Kłodzko Synagogue

The Kłodzko Synagogue, officially the Synagogue of Kłodzko, and formerly the Synagogue in Glatz (Synagoge in Glatz), was a former Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue, located on the Grünestraße (Green Street), in Glatz, Germany. This location is now Wojska Polskiego Street, in Kłodzko, in Kłodzko County in Lower Silesia, Poland.

The synagogue was completed in 1885 and destroyed by Nazis on November 9, 1938, during Kristallnacht.

History
The synagogue was built on the initiative of Progressive Jews, according to the plans of architect Albert Grau (1837–1900) of Breslau (now Wrocław), a student of Georg Gottlob Ungewitter, in the Moorish Revival and Brick-Gothic Revival styles.

From 1742 Kłodzko was part of the Kingdom of Prussia, then Germany, until Silesia became Polish under border changes promulgated at the 1945 Potsdam Conference. During the November Pogrom (9 November 1938), termed "Kristallnacht" in German Nazi propaganda, the synagogue was destroyed in an arson attack by German Nazi gangs.

Commerations
Reinhard Schindler, a former Glatz citizen, developed the idea of having a memorial stone placed for the synagogue. The memorial stone was erected in 1995 with an anodised aluminum plaque in Polish, Hebrew and German commemorating the destroyed synagogue. The inscription reads:

Sculpture
In 2015–2016, the German sculptor Gerhard Roese of Darmstadt created a sculpture of the synagogue made of cast aluminium weighing approx. 100 kg. The collected materials, plans and sketches, together with photos and a description of the burning of the temple, was published as a book by Roese under the title: Decalogue on Fire. The artistic work under the same title includes the sculpture of the synagogue, a sculpture of the Ten Commandments above the portal, and a sculpture of one of the cast-iron gallery columns that collapsed during the fire in its rubble and ash bed. In addition, fifteen 1 × 1 meter (3.3 × 3.3 foot) large panels of photographs by Günter Veit and a synagogue with a fragment of a Torah scroll, probably stolen in Poland by a member of the Wehrmacht. In May 2018, Roese brought the entire work to Kłodzko with the help of a group of young people and donated it to the city. The sculpture and other materials from the exhibition of Roese were also in 2018 in the project Topography of Terror installed in Berlin and published in a catalog.

Synagogue revival
On the anniversary of the Reichsprogromnacht, also Kristallnacht on November 8, 2018, the Muzem Ziemi Kłodzkiej w Kłodzku (Museum of the Kłodzko Land), together with the sculptor from Darmstadt and the Polish activists Michał Cyprys, Henryk Grzybowski, Mieczysław Kowalcze and Grzegorz Sadowski, hosted an event commemorating the terror of 80 years ago and the former Jewish community under the motto Synagoga Reviva. Gerhard Roese talked about his idea and implementation of the sculpture model of the synagogue.

Students from various schools in Kłodzko and a group of adults participated. They learned what is known about the structure and its destruction today, as well as that of two surviving ladies, Ruth Prager and Shoshana Efrati, who had visited the synagogue in their childhood. Henryk Grzybowski told about their fate from former Glatz, to Chile and Israel.

After a small concert with Yiddish and Hebrew songs performed by Sylwia Grzybowska, those in attendance went to the synagogue memorial stone and lit candles.

Commemorative plaque
On January 26, 2019, a commemorative plaque with content in three languages was stolen from its stone. On March 22, 2019, a new stone tablet financed from contributions from the community of Kłodzko and former German residents was unveiled.