Bettingen-Huettersdorf

First Jewish presence: 1724; peak Jewish population: unknown; Jewish population in 1933: unknown (1935: 5 - Lebach, 26 - Bettingen, 20 - Huettersdorf)

Bettingen Jews, first mentioned in records from 1724, formed their own community together with the Jews of Huettersdorf and Buprich. By 1837, however, the Jews of Bettingen belonged to the Huettersdorf community, which, 10 years later, was known as the community of Huettersdorf- Lebach. Too small to be recognized as a public community, Huettersdorf-Lebach did not enjoy the rights and privileges accorded to official Jewish communities. In 1897, the Jews of Lebach, aspiring to independent status, attempted to join the community of Saarwellingen as a sub-community but were refused. The Huettersdorf-Lebach community maintained a synagogue in Huettersdorf, first mentioned in 1850. In 1933, the community of Bettingen-Huettersdorf was still a Privatgemeinde (private community), with which the Jews of Lebach were affiliated. Three schoolchildren received religious instruction that year. In violence that followed the return of the Saarland to Germany in 1935, stone-wielding vandals broke windows in the Huettersdorf synagogue. By February 1936, all Huettersdorf Jews had left: two moved to other places in Germany, the others to France and Luxemburg. On Pogrom Night, the homes of the three remaining Jewish families in Bettingen were vandalized; the men were sent to Dachau, and their wives and children were expelled from the town. Later, in 1940, SA men demolished the Huettersdorf synagogue. At least seven Jews originally from Bettingen, two from Lebach and four from Huettersdorf perished in the Shoah.

Nurit Borut

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

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