Herxheim

First Jewish presence: 1681; peak Jewish population: 162 in 1848; Jewish population in 1933: approximately 19

The Jews of Herxheim conducted services in a prayer room on Holzgasse until 1797, when they established a synagogue and a school in an existing building located on what would later become the Judengasse (“Jews’ alley”). In 1842, a larger synagogue was built at 18 Obere Hauptstrasse; adjoining the new synagogue, at the front were a school and an apartment for the teacher. The building was partially renovated at the end of the 19th century; in 1923/24, the school and apartment were converted into a residential property. We also know that the community consecrated a cemetery in the 1870s. In 1933, Herxheim’s Jewish schoolchildren received religious instruction in Landau. On Pogrom Night, rioters used an axe to destroy the synagogue’s interior. Furniture, ritual objects and holy books were stacked up and burned, but neighboring residents, fearing for the safety of their own homes, prevented the incineration of the synagogue. Approximately 50 people plundered the building. After the pogrom, Herxheim’s local authorities seized the synagogue site as “payment” for demolishing the ruins. The Jewish cemetery was cleared and leveled during the Nazi period, its gravestones used to pave a road. Herxheim’s last Jews left in September 1939. At least three local Jews perished in the Shoah. The cemetery was converted into a park after the war, and a memorial stone was later unveiled there. The school and the teacher’s apartment survived the pogrom and, until 1959, functioned as Herxheim’s municipal hall (this building was demolished in 1993). In 1984, an ornamental stone from the original synagogue was unveiled as a memorial on the former synagogue’s site.

Bronagh Bowerman

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

---