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The Jewish Museum of London

The Jewish Museum London showcases the social and cultural heritage of the Jewish people. Exhibits explore British Jewish History, religious ceremonial artifacts, art galleries, and beyond. The Holocaust Gallery somberly recalls the tragic events of the Second World War. Much of the collection comes from British born Leon Greenman who lived with his family in the Netherlands at the time. Unable to attain asylum in the UK, his wife Else and son Barney died in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Leon’s archive of photographs keeps their memory alive at the Jewish Museum.

Professor Cecil Roth, Alfred Rubens, and Wilfred Samuel founded The Jewish Museum of London in 1932. The museum’s original location in Woburn House in Bloomsbury later moved in 1994 to an early Victorian-style building in London’s hip Camden Town. The predominantly Jewish East End of London housed the London Museum of Jewish Life starting in 1983. Finally, through fundraising efforts, the two museums merged and opened The Jewish Museum London in 2010 in a former piano factory in Camden Town.

New West End Synagogue

Constructed in 1879 in St. Petersburgh Place, London, the New West End Synagogue represents one of the city’s oldest and most beautiful Jewish temples. It accommodates up to 800 people and Historic England used to describe the edifice as “the architectural high-water mark of Anglo-Jewish architecture”. Indeed, this awe-inspiring, Grade One Listed Building, impresses its visitors instantaneously when they approach a hallway of towering arches supported by golden columns. Circular marble steps then lead to the Torahs’ ark, which sits on a raised platform. Looking above, a circular, ornamented window, lets light in from the heavens. The New West End Synagogue is the perfect “Hidden Gem” to visit while in London as it caters to a all ages and tastes with a expansive range of activities open to the public.

The New West End Synagogue is a work of art thanks to designers George Ashdown Audsley and William James Audsley. In creating the building, the architects drew from their experience in designing Protestant Churches, while incorporating elements of High Victorian Gothic Revival, and integrating Egyptian, Greek, Saracenic, and Hindu architectural styles. Leopold de Rothschild laid the synagogue’s foundation stone on June 7, 1877. Today, the British Orthodox synagogue welcomes visitors and continues to run regular services.

Western Marble Arch

Centrally located on Great Pulteney Street in Westminster, the historical Western Marble Arch (WMA) Synagogue has offered London Jews a house of worship since 1761. The WMA Synagogue sits outside of the city of London, just a short distance from Oxford Street and Hyde Park, in Westminster. Due to its location, tourists often overlook this historical hidden gem. The synagogue represents one of the leading Orthodox Jewish temples hosting religious services, community service efforts, holiday events, bar and bat mitzvahs, and weddings.

Originally named The Western Synagogue, the temple stands out as one of the first Ashkenazi synagogues in all of England. The pioneering congregation also became the first to lead sermons in English. Prior to the Second World War, London Jews could pray at the city’s Great Synagogue. However, German air strikes destroyed the building during WWII. In 1957, the Jewish community built the March Arch Synagogue as its replacement. The two great synagogues of central London, the Western Synagogue and the Marble Arch Synagogue, decided to merge in 1991 to unify the community. Today, congregates affectionately refer to the Western Marble Arch Synagogue as “Marble Arch”

The Imperial War Museums

The Imperial War Museums (IWM) consists of five museums throughout the UK, three of which are in London. Founded during WWI, the London Imperial War Museum preserves history by retelling stories of British wars through those who experienced them. Exhibits feature vast collections of artifacts and stories of those impacted by war including those of the Second World War and Holocaust. This museum also features impressive award-winning galleries that are able to move, inspire, and transform its viewers.

In the wake of WWI, Britain’s War Cabinet authorized the creation of a national war museum to document the experiences still occurring in Europe and Britain during the Great War. At the breakout of World War II in 1939, the Imperial War Museum continued its efforts even in the midst of the London bombings, during which curators had to evacuate vulnerable items from the city. That same year in 1939, Great Britain took in close to 50,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, many of them children who left their families behind. Today, the museum’s Kindertransport exhibit displays possessions like suitcases, prayer books, dolls, and magazines brought by the children who escaped Europe as well as other artifacts from that tragic period of history.

The Freud Museum

Situated in Sigmund Freud’s former family residence in Hampstead, London, the Freud Museum houses a collection of personal items, antiques, documents, and even the iconic chair owned by the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Exhibits reveal Freud’s pathway toward developing psychoanalysis, considered the predecessor to modern psychology. By far, the most famous attraction within the museum is Freud’s psychoanalytic couch where all his patients once reclined. Visitors will also notice many fine Oriental rugs including styles such, Heriz and Tabriz covering the floors and tables, which is a unique design choice one has to see to truly feel Freud’s presence.

Considered the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud came from a family of Jewish wool merchants originally from Freiberg, Moravia (present-day Příbor, Czech Republic). Freud spent most of his life in Vienna where he studied, started a family, and explored the motivations behind human behavior. Although not a religious man himself, Freud couldn’t ignore the growing Anti-Semitism in Europe and the advancement of the Nazi regime. Freud and his family arrived in London as refugees fleeing Austria in 1938, narrowly escaping Nazi persecution. The museum served as Freud’s former residence where he lived with his family until the death of his daughter, Anna, in 1982.

Ben Uri Gallery and Museum

Ben Uri Gallery and Museum was founded over a hundred years ago in 1915 in the Jewish ghetto of Whitechapel in the East End of London by an immigrant Russian artist, Lazar Berson, who came to London in 1914 from Paris where he shared an apartment with fellow Lithuanian artist Jacques Lipchitz. The museum is a registered charity and the only specialist art institution in Europe addressing universal and ever-more central issues of identity and migration through the visual arts.

Our collection principally reflects the work, lives and contribution of British and European artists of Jewish descent, now extensively interpreted within the wider context of twentieth and twenty-first century art history, politics and society.

From our inception as an art society in Whitechapel in 1915, to our current status as a museum with an international reach, the collection has grown to more than 1300 works across 30 different mediums. Made up of both historical and contemporary works, the Ben Uri collection includes master works by seminal artists including Auerbach, Bomberg, Chagall, Epstein, Gertler, Grosz, Herman, Levy, Liebermann, Soutine and Wolmark. It spans 120 years and includes 380 artists from 35 countries, of which 67% are émigrés and 27% women. More about our history can be accessed from our 100+ year timeline, online gallery and archives.

Bevis Marks Synagogue

The Bevis Marks Synagogue sits in a hidden courtyard, and guests cross through a stone archway as they first arrive. When a visitor enters this historically important synagogue they see, “Holy Congregation The Gates of Heaven” carved above the entrance. The historical two-story temple evokes an angelic atmosphere with wooden pews and golden candlelit chandeliers hanging from its high ceilings. As one of the oldest active temples in Europe, the Bevis Marks Synagogue has stood the test of time, serving as a house of worship for over 300 years. The synagogue welcomes visitors to view this historic building during visiting hours, or to go on a guided tour. Worshipers can also come for Shabbat and other Jewish holidays.

For centuries, Britain banned Jews from living within its kingdom. However, by 1656, new petitions to the government proved successful, and Jews could finally immigrate to England and practice Judaism openly. Following the new immigration laws, a new Jewish community began to flourish in London, mostly made up of Southern and Eastern Europeans. Sephardic Jews thrived in London during this era, working as doctors, jewelers, engravers, confectioners, and street vendors. In 1701, the Sephardim built the impressive Bevis Marks Synagogue which still remains the longest continuously operating Jewish temple in Europe.

Hyde Park Holocaust Memorial

The Hyde Park Holocaust Memorial represents Britain’s first testimonial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The Board of British Jews paid for its construction in 1983. Richard Seifert, Mark Badger, and Derek Lovejoy and Partners designed the monument which consists of a garden of boulders in raked gravel shaded by white-stemmed birch trees. The memorial sits east of The Dell just past the dam. Observers will notice an inscription from the Book of Lamentations on the largest stone which reads: “For these, I weep. Streams of tears flow from my eyes because of the destruction of my people.”

Hyde Park houses Britain’s first memorial in honor of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Thirty eight years after the end of the Second World War in 1983, the Board of Deputies of British Jews organized the design and construction of Britain’s first Holocaust memorial. It serves as a sobering reminder to pass the memory of the 6 million lives lost on to the next generation. On Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) 2018 over 1,200 people gathered at the memorial to mourn the lives lost, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the 73rd anniversary of the British Army’s liberation of Bergen-Belsen. Some of the key attendees on this significant day included not only the survivors of the atrocity, but also Israeli Ambassador, Mark Regev, and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.

Photo attribution: Mx. Granger, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Portuguese Synagogue of Amsterdam

The Portuguese Synagogue also known as the Esnoga or Snoge, is a 17th-century Sephardic synagogue in Amsterdam. Esnoga is the Ladino word for synagogue. The Amsterdam Sephardic community was one of the largest and richest in Europe during the Dutch Golden Age, and their very large synagogue reflected this. The description in a speech in January 2012 by Israeli Prime-Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “one the most beautiful synagogues I have ever seen” reflects a very common view, and the synagogue is a popular tourist attraction.

The Jews were expelled en masse from Spain in 1492 by the Alhambra decree. Many who fled to Portugal were forced to convert to Catholicism in 1496, while the other Jews were expelled from Portugal in 1497. For hundreds of years, the Inquisition continued to investigate the converts and their descendants on suspicions that in secret they still practiced Judaism.Some of those who wished to enjoy a freedom of religion found refuge in Amsterdam. During a substantial migration that took place in the 17th century, these Jewish refugees from the Iberian peninsula called themselves Portuguese Jews to avoid being identified with Spain, which was at war with the Dutch Republic at the time.

Photo Attribution:
Johnbod, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Willem Nabuurs, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

The Dutch Resistance Museum

The Dutch Resistance Museum (Dutch: Verzetsmuseum) is located in Amsterdam.The Dutch Resistance Museum, chosen as the best historical museum of the Netherlands, tells the story of the Dutch people in World War II. From 14 May 1940 to 5 May 1945, the Netherlands were occupied by Nazi Germany.Permanent exhibit of the museum recreates the atmosphere of the streets of Amsterdam during the German occupation of the WWII. Big photographs, old posters, objects, films and sounds from that horrible time, help to recreate the scene. The background of the Holocaust is visualized to the visitor. This is an exhibition about the everyday life during that time, but also about exceptional historical events, resistance of the population against the Nazis and heroism.

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