Jewish community of Lechenich

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The Judenstrasse of the old city

The history of the Jewish community of Lechenichs , a small town about 20 km west of Cologne , spans a period of about 700 years. It begins in the 13th century and ends in 1942. The heyday of the Jewish community was at the end of the 19th century. The Jewish life in Lechenich was completely destroyed by the persecution of the Jews by the National Socialists .

Middle Ages to the end of the 18th century

Already in the 13th century there was a Jewish community in Lechenich, which received town charter in 1279 . When the rumor arose in 1287 that the Jews had murdered "Good Werner" , the Jews were persecuted throughout the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation . According to the memorandum of the Jewish community in Nuremberg , around 46 Jews are said to have perished in Lechenich. The Jews in Lechenich were also affected by the persecution of the Jews in 1349 and the persecution in 1374.

In the following centuries the community continued to exist. Lechenich belonged to the Electorate of Cologne and the Jews in Lechenich were protective Jews of the Elector and Archbishop, who paid him protection money for a "safe conduct letter". These protection money payments are already documented for 1366. The synagogue for all Jews of the Lechenich office was located in Lechenich. In the 17th and 18th centuries it was on Judenstrasse. It was a prayer room in a residential building that included a mikveh under the extension .

The Jews in Lechenich were cattle dealers, but also moneylenders. Some were wealthy, others impoverished and roamed the surrounding villages as peddlers .

19th and early 20th centuries

In 1801 Lechenich had about 1,070 inhabitants, including 41 Jews, about 3.8% of the population. Six were traders, one was a butcher, and one who had no job description described himself as poor.

The Jewish community flourished at the end of the 19th century. The Jews were citizens with equal rights, performed military service, were members of local councils, associations, and also active in carnival. The Berlin Baron Georg von Bleichröder , horse breeder and owner of Lechenich Palace , belonged to the Jewish community.

The community had grown rapidly in the course of the 19th century. Their share of the total population rose from 2.91% in 1860 to 3.71% in 1872. As a result of the emigration to the cities, especially to Cologne , the proportion of Jews in the population fell to 2.71% in 1901.

The synagogue as the center of the community

The Lechenich Synagogue
Inauguration of the synagogue in Lechenich , drawing by Jean Bungartz , Illustrirte Welt magazine , 1886

The synagogue community Lechenich consisted of three special communities, the special community Lechenich, the special community Gymnich and the special community Friesheim . According to the statute of 1848, the localities of Lechenich, Erp , Blessem , Liblar , Bliesheim and Roggendorf, today Kierdorf , belonged to the special community of Lechenich, the localities of Gymnich and Dirmerzheim to the special community of Gymnich, and the locality of Friesheim to the special community of Friesheim. Max Berg was the last head of the synagogue in Lechenich. He has held the office since 1913.

The prayer room in the house built in the 17th century on Judenstrasse was used by the community in the 19th century until a new synagogue was built. The new synagogue on Judenstrasse across the street was inaugurated on September 10, 1886 in a solemn ceremony at which Rabbi Dr. Abraham Frank from Cologne gave the keynote address. The synagogue, a brick building with four towers, offered space for 60 men and 36 women.

Preserved prayer house, Judenstrasse 7
Restored former Jewish school on Judenstrasse

A school was built next to the synagogue in 1905, from which there was a separate entrance to the bathroom in the basement. The school was closed in 1920 due to insufficient student numbers and financial reasons. The Jewish children then went to Catholic school, and some also went to high school in Lechenich for four years. The Jewish children had time off during Catholic religious instruction. They received their religious instruction from outside Jewish teachers. Some parents sent their children to Cologne to visit the Jewish Orthodox Realgymnasium Jawne or the Jewish Orthodox elementary school on St. Apern- Strasse, which is now reminiscent of Erich-Klibansky-Platz .

1933 to 1938

At the beginning of the rule of National Socialism , Lechenich had 3990 inhabitants, 74 of them were Jews, which corresponds to 1.8% of the total population. Of the 16 Jewish heads of household, two were merchants, three butchers, a horse dealer, three cattle dealers, two leather goods dealers, a house painter, a synagogue servant , a widow with an adopted son and a single woman.

After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 renamed soon took place some roads. The market square was no longer called the market, but "Adolf-Hitler-Platz". Bonner Strasse became "Hindenburgstrasse", and Judenstrasse, on which the synagogue was located, became "Horst-Wessel-Strasse". The next measures discriminated against the Jewish families: On April 1, 1933, a boycott of Jewish businesses was called for; SA guards moved to make sure that the boycott was being followed. The local group leader was lawyer Paul Geile, who became mayor in 1934. At the end of April, the slaughter of animals was prohibited . The measures taken by the Nazi government against Jewish traders worsened the economic situation of the Lechenich Jews.

Discrimination has been increasing since 1935. According to the Reich Citizenship Law , the Jews were no longer full citizens and were marginalized and stigmatized by the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 and the additional labeling of names and passports since 1938.

In the years from 1933 to 1938, most of the adult children of Lechenich families emigrated to England, Palestine, Peru, New York and Sao Paulo. In the summer of 1938 three young men traveled to their relatives in the USA. Exact information on emigration is not possible due to a lack of data, but by autumn 1938 around 25% of Lechenich Jews had moved, most of them had emigrated.

November 10, 1938 in Lechenich

The riots against the Jews, known as the 1938 November pogroms , began in Lechenich on November 10th. The order of the Nazi leadership was telegraphed to the district administrator of the Euskirchen district, who passed the instructions to Mayor Geile to set fire to the synagogues and to demolish Jewish commercial buildings.

In the afternoon, SA men broke into the synagogues and destroyed the interior. The looters picked up prayer robes and Torah scrolls and wandered the streets with the scrolls in their arms. The synagogue was set on fire with petrol cans brought by the Hitler Youth . The fire brigade acted according to the instructions, only to prevent the flames from spreading to neighboring houses and not to extinguish the fire, and did not intervene. The synagogue burned to the ground. The SA and Hitler Youth then demolished the homes of all Jewish traders. Windows were smashed and shop fittings and furniture were thrown on the street. An old Jewish woman received a head wound from a spade blow from an SA man.

On the orders of the Gestapo , the Jewish men were arrested and locked up in the district court. The following day, after the old men were released, the younger men who were fit for work were transported to the Dachau concentration camp . In December the prisoners came back to Lechenich.

After the pogrom, the Nazi regime tightened anti-Jewish policy with a regulation on the use of Jewish assets . The ordinance on the elimination of Jews from German economic life of November 12, 1938, also forced Jewish businesses in Lechenich to deregister their businesses.

In the spring of 1939, the community of Lechenich acquired the synagogue property and the school building for 7,000 Reichsmarks, as local group leader and mayor Dr. Geile informed the district administrator on March 28, 1939. The remains of the burned-out synagogue were torn down and the undamaged schoolhouse was converted into a party home. A home for the Hitler Youth was set up in the classroom on the ground floor and a home for the Association of German Girls in the teacher's apartment .

The former prayer house of the Jews opposite the synagogue from 1886, which had belonged to a Jewish family, is still inhabited today.

The Jewish community gradually dissolved after 1938. Almost all Jewish families in Lechenich had left the place after the pogrom and the forced sale of their property and had mostly found accommodation in the nearby city of Cologne in order to try to emigrate from there. One applicant was able to travel to Denmark and an extended family managed to travel to Kenya. Of five applications submitted and granted in Lechenich, only two were accepted. One Jew traveled to Trinidad, another emigrated to China without his family. Several families wishing to leave the country did not manage to leave because of a lack of approval from the immigration country. Of the families whose applications were rejected, only three subsequently stayed in Lechenich.

Of the Jews still living in Lechenich in 1938, over 60% had left Lechenich by the outbreak of the Second World War .

November 10th in Liblar

In Liblar, part of the Lechenich synagogue community, where five Jewish families lived in 1938, their apartments and shops were demolished on November 10th, and one Jew was injured by severe blows. After the November pogrom, four families left their place of residence and moved to Cologne. One family managed to send their daughter to Palestine on a Kindertransport via England . An old couple who stayed behind in Liblar were sent to a Jewish house in Gymnich (Schützenstrasse) in 1941 .

The extermination of the Jews from 1939 to 1945

The few families who stayed in Lechenich after their houses and property had been sold had to move into a “Jewish house” in 1939. The men were conscripted to work in road construction. In the summer of 1941 the Jews from Lechenich were admitted to “Jewish houses” in Friesheim and Gymnich. At the beginning of July 1942, the "Rhineland District Office of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany " informed the Jews still living in Friesheim and Gymnich about the imminent deportation. You were brought to Cologne. From Cologne they were deported to the concentration camps in the east, to Lodz , Minsk , Riga or Theresienstadt and to the Auschwitz extermination camp .

Of the deported Jews from Lechenich, only one survived. As far as we know, there were murdered: eleven in Minsk, four in Riga, four in Auschwitz, three in Lodz, four in Theresienstadt, and two in unknown locations.

The passport of Edith Baum, a Jew from Lechenich, is shown today in the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem as an example of the passports of German Jews.

The Liblar Jews were murdered: three in Riga, three in Lodz, one in Minsk, and two in Auschwitz. One died in the Ramsdorf concentration camp. Two Jews survived in Theresienstadt, one of whom had been transferred from Riga to Theresienstadt.

Commemoration

  • Memorial plaque at the former prayer house

  • Information board at the former Jewish school

  • Today "stumbling blocks" commemorate the deported and murdered Jews of the city

  • Liblar on Carl-Schurz-Strasse

In Lechenich, memorial plaques were put up on some buildings to commemorate the fate of former Jewish fellow citizens. At the instigation of the city administration, the former Jewish school in Lechenich received a plaque in 1983 with information about the synagogue on the neighboring property, which was destroyed in 1938 . The former home of the Baum family in Raiffeisenstrasse also received such a memorial plaque in 2005 (donation from a financial institution). As part of an ecumenical project, supported by private donations, so-called stumbling blocks were placed in the pavement in front of other homes of deported and murdered Jewish families based on an idea by the artist Gunter Demnig in 2006, 2007 and 2008 . These are small, square brass plates that have been provided with the data of the persons concerned and thus remind of the fate of these people who disappeared without a trace at that time and did not return from the extermination camps.

In Liblar, too, on the initiative of one of its members, supported by the Catholic congregations and private donors, the Protestant parish had stumbling blocks placed at appropriate places as a reminder.

Relics of the Jewish community

Jewish religious literature from the Geniza discovered in 2014

During renovation work on a commercial building on Schloßstraße that belonged to Jewish families from 1896 to 1938, workers discovered a geniza in 2014 when a wall was breached . The objects found and secured in a wall niche are no longer used prayer books of the Jewish liturgy, partly in Hebrew, partly in Latin. The books, which date from the second half of the 19th century, are partly provided with handwritten notes. There was also a staff there, which probably belonged to a flag.

The rare find is to be scientifically examined after an appraisal by an employee of the Institute for Regional Studies and Regional History of the LVR .

graveyards

On the Weltersmühlenweg

The old Jewish cemetery at the Schleifmühle was fully occupied around 1890, Jewish graves are not limited in time, so a new cemetery was necessary. There is a memorial stone on the unfenced area at the western entrance.

The new cemetery on Römerhofweg was opened in 1892. The last funeral took place here in 1940. In 1942 a gardener bought the cemetery next to his nursery and grew vegetables there. In 1947 the cemetery was given to the Jewish community of Cologne following a regulation by the British military government that Jewish cemeteries had to be returned to the Jewish communities free of charge. The remaining 31 tombstones were put back up.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ S. Salfeld: Nürnberger Memorbuch p. 26, p. 279 and p. 475, here quoted from K. and H. Stommel: Sources for the history of the city of Erftstadt Volume I. Erftstadt 1990. No. 162, No. 378 and No. 584.
  2. ↑ HAStK certificate S / 1242.
  3. ^ Archive Gracht Honschaft Gymnich, quoted here from Stommel: Sources for the history of the city of Erftstadt, Volume V. Erftstadt 1998. No. 2908.
  4. ↑ Stommel: Sources Volume V No. 2837 and Archive Gracht File 52.
  5. ^ Archive Gymnich file 554 (church accounts)
  6. ↑ HSTAD Kurköln XIII 135.
  7. ^ Karl Stommel: The French population lists 1798–1801. Erftstadt 1989. pp. 294-348.
  8. ↑ City Archives Erftstadt Le 2010 and 2032 (log books of the municipal council 1846–55 and 1906–1929)
  9. ↑ H. and C. Bormann: Heimat an der Erft p. 428 and p. 434.
  10. ^ Bormann: Heimat an der Erft pp. 279–288.
  11. ↑ Handbook of the Archdiocese of Cologne. Cologne 1860, 1872 and 1901.
  12. ^ Karl Stommel: The Jews in the places of today's city of Erftstadt. Erftstadt 1983. p. 24.
  13. ^ Bormann: Heimat an der Erft pp. 87-88.
  14. ↑ Report from: Illustrirte Welt September 1886.
  15. ^ Karl Stommel: The Jews in the places of today's city of Erftstadt. Erftstadt 1986. pp. 32-33.
  16. ^ Bormann: Heimat an der Erft p. 439.
  17. ^ Bormann: Heimat an der Erft, pages 30, 40, 89.
  18. ↑ Handbook of the Archdiocese of Cologne 1933.
  19. ↑ Bormann: Heimat an der Erft pp. 208–209.
  20. ↑ Bormann: Heimat an der Erft pp. 38–126.
  21. ^ Bormann: Heimat an der Erft, p. 215.
  22. ↑ Bormann: Heimat an der Erft p. 216.
  23. ↑ Bormann: Heimat an der Erft pp. 216–218.
  24. ^ Bormann: Heimat an der Erft pp. 39–74 and pp. 220–221.
  25. ^ Illustration of the message published in Bormann: Heimat an der Erft p. 347.
  26. ^ Bormann: Heimat an der Erft pp. 31–31 and pp. 90–92.
  27. ↑ Bormann: Heimat an der Erft p. 221 u. 222.
  28. ↑ Bormann: Heimat an der Erft pp. 18–26.
  29. ↑ Bormann: Heimat an der Erft pp. 222–224.
  30. ^ Jörg Füchtner: The end of the Jewish part of the Lechenich population. Yearbook of the City of Erftstadt 2009. pp. 68–69.
  31. ^ Jörg Füchtner: The end of the Jewish part of the Lechenich population. Yearbook of the City of Erftstadt 2009. pp. 68–74.
  32. ↑ D. Heinzig according to the information in the memorial book of the Federal Archives.
  33. ↑ Kölner Stadtanzeiger Rhein-Erft April 1, 2014 p. 31.

Web links

Commons : Jüdische Gemeinde Lechenich  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files