Ludwigshafen Am Rhein

First Jewish presence: 1845; peak Jewish population: 1,400 in 1931; Jewish population in 1933: 1,070

The presence of Jews in Ludwigshafen am Rhein was documented for the first time in 1845, when 14 Jews lived in the city. A Jewish community was not founded there officially until 1855. At that time, Ludwigshafen was home to 107 Jews. Until the end of the 19th century, 1% to 1.5% of the population was Jewish. The well-known philosopher Ernst Simon Bloch was born in Ludwigshafen in 1885. In 1925, the community numbered 1,211 Jews and was the largest in the Palatinate region. The community’s peak membership figure of 1,400 persons in 1931 included many foreign Jewish nationals, mainly from Eastern Europe. Ludwigshafen’s Jews operated two prayer halls (on Ludwigstrasse), an elementary school (from 1856 until 1870) and, after 1857, a municipality-owned cemetery (on Frankenthaler Strasse), which was expanded several times. In 1863/1864, the community purchased a former church on Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse and turned it into a synagogue. The inauguration ceremony took place in May 1865. The synagogue was renovated numerous times, the last of which was in 1909. In 1925, the Jews of nearby Rheingoenheim were affiliated with the Ludwigshafen community. In 1933, 170 Jewish schoolchildren in Ludwigshafen received religious instruction; the community employed a teacher and a chazzan. A regional center for Jewish welfare was based in the city, and several Jewish associations and branches of nation-wide Jewish organizations were active in the community. After Hitler’s rise to power, Jewish officials in Ludwigshafen were removed from their positions, Jewish doctors banned from practicing and Jewish teachers dismissed. The city’s Jewish stores were boycotted on a permanent basis. The Jewish cemetery was desecrated on several occasions in the 1930s. In 1935/36, the process of so-called “aryanization” was intensified. In October 1938, 166 of the city’s German-Polish Jews were expelled and interned in Zbaszyn in today’s Poland. On Pogrom Night, November 1938, SS troops entered the Ludwigshafen synagogue and confiscated its ritual items. They set the synagogue on fire, along with the adjacent community hall. Jewish homes were vandalized, windows smashed and shops looted. Some Jews were beaten up in the street. Men were arrested and sent to Dachau. Children and older women were taken by boat across the river Rhine to Mannheim and told not to come back. They returned two weeks later. After Pogrom Night, a few Ludwigshafen Jews managed to emigrate. In January 1939, only 395 Jews remained in the city. The synagogue site was sold that year. From May 1939 onwards, Jews were forced to live together in so-called “Jews’ houses.” In October 1940, 183 local Jews were deported to Gurs, France. Another eight were deported from Rheingoenheim, and two from Ruchheim. One Jewish woman from Ludwigshafen was transported to Theresienstadt in 1945. At least 239 Ludwigshafen Jews perished in the Shoah. After World War II, the synagogue site was returned to the official Jewish community of Rhineland Pfalz, which sold the building to a publishing house. A memorial plaque was affixed in 1973. That year, the city had 60 Jewish residents. In 2007, memorial “stumbling stones” were set into the sidewalks to remind pedestrians of the Shoah victims.

Heidemarie Wawrzyn

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

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