Jean Mandel

Jean Mandel (born September 20, 1911 in Fürth ; † December 25, 1974 at Höhenried Castle in Bernried am Starnberger See ) was a co-founder of the regional association of Israelite religious communities in Bavaria and its vice-president and first community chairman of the Fürth Jewish community after the Second World War .

Life

Mandel was born in Fürth in 1911 and attended the Israelitische Realschule there. After attending Sabel's commercial school in Nuremberg, he began commercial training in the Schwarz brothers' hop wholesaler in Nuremberg. After completing his apprenticeship, he worked in his parents' company, the First Fürth rag sorting facility . He took over this together with his brother in 1936. The business was destroyed during the Reichspogromnacht .

On October 28, 1938, Mandel was deported to Poland , where he settled in Lemberg . In March 1939 he returned to Fürth for two months. During the occupation of Poland , between 1941 and 1944, Mandel went into hiding in various hiding places in Lviv. In 1944 the Red Army liberated Lviv and interned Mandel because the Soviet secret police thought he was a Western spy. After a short stay in the DP camp in Zettwitz , Mandel returned to Fürth in the summer of 1945 to rebuild his company. Alongside Rabbi David Spiro , he was the driving force behind the rebuilding of the Israelite Religious Community in Fürth, of which he remained chairman until his death.

Mandel was also a founding member of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation in Nuremberg and its Jewish chairman. From 1946 he founded the regional association of the Jewish religious communities in Bavaria and was its vice-president. Between 1957 and 1974 he was chairman of the state committee. From January 1, 1964 until his death, he was a senator in the Bavarian Senate . From 1971 Mandel was a member of the board of directors of the Central Council of Jews in Germany .

Jean Mandel's tomb in the New Jewish Cemetery in Fürth

In Fürth, conflicts between German Jews and Eastern Europeans did not escalate to the same extent as in other Jewish communities in Germany, this is mainly attributed to Jean Mandel, since he was the son of Polish immigrants. Since the death of Spiro and Mandel in the 1970s, the congregation has lost many members because they no longer saw any prospects for a Jewish lifestyle. The decline in membership almost threatened the existence of the Jewish community. The dissolution of the community was only averted in the 1990s by the influx of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

In his youth, Mandel was an avid soccer player at SpVgg Fürth . He had to give up this hobby after losing a leg in a motorcycle accident.

Honors

• Federal Cross of Merit, 1st Class (September 3, 1956)
• Bavarian Order of Merit (1973)

literature

• Helga Schmöger (arrangement, among others): The Bavarian Senate. Biographical-statistical manual 1947-1997 , Düsseldorf, Droste-Verlag, 1998, p. 216 f. (Handbooks on the history of parliamentarism and political parties; Volume 10) ISBN 3-7700-5207-2

Web links

• Jean Mandel in the parliamentary database at the House of Bavarian History

Individual evidence

1. ↑ State Association of Israelite Cultural Communities in Bavaria: The State Committee with the Chairperson ( Memento of the original from April 17, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In the biographical-statistical manual of the Bavarian Senate and in the publications of the HdbG, it is mentioned from 1950 to 1974. 
2. ↑ Jewish life: Fürth - the "Frankish Jerusalem". In: BR-online. Bayerischer Rundfunk, February 3, 2016, accessed on February 3, 2017 . 
3. ↑ Office of the Federal President