Dornum Jewish community

The Jewish community in Dornum existed for a period of around 300 years from its beginnings in the 17th century to its end on March 8, 1940. In 1925, the Jews in Dornum made up the highest percentage of the population in East Frisia after Neustadtgödens with 7.3%. For the first time after the Thirty Years War, Jews settled in the glory of Dornum , after Count Rudolf Christian granted the glory owners the privilege of issuing their own letters of protection in 1626 . From then on the Jews took part in local life and were members of various village associations. After 1933, many Jews emigrated and persecuted. Over 50% of the Jewish residents living in Dornum in 1933 were murdered in the Holocaust . None of the surviving Jews from Dornum returned.

History of the Jewish community in Dornum

17th century to 1933

The Jewish cemetery in Dornum

The first Jews settled in the glory of Dornum after the Thirty Years War. In 1626 the owners of the glory were granted the privilege by Count Rudolf Christian of issuing letters of protection for Jews. Under the Baroque prince Harro Joachim von Closter (1700–1707), further Jewish craftsmen and merchants were accepted into Dornum. In the village itself, only one family lived at first due to the "single-family home law". After the Christmas flood in 1717, this restriction was lifted and Jews were allowed to move freely. In addition, “Jewish escorts” and “letters of protection” were awarded. 1,721 of glory owner pointed to the Jewish community of Dornum as a burial place the slightly Lübben- lying outside the village mound to. First the Jewish community had to rent the place, which is not allowed according to Jewish regulations, since Jewish cemeteries and graves have to exist for all eternity. In 1723 the Jewish community bought their own cemetery . A synagogue in Dornum is first mentioned around 1730 . The synagogue in Dornum, still preserved today , was built in 1841. The Dornum Jews had to borrow the money for this from a Christian moneylender, with houses and valuables belonging to the Jewish families being given as security. 1848 was founded in Dornum a vigilante group in which there were also Jewish members. From then on, Jews were members of various local associations, including the rifle, gymnastics and military association. During the First World War , five Jews from Dornum died and were honored on a plaque in the synagogue. In 1920 the synagogue received electric light. The building did not have a heating facility. The floor of the synagogue was made of pounded clay. Only around the bima were red bricks laid out. In the Weimar Republic , the local Jews were the rifle king three times (1920 Moses Hess, 1923 Daniel Cohen, 1929 Wilhelm Rose).

In November 1931 an NSDAP local group was founded in Dornum . In 1932 the NSDAP bought the Dornum Castle - about 200 meters from the synagogue - and established an SA leadership school there. At that time there were no National Socialists represented in the local council. At that time, the chairman of the synagogue community, Aaron Wolffs, still had a seat on the council.

1933 to 1938

Former synagogue in Dornum

In the local elections on March 12, 1933, the chairman of the synagogue community Wolffs lost his seat in the community council and the NSDAP moved into the twelve-member community council with five members. From January to October the number of members of the NSDAP local group rose from 37 to 85 people. On March 19, a memorial plaque was inaugurated for those who died in the First World War. The names of the Jewish dead were omitted. The Jews were also forced out of club life. The shooting club removed the pictures of the Jewish shooting kings from the clubhouse and broke their shields from the shooting chain.

On March 28, 1933, Anton Bleeker, the Standartenführer for East Friesland, issued a ban on slaughter in all East Frisian slaughterhouses and ordered that the slaughter knife be burned. This led to a first major incident on the same day. The Dornumer SA marched together with the SS and the SA from the north on the market square. The SA forced the slaughter knife to be handed over to be burned in the marketplace. The Sturmführer then declared all Jewish shops in Dornum to be closed.

On April 1, 1933, the so-called boycott day , SA guards moved in front of the Jewish shops and observed whether the boycott was actually being adhered to.

On April 5, 1933, the SA arrested the cattle dealer Jako Rose and took him to the police prison north. There he died under unexplained circumstances. The next day, rumors quickly spread that the cause of death was "suicide by hanging". If economic reasons had already caused the Jewish population to move away more frequently before 1933, the exodus of the Dornum Jews now began. By the end of 1933, a third had already left Dornum.

In August 1933, Hohe Strasse, on which the synagogue and many Jewish apartments were located, was renamed Adolf-Hitler- Strasse. After 1933 the synagogue in Dornum was hardly used any more, because the required number of ten male worshipers for a minjan was no longer achieved. Wilhelm Rose, the last head of the community, finally sold the synagogue on November 7, 1938 for 600 Reichsmarks to the local master carpenter August Teßmer, whose house was directly adjacent to the synagogue building. From then on he used the building as a furniture store. Rose transferred the sales proceeds, which were intended for the Jewish aid association, to the regional rabbinate in Emden .

November pogrom 1938

Honor plaque with the names of the five Jewish soldiers who died in the First World War

By November 1938, around two thirds of the Jews living in Dornum had left their East Frisian homeland. Despite the sale, the SA and SS stormed the Jewish house of God on the Reichskristallnacht . The windows were broken and all furnishings were taken out. These included the plaque of honor with the names of the five Jewish soldiers who died in the First World War, the Bima , the Aron ha-Qodesch ( holy shrine - the Torah scrolls are kept in the synagogue) and the bier. Finally, the Torah scrolls were stolen from Wilhelm Rose's house. The objects were then burned publicly on the market square. Then SA troops broke into Jewish homes, arrested everyone, and took them north to the slaughterhouse in a truck, where the Jews from Northern Norway had also been rounded up. Old people, women and children were released on the morning of November 10th, the men were deported via Oldenburg to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , from which they could only return weeks later. In the period that followed, the last Jews left Dornum. On March 8, 1940, the village was reported as " free of Jews ".

The cemetery , where the last burial took place on November 9, 1938, on the day of the pogrom, was sold by the National Socialists to a local resident for 150 Reichsmarks. Between 1940 and 1945 the gravestones were removed from the graves and put together on Marktstrasse. Further plans included plowing the cemetery and leaving only one grave symbolically. However, this was no longer implemented.

post war period

Over 50% of the Jewish residents living in Dornum in 1933 were murdered in the Holocaust. A legal processing of the incidents in Dornum did not take place because the public prosecutor's investigations were insufficient for an indictment. By order of the Allied military authorities (Canadians), the stones that had not yet been destroyed were brought back to the cemetery and built on the foundations that were still there. Since some gravestones could not be assigned to the correct graves, it is difficult for the relatives to speak the kaddish , which is why a kaddish is often spoken throughout the cemetery.

The marksman king of 1981/82, Christoph Meyer, had the signs of his Jewish predecessors reinserted into the royal chain .

The synagogue served as a furniture store until 1990. In 1990 the support association "Synagoge Dornum" was founded, whose aims are the preservation and restoration of the synagogue in Dornum, the maintenance and care of the Jewish cemetery and the creation of a permanent exhibition on the Jewish history of Dornum. In 1991 the synagogue was restored with funds from the preservation authorities and the municipality of Dornum and since then it has served as a memorial and information center. None of the surviving Jews from Dornum returned.

Community development

In 1925, the Jewish community in Dornum had the highest percentage of the population in East Frisia, at 7.3%. In 1905 it was 9% of the total population of the patch.

year Parishioners 1802 31 people 1867 65 people 1885 61 people 1905 83 people 1925 58 people 1933 at the beginning of the year 53 people 1933 end of the year 32 people 1938 November 15 people

Memorials

Memorial and information center Synagoge Dornum

• Memorial and information center Synagoge Dornum
• Jewish cemetery in Dornum

See also

• History of the Jews in East Frisia
• East Frisia at the time of National Socialism

literature

• Horst Reichwein: The Jews in the East Frisian glory Dornum (1662-1940). The history of the synagogue community of Dornum from the East Frisian prince's claim for protection money in 1662 to the expulsion by the National Socialists in 1940 . Self-published (Edition Holtriem), Westerholt / Ostfriesland 1997, ISBN 3-931641-03-1 . (Not listed in the DNB )
• Horst Reichwein: Stone witnesses to Jewish life in Dornum. A booklet accompanying the tour through the East Frisian town of Dornum . Dornum 1994.
• Herbert Reyer (arr.): The end of the Jews in East Frisia. Catalog for the exhibition of the East Frisian landscape on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht . Verlag Ostfriesische Landschaft, Aurich 1988, ISBN 3-925365-41-9 .
• Herbert Reyer, Martin Tielke (ed.): Frisia Judaica. Contributions to the history of the Jews in East Frisia . Aurich 1988, ISBN 3-925365-40-0 .
• Daniel Fraenkel: Dornum. In: Herbert Obenaus (Ed. In collaboration with David Bankier and Daniel Fraenkel): Historical manual of the Jewish communities in Lower Saxony and Bremen . Wallstein, Göttingen 2005; ISBN 3-89244-753-5 ; Pp. 478-486

Web links

• Memorial and information center Synagoge Dornum
• The Jewish cemetery in Dornum
• Jewish history and synagogue in Dornum

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Herbert Obenaus (Ed.): Historical manual of the Jewish communities in Lower Saxony and Bremen . Wallstein, Göttingen 2005. ISBN 3-89244-753-5 , p. 479.
2. ↑ Horst Reichwein: The Jews in the East Frisian glory Dornum (1662-1940). The history of the synagogue community of Dornum from the East Frisian prince's claim for protection money in 1662 to the expulsion by the National Socialists in 1940 . Edition Holtriem, Westerholt 1997, ISBN 3-931641-03-1 . P. 115.
3. ↑ Horst Reichwein: The Jews in the East Frisian glory Dornum (1662-1940). The history of the synagogue community of Dornum from the East Frisian prince's claim for protection money in 1662 to the expulsion by the National Socialists in 1940 . Edition Holtriem, Westerholt 1997, ISBN 3-931641-03-1 . P. 163.
4. ↑ Herbert Obenaus (Ed.): Historical manual of the Jewish communities in Lower Saxony and Bremen. Wallstein, Göttingen 2005. ISBN 3-89244-753-5 , p. 485.

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on August 8, 2007 .

Coordinates: 53 ° 38 ′ 51.6 "  N , 7 ° 25 ′ 43.4"  E