Jewish community of Hachenburg

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Former synagogue in Hachenburg

The Jewish community in Hachenburg in the Westerwaldkreis ( Rhineland-Palatinate ) was a Jewish community whose roots go back to the Middle Ages . The Jewish community went out in 1940 as part of the German deportation Jews in the Nazi era .

history

The first written mention of Jewish citizens comes from the year 1349, when they fell victim to the first persecution after the Great Plague . The formation of the modern Jewish community in Hachenburg goes back to the 17th century: in 1674/75, two Jewish families are mentioned in the city. In the course of the 18th century their number rose to ten (in 1729 there were three families, in 1751 four, in 1778 six, in 1799 ten). In 1791 there were 43 Jewish residents. In 1751 there was a butcher among the families, and in 1788 there were two wine merchants. 1799 are given as professions: butcher and butcher, shopkeeper, trader, soap maker and wine merchant.

A community leader was named for the first time in 1810. The number of Jewish residents developed as follows: in 1843 there were 73; By 1871 the number fell to 53 (3.8% of a total of 1,384 inhabitants), only to increase again: in 1885 there were 57 (3.7% of 1,532), in 1895 72 (4.7% of 1,527), in 1900 72, 1905 124 (6.7% of 1,843) and 1913 126 Jewish citizens in the community.

The Jewish community also included the Jewish citizens of Alpenrod (1842 20 Jewish residents with Hirtscheid and Dehlingen), Altstadt (1843 17, 1905 10), Höchstenbach (1843 35, 1905 10), Kirburg (1843 26, 1905 17), Kroppach ( 1843 19) and Nister (community) . In the 19th century there were rooms in the subsidiary communities of Höchstenbach, Kroppach and Kirburg. The Jewish traders were butchers and cattle dealers, grain and fruit dealers.

Since the second half of the 19th century, several of them had built stores and shops on site, including a shoe store, a glass and china shop, and the like. a. m. Facilities included a synagogue , a religious school, a ritual bath ( mikveh , rebuilt in 1908) and its own cemetery . A religion teacher was employed to take care of religious tasks for the community, who also acted as prayer leader and schochet . Around 1842 Josef Rosenau is named as the teacher (in 1848 there were 25 children in the religious school, in 1851 31 children).

Services initially took place in a private house on Judengasse. It was not until 1897 that its own synagogue was inaugurated on Alexanderring. The Jewish community of Hachenburg belonged to the district rabbinate Weilburg and, after 1925, to the unified rabbinate district Bad Ems and Weilburg.

Around 1925, when 103 Jewish community members were counted, which corresponded to 4.7% of the total population, there was a men's chevra at Jewish associations ( Israelite charity association , founded in 1903 with the aim of supporting the sick and needy, with 38 members in 1932). The Jewish support association is also mentioned in 1932 , as is a women's association (or Israelitische Frauen-Chevrah , founded in 1882 with the aim of providing sick people with support and guards, with 34 members in 1932), a local group of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith , a Jewish one Youth association and a local group of the Reich Association of Jewish Front Soldiers .

The fall of the Jewish community in Hachenburg

The members of Alpenrod (1925 6, 1932 4), Steinebach an der Wied (1925 3) and Altstadt (1932 8) also belonged to the Hachenburg community . In 1932 Siegfried Levi worked as a teacher and cantor. At that time he had seven school-age children to teach religion. Berthold Seewald was the community leader.

After 1933, the number of Jewish community members continued to decline due to increasing reprisals and the consequences of the economic boycott . In 1936 there were still 75 members of the congregation, in September 1938 there were 28. By 1938 around 13 Jewish families had moved or emigrated from Hachenburg (around 20 people to the USA, six to South America, three to England, two to France, several to Palestine). The interior of the synagogue was destroyed during the November pogrom in 1938 . The building was spared from the fire because of the fire hazard for the surrounding buildings. On March 5, 1940, the last Jewish residents moved to Düsseldorf.

The Holocaust claimed 38 victims in Hachenburg. The information was based on the lists of Yad Vashem , Jerusalem and the memorial book - Victims of the persecution of Jews under the Nazi tyranny in Germany 1933-1945

Processing of the Nazi past / memorials

Today the Jewish cemetery on Dehlinger Weg (until 1923: Judenfriedhofsweg ), which the community acquired in 1781, commemorates the former Jewish community . On December 30, 1940, the Wiesbaden district president ordered the cemetery to be closed. Today there is a memorial for the persecuted and murdered Jewish citizens. The outer walls of the former synagogue on Alexanderring are still standing. However, as a result of multiple conversions into a residential and commercial building, nothing is reminiscent of the building's Jewish past.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the council group Die Grünen asked for the "Alte Poststrasse", which was called Judengasse until 1933 , to be given its old name again. The Dehlinger Weg , on which the Jewish cemetery is located , was also included in these considerations . When Ignatz Bubis , then chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, visited Hachenburg in 1995 , the topic was taken up again. This time the FDP faction made the proposal to reintroduce the former name Judengasse . This request was then implemented by the city mayor Hendrik Hering and the SPD parliamentary group, although there were violent dislike of the name change on the part of the residents, which escalated in a citizens' meeting. The city council decided on February 17th, 1997 with a majority of one vote to reintroduce the name Judengasse .

In 1991 the Jewish cemetery in Hachenburg was placed under monument protection.

Former synagogue Hachenburg (center)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Chr. Weidlinger-Vandirk: Places of Jewish life - an overview . In: Jüsch / Jungbluth: Jews in the Westerwald, p. 26 f.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Judaica-alemannia - history of the Jewish community Hachenburg.

literature

  • Klaus-Dieter Alicke: Lexicon of the Jewish communities in the German-speaking area. 3 volumes. Gütersloher Verlagshaus , Gütersloh 2008, ISBN 978-3-579-08035-2 .
  • Florian Sanner: Juden und Judenschutz in Kirburg (1698–1800), in: Nassauische Annalen 122 (2011), pp. 107–120.
  • Joachim Jösch / Uli Jungbluth u. a. (Ed.): Jews in the Westerwald. Life, suffering and remembrance. A guide to the search for clues . Montabaur 1998.
  • Jakob Saß: violence, greed and grace. The concentration camp commandant Adolf Haas and his way to Wewelsburg and Bergen-Belsen , Past Publishers , Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-86408-246-7 , pp. 126–178.

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