Sweden’s Jewish community has unveiled a newly renovated mikvah in Gothenburg designed by Ikea designer Olga Popyrina, according to the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
Popyrina, who worked designing lighting fixtures and glassware for Ikea, collaborated on the project with Rabbi Alexander and Leah Namdar of Chabad Lubavitch Sweden.
The mikvah will feature a sink housed for more than 40 years at Chabad World Headquarters in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., which the Namdars brought with them to the Scandinavian nation.
Chabad noted that the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, said as he left Gothenburg for the United States in 1940, amid World War II, that he hoped a mikvah would one day be established in the city.
The newly renovated mikvah first opened in 2011 inside the Gothenburg Chabad center, a building originally constructed in the 1940s by a Swede who “helped found the Swedish Antisemitic Union and maintained close ties to Nazi leader Hermann Göring,” according to Chabad.
According to Leah Namdar, “the fact that a place with such a dark history has been transformed into a bastion of Jewish light in our city is truly inspiring.”
