Borken Jewish community

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The Jewish community of Borken existed from 17./18. Century until September 7, 1942, when its last members were deported.

history

As early as the 14th and 15th centuries there were some Jews in Borken, and up to the 18th century there were around six Jewish families living in the village. After that, the Jewish community grew steadily, up to 204 people in 1895, which at that time corresponded to a population of 15.8% of the total population of the city. After that, their number gradually declined due to emigration to the larger cities, but also to the USA .

year Residents, total Jewish residents Percentage
1827 1,118 83 7.4%
1835 ... 66 ...%
1842 1,373 70 5.1%
1852 1,417 120 8.5%
1861 1,480 157 10.6%
1885 1,273 182 14.3%
1895 1,290 204 15.8%
1905 1,266 171 13.5%
1925 1,660 145 8.7%
1933 1,960 141 7.2%
1937 ... 60 ...%
1938 ... 40 ...%
1939 2,109 22nd 1.0%
1942 ... 3 0.0%

The Jewish inhabitants of the neighboring villages of Großenenglis (1835: 14, 1842: 5, 1861: 8 Jewish inhabitants; at the end of the 19th century only one family) and Freudenthal (1893: 4 families) also belonged to the Jewish community of Borken . Most of them earned their living as shopkeepers, traders, butchers and horse traders due to the restrictions imposed on their religious community, but in the mid-19th century there was also a Jewish bookbinder and a shoemaker in Borken.

Community institutions

In 1825 a synagogue was built at the intersection of Hintergasse and Dorfweg , or in a converted barn of unknown year of construction. Little is known of the history of the synagogue. Before that, the congregation had either used a prayer room or perhaps a former synagogue. On the evening of November 8, 1938, during the November 1938 pogroms organized by the NSDAP , the synagogue was desecrated and its interior devastated. On February 20, 1939, the congregation sold the synagogue and schoolhouse to the city of Borken under pressure from the circumstances, and the synagogue building was then used as a warehouse for scrap material. After the war, the property came to the JRSO , a Jewish asset management company founded in 1948 . They sold it in September 1949 to a private owner who had the building, which had now become dilapidated, torn down in 1954 and had a stable built in its place. In 1990/91 a small memorial with a plaque was set up on the property, which includes the partially preserved stone plinth of the former synagogue.

In addition to the synagogue, other community facilities included a mikveh , a cemetery and, from 1823 to 1934, an Israelite elementary school. The school was initially in rented rooms in today's buildings at Bahnhofstrasse 84 and Hintergasse 1, then from 1896 in the then newly built Jewish school, Pferdetränke 12. The teacher was also the prayer leader and schochet . In 1887, 43 children attended school, in 1896 there were 66. After that, as the community shrank, so did the number of children in the school. Strong decline at the end of school, and in 1912 only 17 children attended the Jewish school. In 1924/25 there were still only 17 students in the 4 classes.

The Jewish cemetery in Borken has served the Jewish community as a burial place since the end of the 19th century; previously the deceased of the community were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Haarhausen . The cemetery is located about 400 meters east of the community center Borken on Jahnstraße / corner Teichgartenweg ( 51 ° 2 ′ 52.8 ″  N , 9 ° 17 ′ 5.6 ″  E ). It is open to the public to visit, except on the Sabbath (Friday evening to Saturday evening) and on Jewish feast days .

Among the Jewish associations there was the Milde Foundation founded in 1835, the women's association founded in 1900 and the men's association founded in 1920. All three primarily served to support those in need; the men's association also took care of the funeral services.

Downfall of the community

From 1933 on, more and more Jewish residents left the city due to increasing disenfranchisement and reprisals. In 1934 the Jewish school had to be closed, which was last attended by 10 children; only religious instruction could be continued until the end of the school year 1937/38. At the end of April 1938 there were only 40 Jewish residents left and community life largely came to a standstill. After the November pogrom of 1938 , the number of Jewish residents fell to just 22 in 1939, and on August 25, 1942, the last three Jewish residents of Borken were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto .

Of the Jewish people born in Borken or in Großenenglis and / or residing there for a long time, at least 69 died during the Nazi period; the oldest was born in 1853, the youngest in 1928. The first stumbling blocks - cobblestones with a brass plate with the names of the murdered people engraved on them - were laid in their memory in July 2014.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b "Borken (Hessen), Schwalm-Eder-Kreis". Historical local dictionary for Hessen. (As of March 15, 2016). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
  2. ↑ a b c d Alemannia Judaica (ed.): Borken (Hessen) with Großenenglis and Freudenthal . Jewish history / synagogue. ( HTML [accessed June 17, 2010]).
  3. ↑ Alfred Gottwaldt, Diana Schulle: The "Jewish deportations" from the German Reich in 1941 -1945 . An annotated chronology. 1st edition. marixverlag, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-86539-059-5 .
  4. ^ Alemannia Judaica (ed.): The Jewish cemetery in Borken (Hessen) . ( HTML [accessed June 17, 2010]).
  5. ↑ In individual searches, Borken in Hesse may have been confused with Borken in Westphalia.