Vizhnitzer Kloiz Synagogue, Sighetu Marmației

The synagogue stands at Strada Basarabiei 10 in Sighetu Marmației. Its name comes from the Hasidic movement of Vizhnitz (Vijnița) in Bukovina, which was dominant among the Jews of Sighet in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was built by the "Sephardic congregation", a community of Ashkenazi Jews who used the prayer rite known as "Sefard" and who had broken away in 1887 from the court of Sighet's chief rabbi, of the Teitelbaum family. After a first temple built in 1885-1886 (demolished in 1970), the congregation built the present temple nearby between 1896 and 1902, with the support of the Kahana-Heller family of rabbis and businessmen, and inaugurated it in 1902. The synagogue was damaged in the First World War and repaired in 1936. During the Second World War it was used as a store for linen and feathers, and its rabbi, Dr Samuel Danzig, died at Auschwitz. After the Jews of Sighet were deported to Auschwitz on 16-21 May 1944, the synagogue was broken into and looted; most of the town's roughly 10,000 Jews perished. It was renovated in 1950, 1970 and 1981 and restored in 2002-2004 with the help of donors including Louis Kahan of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a descendant of the Kahana-Heller family. Elie Wiesel lived near it as a child. The building, set on the street line, is eclectic in style, with neo-Baroque, neo-Moorish and neo-Romanesque elements. The peach-coloured brick façade, with white mouldings and red tiles on its two small side towers, is crowned by the Tablets of the Law, and above the entrance is a Hebrew inscription from Genesis 28:17: "This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." The interior is painted in yellow, blue, white and red; the women's galleries rest on slender metal columns, and the bimah and the Torah ark stand on the same platform. The white ark has columns with Corinthian capitals and gilded details. The synagogue is a historic monument (LMI code MM-II-m-B-04673). Information on visits is available from the Jewish Community of Sighet, whose offices are in the neighbouring building at Strada Basarabiei 8.