Sokołów Małopolski, the synagogue, 2015

The photograph presents the former synagogue in Sokołów Małopolski, currently the building of the Municipal and Communal Centre for Culture, Sports and Recreation and the Non-Public Music School.

The photo was taken in 2015 and comes from Wojciech Wilczyk’s project “There’s no Such Thing as an Innocent Eye”.

The synagogue in Sokołów Małopolski was erected around 1904. In the era of the People’s Republic of Poland, it was turned into a community centre. The adaptation was related to the enlargement of the building, reconstruction of the interior and the façade. Today, only an expert will notice the almost blurred division into the main hall on the south-eastern side, with tall windows (originally closed with semicircular arches) and a vestibule with a women’s gallery in the north-western part. The photo was taken in 2015. It inspires a reflection on the Poles’ memory of their former Jewish neighbours. Unlike many other synagogues, the building in Sokołów Małopolski was not demolished. A community centre is also a more proper form of use than e.g. a grain warehouse, as the case was for Krasnosielec in Mazovia. However, there is not even a small plaque with information about the history of the building and the local Jews, who constituted 38% of all inhabitants in 1921, and their extermination in 1942 is one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the city.

An article on the history of Jews in Sokołów Małopolski can be found at: https://sztetl.org.pl/en/towns/s/159-sokolow-malopolski/99-history/138049-history-of-community.

Krzysztof Bielawski