partition. In 1869 the Zamość fortress was decommissioned — Zamość lost its military importance but gained economic. From the same century came two figures from Zamość who left a lasting mark on Jewish culture and political thought: Yitzchak Leib Peretz (1852-1915), one of the Three Classics of Yiddish literature, and Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), Marxist philosopher and a co-founder of the Spartacus League in Germany. In the interwar years the Zamość Jewish population numbered twelve thousand — forty per cent of the city. Two Tarbut schools, a Hebrew gymnasium, a public library of five thousand volumes, two Jewish daily newspapers, the Hapoel sports club, a Yiddish theatre. The Hasidic tradition (influences from Belz and Sanz) continued alongside an active Zionist movement and the Bund. German occupation of Zamość began on 14 September 1939. In the first months the Germans planned the deportation of the Polish and Ukrainian population from the Zamość region and the settlement of Volksdeutsche — this was a test of the SS Generalplan Ost. The Renaissance synagogue was requisitioned as a warehouse but not physically destroyed — protected by its monument status within the Renaissance city. In the summer of 1942 the Germans established a ghetto, confining about fifteen thousand people — Zamość Jews and Jews from Tomaszów Lubelski, Szczebrzeszyn and other surrounding towns. In October 1942 deportations to Bełżec began — within four weeks most were taken. The final transports — to Sobibor — took place in November 1942. After the war about two hundred people returned to Zamość. Most emigrated between 1946 and 1957. The synagogue, used in the immediate post-war decades as a library and warehouse, was fully restored between 1995 and 2005 with the support of the World Monuments Fund and Jewish communities from the US. Today it operates as the Zamość Synagogue — a branch of the Zamość Museum with a reconstructed Aron ha-Kodesh, complete polychrome, and an exhibition on the history of the Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities of Zamość. It is one of the most distinguished restorations of a Jewish monument in twenty-first century Poland.

The Germans occupied Zamość on 14 September 1939. As early as the first months the SS planned the Zamość region as a test of Generalplan Ost — the deportation of the Polish and Ukrainian population and the settlement of Volksdeutsche. As part of the Zamość Action (1942-1943), more than a hundred thousand Poles were resettled and about forty thousand killed. The Zamość Jewish community was subject to a separate extermination plan. The Renaissance synagogue was requisitioned as a warehouse but not physically destroyed — protected by its monument status within the UNESCO Renaissance city. The small Sephardic synagogue on Bazyliańska Street was burned in 1939. In the summer of 1942 the Germans established a ghetto within the historic Jewish quarter, confining about fifteen thousand people. In October 1942 deportations to Bełżec began — within four weeks most were taken. The final transports — to Sobibor — took place in November 1942. Some Zamość Jews were shot by the Germans at the Rotunda — a former nineteenth-century defensive bastion used as a site of execution. About 8,000 people died there — Zamość Jews, Poles, partisans. Of twelve thousand Zamość Jews, about two hundred survived the war.

The Zamość Synagogue is open as a branch of the Zamość Museum — access hours: Tuesday to Sunday 10:00-17:00 (summer), 10:00-16:00 (winter). Admission about 15 PLN, combined ticket with other Museum branches 25 PLN. Audio guides in Polish, English, Hebrew, German. The exhibition includes the history of the Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities of Zamość, Judaica, documents. The New Jewish Cemetery on Prosta Street — open year-round at no charge. The Rotunda — National Memory Museum, open Tuesday to Sunday 10:00-16:00, admission about 10 PLN. The former Jewish quarter around Plac Solny — accessible by walking through the Old Town. Etiquette: men cover their heads when entering the synagogue and the cemetery. In the cemetery one does not walk on graves. At the Rotunda silence is observed within the cells and around the monuments. Recommended day plan from Warsaw or Kraków: depart at eight in the morning, three hours and twenty minutes (from Warsaw) or four hours (from Kraków). The first hours — the Zamość Synagogue, a walk through the former Jewish quarter, the UNESCO Great Market Square. Lunch at a restaurant on the Great Market Square — Restauracja Sztuczki Magika or Restauracja Padwa (regional cuisine, not kosher). In the afternoon, the New Jewish Cemetery and the Rotunda. Return to the hotel in the evening. A full day taking in Jewish heritage and the UNESCO Renaissance city.

Mercedes V-Class from Kraków to Zamość is four hours (from Warsaw — three hours and twenty minutes). The 355-kilometre route from Kraków runs through Tarnów, Mielec and Sandomierz, a mixture of A4 motorway and national roads. The route from Warsaw is more comfortable — the S17 road to Lublin, then Road 17 to Zamość. Parking in Zamość: free parking on Bazyliańska Street (five minutes on foot from the Synagogue and the Great Market Square). In the summer season the Old Town can be crowded — we recommend earlier arrivals. The Mercedes V-Class fits in all standard bays. Recommended transfer duration: from Kraków — twelve to thirteen hours door-to-door (we recommend the two-day variant with overnight in Zamość — Hotel Zamojski Senator or Hotel Mercure Zamość Stare Miasto). From Warsaw — ten to eleven hours door-to-door; a single-day variant is feasible. For visitors combining the visit with Lublin (90 km) — a two-day variant with overnight in Zamość and a half-day in Lublin, or vice versa.