Breslau - 96 Hohenzollernstrasse, Synagogue at the Israelite Hospital

Summary: Fifty years after the opening of Frankel’s Jewish Hospital in Breslau in 1847, the Jewish community commenced plans for a new Jewish hospital, designed to improve the medical care of Breslau’s Jews. On April 4, 1903, the Israelite Hospital was opened at 96 Hohenzollernstrasse. As a Jewish institution, the hospital’s administrative building housed a prayer room. Morning and evening prayer services were held there daily, and a chazzan served the congregation. Patients, as well as non-patients from the southern part of the city, attended services at the Israelite Hospital. The prayer room, a simple rectangular structure whose decorative style could be described as modernized medieval, contained three windows along the wall of the Torah Ark, as well as pairs of thin columns. Men and women sat separately. The room was not vandalized on Pogrom Night, November 1938, but was destroyed by attackers the next year. Prayer services continued until 1939, but were restricted to patients and staff. At the end of August 1939, the hospital was confiscated and appropriated for military purposes. Members of the German army entered the Jewish hospital and destroyed the prayer room, its furniture and the Torah Ark. Today, the building houses the hospital of the Polish State Railway.

Author / Sources: Heidemarie Wawrzyn
Sources: AH, EJL, FJG, JWD, KRN, LBIYB41, LBIYB4, SE, VKD