Synagogue (Emden)
The former synagogue in Emden existed from 1836 to 1938. At the same place there was probably a Jewish house of worship since the 16th century, which had to be replaced in 1836 due to dilapidation. Local National Socialists destroyed the building during the November pogroms in 1938.
Building description
The community built the synagogue in 1835 in the style of the Wilhelminian era . It had three aisles, 200 meters long, 12 meters wide, 8 meters high on the side walls and had a total height of 15 meters. 135 parishioners could be accommodated in the building. After the expansion in 1910, it had 320 places for men and a gallery for 250 women and consisted from then on of the main building from 1836 and the extension building, in which there was space for a conference room, the ritual bath , cloakrooms and a heating system. On the east side of the building was the Torah shrine , in front of it the pulpit and the prayer desk. In the center of the building stood the Almemor , a desk on which the Torah is placed during the reading. The ceiling was designed in the Byzantine style according to our own designs. The west pediment was in the Greek style and decorated with a Hebrew inscription in black letters on a white background. The center of the gable was adorned with a large round window with the Star of David, on the left and right two small towers closed off the front of the building.
history
The first synagogue has probably existed since the 16th century on Sandpfad No. 5, today's Bollwerkstraße in Emden . This is indicated by a complaint by the Council of Churches from 1593, on the basis of which the magistrate forbade the city's Jews from publicly performing their worship services. From 1701 the existence of a wooden synagogue on Sandpfad 5 (today Bollwerkstraße) is assured. In 1835 it collapsed in part during the Sabbath service and was closed by the Emden magistrate after an expert report by the town builder and other experts because of dilapidation. In its place, the community built a large synagogue in 1836. The ceremonial inauguration by the state rabbi Löwenstamm took place on August 24, 1836 in the presence of the mayor and magistrate of the city of Emden.
In 1910 the synagogue was expanded according to plans by the government master builder Ernst Friedheim, who also designed the Bornplatz synagogue in Hamburg . The cost of the renovation was given as more than 60,000 gold marks .
It is characteristic of the relationship between the Jews and the rest of the city's population that representatives of both the Christian communities in Emden and the municipal authorities also took part in these opening ceremonies. In 1910, the city of Emden was represented by its mayor and a delegation of the mayor. In addition, representatives of the Mennonites , the Lutheran and the Catholic community were present. Only the reformed and the old reformed congregations were not present.
November pogroms 1938
On the night of November 9-10, 1938, the rioting against the Jews, ordered by the Reich leadership of the National Socialists, took place in Emden, which were later referred to as the “Reichskristallnacht” or the November 1938 pogroms . Bernhard Horstmann, the 26-year-old district leader, was instructed by telephone from the Gauleitung in Oldenburg at around 11 p.m. that retaliatory measures would be carried out against the Jews throughout Germany that night. According to an order from Gauleiter Weser-Ems, Karl Röver, all synagogues in the German Empire should burn at 1 a.m.
At 11:30 p.m. Horstmann instructed his deputy and district office manager Neeland to organize the arson in the synagogue. The SS then brought fire agents into the church. At the same time, the Emden fire brigade was informed about the planned action. It should not intervene and should limit itself to preventing the flames from spreading to surrounding houses. SA troops prepared to arrest all Emden Jews. At around 1 a.m., forces from the SA and SS went to the synagogue. They were not uniformed to conceal the scheduling of the arson and the identity of the perpetrators. The whole action should look like a spontaneous outbreak of violence by the German population in revenge for the murder of the legation secretary Ernst Eduard vom Rath by the Jew Herschel Grynszpan . The Emden National Socialists broke into the building and stole valuable inventory. Then they placed some straw and hay bales and doused the inventory with gasoline and fire accelerators. Shortly afterwards Horstmann arrived and gave the order to set fire to the synagogue. A big explosion followed in the synagogue, but the fire did not start. Only after another 20 liters of gasoline had been brought into the synagogue did a firestorm break out. At around 2.30 a.m. the synagogue was in bright flames and burned down to the outer walls.
At the same time, the Jews began to catch up in the city. SA men under the leadership of Standartenführer Kroll and his adjutant Otto Bennmann broke into Jewish apartments and shops, plundered them and drove the residents of the gym of the Neutorschule. The SA troops also made use of firearms. The merchant Louis Philipson was shot in the lung and the butcher Daniel de Beer was fatally injured in front of the guard building under circumstances that have never been clarified. In the school gymnasium, the SA troops abused the Jewish residents of Emden, who had been rounded up. Older men over 65 years of age, the infirm, women and children were allowed to return to their destroyed homes on the morning of November 10th. The remaining men, around 60, continued to be tortured by their tormentors. Finally the SA led the men past the burned-out synagogue. There the SA forced a Jew to accuse himself of setting fire to the synagogue. On November 11th, the SS took over the prisoners and deported them from Emden Bahnhof West via Oldenburg to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . The merchant Sally Löwenstein and the cattle dealer Hermann Sax died there after further abuse. They were gradually released on condition that they leave the country as soon as possible. At the beginning of February 1939 the last Emden Jew returned to his hometown.
The community quickly disbanded after the November pogroms. In the same month there was a wave of emigration. At the end of January 1940, an initiative by East Frisian district administrators and the municipal authorities of the city of Emden led to an instruction from the Gestapo control center in Wilhelmshaven that Jews were to leave East Frisia by April 1, 1940. The East Frisian Jews had to look for other apartments within the German Reich (with the exception of Hamburg and the areas on the left bank of the Rhine). In Emden, around 200 people were then deported. The last 150 remaining Jewish citizens of Emden lived in the Jewish old people's home at Karl-Tholen-Straße 18 in the autumn of 1941. This is where the National Socialists took the last Jews from Aurich and the north in October 1941. 23 other Jews from the Jewish old people's home in Emden were temporarily transferred to the Jewish old people's home in Varel on October 22, 1941, and in return 6 of the 8 remaining residents of the old people's home in Varel were moved to Emden. On the morning of October 23, 1941, 122 Emden Jews were deported via the Berlin intermediate station to the Łódź ghetto , where they arrived on October 25. None of them survived the Holocaust. The last 23 residents of the Varel retirement home were deported to Theresienstadt on July 23, 1942.
Post war and commemoration
After the war, the space between Sandpfad and Judenstrasse, where the synagogue and school had stood, was leveled and built over. A first memorial stone in memory of the synagogue and its destruction was erected in 1986. It was replaced by the current one in 1990 "because it was inadequate in terms of design and technology".
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gesine Janssen: ... a shining example of human love: the Israelite community in Emden from its beginnings to the Holocaust . Emden. 2010. p. 40
- ↑ Working group "Jews in Emden" e. V. (Ed.): The synagogue in Emden. Documents and texts 1834-1938 , Emden 1994, p. 16
- ↑ a b c d Emden. October 23, 2018, accessed on January 19, 2019 (German).
- ↑ a b Ostfriesische Zeitung, edition of June 11, 1910: Consecration of the converted Israelite church
- ↑ Emden. October 23, 2018, accessed on January 19, 2019 (German).
- ^ The German ghetto Litzmannstadt in Lódz, Poland | ZbE. September 18, 2005, accessed on January 19, 2019 (German).
- ↑ 23.10.41 to Litzmannstadt. Retrieved January 19, 2019 .
- ^ Working group Jews in Emden e. V. ( Memento from January 18, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
Coordinates: 53 ° 22 ′ 9.1 ″ N , 7 ° 12 ′ 42 ″ E