Synagogue (Tholey)

The synagogue was built in 1863 in the municipality of Tholey, which belongs to the St. Wendel district, on Hauptstraße (today Trierer Straße 49). It was abandoned in 1937 and sold several times. In the early 1950s, a residential building was built on the foundation walls of the synagogue.

synagogue

Until about 1837 the community had neither its own synagogue nor a prayer room. The members of the community attended the services in Saarwellingen . After a prayer hall had been set up in a residential building from 1837, the construction of a synagogue was planned from 1860. After the building permit had been granted, a collection was carried out in 1863 in order to obtain the funds required for the building. The majority of the funds consisted of donations from the Jewish communities in the Rhineland . The synagogue in Hauptstrasse (today Trierer Strasse 49) was inaugurated on December 4, 1863. They had a women's gallery and in the basement of a mikveh . After the referendum in 1935 and the associated annexation of the Saar area to the German Reich , so many members of the Jewish community emigrated that the synagogue had to be closed in 1937 and was sold to a private individual who was planning to build a private house on the property. This circumstance meant that the synagogue was not damaged during the November 1938 pogroms . Since this plan was not implemented, the community bought the property with the synagogue, which had already been partially demolished at that time, in 1939. In 1948, two members of the former Jewish community who had returned to Tholey bought the property from the community and sold it again to a family in 1950. At the beginning of the 1950s they built a residential building on the foundation walls of the synagogue.

Tholey Jewish Community

A Jewish family consisting of three people in Tholey is first mentioned in 1729. From 1787 Tholey belonged to the Duchy of Pfalz-Zweibrücken and received town and market rights . Since the dukes of Zweibrücken encouraged the settlement of Jewish citizens, the number of Jewish residents in Tholey also rose sharply from this point on. From around 1800 the community's dead could be buried in its own cemetery . As early as 1841 the community had a private Jewish school, which was recognized as a public Jewish elementary school in 1876 and was housed in its own school building from 1886. It existed until 1916. After that, the community only had one religious school. In 1936 the building was sold. Economic difficulties in the last third of the 19th century as a result of the introduced free trade, led to the first wave of emigration of predominantly wealthy Jewish families. After the referendum in 1935, almost all Jewish residents emigrated. The last remaining 13 Jewish residents were deported to the Gurs internment camp on October 22, 1940 .

Development of the Jewish population

year	Jews	Jewish families
1729/1730		1
1787		10
1790	41
1843	88
1895	91
1925	45
1935	41
September 1940	13

Source: alemannia-judaica.de; jewische-gemeinden.de

In the memorial book - Victims of the Persecution of Jews under National Socialist Tyranny 1933–1945 and in the Central Database of the Names of the Holocaust Victims of Yad Vashem , 33 members of the Tholey Jewish community (who were born there or lived temporarily) are listed who were born during the time of National Socialism were murdered.

literature

• Michael Landau (Ed.): So that it is not forgotten. Contributions to the history of the synagogue communities in the St. Wendel district. In: Publications of the Adolf Bender Center (= publications of the Adolf Bender Center. Issue 1). St. Wendel 1988.
• Albert Marx: The history of the Jews in Saarland. From the Ancien Régime to the Second World War. Die Mitte, Saarbrücken 1992, ISBN 978-3921236673 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Tholey (St. Wendel district) Jewish history / synagogue . alemannia-judaica.de. Retrieved January 10, 2020.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Tholey (Saarland) . jewische-gemeinden.de. Retrieved January 10, 2020.
3. ↑ Commemorative Book Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933–1945 . Federal Archives. Retrieved January 10, 2020.
4. ^ Central database of the names of Holocaust victims . Yad Vashem - International Holocaust Memorial. Retrieved January 10, 2020.