The house was equipped with rooms for the ritual washing of the corpses, a mourning hall and a mortuary leading to the adjacent Jewish cemetery.

The design is only partially characterized by Jewish symbolism, simplified geometric elements show the influence of Art Nouveau and expressionism.

[1][4] With the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany, the cemetery was defiled by the Nazis in early 1936 but was not directly affected by the Kristallnacht riots of 1938.

[7] After an anti-semitic campaign in Poland the remains of the cemetery were levelled to the ground in 1968 and the building was used as a magazine by the municipal archive of Olsztyn until 1996.

[9][10][11] Borussia is a Polish Foundation founded in 1990 and dedicated to the unbiased research of East Prussian heritage in the area, which had been tabooed for decades in Communist Poland.

[12][13] The restoration project was made with the support of European Founds ("Operation Program Warmia and Mazury 2007-2013 [14]) The building and the adjacent cemetery were acquired by the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland.

In the Jewish culture the body is always hidden from the public and it is washed and dressed by a group of people, the Chevra Kadisha, that conduct this ceremony as volunteers.

The Chevra Kadisha, the sacred society, is a group of pious men and women who have taken on the obligation of ritually preparing the deceased.

The door led into the central room and at the left there was the bathing chamber where the dead bodies were washed following the Jewish rules.

Probably in the center of each square there was a decoration but, due to the horrible condition of the building (between 1996-2006) and the works that had been made before the restoration, it is impossible to clearly understand the shape, it is just possible to see some blue small dots.

The real function of this spot is unclear, it could probably be two dressing rooms for the Chevra Kadisha members: there is an exhaust pipe (there is one also in the washing chamber) that could be used to warm up the water.

The big central space is enclosed by a gallery, three columns at each side describe two small corridors illuminated by three windows.

Mendelsohn found a special solution to this problem: he built two domes one in the other, where the internal one do not touch the external one, creating this way two roofs.