Remnants of the Golden Rose

It's been a packed 48 hours. Unfortunately, I only have energy for a short post.

We had an amazing day in L'viv yesterday, made possible in part by the wonderful people at the Swiss Hotel L'viv.  Not only were they able to accommodate two desparate women in need of a room, but they also worked with us on a number of other fronts.  We were able to leave our bags there all day, we received the 20% discount on dinner for a second night running and we had the opportunity to stay in the lounge until we had to leave for our train.  More importantly, they arranged for us to take a really meaningful tour of L'viv and they arranged for a cab to pick us up and take us to the train station.  I cannot offer sufficient praise for these people.

Breakfast was bountiful, as it tends to be on this side of the Atlantic.

Fortified, we made our way out to the city center for an exploration of Staroyevreiska Street.

We took a left turn and found a little book store displaying a map of the city center and a map of the Ukraine (as well as books, of course).  Unfortunately, their credit card terminal wasn't functioning and I forgot I had Ukrainian cash in my wallet.

We then decided to head down to the opposite end of the street.  We were looking for traces of Jewish life in the city center.  One of the things the old Interwebs put us on to was missing mezuzahs (a piece of parchment [contained in a decorative case] inscribed with specified Hebrew verses from the Torah [Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21]).  Lookey, lookey what we found:

You should look in the upper third of the photo above for a long hole pointed up on the left on the right hand side of the doorpost, like so:

We saw some other doorposts which were a little more ambiguous.

We later learned from our afternoon tour guide (the subject of another post) that there are a lot of empty spaces where Jewish life was once present in L'viv.

We had made up a list of the places we wanted to see in L'viv, and were hopeful that between our own explorations and the tour we planned to take in the afternoon, we might succeed in finding them.  One of the most important places we hoped to find was the site of the Golden Rose Synagogue ('Di Goldene Royz').  This synagogue was built in 1582 and was confiscated by the Jesuits.  The Jewish community was forced to pay a ransom in order to regain the synagogue.  Our afternoon guide later told us the story of  a rabbi's daughter-in-law who had negotiated the return, Rosa bat Ya'akov.  The synagogue was named the Golden Rose Synagogue in her honor.

The synagogue was desecrated in 1941, and destroyed by the Nazis in 1943.

There's some controversy about the site.  It was named a World Heritage site in 1998, but L'viv city planners had allowed developers to propose building a hotel.  After an article published in the Guardian brought the issue to world attention, the city fathers put a halt to the hotel development and commenced with a long-delayed Holocaust memorial.

Among the concerns expressed were that the hotel developer would endanger the ritual bath  and other Jewish artifacts, as well as possibly the remaining outer walls of the synagogue itself.  Here's what we saw:

The plans for the Holocaust memorial were displayed on the walls of the Golden Rose Restaurant next to the site.

While a Holocaust Memorial is important for L'viv, international pressure would be useful to make sure the project continues.  This image did not inspire optimism.

One lone soul can only get so far.