Jewish community Mogendorf

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The Jewish community in Mogendorf was a Jewish community in Mogendorf in the Westerwaldkreis in Rhineland-Palatinate .

History of the Mogendorfer community until 1933

The history of the Jewish community in Mogendorf begins with the arrival of the Jew Salomon, who lived there from 1696 to 1707 and finally moved to Selters . In 1712 another Jewish family came to Mogendorf. Their head was called Schey Isaac, referred to as the Jud Schey von Mogendorf . This family was followed by others, such as Itzig Schey, his son and the families of Lehman Moses from Selters and Löw Heymann in 1744, as well as those of Jacob Veit from Meudt in 1746. This increased the number of Jewish families in the village to five.

In 1746 the now 75-year-old Jud Schey requested that he hold school and a Jewish ceremony in his house with ten people , as he was unable to go to Selters. This was granted to him for one Reichstaler per month. The synagogue , built in 1746 on the initiative of Schey Isaac, was not yet a separate building, but was in his house. The first teacher to serve in the Jewish community was a Jud Bacher who moved here in 1774.

In 1753 six Schutzjuden families with a total of 24 people lived in Mogendorf . In 1815 ten Jewish families with 62 people lived there, the men mostly realtors , cattle and cattle dealers by profession. In his article on the Jews in Mogendorf, Uli Jungbluth mentions their financial situation: For example, a Jacob Heyum, who was 48 years old and had three underage children, paid 12 guilders protection money with an income of around 200 guilders a year. He and his brother did some farming and cattle trading. The 56-year-old realtor Gumbel Herz, who had three underage children, paid 6 guilders protection and earned around 25 guilders.

After almost a hundred years of existence, the community decided to build its own synagogue. This should serve the Jews from Mogendorf, Vielbach and Quirnbach . In 1842, planning began for a synagogue for 80 men and a gallery for 25 women, a ritual bath with a heating chamber, a classroom, a hallway, two outside stairs and a toilet. The building was 17 m long and 6.50 m wide.

The synagogue in Hadamar served as a model for the construction and so the chairman of the Mogendorfer Kultusgemeinde, Hirsch Löw, agreed the construction of the interior with the Hadamar master carpenter Joseph David Hohenstein. He built the Bima after the Hadamar model, as well as the upstairs stage ( Alemmer ), the men's chairs and the school furniture and the women's chairs , which were made from parts of the old synagogue. After a construction period of seven years, the building was completed in 1850. It cost 4,727 guilders, an impressive amount for the time.

The downfall of the Mogendorfer community

The Mogendorfer community also experienced a gradual decline as a result of emigration and emigration from the second half of the 19th century. In 1930 the Mogendorfer Jews no longer had their own teacher. Every 14 days a teacher came from Selters to teach the Mogendorfer and Quirnbach students.

On November 10, 1938, during the so-called Reichspogromnacht, the synagogue in Mogendorf, the target of the SS and the SA, was destroyed in two separate actions. The SS- Hauptsturmbannführer Adolf Haas from Hachenburg gave on November 9 a. a. An SS man from Wirges was ordered to take part in the lighting of the synagogue in Mogendorf. The men were ordered to go home, put on civilian clothes, and wait. The men were picked up in two cars on the morning of November 10; Haas drove with them to Mogendorf, smashed the furniture and piled it up in the middle of the room. The SS man from Wirges was able to dissuade the group from setting fire to the wood because the neighboring houses were too close. Finally the SS command departed.

A little later came an SA troop, which had already raged in Mogendorf in the morning and later held a meeting in Montabaur, where they were planning an action in the evening. a. the Mogendorfer Jews should also be taken into protective custody. The men arrange to meet for the evening in civilian clothes in the Kohlenberg restaurant. After a speech by the SA storm leader, a group of SA men drove to Quirnbach, the other part went out onto the street, where the Jewish houses were already being attacked by young people and younger SA men. At Alexander Castle, the stable and toilet were demolished so that the rubble was lying around on the street. Also, the district administrator Freiherr von Preuschen and the NSDAP - district leader Cramer arrived by car from Montabaur to the house of the castle, who had previously sold his house the municipality, which wanted to demolish, to widen the road. All Jews from Mogendorf were then rounded up at the school to be later transported away. Meanwhile strangers tried several times to set fire to the synagogue, which Mogendorfer citizens were able to prevent each time. The broken stone walls stood for 14 years until 1952; then the former synagogue became the property of the Protestant parish and the ruins were converted into a Protestant church.

The Jewish community went out in the wake of German Jews deported in the Nazi era ; the 34 Mogendorfer Jews were mostly deported to the east, for example to Auschwitz , Majdanek , Riga , Minsk or Theresienstadt ; only a few families were able to emigrate to the United States, such as the Siegmann family and Julius and Kathinka Löw.

See also

literature

  • Uli Jungbluth: To the synagogue and the Jews of Mogendorf . In: Joachim Jösch, Uli Jungbluth u. a. (Ed.): Jews in the Westerwald. Life, suffering and remembrance. A guide to the search for clues . Montabaur 1998, pp. 100-110.

Web links

History of the Mogendorf synagogue near Alemannia Judaica

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jungbluth, p. 100.
  2. ↑ Jungbluth, p. 100.
  3. ↑ Jungbluth, p. 101.
  4. ↑ Jungbluth, p. 105. (See also H. Koch: Die Juden von Mogendorf (1996)).
  5. ↑ Jungbluth, p. 105 ff. (See also H. Koch: Die Juden von Mogendorf (1996)).
  6. ↑ Jungbluth, p. 107 ff.