Obj. ID: 22458
Jewish Architecture  Gamarski’s Kloyz in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania

The kloyz was built by Simon and Hadassah Gamarski ca. 1860; at the turn of the 20th century its gabbai was Leib Gamarski. A large group of Torah students (among them historian Ben-Zion Dinur) were accommodated in the kloyz and received assistance from the congregation. There were 90 regular worshippers in 1916 and 109 in 1935; the kloyz owned the premises on the ground floor of the building.

According to the description by Avraham Nisan Yaffe in 1941/42, “the kloyz is high and spacious and has a women’s section. It is beautifully painted; all music instruments mentioned in the Hallelujah chapter [Ps. 150] are deppicted on one of the walls.” By 1942 the Torah ark was still preserved there.

(From Vladimir Levin, “Synagogues, Batei Midrash and Kloyzn in Vilnius,” inSynagogues in Lithuania. A Catalogue, ed. Aliza Cohen-Mushlin et al., vol. 2 (Vilnius: Vilnius Academy of Arts Press, 2012), p. 334).