Israelite religious community Weiden
The Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Weiden is the Jewish community of Weiden in the Upper Palatinate . Today it has 257 members (as of 2014). Your synagogue is located at Ringstrasse 17 in Weiden.
history
14th to 17th centuries
In 1359 a Jew was first mentioned in Weiden. In 1388 a Jewish family lived in Weiden. From 1465 to 1489 there were four Jewish families in Weiden who lived from the money and goods trade. These were Isaac and son Leb and Israel and son with their families. Every Jew in Weiden had to pay 10 guilders protection money annually. From 1489 to the Thirty Years' War no Jews were mentioned in Weiden. During the Thirty Years War, individual Jews moved to Weiden. Nine Jewish families with a total of 40 people lived in the city from 1636 to 1640. However, the settlement of Jews in Weiden encountered strong resistance from the Christian population, especially from circles of craftsmen and merchants, who feared competition.
19th century
In the 19th century the situation of the Jews gradually improved. They received more rights and greater freedoms, especially through the repeal of the matriculation paragraph in 1861. Now, gradually, more and more Jews moved from the rural areas to the larger cities. In 1863, Weiden had a railway connection, which greatly improved the city's economic opportunities. The Jews now moving to Weiden came partly from the nearby raft, but also from Lower and Middle Franconia. In 1867 there were 5 Jews in Weiden, in 1871 there were 18 Jews and in 1880 there were already 76 Jews. They initially belonged to the Jewish community of Floß .
Since 1886 there was an Israelite elementary school in Weiden, initially as a private school and from 1902 as an institution with a public character. Elementary and religious instruction was given in it. The Jewish elementary teachers performed the religious duties in the community and also acted as cantors, prayer leaders and slaughterers. The teachers were W. Hirnheimer from 1889 and Emanuel Strauss from 1897.
In 1889 a synagogue association was founded in Weiden. This year, a synagogue was built and inaugurated at Ringstrasse 17 according to plans by the Weiden architect Peter Weiß .
Many Jewish residents of Weiden were engaged in the real estate business and in the trade in fabrics, pitch, hops, iron and metal goods, tobacco and cigarettes, wine, leather, shoes, wood, coals, hides, skins and glass products. They were particularly well represented in the textile sector and in the livestock and horse trade. There were few academics among them. A doctor - Berthold Rebitzer - and a few lawyers, who only stayed in Weiden for a short time. In contrast to the average non-Jewish population of Weiden, there were very few industrial workers among the Jewish citizens. Within the Jewish community there was an above-average decline in the birth rate at the beginning of the 20th century, an increase in small families, single people and people over 60 years of age.
As early as 1893 an active anti-Semitic people's association was formed in Weiden. At the time, the Jews were considered to be the culprits for the hardships caused by the transition from an agricultural society to early capitalism. The envy of the economic success of many Jews during this period fueled anti-Semitic hatred.
In 1895 an independent religious community was established, which, however, still belonged to the Rabbinate Floß. There was no mikveh in Weiden. The mikveh in raft was also used. In 1896, after the death of the Floßer rabbi Israel Wittelshöfer, the Jewish community joined the Bayreuth rabbinate.
20th century
Since 1901 the Jewish community had its own cemetery in today's Sperlingsstraße. The Jewish cemetery in Floß had previously been used.
A large number of different associations emerged within the Jewish community of Weiden.
In 1914, for the first time, two Jewish citizens were elected to the Weiden community representative.
During the First World War Jews from Weiden fought on the German side. Paul Klein (born on August 3, 1893 in Nuremberg, died on March 28, 1915), a member of the Jewish community of Weiden, was among the fallen. Until 1954 his name was on the war memorial in the Bahnhofstrasse, but it was replaced in 1955 by a new memorial without a name.
The second anti-Semitic wave in Weiden arose after the First World War. Now the Jews were seen as the cause of war and revolution. The Weiden anti-Semites organized themselves as a local group of the German Völkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, later in the NSDAP and in the Völkischer Block. Their activities included desecration of the cemetery, propaganda, defamation, molesting and insulting fellow Jews.
The Jewish community of Weiden joined the Association of Bavarian Israelite Congregations founded in 1920 .
1933 to 1945
Immediately after the seizure of power by the Nazis came in Weiden riots against the Jews. Several Jews were deported to the Dachau concentration camp in early 1933 , sometimes for several years. On April 1, 1933, the Jewish shops in Weiden were boycotted. SA men monitored compliance with the boycott in front of the shops .
With the persecution of the Jews, Zionism gained influence. A local group of the “Association of German-Jewish Youth” had existed in Weiden since 1933. In 1935 this was transferred to the “Zionist Youth League Habonim, local group Weiden”. The Jewish community of Weiden was incorporated into the Reich Representation of German Jews and lost its independence.
During the pogrom on November 9, 1938 , Jewish shops and apartments were devastated. About 40 Jews were dragged to the town hall and brutally mistreated there. 23 Jewish men were brought to the regional court prison and deported from there to the Dachau concentration camp. There, on November 15, 1938, the Weiden merchant Hermann Fuld was murdered by the SS. The interior of the synagogue on Ringstrasse was destroyed, but the synagogue was not set on fire because the Weiden mayor feared the flames would spread to neighboring houses.
Since 1933, more and more Jewish businessmen gave up their businesses in Weiden. In 1938 all remaining Jewish shops and companies in Weiden were expropriated. 140 Jews emigrated, including:
- 20 to England
- 17 to the USA
- 14 to Palestine
- 11 to Czechoslovakia
- 7 to East Africa
- 5 to Argentina
- 4 to Cuba
- individual to other countries
- 53 to other German cities: Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Nuremberg, Regensburg
Only a Jewish woman from Weiden, who was married to a non-Jewish man, managed to go into hiding, to hide and to survive.
In 1939 there were only 16 Jews left in Weiden. They were merged into two houses. One of these houses was the morgue of the Jewish community, converted for this purpose. From 1939 to 1942, these 16 Jews had to do heavy physical labor in the Merklmooslohe estate.
In 1942 all the Jews who remained in Weiden were deported to the Trawniki forced labor camp and the Theresienstadt concentration camp and murdered there. A total of 44 Weiden Jews murdered by the Nazis are known by name.
Since 1945
After the war ended , many Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe came to Weiden. In Poland there was increased anti-Semitism and pogroms. The Polish non-Jewish population had appropriated the property of the Polish Jews during the Nazi era and now feared having to surrender them again. On the death marches from Flossenbürg and its satellite camps to Dachau, the Allies liberated a large number of Jewish prisoners, many of whom also came to Weiden. In the summer of 1945 there were up to 1,000 Jewish survivors in Weiden at times.
In March 1946, a mikveh was set up in the basement of a primary school in Weiden. At the end of 1946 there were two rabbis in Weiden, a synagogue servant , a mohel , several prayer rooms, a Torah Talmud school, several kosher butcher shops and a kibbutz where Jews were preparing for life in Palestine. It was not until 1948 that the former synagogue was used again as such with the help of the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization (abbreviated: JRSO). In the meantime it had served as a storage room in a sugar factory. In the end 2 of the earlier 8 Torah scrolls and some ritual silver were returned.
The Jewish community of Weiden was officially re-established in 1953. It was now called "Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Weiden" and is a member of the regional association of the Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde in Bavaria . In 1970 a mikvah was set up in the community center.
In the 1990s, the “Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Weiden” was renamed “Weiden Jewish Community”.
As parishioners emigrated to Israel and the USA, the size of the community steadily decreased. After all, in 1990 the congregation only had 36 members, almost all of whom were over 60 years old. The idea of the self-dissolution of the community began to become familiar when the influx of Jews from the CIS countries began in 1994 . For almost 2,000 people, the Jewish community in Weiden was a transit station to other cities. But almost 300 Jews stayed in Weiden and the surrounding area.
Again and again there were anti-Semitic riots in Weiden after the war up to the present day. In 1991 the Jewish cemetery was desecrated, the Holocaust memorial in downtown Weiden was desecrated several times in 2000 and 2002, and stones were thrown in the synagogue and in the shop of the Jewish Brenner family in 2002.
Number of Jewish residents in Weiden
| year | Number of people | in% of the total population |
|---|---|---|
| 1867 | 5 people | 0.1% |
| 1871 | 18 people | 0.5% |
| 1880 | 76 people | 1.6% |
| 1890 | 101 people | 1.7% |
| 1900 | 124 people | 1.2% |
| 1910 | 156 people | 1 % |
| 1924 | 150 people | 0.7% |
| 1933 | 168 people | 0.8% |
| 1939 | 16 people | |
| 1942 | 3 persons | |
| 1943 | 0 people | |
| 1946 | 643 people | |
| 1950 | 66 people | |
| 1976 | 59 people | |
| 1990 | 36 people | |
| 2014 | 257 people | 0.6% |
Rabbis, cantors, prayer leaders in Weiden
- 1924 to 1939 teacher and cantor Emanuel Strauss
- around 1970 to 1980 Rabbi Julius Klieger
- 1984 to 1992 Cantor Baruch Grabowski
- 1992 to 1998 teacher and prayer leader Marcus Schroll
- 1998 to 2002 Rabbi Michael Leipziger
- 2002 to 2006 Rabbi Gesa Schira Ederberg (* 1968 in Tübingen)
- 2007 to 2014 Rabbi Daniel Katz (* 1960 in New York)
Important members of the Weiden Jewish community
- Michael Brenner (born January 4, 1964 in Weiden), German historian
literature
- Michael Brenner , Renate Höpfinger (ed.): The Jews in the Upper Palatinate. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58678-7 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Jewish Community Weiden Kdö.R. , Central Council of Jews in Germany, accessed: February 22, 2016.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Weiden (Upper Palatinate): Jewish history / synagogues. Alemannia Judaica, accessed February 22, 2016.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Sebastian Schott: The history of the Jewish community Weiden up to the middle of the 20th century. In: Michael Brenner , Renate Höpfinger (Hrsg.): The Jews in the Upper Palatinate. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58678-7 , pp. 105-118.
- ↑ Hans-Christoph Dittscheid: The synagogue buildings of the Upper Palatinate from the Middle Ages to the modern age. Losses - discoveries - interpretations. In: Michael Brenner, Renate Höpfinger (Hrsg.): The Jews in the Upper Palatinate. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58678-7 , pp. 46, 47.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h jg-weiden.de ( Memento of the original from February 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Michael Brenner: Impressions of Jewish life in the Upper Palatinate after 1945 in Michael Brenner (Hrsg.), Renate Höpfinger (Hrsg.): The Jews in the Upper Palatinate. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58678-7 , p. 247.
- ↑ ark.de
- ↑ alemannia-judaica.de
- ↑ ark.de
- ↑ alemannia-judaica.de
