Miskolc

Ludwig Förster, the architect of the Dohány Street Synagogue began constructing the Miskolc temple in what is today the Kazinczy street in 1861, just two years after the finishing his famous work in Pest. Förster, the Viennese celebrity architect, planned the exterior of the synagogue to be substantially different from that of the Dohány Street Synagogue, the interior design however follows the same oriental style. Cast iron structure, the most advanced construction technique of the time was used to ensure the buoyancy of the interior similarly to the great synagogue of the capital. Whereas the iron holders of the great Pest temple were covered with pressed paper (today plastic), those of the Miskolc synagogue stand naked giving the interior a simplistic and modern look. Walls are decorated in oriental style, the octagonal and ribbon motifs and carpet-like patterns were thought to be the appropriate style of ornamentation in nineteenth century synagogue architecture. According to the then modern practice of interior arrangement of synagogues, the Torah Ark and the Bimah were placed in front of the benches. A monumental dome towers above the Torah Ark, the construction however was built on an elevated platform following the traditional practice and referring to words of the Psalm “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord”. In 1864, as an act of compromise towards conservative members of the community, the Bimah was moved to its traditional location in the center of the building. The curtain covering the Torah Ark was made to remember the thousands of Miskolc Jews who were deported to and killed in Auschwitz. Much of the community once counting some 10,000 members perished in the Holocaust. The building of the synagogue is still in the hands and use of the Jewish community. Another synagogue was built in the early twentieth century in Miskolc. Only photographic depictions remain of that building as it was demolished in the early 1960s.