Beiseförth Jewish Community

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The Jewish community in Beiseförth in the north Hessian Schwalm-Eder district developed from the first beginnings in the 16th century and existed until the time of National Socialism . The Jewish people living in Binsförth , Malsfeld , Neumorschen and Rengshausen also belonged to the community . The village belonged with the rest of the former circle Melsungen to Rabbinatsbezirk Niederhessen based in Kassel .

Community development

Jews are mentioned in Beiseförth as early as 1542 and also around 1600, 1614 and 1654 . Presumably, however, the number of men necessary for the formation of a Jewish religious community ( Kehillah ) was not reached in Beiseförth and the neighboring towns until the 18th century . In 1744, four so-called Schutzjuden lived with their families in Beiseförth, and in the 18th century there were two or three Jewish families in Neumorschen.

year Residents,
total 		Jewish
residents 		Share
in percent
1835 ... approx. 20 ...%
1861 779 78 10.0%
1871 732 63 8.6%
1885 737 33 4.5%
1895 693 21st 3.0%
1905 731 18th 2.5%
1925 766 20th 2.6%
1933 ... approx. 21 ...%
1938 ... 15th ...%

The number of Jewish residents of Beiseförth peaked around the middle of the 19th century and in 1861, at 78 people, made up 10.0% of the total population. After that, their number fell very quickly through emigration and emigration until the turn of the century, and in the 20th century there were almost continuously only around 20 people. The reprisals , professional bans , boycotts and ever-increasing disenfranchisement that began after the so-called seizure of power by the NSDAP in January 1933 then prompted some families to send children abroad or to emigrate at all. At the time of the November pogroms in 1938 , only 15 Jewish people were still living in Beiseförth.

In the neighboring towns, too, whose Jewish residents belonged to the Kehilla in Beiseförth, there were significantly fewer Jews in the 20th century than in the middle of the 19th century. As early as 1928, only 12 to 14 men from the villages belonging to the community came together for the Sabbath service in Beiseförth.

Locality 1835 1861 1905 1924 1932/33
Binsförth 6th 9 14th 12 11
Malsfeld 27 45 8th 9 ...
New hay 41 38 12 ... 0

Facilities

The community's facilities included a synagogue , a ritual bath ( mikveh ), a Jewish denominational school (from 1842 to 1884) and a cemetery in neighboring Binsförth. The community could not afford its own rabbi . The teacher employed by the community also served as prayer leader and schochet (butcher). After the school closed and the last teacher left in 1884, one of the men in the parish was prayer leader, schochet and accountant. The few children in the community then received their religious instruction in Heinebach .

synagogue

After the congregation had initially contented itself with a prayer room in a residential building, after long negotiations with the Hessian district administration in Melsungen , they were able to build their own synagogue in 1853 , a two-story hall building with a gable roof made of air-dried adobe bricks . The building at the exit to Binsförth had no basement. The roof structure , the benches and the gallery with their supporting pillars were made of oak . A staircase from the anteroom led to the gallery. The frames of the arched windows and the two entrance doors were made of hewn natural stone.

In 1928 the now 75-year-old synagogue was renovated and ceremoniously reopened in November. The walls and the ceiling were colored sky blue, the benches, the women's gallery and the doors deep blue.

Only five years later, on November 9, 1938, in the course of the November 1938 pogroms, the interior of the synagogue in Beiseförth was devastated by SA people and their followers, and the stone with the Ten Commandments above the entrance was knocked off. The synagogue was abandoned soon after, as the last Jewish families left Beiseförth before the end of the 1930s.

After 1945 the synagogue was converted into a residential building. An information board on the house recalls the history of the building.

graveyard

The community's cemetery , the oldest Jewish cemetery in North Hesse, is located in the district of Binsförth , about 800 m southwest of the village on the northern slope of the Wichter Höhe ( 51 ° 3 ′ 50 ″  N , 9 ° 33 ′ 59 ″  E ). The 5540 m² cemetery is fenced and still contains 256 tombstones ( Mazewot ) from the occupation period from 1694 to 1937. The site was donated to the Jewish community in the middle of the 17th century by the Lords of Baumbach , local landlords. Deceased Jews from Heinebach and Nenterode and until 1860 or 1867 from Melsungen , Röhrenfurth and Spangenberg also found their final resting place here.

End of the parish

The November pogroms in 1938 signaled the imminent end of the already greatly shrunk community. The fifteen Jews who were still living in Beiseförth on November 9, 1938, found shelter with neighbors that night or fled to the little wood on the Fährberg north of the village. But the very next day at least three of the men from Breitenau and Neumorschen were taken by the Gestapo to a collection camp in Kassel and from there to a concentration camp. After their release from protective custody , they returned to their families, but only to prepare for their imminent departure or emigration.

Nevertheless, at least twenty Jewish people who were born in Beiseförth and / or who had lived there for a long time became victims of the Holocaust . Five from Binsförth, six from Malsfeld, eight from Neumorschen and three from Rengshausen were also killed.

Post Comment

At the end of May 2012 the first “ stumbling blocks ” were laid in Beiseförth.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Two families
  2. ↑ Three families
  3. ↑ Dippel, p. 91
  4. ↑ Dippel, p. 91
  5. ^ Artist Gunter Demnig laid stumbling blocks in Beiseförth , HNA , June 1, 2012

Web links

literature

  • Paul Arnsberg : The Jewish communities in Hesse. Beginning - fall - new beginning. Volume 1. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1971, ISBN 3-79730-213-4 , pp. 60-62.
  • Walter Dippel: The former Jewish community in Beiseförth . In: Heimat- und Verkehrsverein Beiseförth eV (Ed.): Beiseförth - history of a village. Chronicle of the 650th anniversary in 1998 . Beiseförth 1998, pp. 89-93.
  • Manfred Eifert, Manfred Katz: 398 years of Jewish life in Beiseförth. Self-published, November 2008.