Bergische Synagoge
The Bergische Synagoge is the assembly and place of worship of the Jewish religious community in Wuppertal .
history
After the Barmer synagogue on Scheurenstrasse (today Zur Scheuren ), which was completed in 1897 according to plans by Ludwig Levy , was burned down by the Nazis during the pogrom night in November 1938 and the Jewish community was destroyed and many of its members were murdered in the period following the Nazi dictatorship , the Wuppertal Jewish community grew in the 1990s, mainly due to the influx of so-called contingent refugees , from 65 to around 2000 members. It quickly became clear that the community needed a new synagogue. On the initiative of the former mayor of Wuppertal, Ursula Kraus , the Freundeskreis Neue Synagoge eV was founded in 1996 to promote the construction of a new synagogue in Barmen. The first symbolic groundbreaking ceremony took place on November 10, 1998. The property for the new building, which costs around 4.5 million euros, was made available by the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland at the request of the United Evangelical Community Gemarke in Wuppertal-Barmen . Broad support for the construction of a new synagogue also came from the cities of Solingen , Remscheid and Velbert .
In October 2001 the foundation stone for the new Bergische Synagoge was laid in the immediate vicinity of the Gemarker Church . In the presence of Federal President Johannes Rau , Israeli President Mosche Katzav and the Chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany , Paul Spiegel , the synagogue was ceremoniously consecrated on December 8, 2002. It was the first time that the highest representative of Israel attended the opening of a synagogue in Germany.
A striking feature of the Bergische Synagoge, which was created according to the plans of the Wuppertal architects Goedeking + Schmidt, are nine high, narrow windows, which symbolize a Hanukkia , in addition to a glass tower .
Above the portal - as above the main entrance of the destroyed synagogue in Barmen - there is a word from the prophet Isaiah in the Hebrew original: ביתי בית תפלה יקרא לכל העמים - because my house is to be called a house of prayer for all peoples (Isa 56,7). The synagogue holds about 300 people.
On the night of July 29, 2014, three Palestinians threw several incendiary devices at the synagogue. The Molotov cocktails were poorly built and therefore did little damage. The men were sentenced to 200 hours of community service and three to 15 months' imprisonment for attempted arson, which were suspended in view of the several months in custody and lack of evidence of an anti-Semitic act. This judgment is final.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Martin suspected Palestinians confess - confession to the arson attack on the Wuppertal synagogue , evening newspaper of January 14, 2015
- ^ Judgment on arson attack on synagogue. “No anti-Semitic act” , taz article from February 6, 2015
- ↑ Comment on this: Stefan Laurin: Opinion. Wuppertal and the arsonists. In: Jüdische Allgemeine. January 12, 2017.
Coordinates: 51 ° 16 ′ 16 ″ N , 7 ° 11 ′ 52 ″ E