Kolín Jewish Community

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The Jewish ghetto in Kolín, here Karoliny Světlé alley

The Jewish community ( Kehillah ) in Kolín (German Kolin , older also Cologne on the Elbe ), a town in the Okres Kolín district in the Czech Republic , has existed since the 14th century. For a long time it was one of the largest and most important Jewish communities in Bohemia and, from 1918, in Czechoslovakia .

History of the Jewish population in Kolín

The beginnings of the Jewish community in Kolín, which is one of the oldest and most important Jewish communities in the history of Bohemia, go back to the 14th century. However, with the more precise dating, the sources diverge somewhat. The historian Josef Vávra mentions that after 1376 some Jews were named in the city registers , the Kolín Rabbi Richard Feder , who received Vávra's work, does not question this information. Zuzana Věchetová mentions sources in her work in which the authors refer to the possible beginnings of Jewish settlement in Kolín in the first half of the 14th century. She also mentions entries in the Bohemian country tables ( libri contractuum , Czech "zemské desky"), according to which 1377 was written about the property status of some Jewish residents (LC II). Furthermore, reference is made to the Codex epistolaris Johannis regis Bohemiae , in which there is a letter from 1339-1341 (or 1346), addressed to the administration of Kolín, among others, regarding tax matters for Jews there (this source has been since the beginning of the 20th century lost).

In addition to business activities such as money lending and trading, the Jews began to be involved in crafts - initially for their own immediate needs, but increasingly also in competition with non-Jewish craftsmen. There is evidence of an armorer Abraham and other craftsmen in Kolín .

In 1541 King Ferdinand I decided to make the Bohemian cities "free of Jews"; the Jews from Kolín are said to have emigrated to Poland in 1542, led by Rabbi Mojžíš Malostranský . After Ferdinand's successor Maximilian II allowed the settlement of the Jewish population again in 1564, the community was revived: in 1574, 33 Jewish families lived in the city, and by 1620 the community was the second largest in Bohemia and was one of the most important in the country in the period that followed. From 1917 onwards he worked as Rabbi Richard Feder , who held this office until 1953 (with an interruption from 1942 to 1945).

Shoah

After the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , the Jewish population of Kolín was deported to large-scale concentration camps in three large transports, in most cases via Theresienstadt to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp ; the first deportation to Theresienstadt took place on June 13, 1942 (transport AAb with 744 people), the next on June 9, 1942 (Transport AAc with 724 people), the last on June 13, 1942 (Transport AAd with 734 people) with a total of 2232 people. Most of them were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau. This number includes deported Jews from all over the area of ​​the Kolín Regional Council (with several political districts), in which the Kolín community was assigned a central role in the implementation of the instructions of the Protectorate authorities. Almost 140 of these deportees survived. Around 500 people were deported from Kolín itself, of whom only a few survived: at the instigation of Rabbi Feder, a memorial with eight plaques was inaugurated in 1950 at the new Jewish cemetery in Kolín, on which the names of 487 victims of the Holocaust are engraved, and another Source cites 480 victims by name. The efforts of Rabbi Feder to organize a large-scale emigration of around 500 Jews to Kolín in 1939 failed in part because of the unwillingness of foreign authorities. Overall, it is assumed that around 96 percent of the Jews deported from Kolín and the surrounding area were murdered.

After 1945

After the end of the war, a small Jewish community was founded again in Kolin. Rabbi Richard Feder, who was the only one of his family who had survived the Holocaust, played a large part in this. He returned to Kolín to revitalize the former Jewish community. However, after he was called from Kolín to Brno in 1953, the community dissolved in the 1950s.

After 2008, several stumbling blocks were laid in Kolín, sometimes a school initiative was also involved.

Rabbi of the community

Almost unanimously, Rabbi Majer (also known as Meir) is listed as the first rabbi in Kolin; his rabbinate is said to have lasted from 1500 to 1513. He was followed by Samuel, and in 1541 the office fell to Mojžíš Malostranský. Well-known authors and theologians such as Eleazar Kalir (1782–1802) and Benjamin Volf ha-Levi Boskovic (1802–1810) also worked as rabbis in Kolín. From the 17th century, the rabbi in Kolín was also the rabbi in Kouřim.

The last rabbi in Kolín was Richard Feder , who held the office from 1917 to 1953 (with an interruption between 1942 and 1945 - imprisonment in the Theresienstadt concentration camp ). After the liberation he returned to Kolín and tried to revive the then very small Jewish community, which consisted of a few surviving returnees. In 1953, however, he was moved to Brno.

Development of the Jewish population

The population of the Jewish community in Kolín developed as follows:

year
number
annotation
around 1390 approx. 15 families
1504 300 people
around 1575 approx. 35 families
1718 138 families
1793 215 families alternatively: 251 families equal 1169 people
1854 approx. 1700 people about 23 percent of the population
1872 247 families
1881 1148 people
1890 1075 people about 7 percent of the population
1900 806 people
1910 634 people
1921 482 people
1930 430 people about 2 percent of the population

In 1938, numerous Jewish families from the Sudetenland fled to Kolín.

Personalities

The following persons belonged to the Jewish community in Kolín:

Remarks

  1. ↑ Another source gives the date March 22, 1944 as the last transport and puts the number of deportees at a total of 2254 - cf. Eradication of a bohemian community , online hagalil.com / ... . The source Kehilat Israel gives the number of deported persons as 2,202, but gives further deportations besides the three main transports, cf. kehillatisrael.net / ...
  2. ↑ The Yiddish or Hebrew names are here - owed to the sources - as a rule reproduced in the Czech transliteration, which can lead to large differences to the names used in German.
  3. ↑ One of the two sources is clearly a typo.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Josef Vávra: Dějiny královského města Kolína nad Labem, JL Bayer, Kolín 1888, 265 pages, online at: ia802700.us.archive.org / ... , page 38
  2. ↑ a b Richard Feder: Dějiny Židů v Kolíně , in: Hugo Gold (ed.), The Jews and Jewish communities of Bohemia in the past and present , Jüdischer Buch- und Kunstverlag, Brno-Prague 1934, page 277, online at: digi.landesbibliothek .at/...
  3. ↑ Zlatuše Kukánová, Lenka Matušíková: Matriky židovských náboženských obcí , in: Paginae historiae 1992, pp. 103–127; Moritz Popper: On the history of the Jews in Kolin (Bohmen) in the 14th century , in: Monthly for the history and science of Judaism, 1893/94, page 220; both quoted to: Zuzana Věchetová: Židovská obec v Kolíně. Židovští obyvatelé v soupisových pramenech 16.-18. století , Karlova Universita, Prague, 2006, page 18, note 80 and note 81, online at: is.cuni.cz / ...
  4. ↑ a b Stanislav Petr: Nejstarší židovská kniha města Kolína z let 1598-1729 a správa židovské obce v tomto období , in: Zuzana Miškovská (ed.): Sborník z historie Židů na Kolínsku , Kolín 1992, page 8; Stanislav Petr: Kolínská židovská komunita po prvním exodu židů ze zemí Koruny České v roce 1541 (in: Práce muzea v Kolíně - řada společenskovědní IX: Židé v Kolíně a okolí, Kolín 2005, page 15); both quoted according to: Václav Nedbal: Židé v Kolíně a okolí: Místa paměti , Univerzita Karlova, 2018, online at: is.cuni.cz / ... , page 21, note 72 or page 23, note 88
  5. ↑ Mark Wischnitzer: Origins of the Jewish Artisan Class in Bohemia and Moravia, 1500–1648 , in: Jewish Social Studies , Volume 16, No. 4 (October 1954), pages 335-350, 337, online at: JSTOR 4465275
  6. ↑ a b c d Jiří Fiedler: Kolín , report on the Jewish community in Kolín, online at: holocaust.cz / ...
  7. ↑ a b c Klaus-Dieter Alicke: Lexicon of Jewish communities in the German-speaking area , 3 volumes, Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2008, ISBN 978-3-579-08035-2 , here section Kolin (Bohemia) , in: Online version Aus the history of Jewish communities in the German-speaking area , online at: jewische-gemeinden.de / ...
  8. ↑ List of all transports to Theresienstadt (sorted by place of departure) , database of the Institute Theresienstadt Initiative, online at: katalog.terezinstudies.cz / ...
  9. ↑ a b A Brief History of the Jews of Kolin during the Occupation 1939–45 , Report by Kehillat Israel, online at: kehillatisrael.net / ...
  10. ↑ Dějiny města , report on the history of Kolín, M vonSTSKÉ INFORMAČNÍ CENTRUM Kolín server, online at: infocentrum-kolin.cz/
  11. ↑ Kolínská židovská obec bývala po Praze druhou nejvýznamnější, dokládají to četné památky , in: Novinky.cz, news portal, online at: novinky.cz/
  12. ↑ Untitled [Names highlighted in blue have already been memorialized], a list by the Manetto Hill Jewish Center about the deported and murdered Jews from Kolín, online at: manettohilljc.org / ...
  13. ↑ Dopis rabína Richarda Federa Ministerstvu sociální a zdravotní správy ve věci vystěhování kolínských Židů (Letter from Rabbi Richard feder to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health ...), April 26, 1939, online at: holocaust.cz/.../zidu
  14. ↑ Richard Feder: Židovská tragédie: dějství poslední (The Jewish Tragedy: The Final Act), 1947, quoted here from the excerpt Mezi okupací a deportací , online at: holocaust.cz/...deportaci
  15. ↑ a b PhDr. Richard Feder , curriculum vitae in Internetová encyklopedie dějin města Brna (online encyclopedia of the city of Brno), online at: encyklopedie.brna.cz / ...
  16. ↑ Stolpersteine ​​Kolín , report about the stumbling stones in Kolín on the pages of Střední odborná škola stavební a Střední odborné učiliště stavební (building technical college and building technical training center), both in Kolín, initiators of the stumbling stones laying in Kolín, stolpersteine.ss-stavebnikolin.cz / ...
  17. ↑ Židovská čtvrť - ul. Na Hradbách - synagoga , private web , online at: prochazkakolinem.wz.cz / ...
  18. ↑ Zuzana Miškovská, Stanislav Petr (et al.), Sborník z historie židů na Kolínsku , Kolín 1992, cit. to: Zuzana Věchetová: Židovská obec v Kolíně. Židovští obyvatelé v soupisových pramenech 16.-18. století , Karlova Universita, Prague, 2006 online at: is.cuni.cz / ... , page 28, note 137
  19. ↑ : Rudolf M. Wlaschek: Jews in Böhmen - Contributions to the History of European Jewry in the 19th and 20th Century , in: Publications of the Collegium Carolinum, Volume 66, R. Oldenbourg-Verlag, Munich 1997, quoted. according to: 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 , here section Kolin (Bohemia) , in: Online version From history Jewish communities in the German-speaking area , online at: jewische-gemeinden.de / ...
  20. ↑ Jaroslav Pejša, Ladislav Jouza, Miroslava Jouzová: Moje město Kolín: Židé v Kolíně , Úmyslovice 2014, pages 7 and 9, cit. according to: Václav Nedbal: Židé v Kolíně a okolí: Místa paměti , Univerzita Karlova, 2018, online at: is.cuni.cz / ... , page 20, note 70, and page 22, note 84

Coordinates: 50 ° 1 '40 "  N , 15 ° 11' 55.1"  E