Shimon Peres, Israel's deputy prime minister, joined Estonian officials and members of the local Jewish community yesterday to mark the opening of the first synagogue in the Baltic state since the Second World War. Estonia was the only country in Europe to be declared "free of Jews" by the Nazis -- its 5,000 Jews were deported to gulags in the Soviet Union, fled Nazi troops or were killed in the Holocaust. "They can burn down the building but they cannot burn down the prayer. Never did our faith stop being what it is, a burning fire," Mr. Peres, pictured, said. Estonia's last synagogue, built in the 19th century, was destroyed during the 1944 Soviet bombing of the capital Tallinn.