Baroque synagogue from 1763-1771 in Wielowieś, the oldest surviving in Upper Silesia, today a grain store.
The synagogue in Wielowieś, a village near Gliwice, is a brick building erected in 1763-1771 and is regarded as the oldest surviving Jewish house of prayer in Upper Silesia. Today it is not used for prayer, but it remains entered in the heritage register and still stands on ul. Gminna.
The synagogue was built on the site of an older, wooden one, with money from the Jews of Wielowieś who had emigrated abroad. The earliest known trace of the construction is a letter of 1763 in which Salomon Bloch of London wrote to Hirsch Bloch of Wielowieś about the planned undertaking. It was formerly regarded as the most imposing synagogue in eastern Germany.
The block stands on a rectangular plan. In the western part there was a vestibule with a women's gallery, and in the eastern part the main prayer hall. The heritage register defines the style of the monument as Baroque. The post-war rebuilding greatly altered the elevations, but the outlines of bricked-up windows with semicircular heads can still be seen on the walls.
On the night of 9 to 10 November 1938 Nazi stormtroopers vandalised the building and set it on fire, damaging the interior and the roof. The fire was quickly put out, but the synagogue was never again opened for prayer. Jewish symbols were removed and the domed turret was taken down. After the war the building was thoroughly rebuilt as a grain store for the local cooperative. Of the furnishings a parochet from 1783 has survived, and since 1977 it has been in the collections of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw.
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