Because of the Cold War, the area of Eastern Europe which had contained these synagogues was closed to Western scholars for a generation. Only in the last ten years have historians begun to have ready access to a part of the world which had become forgotten.

For decades, the world believed all these structures were lost. Then, a few years ago, a team from Hebrew University discovered six wooden synagogues still standing, miraculously surviving both the Holocaust and 50 years of additional neglect.