By DPA
Berlin : Germany’s largest synagogue has reopened in Berlin after being comprehensively renovated over the past year at a cost of some 5 million euros ($7 million).
The Ryke Street synagogue in central Berlin, which was thrown open to visitors Friday, suffered serious damage in the Nov 9, 1938 pogrom called the Night of Broken Glass but was not burned down, apparently because the Nazis feared that would cause damage to the surrounding buildings.
Built in 1904 in the neo-Romanesque style, the synagogue was home primarily to Berlin’s orthodox Jews, even though most Jews at that time in the German capital belonged to reform synagogues.
Wrecked during the pogrom, its congregation largely shipped to concentration camps and the building was put to purposes other than religious.
When Berlin was partitioned after World War II, the synagogue was in the Russian control eastern sector of the city, which later became the capital of communist East Germany.
After the end of the war in 1945, Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe were for a time housed there, and the synagogue later became home to the East Berlin Jewish community.
Over the years after 1967, it was gradually renovated, and the most recent works have seen the restoration of the coloured-glass interior. The synagogue can accommodate some 1,200 worshippers.
A new cultural centre will formally open Sunday in the western part of Berlin for the Chabad-Lubavitch branch of orthodox Jews.
A feature of the centre is a 30-metre replica of part of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, built with stone from around the city.