The Space of Synagogues, Lviv/Ukraine

After winning the international competition in 2010 and several years of planning, the realisation of the first construction phase of the memorial site began in 2015. In autumn 2016, the section on the site of the ‘Golden Rose’ synagogue and the former Beth Hamidrash (Torah school) was completed.

A flat wooden walkway is placed in front of the surviving foundation walls of the ‘Golden Rose’. This traces the contours of the destroyed women's gallery and offers a view and an appreciative distance to the preserved ruins, which have been conserved as a listed building. In the area of the Beth Hamidrash Torah School, the outline of the building was traced by a bright white concrete wall and designed as a green and lively space. The space between the two former buildings will become an exhibition and information centre. Together with designer Sophie Jahnke, an installation consisting of natural stone panels was developed based on the competition idea of ‘history to be continued’. These are part of an atmospheric and emotional experience of Lviv's Jewish history. Quotes and images from the town's history, selected together with the Jewish community and local historians, are displayed in chronological order. The partial destruction of the stones due to weathering and their dense or fragmented positioning are an abstraction of the living, tragic history and the almost vanished presence of the Jewish community in Lviv.