Andrea Strongwater is an author and artist whose artwork has been shown worldwide, including in the collections of the University Medical Center of Princeton, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum in Ithaca, New York, the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, Or Hadash Synagogue in Atlanta, and the Georges Cziffra Foundation in Senlis, France. Some of her paintings have been sold, and their images have also been sold as prints, postcards, and notecards at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, the Shoah Memorial in Paris, and to private collectors. The forerunner to her recently published book Lost Synagogues of Europe: Paintings and Histories (JPS, 2025) is her award-winning children’s book Where We Once Gathered: Lost Synagogues of Europe.

What was European Jewish life like before it was smashed? How did these Jewish people fit into society over time? What did they do for a living? What country did they live in when today two Jewish people whose families are from the same town say they are from different countries? So many questions to answer but most of the evidence is gone, hidden, or destroyed by the catastrophe which aimed to rid Europe of all its Jews. Lost Synagogues of Europe is a series of paintings describing the richness, depth, and beauty of European Jewish culture that existed before the Holocaust and is my attempt to provide answers to some of these questions.

The horror of the Nazi rampage is something I feel too deeply. It’s impossible to do anything but sob when seeing and hearing all the details and counting all the people who were murdered in the Holocaust. I wanted to find a way to tell the story of European Jewish daily life with enough distance from the pain to make it understandable. So I started with something I love: buildings. How and by who they are designed, how they are put together, how they work or don’t work, and how they are changed over time. For me buildings have a life, and I realized they could be the vehicle through which to tell this story. Plus, as a painter they are very interesting subjects.

This book began as a painting project.  At first, I painted lost buildings using postcards taken in the late 1800s as reference material. The postcards are blurry, black-and-white images that are hard to understand. I boosted them with colors consistent with the materials they were made of to make the images inviting and approachable. The Deanie and Jay Stein Museum Shop of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum was interested in making postcards of my paintings since their audience often asked about the buildings. I love the idea of keeping images of these structures alive as paintings and postcards that can be kept over many lifetimes. But what is the story behind each one? As I painted, I began researching their stories and it occurred to me that I could keep this historical Jewish community alive in our minds by recording the vibrant lives they led, even amidst the episodes of violent and significant murders of Jews all over Europe. This research took years.

I painted the exteriors and interiors of the synagogues I could find records for using old photos, postcards, architectural plans, essays, and articles describing each synagogue. Then I searched for everything I could find on each community. Each of the synagogues in my book was destroyed in the 1930s-1940s. Communities were destroyed too, but some have re-emerged. European Jewry that once was no longer exists but the humanity, the loves and likes, and stories continue today.

I invite you to read the book, study the pictures, and learn more. I see it as a more sophisticated version of Instagram with all kinds of info coming at you in bits and pieces—but my pieces have been thoroughly researched for truth. And the pictures are pretty good 😊.