Press Releases

RESTORATION & RENOVATION 2002 FEATURES SPECIAL "ANNIHILATED HERITAGE" EXHIBIT FROM POLAND

NORTH READING, MASSACHUSETTS, March 14, 2002---Restore Media, LLC, organizers of next week's Restoration & Renovation Exhibition and Conference in Boston, today announced an important, last-minute addition to the program of events for the show that runs next week (March 21-23) at the Hynes Convention Center. In the exhibition hall, visitors to Restoration & Renovation will be able to view "Annihilated Heritage," a special exhibit on the lost wooden synagogues of Poland, which were destroyed during the Nazi occupation. The exhibit, organized by the Association of Conservators of Historic Monuments in Poland, has been made available through the gracious support of two private citizens, Dr. Paul and Mrs. Genette Micale of Newport News, Virginia--in honor of their friend, Samuel Althaus, a survivor of the Ausschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau concentration camps.

Gallery talks about the exhibit and its significance in documenting the loss of an important aspect of Polish and European cultural history will be given by Marek Baranski, a member of the Association of Conservators of Historic Monuments. The gallery talk will take place Thursday, March 21 at 2 PM and Friday/Saturday, March 22 and 23 at 3 PM at the exhibit in booth 121.
Wooden, timberframe synagogues, which had been constructed since the XIV century by Jews who settled in Poland, were an interesting component of the architecture of many towns and villages. With their high roofs and unique profile, they were a conspicuous element of the landscape. Their architectural detail was often inventive and connected with local tradition. These synagogues, which were a characteristic element of the architecture in towns and villages across central Europe, especially in Poland and Lithuania, fulfilled an important social and religious role in the lives of Jewish communities. Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries in the areas now known as Poland, Belarussia, Ukraine and Lithuania, more than 180 valuable and historically significant wooden synagogues were constructed. Their interiors were often richly decorated with polychrome depictions. None of them survived the Nazi occupation.

Visitors to Restoration & Renovation will have the opportunity to view unique archival documentation - including rare photographs and scaled architectural drawings made between the First and Second World Wars by the Department of Polish Architecture of the Polytechnic Institute in Warsaw.

Under the leadership of architect and conservator, Dominik Maczynski, an effort has been launched to raise the necessary funds to reconstruct the synagogue of Zabludow. The rebuilt synagogue will also serve as a museum to house documentation, historic photographs, and architectural inventories of the world's lost wooden synagogues and the cultural heritage they represent.

Restoration & Renovation is the only trade exhibition and conference in North America dedicated to the restoration of the built environment and to historically inspired new construction. Further information is available at www.restorationandrenovation.com. On-site registration hours at the Hynes Convention Center are March 21-22, 7 AM- 6PM and March 23, 7 AM to 5 PM; exhibit hours are March 21-23, 11 AM to 6 PM.