Traces of Jewish Life in Coppenbrügge, Niedersachsen

There are not too many stories about the Jewish life in Coppenbrügge, a small village situated near Hannover and Hameln, in Niedersachsen, Germany. The community was always small, with around 50 Jews living here at the beginning of the 19th century. 

The presence of Jews here is first mentioned in 1630. For the holidays and the Shabbat, the services were offered as far as Hameln, made famous by Brothers Grimm Pied Pipper of Hamelin.

The few Jewish families living here were active in small businesses, such as the Levy family, which owned a textile factory. Oskar Levy was member in the local hunting and war veterans associations, from whom he was dismissed shortly after the Nazi come to power. 

But the Nazi were not having enough humiliating and killing innocent people, they had their feud with the dead Jews too, as they destroyed the local cemetery where 60 people were laid to rest. The cemetery was open since 1787, for the Jews living in the communities of Coppenbrügge, Brünninghausen and Hohnsen.

After the war, the plot that used to be a cemetery was purchased by a private person and was returned back to the Jewish community only in 1988. There are no information about Jews living now an open Jewish life in Coppenbrügge. The area of the former cemetery is marked with a fence, with a modest memorial for the Jews murdered.

An informative billboard has an outline of the circumstances that lead to the destruction of the Jewish life in Coppenbrügge, mentioning the name of the former Jewish residents murdered: Erich Levy, Lieschen Levy, Oskar Levy, Ruth Levy, Ernst Rothstein, Bertha Spiegel. May their memory be a blessing and the name of their murderers for ever erased!

Traces of Jewish life in Perleberg, Germany

My travels through Germany often bring me near traces of Jewish life. There are so many places now where Jews are no more since the end of the 1930s, but their memory is preserved and the places of memory are symbolically converted into cultural meeting points. Although there is a lot to talk about this issue too, as for now I will focus on the way in which the Jewish memory is introduced into the bigger narrative of a city without Jews.

My latest discovery was into the city of Perleberg, a former Hansa city with an interesting old town architecture.

Perleberg has the best maintained Jüdenhof in Germany. Situated on Parchimerstrasse 6a (previously Jüdenstrasse), close to the city center but on a side street, its entrance is symbolically marked by a big white arch. The Jewish history is introduced to the visitor on a big billboard in German, right at the entrance.

The Jewish community here, attracted by the opportunities of trade, went through different stages. Its first history dates back from the 14th until the 16th century, troubled times when the Jews were often the victims of unjust anti-Semitic trials and pogroms. 

The second episode of Jewish history in Perleberg starts in 1800, when a new Synagogue is built and the community is flourishing, but again, only for a short time. In 1942, all the local Jews are sent to concentration camp and killed. Nowadays, there are no signs of organised Jewish life here and most probably no Jew is living here.

The space that was used before to keep the Jews isolated from the rest of the city is used nowadays for cultural encounters and as a meeting point where topics which include Jewish history and traditions are introduced to the wider public through conferences or art and photo exhibitions. Most events are hosted in a simple modern looking rectangular building on the place of the former synagogue, neighbouring a traditional timbered house.  

Traces of Jewish life in Angermünde

In the region of Brandenburg, close to Berlin, there are many traces of Jewish life and even well settled communities, many of them destroyed during Shoah. The question regarding the choice of Jews to settle in those area has some simple answers: many of them where waiting for an eventual opportunity to make it to Berlin, or they just wanted to take advantage of the relatively tolerant - non-Catholic - ambiance and use the trade routes to Poland and other Central European destinations.

As his part of Germany used to be during the Cold War part of the communist world - the GDR - if a minimal, if any denazification, many of the traces of Jewish life disappeared. The idea of the German communists was that most of the perpetrators were actually in the 'West' therefore the biggest number of victims were on the other German soil. After the reunification, more efforts were directed towards recognizing the victims and traces of Jewish presence in this part of the country, hence the big number of mentions about Jewish life in Brandenburg and elsewhere in the ex-communist realm.

During a short weekend visit to Angermünde, on the Pushkinallee, I encounter a mention regarding the former Jewish cemetery in this locality, The Jews established here at the beginning of the 19th century, with 1709 the year of the first Jewish presence. In 1835 it was bought a piece of land that was used as a cemetery until 1936. After the intensification of anti-Semitic attacks, the cemetery was took over by the state and the space used for various destinations, among others as a garage. As in many cases in Brandenburg, Prenzlau for instance, the stones were took away by the locals and used for their own constructions.

There are no Jews or signs of Jewish presence in the nowadays Angermünde, only a short historical mention about their presence here, installed in 1996.

Jewish histories BerIin: Kleine Synagoge in Auguststraße

A drawing on a wall covered at the bottom with chaotic graffiti, this is all what's left from once used to be the Kleine Synagoge in the central area - Mitte - of Berlin, on Auguststraße 10. The synagogue Ahawas Shalom und Mogen David was inaugurated in 1906, aimed to serve 500 members. In this area in Mitte used to live many middle class Jews. 

The synagogue was destroyed during the Kristalnacht in 1938. At the memorial place, besides a detailed plan, a picture during a Simcha Torah celebration is displayed. The remains of the synagoge were used for other construction work so nothing was left from it.

The inclusion of the Kleine Synagoge in Auguststraße 10 in the circuit of Jewish memorial places is relatively recent, as it took place only ten years ago. In the middle of the 1980s, here was a kindergarden.