Center judovske kulturne dediščine Sinagoga Maribor

The synagogue is situated in the heart of the former Jewish quarter near the south-east corner of the medieval town walls above the Drava River. The synagogue's earliest appearance and date are unknown; it originates most likely from the end of the 13th century, but it was only first mentioned in 1354. It was remodelled twice: before 1400 and around 1450. After the expulsion of the Jews from Styria and Maribor in 1497 the synagogue was converted into a Church of All Saints in 1501. The building functioned as a church until the late 18th century. In the early 19th century it was sold and turned into a storehouse. The building was then divided horizontally into two parts. Eventually, the upper part was used as a dwelling. During the early 1980s the lower floor was used for exhibitions.

The renovation interventions started in the 1990s. It was not easy to decide which of the last 3 initial phases to reconstruct. Most material finds (besides key-stones also parts of ribs, consoles and portals) date from the last synagogue phase (the mid-15th century). A reconstruction of the late Gothic two-bay sanctuary was therefore made, following the indications of the assembled material. It was opened to the public in 2001.

The Maribor Synagogue was run by the Maribor Regional Museum till 2011, when an independent body, the Center of Jewish Cultural Heritage Synagogue Maribor, was established as its legal operating base.

One of the most important duties or paramount tasks of the Maribor Synagogue is to present the interesting and rich Jewish cultural tradition to the public, and in that way stimulate the perception and knowledge of different cultures and the aspiration for a more tolerant society. The long-term goal is to establish a Slovene Jewish Heritage Centre at the site.

The Center of Jewish Cultural Heritage Synagogue Maribor was established to provide a public service in the field of collecting, preserving, documenting, studying, interpreting, managing and exhibiting the Jewish cultural heritage in the territory of the Municipality of Maribor and Republic of Slovenia and beyond, and to inform about it, with the aim of developing awareness of the Jewish cultural heritage, disseminating knowledge about its values and promoting enjoyment of it. Synagogue Maribor has become a centre for studys, documentation, and research into Judaism, Antisemitism and the Holocaust. It organises cultural, scientific and other public events and carries out research projects. In cooperation with numerous domestic and foreign experts and institutions, a significant part of the programme content is dedicated primarily to the history of the Holocaust and antisemitism.

The Maribor Synagogue has a small library containing resources on Jewish history, mainly books, as well as publications of the Maribor Synagogue.

The history of the Slovenian righteous is researched and remembered by the Maribor Synagogue as part of the project "Shoah - Let Us Remember"; the Maribor Synagogue is also involved in the following projects: "Stolpersteine" project, "Stone Tears" project, "The Crocus Project," "Never Forget" project, etc.).

The vast majority of the research-related video material is publicly available on Maribor Synagogue YT channel (https://www.youtube.com/@sinagoga.maribor/featured), including a documentary - a biographical film about Klara Kukovec, née Doctor (1883, Herson-1979, Maribor), produced by the Maribor Synagogue in 2014 (available at https://vimeo.com/355693952 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daRWEYHWcIc) and an interview with Erika Fürst (1931, Murska Sobota) entitled "Letters to Erika" (Pisma Eriki), produced by the Maribor Synagogue in 2018 (available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJIXpPYukEs).

The website of the Maribor Synagogue also contains a rich digital archive with freely accessible book publications and school materials, exhibition catalogs, e.g. Marpurgi: Between History and Artistic Freedom (Maribor: Sinagoga Maribor, Mariborska knjižnica, 2020) by Klemen Brvar and Boris Hajdinjak; and "Here is where death worked itself to death...": Slovenian Victims of Auschwitz (Sinagoga Maribor, 2020) by Boris Hajdinjak (all publications are available at https://www.sinagogamaribor.si/en/dediscina-sinagoga/publications-and-other-materials/).

In connection with the genocide of the Roma and Sinti, the Maribor Synagogue cooperates on several occasions with the Roma Association of Slovenia, the Institute for Romological Studies, Education and Culture (IRŠIK) and various Roma associations in Slovenia. Also in 2018, the Maribor Synagogue and the National Education Institute Slovenia organized a seminar for educators (Maribor Synagogue, 13 April 2018) entitled “Roma and the Roma Community in Slovenia and Croatia in the 20th and Early 21st Centuries.” The seminar was organized as part of the 2018 "Stone Tears" project and was supported by the Municipality of Maribor (abstracts and PowerPoint presentations can be found at https://www.sinagogamaribor.si/dediscina-sinagoga/genocid-nad-romi/). For the history of Slovenian Roma in Auschwitz in particular, see the lecture by Boris Hajdinjak (at http://sinagoga.websmash.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Hajdinjak-B.-Slovenski-Romi-v-Auschwitzu-13.-IV.-2018.pdf.

Sinagoga Maribor has also published a video: “Branje imen romskih žrtev nacističnega preganjanja, Alenka Janko Spreizer, 2021,” reading of the names of [Slovenian] Roma victims of Nazi persecution by Alenka Janko Spreizer (posted on YT by Sinagoga Maribor, 8. apr. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hmm-GJ0JgI). Another publication on the Roma in Slovenia with a brief historical overview and on the genocide of the Slovenian Roma and Sinti was published. It contains the list of Roma who were transported from the Novo mesto area on December 2, 1943, containing data taken from the edited volume entitled Auschwitz-Birkenau (Oswiecim-Brzezinka), published in 1982, and supplemented with data from the records of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. The publication is entitled Romi v gibanju / Roma on the Move and was published on the occasion of the exhibition “Roma on the Move” (Sinagoga Maribor, 5. 11. 2013-15. 3. 2014), a supplement to the Slovenian-English version of the original exhibition entitled "Roma in Bewegung," which was conceived by the Academy in Graz and the Roma Service in 2008 as part of the ROMALE!08 festival. The original exhibition was supplemented with data on the history of the Roma in Slovenia, their fate during the Second World War and their position in Slovenian society today. The publication Romi v gibanju / Roma on the Move was published by the Sinagoga Maribor in 2013 (available at https://www.dlib.si/details/URN:NBN:SI:DOC-GZSTOZ4P/?euapi=1&query=%27keywords%3Dromi+v+gibanju%27&pageSize=25).