Kirchheimbolanden

First Jewish presence: 1537; peak Jewish population: 201 in 1825; Jewish population in 1933: 65

Kirchheimbolanden’s 18th-century Jewish community conducted services in a private residence thought to have been located at 33 Schlossstrasse. By the early 1820s, this prayer room was unable to accommodate the growing community, and was therefore replaced by a larger synagogue. In 1833, that synagogue was destroyed in a neighborhood fire, after which, in 1836, a new synagogue—it housed a classroom, a mikveh and a teacher’s apartment—was inaugurated at 15 Schlossstrasse (present-day 8 Am Husarenhof ). The community employed a teacher of religion (he also served as chazzan and shochet) and, up until the 19th century, its own rabbi. The Jewish cemetery was consecrated in 1843. In 1933, by which point the Jews of Marnheim had been affiliated with the community, eight schoolchildren received religious instruction. On Pogrom Night, rioters burned down the synagogue and ransacked Jewish-owned homes and businesses; Jewish men were sent to Dachau. Later, in 1941, the synagogue ruins were blown up. The Jewish cemetery was heavily desecrated during the Nazi period. Most local Jews either emigrated from or relocated within Germany. On October 22, 1940, ten of the town’s 11 remaining Jews were deported to the concentration camp in Gurs, France. At least 27 Kirchheimbolanden Jews perished in the Shoah. The synagogue site—it was later transferred to the municipal council—was turned into a park; a memorial plaque was unveiled there in 1978, to which three stones, taken from the concentration camps at Natzweiler-Struthof, Dachau and Auschwitz, were added in 1984. An additional commemorative plaque was unveiled there in 1988.

Esther Sarah Evans

Copyright: Pogrom Night 1938 - A Memorial to the Destroyed Synagogues of Germany/ germansynagogues.bh.org.il

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