Jewish community in Öhringen
The Jewish community in Öhringen was formed in the second half of the 19th century and died out due to the persecution of the Jews during the Nazi era.
history
Jews have been recorded in Öhringen as early as the high Middle Ages. In the rintfleisch pogrom in 1298, an unknown number of Jews from Öhringen were also murdered. In the course of the plague pogroms in 1348/49, the medieval community probably went out completely, so that in 1353 the old Öhringen hospital could be built on the former synagogue site. After Count Kraft and Albrecht von Hohenlohe had agreed in 1455 not to accept any more Jews in their territory without the consent of the other, only a few Jews can be found in Öhringen.
The modern Jewish community then formed through the influx of Jews after their legal equality in the 19th century. In 1869 there were eight Jews in Öhringen and a community was officially founded. In the years that followed, numerous Jews from surrounding rural communities moved to the city. In 1886, 180 Jews were already living in Öhringen, after which the size of the community remained more or less stable. In 1888 the Jewish community bought the Gasthaus Sonne and converted it into a synagogue . The Öhringen Jews had their burial at the beginning of the association cemetery in Affaltrach , from 1911 there was a separate Jewish cemetery in Öhringen .
The Jewish fellow citizens were fully integrated in Öhringen. The Jewish businesses in Öhringen included up to 13 cattle shops and a. the Einstein shoe factory, the Thalheimer lacquer and paint factory, Max Blum's tobacco shop, Julius Israel's wine wholesaler, the Bloch brothers' grain shop, the Kaufmann bakery, Max Kochentaler's textile goods store, the Lämmle grain wholesaler, Seligmann Weil's butcher's shop and that Schlesinger department store. Julius Bloch was a council member.
National Socialist Persecution
As early as 1923, after the establishment of the local NSDAP group in Neuenstein , there was hostility to the Jews from Öhringen from the National Socialists, against which resistance arose above all from the circles of the Öhringen Jewish cattle traders. After the National Socialists came to power, on March 18, 1933, the Heilbronn SA attacked the city's Jewish cattle dealers, allegedly looking for weapons. The dealer Siegfried “Siecher” Herz, who was involved in fights with Neuensteiner SA men as early as 1923, was humiliated, abused and seriously injured by the SA men under the leadership of Fritz Klein . Herz 'servant August Hartmann, the cattle dealer Gustav Berliner and the factory owner Heinrich Einstein were also seriously injured.
Furthermore, the development in Öhringen follows the general development of the persecution of the Jews in the German Reich: the Jewish citizens had to endure more and more sanctions and boycott measures and were forced out of schools, clubs and shops. The Jewish community ran a private school for their children from 1936 to 1938. Most recently, in 1938, the traditionally strong Jewish cattle trade in Öhringen came to a standstill.
During the Reichspogromnacht in 1938, the Öhringen synagogue was demolished by order of the NSDAP district leader and its inventory burned on Schillerplatz.
By 1941 around two thirds of Öhringen's Jews had emigrated. The community disbanded in 1939, and most recently the largest, unoccupied part of the Jewish cemetery was sold. 36 Jews from Öhringen were deported, 33 of them were killed.
The former synagogue was later converted into a youth center. The Merzbacherstrasse , named after the Jewish doctor Dr. Julius Merzbacher, who was deported to Majdanek via France in 1943 and murdered there.
literature
- Paul Sauer: The Jewish communities in Württemberg and Hohenzollern , Stuttgart 1966, p. 156/147.
- Jewish citizens in Öhringen - a documentary , City of Öhringen 1993