Deidesheim Jewish Community

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The Jewish community ( Kehillah ) in Deidesheim in Rhineland-Palatinate existed - with interruptions - from the late Middle Ages to the time of National Socialism . The former synagogue and the Jewish cemetery still bear witness to its long history .

history

From the Middle Ages to the end of the Weimar Republic

The northern gate of the Deidesheim city fortifications , which has now been demolished , was also known as the “Jewish Gate ” in the Middle Ages.

Jews in Deidesheim were mentioned for the first time in 1302. The Jewish community at that time was relatively large and wealthy, if one takes as an indicator the amount of the imperial tax that it paid. During the " plague pogroms ", probably in the spring after April 1, 1349, the Jewish community in Deidesheim was wiped out. The Bishop of Speyer, Gerhard von Ehrenberg , donated the synagogue at that time to the vicariate of the Martins Altar in the crypt of St. Guido Abbey in Speyer . It is unclear when a Jewish community was established in Deidesheim again. In a listing of Deidesheim's firearms in 1472, the northern city gate was referred to as the “Judenpforte” and in an undated wisdom that was probably written between 1360 and 1395, a “Judenbrunnen” was named, which is presumably located on the site of the synagogue at that time located on Deidesheim market square; Furthermore, a Jewish school was mentioned in 1532 and the northern part of today's Weinstrasse in Deidesheim was still called " Judengasse " until the 18th century - however, all these names could also come from before 1349 and do not allow conclusions to be drawn about the existence of a Jewish community with certainty in this period too. It was not until the 17th century that there was reliable evidence of it.

In 1686 there were 40 and in 1787 21 Jews in Deidesheim, which in that year had a total of 1297 inhabitants. In the middle of the 19th century the number of members of the Jewish community peaked at 95; Back then, in 1852, the new synagogue was also built in what is now Bahnhofstrasse. After that, the number of Jews in Deidesheim declined again, as did the total population of Deidesheim at that time, as a result of emigration to industrial locations and emigration to other countries. In 1927 there were twelve Jews in Deidesheim and in 1934 there were eleven. At the end of the Weimar Republic, Max Reinach and Oswald Feis, both top candidates of the local political groupings "impartial employee and worker list" and the "citizen list", had a seat on the city council, which they had to give up after the National Socialists came to power.

time of the nationalsocialism

Stumbling blocks on Deidesheim's market square remember the brothers Oswald and Richard Feis

On November 10, 1938, during the November pogroms , the houses of the two Jewish families still living in Deidesheim were ravaged and, on the evening of the same day, the Jewish cemetery as well . The synagogue, on the other hand, was spared, as it had already been sold on December 17, 1936. The five Jews still living in Deidesheim at that time, the brothers Oswald and Richard Feis, as well as Fanny and Adolf Reinach and their son Max, were brought to the Bad Dürkheim district court , where they had to spend the night. The first four were able to return to Deidesheim the following day, whereas Max Reinach was taken to the Dachau concentration camp together with other Jews ; he did not return to Deidesheim until December 15, 1938.

Richard Feis moved to a retirement home in Frankenthal on March 30, 1939 , and then to a retirement home in Rockenhausen . There he died on November 10th of this year. His brother Oswald was also initially in the Frankenthal nursing home, but from there, like many other Jews in need of care in Bavaria, he was brought to the Eglfing-Haar sanatorium . He was then picked up by SS men on September 20, 1940, along with other people staying there. Allegedly they were supposed to be housed in the - in reality nonexistent - Reichsanstalt Cholm near Lublin , but in fact they were deported and murdered, possibly in the Hartheim killing center . According to the resident registration card, the official date of Oswald Feis' death is January 21, 1941, which is probably not true; he was probably killed immediately after his deportation.

Fanny, Adolf and Max Reinach were deported to the Gurs internment camp in southern France during the Wagner-Bürckel campaign on October 22, 1940 . Adolf Reinach died there on July 26, 1942. Max Reinach was taken by Gurs on August 21 of the same year, first to the Drancy assembly camp near Paris, and later to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. May 8, 1945 is given as the official date of his death. The only survivor of the Jews still living in Deidesheim in 1938 was Fanny Reinach. She was transferred from the camp in Gurs to two other camps.

To commemorate these five people, as well as four others who lived in Deidesheim after the Nazis came to power but had left the city before the November pogroms in 1938, stumbling blocks were laid in Deidesheim .

After the Second World War

Fanny Reinach returned to Deidesheim after the war, but only in the spring of 1949 due to illness. At the court trial in 1949 at which the Reichspogromnacht in Deidesheim was dealt with, 16 people were charged with crimes against humanity . Fanny Reinach appeared as a joint plaintiff. Although the events in Deidesheim during the Third Reich were re-opened in public at the trial, and although Fanny Reinach had lost two children and her husband in the Holocaust, and she had been expropriated before her deportation, the 76-year-old had to ask for the return of hers for a long time Dispute over property; She was only able to move into her previous house two years after her return from France, as it had been sold "legally correct". Hans-Jürgen Wünschel , who documented Deidesheim's post-war history, called her a “victim of German legal sentiments” in this context.

Fanny Reinach, the last member of the Deidesheim Jewish community to live here, died on December 13, 1960 in the Deidesheim hospital and was buried in the cemetery in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse .

Feis family foundations

The "Feissche Madonna"

The Jewish Feis family, who lived in Deidesheim, gave the Catholic community two gifts that made it clear that the relationship between the Catholics of Deidesheim and their Jewish fellow citizens was good before the Nazis came to power. According to an entry in the parish log of November 27, 1900, Jakob Feis, who was born in Deidesheim and emigrated to London, left the parish with an oil painting (90 × 70 cm) depicting Our Lady. This is a “Murillo copy” from the 19th century, which is also mentioned in a compilation of cultural monuments in the Bad Dürkheim district as part of the inventory of the parish church . The second foundation - initiated by the brothers Richard and Oswald Feis, who had encouraged their cousin in Frankfurt to set up the foundation and organized the transport to Deidesheim - was an almost life-size statue of Our Lady. The donation was mentioned in the parish log book on November 19, 1928. The statue was initially in the rectory and was ceremonially erected on December 8, 1940, during the Second World War and the persecution of the Jews, in the parish church, which was filled to the last seat. Today she stands in front of the choir of the parish church.

literature

  • Berthold Schnabel : Memories of the Jewish community of Deidesheim . In: Heimatfreunde Deidesheim und Umgebung e. V. (Ed.): Deidesheimer Heimatblätter. Contributions to the history of the former prince-bishop's office in Speyer and today's Deidesheim association . No. 7 , 1991, pp. 1-19 .
  • Berthold Schnabel: Jewish life in Deidesheim in the century between 1630 and 1730 . In: Heimatfreunde Deidesheim und Umgebung e. V. (Ed.): Deidesheimer Heimatblätter. Contributions to the history of the former prince-bishop's office in Speyer and today's Deidesheim association . No. 19 , 2007.
  • Berthold Schnabel: On the medieval history of Jewish communities in the northern Front Palatinate. Revised and expanded second edition. In: Heimatfreunde Deidesheim und Umgebung e. V. (Ed.): Deidesheimer Heimatblätter. Contributions to the history of the former prince-bishop's office in Speyer and today's Deidesheim association . No. 18 , 2008.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schnabel: Jewish Life ... , p. 6.
  2. ↑ a b Schnabel: Memories ... , p. 1.
  3. ↑ Schnabel: Zur Medieval ... , p. 11.
  4. ↑ Schnabel: Memories ... , p. 2 f.
  5. ↑ a b c Schnabel: Memories ... , p. 4
  6. ↑ a b The Federal Archives: Entry: Feis, Oswald. Memorial Book - Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny 1933–1945 , accessed on October 29, 2017 .
  7. ↑ a b c d Schnabel: Memories ... , p. 5
  8. ^ The Federal Archives: Entry: Reinach, Max. Gedenkbuch - Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny 1933–1945, accessed on October 29, 2017 .
  9. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Wünschel: A forgotten chapter. Deidesheim after the end of the dictatorship . Knecht Verlag, Landau in der Pfalz 1994, ISBN 3-930927-02-0 , p. 107-111 .
  10. ↑ a b Martin Nieder: Foundations of the Feis family , Festschrift zur Altarweihe 1987, Kath. Pfarramt Deidesheim, 1987, p. 74
  11. ^ Georg Peter Karn, Rolf Mertzenich: Bad Dürkheim district. City of Bad Dürkheim, municipality of Haßloch, municipalities of Deidesheim, Lambrecht, Wachenheim (=  cultural monuments in Rhineland-Palatinate. Monument topography of the Federal Republic of Germany . Volume 13.1 ). Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 1995, ISBN 3-88462-119-X , p. 148 .