In Search of Recent History, Reeder Works to Uncover Eastern Europe’s Largest Synagogue

A team including Bayer School Dean Dr. Philip Reeder is working with history only 55 years old as it explores what once was the largest synagogue in Eastern Europe—on the heels of discovering a church floor in Nazareth believed to date to the 4^th century.

The Great Synagogue in Vilnius, Lithuania, now a primarily Catholic capital city once called the “Jerusalem of Lithuania,” has ties to the Holocaust and the Soviet era.

Reeder, as a member of the team led by the University of Hartford, spent a week at the site to prepare for future excavations. The researchers are creating plans of sub-surface locations of the remains of the Great Synagogue. They find themselves piecing together information about the structures, damaged in the Nazi era and demolished only in 1957, during the Soviet era.

Surprisingly, little is known about the complex. The juxtaposition of the team’s recent archaeological work of the ancient church with this work on a more recent structure, Reeder said, illustrates how quickly history can be lost. “We’re talking about what has left people’s minds in only 50-some years,” said Reeder, director of mapping on both projects. “We are trying to not let this important piece of history slip into oblivion.”

Housing and a school now sit on top of the site believed to hold the Great Synagogue, which once accommodated thousands. The synagogue reached its apex during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, when Jews comprised up to 40 percent of the population of Vilnius. Plans from 1893-1898 show a complex with 12 institutions and indicate a 30-by-120 bathhouse area, including a pool for rituals. Using geophysical analysis, the team located the front portion plus the back of the synagogue and its bathhouse.

“The bathhouse was built below ground level,” said Reeder, “so we theorize that some artifacts may have survived demolition.”

Ground-penetrating radar is helping the team determine where these structures might be. Reeder will develop diagrams that combine existing maps so that information can be visualized in a different way. Already, team members plan to return next year to help locate unidentified mass graves believed to hold the remains of 70,000 Jews and other Lithuanians murdered by Nazis in the nearby Paneriai forest.

In June, this team discovered a mosaic floor in Nazareth that appears to be from one of the earliest churches in the history of Christianity, a shrine where tradition holds the Angel Gabriel foretold the birth of Jesus to Mary. Reeder and the team will return to Nazareth in early August to document and complete the excavation.