Jewish community Oberaula

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The Jewish community in Oberaula in the north Hessian Schwalm-Eder district existed from the 17th century until the time of National Socialism .

Community development

Jews are first mentioned in Oberaula in 1611. In 1646 two Jewish households and in 1671 four Jewish households are documented. It is not known when a sufficient number of men for the formation of a Jewish religious community ( Kehillah ) was reached, but it may have taken a long time. In 1774 there were still only five households, but as early as 1776 there were reports of eight families. However, since Jewish families had also been resident in neighboring Schwarzenborn at least since the 18th century, they may soon form a community with their fellow believers in Oberaula. In the 19th and 20th centuries, this association of the Jewish families from Schwarzenborn, Frielingen and Hausen with the community in Oberaula was recorded.

The number of Jewish residents of Oberaula was greatest in the second half of the 19th century, as was their percentage of the total population. At the turn of the 20th century, a slight emigration to the larger cities and overseas began, but the number of Jewish residents in Oberaula remained relatively constant until 1933. The reprisals , professional bans , boycotts and ever more extensive disenfranchisement led to a drastic downsizing of the community through emigration and emigration . At the beginning of 1939 there were only 39 Jewish residents, but after the looting and devastation of their synagogue during the November pogroms in 1938 , they decided to leave the village. 15 of them managed to flee to Palestine , the USA or France in time. The last Jewish residents left Oberaula in August 1940.

year Residents,
total 		Jewish
residents 		Share
in percent
1835 ... 45 ...
1861 921 106 11.5%
1871 811 82 10.1%
1885 823 91 11.1%
1895 788 90 11.4%
1905 857 70 8.2%
1925 1113 79 7.1%
1933 1197 79 6.6%
1939 1231 39 3.2%

Facilities

The community facilities included a synagogue , a ritual bath ( mikveh ), a Jewish school and a cemetery, as well as the Israelite Men's Association and the Israelite Women's Association, both dedicated to charitable purposes.

synagogue

The community may have had not only a prayer room but a synagogue since the 18th century , which was replaced in 1837 by the construction of a "new synagogue" in what was then Haintorgasse (today Friedigeröder Strasse). The two-story half - timbered building with the women's gallery on the upper floor and separate, but directly adjacent entrance doors for men and women was inaugurated on September 15, 1837 and was the center of Jewish community life for 101 years. During the November pogroms in 1938 , the interior of the synagogue was devastated and partially destroyed; There was also devastation in the community cemetery. As the remaining parishioners decided to move away, the synagogue building was sold and then used as a residential building. In 1969 it was demolished and the property was leveled.

Since 1989, there has been a memorial plaque with a stylized image of the former synagogue on the neighboring parish barn of the Evangelical Church Community, a replacement for a temporary plaque that was attached to the site of the former synagogue five years earlier.

school

The Israelite Elementary School was housed in a private house. The teacher employed by the community was both prayer leader and schochet (butcher). In 1869 there were 18 students; in 1890 their number had increased to 29. After that, the number of pupils fell steadily: in 1901 there were 19, in 1925 only six (another child who attended another school only received religious instruction) and in 1931/32 there were also six. The school was forcibly closed on April 1, 1933.

graveyard

The cemetery is the oldest surviving Jewish cemetery in the former Ziegenhain district : the first verifiable burial took place in 1694. It is located on the southern edge of the village on Bundesstrasse 454 (Hersfelder Strasse) in the direction of Wahlshausen ( 50 ° 51 ′ 15 ″  N , 9 ° 28 ′ 24 ″  E ) and can be found under various district names: "Juden Todtenhof", "der Sambel" , "Under the country road" and "over the meadows". It was expanded several times from 1840 and today has a size of 5879 m². The oldest part comprised a flat meadow in the brook bottom of the auditorium ; Later, in several steps, first a slope, then further small slopes and a flat plot of land above the old cemetery were acquired. The older parts of the cemetery are now in the shadow of a sparse oak hains , while the 1903-scale burial of a turf covered without trees.

The cemetery initially served only the Jews from Oberaula, but soon became the collective cemetery for the Jewish communities in other places in the area: Breitenbach am Herzberg , Frielingen, Hausen, Mühlbach , Neukirchen , Ottrau , Raboldshausen and Schwarzenborn .

318 gravestones in varying degrees of preservation were documented in 1980 and 1982, but the original occupancy was, according to documents, much higher and could have been twice as high. The last two graves marked with a tombstone are from March 1937. The community's death register contains three more deaths, the last one in February 1938, and these burials certainly took place in the cemetery, but there were no more tombstones for these deceased be set.

The cemetery was devastated in the night of the pogrom on November 9, 1938.

In March 1984, the first plaque was placed at the entrance to the cemetery; it was replaced by a new one in 1989.

Holocaust victims

As far as is known so far, 53 Jewish people from Oberaula or who had lived there for a long time were killed during the Nazi era. At least eight people from Schwarzenborn suffered the same fate.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Greve, p. 163
  2. ^ In Schwarzenborn there were 60 Jewish residents in 1865, 70 in 1861, 19 in 1905 and only eight in 1932.
  3. ^ In Frielingen there were 18 Jewish residents in 1835 and 22 in 1861. From 1837 they belonged to the community in Niederaula , (Greve, p. 162).
  4. ↑ Four Jewish families lived in Hausen in 1744, four in 1816/17 and ten in 1840 (Greve, p. 162). In 1861 there were 29 Jewish residents, 24 in 1905, seven in 1925 and only two in 1932.
  5. ^ Greve, pp. 161-165
  6. ^ Graves of the Jewish cemetery in Oberaula .  Jewish graves in Hesse. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
  7. ^ History of the Jewish community in Oberaula

Web links

literature

  • Barbara Greve: A good place - the Jewish cemetery Oberaula. Research on a country cemetery in Northern Hesse. In: Journal of the Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies , Volume 117/118, 2012/13, pp. 161–196
  • Paul Arnsberg : The Jewish communities in Hesse. Beginning - fall - new beginning. Volume 2. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1971, ISBN 3-7973-0213-4 , pp. 149-150
  • Heinz Herget, Harald Heynmöller, Rainer Knoth: What reminds us of the last Jewish citizens of Oberaula. In: Hartwig Bambey u. a. (Ed.): Displaced Neighbors; Contributions to the history of the Jews in the Ziegenhain district, Volume 2. Edition Hexenturm, Schwalmstadt-Treysa, 1993, ISBN 3-92429-607-3
  • Marga Spiegel : 100 Years - 4 Lives: A German Jewess tells. LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2012, ISBN 978-3-643-11767-0