History of the Jews in Estonia

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The history of the Jews in Estonia began relatively late in comparison with other European countries. Despite individual Jewish contacts during the Middle Ages , Estonia and Livonia , in contrast to Lithuania , did not belong to the traditional settlement area of ​​the Jewish population in Europe and an organized Jewish life only developed here in the first half of the 19th century.

Early years (14th to 19th centuries)

The conquest and Catholic Christianization of the pagan Estonians by Denmark and the Teutonic Order was completed in the 13th century. There have been reports since the 14th century that individual Jews lived in Estonia. Contacts with Judaism remained sporadic, however. The Order of the Brothers of the Sword expressly forbade the settlement of Jewish communities in its domain.

A permanent presence of Jews can only be proven since the 19th century. A decree issued by the Russian Tsar Alexander II in 1865 officially allowed Jews to settle in Estonia. These were mainly cantonists (forcibly) recruited under Tsar Nicholas I and their descendants, traders, craftsmen and Jews with higher education who came to Estonia in the following years.

Organization of Jewish Life (1830-1918)

Synagogue of Tartu (early 20th century)

Above all, former tsarist soldiers and Jewish craftsmen founded the first Jewish community in what is now Estonia. The Tallinn congregation was founded in 1830 with around 40 Jews. The community in Tartu , Livonia , was founded in 1866 when fifty Jewish families settled there.

As a result, Jewish houses of prayer were also built. The Tallinn Synagogue was inaugurated in 1883. The Tartu synagogue dates from 1901. Both fell victim to fires during World War II . With the growing Jewish population in other cities ( Valga , Pärnu , Viljandi ), Jewish houses of prayer and cemeteries were built there.

Jewish community members tried since the second third of the 19th century to create a Jewish educational network. In the 1880s, Jewish elementary schools and a boys' school were established in Tallinn to teach the Talmud . While in the middle of the 19th century the majority of Estonian Jews were still small traders and artisans, they later also made their way into academic circles. From the end of the 19th century, Jews were admitted to study at the University of Tartu . In particular, the Academic Association for Jewish History and Literature , founded in 1884, tried to develop Jewish cultural and educational life in Estonia's university town. In 1917 the first Jewish theater association was founded in Tartu.

Interwar period (1918 to 1940)

When Estonia became independent from the Russian Empire in 1918, the general conditions for the Jewish community in Estonia changed. Around 200 Jews fought on the Estonian side against Soviet Russia in the Estonian War of Independence 1918–1920 , including almost 70 volunteers. In May 1919 the first congress of the Jewish communities in Estonia met, which set the course for the future of Jewish life in the country.

The young Estonian state and its population were characterized by tolerance towards the cultural, religious and national minorities. Estonia's liberal minority legislation favored the cultural development of Judaism.

In 1919 a Jewish school was first established in Tallinn. In February 1924 the new building of the Jewish grammar school in Tallinn was inaugurated in the presence of the Estonian head of state Konstantin Päts .

Various Jewish associations, clubs and societies contributed to public life in Estonia. The literary and theater society in Tallinn , founded in 1918 and named after the Zionist poet Chaim Nachman Bialik , played an important role . Other circles in Viljandi, Narva , Pärnu and in other Estonian cities worked far beyond Jewish circles.

In 1920 the Maccabi sports club was founded. The Estonian Jewess Sara Teitelbaum (1910–1941) was 17 times Estonian athletics champion and set 28 national records. Her brother Rubin Teitelbaum was a seven-time Estonian weightlifting champion between 1927 and 1933 .

In the 1930s, about 100 Jews were studying at the University of Tartu, 44 of them law and 18 medicine . Since 1934 the university also had a chair for Jewish studies . A total of five Jewish student associations were registered in Tartu.

The Zionist youth movements Hashomer Hazair and Betar were also active in Estonia. Some Estonian Jews traveled to Palestine , where, among other things, they participated in the expansion of the kibbutzim of Kfar Blum and Geva .

On February 12, 1925, the Estonian government passed the Estonian Minority Law, one of the most liberal of its time in Europe. At that time, Estonia had 3,045 Jews, with which the quorum of 3,000 members for recognition as a national minority in Estonia was reached. Along with the Jews, the Baltic Germans , Estonian Swedes and Russians also received this status in 1926 .

In 1926 the Jewish Culture Council ( Juudi Kultuurivalitsus ) was elected as the official representative of the Jews in Estonia. From 1926 until the Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1940 he was head of Hirsch Aisenstadt . Rabbi of the Tallinn Jewish Community was Dr. Aba Gomer (1879–1941), who was later murdered by the German National Socialists .

In 1934 there were 4,381 Jewish people in Estonia (0.4% of the population). 2203 Jews lived in Tallinn, others in Tartu (920), Valga (262), Pärnu (248), Narva (188) and Viljandi (121). More than half of them worked in trade and services. Eleven percent of the Jewish population had a higher education. In Estonia there was both a Jewish medical association and Jewish interest groups for trade and industry. There were Jewish cooperative banks in Tallinn and Tartu . In addition, the Jewish communities maintained charities in Tallinn, Tartu, Narva, Valga and Pärnu.

Second World War and Holocaust (1940 to 1944)

The National Socialist report by Walter Stahlecker on the 1941 executions of Einsatzgruppe A describes Estonia as " Jew-free "
Memorial in the area of ​​the former National Socialist concentration camp Klooga

With the Soviet occupation of Estonia in the summer of 1940, the cultural and religious freedom of Judaism in Estonia ended. Cultural autonomy was abolished as early as July 1940. Until August 1940, all clubs and societies were banned by the Soviet occupation authorities. The Jewish businesses were nationalized. About ten percent of Estonia's Jewish population (350–450 people) were deported to Siberia on June 14, 1941 together with large parts of the Estonian elite .

On June 22, 1941, National Socialist Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Only two weeks later the Wehrmacht occupied Estonia. On August 28, 1941, Tallinn fell into the hands of the Germans. Before the advancing German army, around 75% of Estonia's Jewish population managed to flee to the Soviet Union or Finland . Almost all Jews who remained in Estonia were murdered by the National Socialists by the end of 1941. Among them were the only rabbi in Estonia, the professor for Jewish studies at the University of Tartu, Jews converted to Christianity , the old and the sick.

The summary killing operations began shortly after the German occupation of Estonia by Sonderkommando 1a under Martin Sandberger as part of Einsatzgruppe A led by Walter Stahlecker . They were supported by Estonian collaborators who accused the Jews of communist activities or sympathy for the Soviet Union.

According to National Socialist information, between 921 and 963 Estonian Jews were murdered by the Nazis by the end of 1941. At the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942, Estonia was designated by the National Socialists as " Jew-free ".

The Germans set up over twenty concentration and labor camps in Estonia , which were primarily intended for foreign Jews. The largest were the Vaivara and Klooga concentration camps . Several thousand Jews were murdered in Kalevi-Liiva in Northern Estonia. Historians estimate that a total of 10,000 Jews from all parts of Central and Eastern Europe were killed by the National Socialists on Estonian soil.

Less than a dozen Estonian Jews survived the Holocaust in hiding . With the theologian Uku Masing and his wife Eha, two Estonians have been honored as Righteous Among the Nations for the salvation of Jews .

Soviet occupation (1944 to 1991)

After the liberation of the surviving Jews in Estonia by the Red Army in 1944, the second Soviet occupation of Estonia followed until 1991. The Holocaust had irreversibly destroyed the original community in Estonia. While a few Jews from Estonia returned to their homeland, Russian Jews moved to the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic in the course of the Russification of Estonia, which was forced by the Soviet authorities . However, in the atheistic Soviet society, Jewish life only came into its own on the fringes or underground. There were no Jewish communities or associations in Estonia until the late 1980s.

Only in March 1988, with the opening of the Soviet society under the general secretary of the CPSU , Mikhail Gorbachev , was the Jewish cultural society founded in Tallinn. It was the first of its kind in the entire Soviet Union. In 1989 she established a Jewish Sunday school in Tallinn, and in 1990 a Jewish middle school. Other Jewish cultural societies in Tartu, Narva and Kohtla-Järve as well as sports and social associations followed.

Republic of Estonia (1991 to present)

With the regaining of Estonian independence in August 1991 and the establishment of a democratic constitutional state after the end of Soviet rule, Jewish organizations are once again entitled to all freedoms. In 1992 the Estonian Jewish Community ( Eesti Juudi Kogukond ) was officially founded. A new Estonian minority law from October 1993 ensures the preservation of the Jewish identity. In 2002 the Jewish community established a Jewish kindergarten in Tallinn.

On May 16, 2007, the modern Synagogue of Tallinn was inaugurated in the presence of the Estonian President Arnold Rüütel . The complex includes the Jewish Community Center, a mikveh and a kosher restaurant. The synagogue is headed by Rabbi Shmuel Kot of the Hasidic Chabad movement.

The Jewish community in Estonia currently has around 1,000 members, the majority of whom are retired. Tallinn is by far the largest municipality. There are also smaller Jewish communities in Tartu, Narva, Kohtla-Järve and Pärnu. Due to immigration during the Soviet Union, the majority of the community members are Russian-speaking . The Estonian Jewish Community is a member of the World Jewish Congress , the European Jewish Congress and the European Council of Jewish Communities .

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Remarks

  1. ↑ The possibly Jewish baker Johannes Jode is mentioned in 1333 in the oldest book of thought ; a Jew named Pawel is mentioned in two documents in 1411 and 1413
  2. ↑ A short-lived Jewish community in Tallinn is mentioned as early as 1795