In four chapters organized by inauguration dates (1600s, 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s), author and artist Andrea Strongwater shines light on seventy-seven synagogues built from the early 1600s to 1930 and spanning sixteen European countries where destruction was rampant. She lovingly illustrates their exteriors and/or interiors and tells stories of their history, Jewish community, and architectural significance. These synagogues were considered important enough to have been documented in their time, and so here they do double duty: reminding us of the many thousands of other synagogues that were obliterated without having left any historical record.

Praise for Lost Synagogues of Europe 

“Pre-WWII Jewish culture is brought to life in this rich illustrated tour of synagogues destroyed during the war… The result is a worthy tribute to an important piece of Jewish history.”–Publishers Weekly

“Lost Synagogues of Europe is a remarkable contribution to a variety of disciplines. It offers a virtual tour across European Jewish communities, with equal attention paid to art, architecture, the Gentile authorities’ stance toward its Jews, and the changing historical context, from Roman times till the first decade of the new millennium. Andrea Strongwater tells a painful story of Jewish communal focal points targeted for destruction primarily by Nazi Germany, but also by its Soviet ideological rivals. It leaves us hopeful that as we show a new generation the beauty of what was lost, the Nazi effort to make Europe Judenrein can somehow, to some extent, be undone.”—Shay Pilnik, director of the Emil A. and Jenny Fish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Yeshiva University

“Andrea Strongwater’s paintings of European synagogues destroyed in the Holocaust allow us to connect emotionally with them—and, in that sense, bring them back to life for us. Her concomitant history of these synagogues broadens our understanding of these homes of Jewish living and thereby serves as new, important testimony to Jewish life lost in the flames of the Shoah.”–Vladimir Levin, director, Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The book is available to order at https://jps.org/books/lost-synagogues-of-europe/.

About Andrea Strongwater:

Andrea Strongwater is an author and artist whose artwork has been shown worldwide. Images from more than one hundred of her synagogue paintings have been sold as prints, postcards, and notecards at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC and the Shoah Memorial in Paris. She is also the illustrator of three children’s books, Princess Ingeborg and the Dragons, I Don’t Know – Adventures of a Forest Playground, and Cuffy’s New York City Adventure. The forerunner to this present volume, the children’s book Where We Once Gathered – Lost Synagogues of Europe, which she wrote and illustrated, won two independent publishers awards.

About JPS:

The Jewish Publication Society (JPS) is a leading publisher of works on Jewish thought. Since 1888, our mission has been to produce rigorous, inspiring Jewish books from scholars and writers across denominations, and to make that scholarship accessible to readers around the world.

Contact:
Deena Schoenfeld

Director of Marketing and Communications, The Jewish Publication Society
dschoenfeld@jps.org