Salzkotten

First Jewish Presence: 1652; peak Jewish population: 143 in 1863; Jewish population in 1933: 50

The community’s first prayer room was located in the home of Asher Cohen at 11 Vielserstrasse. Other communal institutions included the following: a synagogue, built on a small square on Vielserstrasse in 1925; and a cemetery, consecrated on Schuetzenstrasse in 1837. Local Jews established a school inside the synagogue building at some point after 1859, and we also know that the community’s leaders included Isaak Auerbach, Hermann Schramm and Julius Hecht. The synagogue was vandalized on Pogrom Night and burned down the following day. Three Jewish-owned businesses and six households were wrecked, 17 men were deported to Buchenwald, and the cemetery was damaged, after which the community was forced to sell roughly 60% of the site. On May 8, 1939, the government appropriated the former synagogue plot and converted it into a park and storage yard. In April 1939, the remaining Jews were moved into so-called “Jews’ houses” from which some were deported on December 10, 1941; two more deportations followed (the latter on July 28, 1942). At least 55 Salzkotten Jews perished in the Shoah. In 1985, the cemetery was declared a memorial. A monument, named Isaak Auerbach-Platz (after the murdered leader) was unveiled in Salzkotten on June 29, 1986. On March 10, 2009, 28 memorial stumbling stones were unveiled in memory of those local Jews who were murdered in the Shoah.

Esther Sarah Evans

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

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