In
fact, a number of synagogues were returned, although in
almost every case the Jews had to overcome serious obstacles
in order to obtain them. In Minsk as early as December 1944,
a group of religious Jews requested hat they be given one
of the five surviving synagogue buildings. However, it took
two years before they succeeded in receiving for their prayers
two rooms (with a total area of 60 sq. m.) in the former
synagogue building on Nemiga St. In another city in Belorussia,
Bobruisk, religious Jews fought for three years for the
opening of a synagogue. They collected the huge amount of
100,000 rubles to repair it. Finally, in August 1948 the
government allowed the synagogue to be opened – only
to finally close it two months later. A three-year struggle
of the Tashkent Jewish community to regain the former Ashkenazi
synagogue on Twelve Poplars Street ended in vain in 1949.
In
1944 the Kiev synagogue on Shchekavitskaya St. began functioning
de facto and was officially registered the following year.
At that time 3,000 Jews attended holiday services there.
In 1948 repairs were completed on the synagogue, with funds
collected from Kiev Jews. Overall, between January 1946
and January 1948 the number of functioning synagogues in
the USSR increased from 75 to 181.
The
return of the synagogue signified not only the possibility
of worshipping freely. In the eyes of Soviet Jews this was
also a kind of compensation for Jewish blood shed and for
the innumerable sufferings which they had experienced during
the War. Thus, it is hardly surprising that often only slightly
religious and even totally non-religious Jews (including
government administrators, scientists, and military personnel)
took part in the fight for the recovery of synagogues and,
when these had been recovered, contributed money for their
renovation and attempted to make them centers of Jewish
public life and mutual aid. This most often occurred on
the territories that had been annexed to the USSR on the
eve of the war.
In
September 1944, the Ugol’naya St. Synagogue was returned
to the Jews of Lvov. From that time, this synagogue was
a center for aid to Jews returning to the city, to veterans,
and to orphans, and also a shelter for Jews who were being
repatriated, either legally or illegally, via Lvov to Poland
and, from there, to Erets Yisrael. A large part of the aid
that was distributed reached the community in the form of
packages from the JDC. The revival of the Lvov Jewish religious
community took place in just liberated territory, where
Ukrainian partisans were still fighting Soviet rule. The
local population was extremely hostile to Jews. A document
of June 14, 1945 deals with an investigation by the security
service of the department of internal affairs of an anonymous
complaint: in the basement of the Lvov synagogue Jews were,
allegedly, hiding the corpses of Christian children who
had been murdered for ritual purposes. The document concluded:
After a careful search of the building no human corpses
were discovered, in the apartment, the hall of the synagogue,
or in the basement or the plumbing pipes. In a shed we discovered
a large quantity of chicken feathers and drops of blood
from slaughtered chickens. The present report determines
that no evidence was found in the synagogue indicating the
murder of children.
The
authorities were not willing to transform synagogues into
Jewish community centers and Lev Serebryannyi, the chairman
of the Lvov Jewish community, was arrested in March 1947
for attempting to achieve such a goal. The synagogue, however,
did continue to function until 1962.
In late 1948 the authorities again began to reduce the number
of synagogues. According to data from the CARC, as of August
1, 1949, in 11 provinces of Ukraine (out of 24) there were
33 synagogues and prayer houses, 9 of which were owned by
the community or individuals while the others were the property
either of the state (24) or of the municipality (3). Some
of these synagogues (e.g. in Vinnitsa and Kharkov) had already
begun to be closed by the authorities at this time.
Officially
registered synagogues in the USSR in 1952.
According
to a report prepared by representatives of the CARC, in
the USSR in 1952 there were a total of 133 synagogues and
prayers houses including: 40 in Ukraine, 29 – in the
Russian Federation (including the Crimea), 25 – in
Georgia, and 11 – in Moldavia. Ten population centers
had two or more synagogues: Riga, Baku, the city of Sachkheri
and the village of Bandza (both in Georgia ) had two, while
Tbilisi, Kutaisi, Moscow, Tashkent, and Chernovtsy had three,
and the Georgian village of Kulashi even had four. For the
most part, the synagogues and prayer houses were state or
municipal property. Individuals (or in one or two cases
- religious communities) usually owned small wooden or clay-covered
structures. Only half of all the synagogues were located
in brick (brick-covered or stone) buildings with at least
100 square meters usable space. The report noted that twenty
five synagogues had been recently established, the remaining
ones were described as having been functioning for years.
A further nine synagogues were listed in the report as having
been recently closed.
The state’s tendency to close synagogues, which was
manifested in the last years of Stalin’s rule, continued
under Khrushchev as well. It received legal justification
with the government resolution of February 17, 1955 “On
changing the procedure for opening prayer houses of religious
cults.”
The
largest wave of synagogue closings took place between 1959
and 1964. According to information from the head of the
CARC, in 1964 only 14 synagogues remained open in the provinces
of Ukraine: 2 – in Vinnitsa, 1 – in Dnepropetrovsk,
3 – in Zakarpatskaya, 1 – in Odessa, 1 –
in Crimea, 1 – in Khmelnitskii, and 1 - in Chernovtsy;
furthermore, some of these were obviously prayer houses
located in dilapidated premises. In the Russian hinterland
the condition of synagogue buildings was no better. For
example, in Astrakhan the Sephardi synagogue posed a danger
to potential worshippers.
The
situation was worse in Belorussia. The Moscow Jewish activist
Semen Yantovsky, who in the early 1980s visited many synagogues
and prayer houses in the Soviet Union, wrote the following
summation of his visit to Belorussia:
… in not a single town of Belorussia is there a building
of a real synagogue in the true meaning of the word. Although
old synagogue buildings still exist in many towns…
they are not being used as originally intended. Actual functioning
synagogues, prayer houses or minyanim literally huddle in
simple huts. Only in Minsk is there a prayer house located
on the first floor of a two-storey wooden house.
…
The interiors of the prayer houses are even worse than their
exteriors… Everything indicates total negligence of
the place where worship is held. Both the exteriors and
the interiors can only evoke a feeling of wrenching sorrow.
… I shall not discuss the question of the number of
worshippers, hardly anywhere can one get a minyan for prayers.
Nowhere did I see any children or young people. This indicates
the extreme repression and poverty of life, of religious
life, and leaves one with a very sad impression after a
visit to Jewish communities in Belorussia.
By 1983, there remained in the USSR not more than one hundred
and perhaps only fifty synagogues, approximately one third
of which were located in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
The authorities intentionally introduced an element of confusion
in official publications and statements about the number
of synagogues by mixing real synagogues with private and
rented premises for prayer.
During this period synagogue life was under constant surveillance
of representatives of the CARC and of the MVD-KGB, to which
reports were made about every contact between worshippers
and foreigners, every demonstration of solidarity with Israel,
every activity connected with emigration, etc. It is, thus,
hardly surprising that anyone who valued his position in
Soviet society avoided going to synagogue. The Moscow Jewish
activist Yasha Kazakov recalled:
On almost every festival you can hear a Jewish father begging
his son: “Please, do not go to the synagogue. What
are you looking for there? You do not even know how to pray.
Don’t go. In any case, you will not change the situation
but you will cause trouble for yourself at work, at university!”…
In the 1970s and 1980s, with the growth of the movement
of Soviet Jews to make aliya, in Moscow and Leningrad, on
major holidays, especially Simhat Torah, thousands of Jews
began to come to synagogue. At this time the synagogue building
was the only place where large numbers of Jews were occasionally
allowed to gather. However, these mass manifestations of
revived national consciousness were only an external sign
of increasing non-official Jewish activity. The latter,
even in its religious component, could no longer be contained
within officially permitted frameworks and, therefore, took
place outside the walls of the synagogue.