Stadthagen

First Jewish presence: 1383; peak Jewish population: 62 in 1905; Jewish population in 1933: 60

Records from 1583 mention a Jewish man called Moses, whose burial in 1597 was the first to take place in Stadthagen’s Jewish cemetery. Documents from 1635, referring to a local fire, mention a prayer room in which approximately 20 Jews conducted services. In 1857, Stadthagen’s Jews built a new prayer room at 19 Niedernstrasse; officially opened in 1858, it was acquired by the town’s synagogue community in 1866. The community commenced construction of a new cemetery in 1822. In 1934, windows in two Jewish businesses were smashed and a tear gas bomb was thrown into another; although a member of the SS was arrested for assaulting three Jews—one of whom suffered from epilepsy—he was quickly freed. Later, on November 1, 1938, two Jews were forced to sell their establishment for a ridiculously low price: one of the owners immigrated to Chile; the other was deported to Warsaw on March 30, 1942, where he died. On Pogrom Night, eight men were sent to Buchenwald and at least one Jewish home was ransacked. Several days later, on November 12, rioters set fire to the synagogue; the blaze was extinguished, but not before the interior had been destroyed. (The Torah scroll and several ritual objects were, according to one report, “secured” in the synagogue. Another report claims that the Torah scroll and other valuables were burned before November 12.) By the end of 1938, approximately 14 Jews had left the town. In July 1939, the remaining Jews were moved into designated “Jews’ houses.” Twenty-four Jews lived in Stadthagen in 1941; two died in the town that year. Local Jews were deported to Riga (in December 1941), to Warsaw (in March 1942), to Auschwitz (in July 1942) and to Theresienstadt (in July 1942). At least 26 Stadthagen Jews perished in the Shoah. On October 26, 1942, the Reich’s Association of the Jews in Germany sold the synagogue property to a local businessman. Twenty-two Stadthagen Jews emigrated from Germany. A monument was erected in the new Jewish cemetery in 1960; and in 1961 a monument in memory of Marx and Toni Wolf, who died in Auschwitz, was unveiled in the cemetery by their surviving family members. A plaque was affixed to the synagogue building, now a storeroom, in 1988, but was later stolen.

Esther Sarah Evans

Copyright: Pogrom Night 1938 - A Memorial to the Destroyed Synagogues of Germany/ Germansynagogues.com

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