In the past, Romania, a predominantly Orthodox Christian country, had a large Jewish community of more than 700,000 people.<\/p>\n
Between 1897 and 1899, in the city of Timi\u0219oara (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), in western Romania, the Jewish community built a large synagogue in the Fabric district<\/strong>. The temple was designed by the Hungarian-Jewish architect Lip\u00f3t Baumhorn, in a peculiar neoclassical style, with neo-Moorish elements and Byzantine influences, which resulted in a building of great beauty<\/strong>. The temple had an organ built by local craftsman Carl Leopold Wegenstein. The history of this building is linked to the sad fate of the Romanian Jewish community. During the dictatorship of Ion Antonescu (1940-1944), hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered in Romania<\/strong>, so this temple was a witness to those years of persecution.<\/p>\n The antisemitic genocide perpetrated by the Antonescu dictatorship led to mass emigration of surviving Romanian Jews to Israel after World War II. The Fabric Synagogue was eventually abandoned in 1985<\/strong> during the communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceau\u0219escu (1974\u20131989), when the local Jewish community was greatly reduced due to emigration.<\/p>\n In 2009, the Jews of Timi\u0219oara donated the building to the National Theatre<\/strong> for use as a performance venue. This marked the beginning of a period that saw the building change hands several times, with restoration plans never implemented. Since 2023, it has been owned by the Timi\u0219oara City Council<\/strong>, but its state of neglect is evident, as can be seen in this video published a few days ago by the channel Broken Window Theory<\/a>:<\/p>\n
\n