My Trip To Germany, After Many Doubts
Many times my
friends invited me to visit them at their home in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and my
relatives called me to come to Dusseldorf. But because I was firm in
my rejection of anything German, based on studies of the Holocaust in Chislavichi and Monastyrshchina
where my father and mother ZA"L had been born and many family members
slaughtered, I could not allow to myself to accept their invitations. But time
passes, wounds are healed and pain subsides. And two important events which
happened recently made me change my mind. The first event was Simon Wiesenthal's
announcement that he ended his uncompromising hunt after Nazi criminals because
there was all but none of them left. The second one was the book by Y. Tsinman "Babyi Yary Smolenshchiny" and my phone
talks with its author from which I understood better who were the true butchers
in that region. So, I made a very good and interesting trip. The scenery of
Bavarian Alps was simply breathtaking. But I'll limit
myself with telling only about the places interesting from the point of view of
our history, Jewish in general and Horowitz in particular. The first of them was the city of
Frankfurt, the second one
–Cologne.
Frankfurt-Am-Main
Just
unexpectedly, the embankment of Main river in Frankfurt
reminded me of the place where I had spent my young years, then this town
was called Kalinin, now it is Tver. The width of Main and the rate
of its flow were the same as of Volga in its beginning,
and Alte Brukke bridge over Main bas the copy of Old Bridge in Tver which had been constructed at the time of Czars.
I came to the
embankment after I visited the Jewish Museum of Frankfurt, which exposition
uncovers the history of the city's Jewish community, from the Middle Ages till the Holocaust. In this history our great
family was honorably represented by rabbis Pinchas
Horowitz and his son Zvi Hirsh, and also by rabbi,
writer and scholar Dr. Marcus Horowitz.
Rabbi Dr. Marcus Horowitz
After a short
break on the bench in the shade of tall trees, I directed my steps to the
Judengasse
Museum, which was situated not far
from the river. In this museum the history of Frankfurt
Jewish community is represented it its visual incarnation: a visitor walks
between the walls of the basements of the houses of the Jewish Ghetto which was
long ago erased from the earth. An old mikveh survived
– it seemed that if filled with water, it would be
ready for use.
Evidence of a Jewish community in
Frankfurt dates back to the 12th
century. At that time, a small group
of Jewish merchants from Worms settled in the town, and quickly flourished and
grew wealthy. Jews had been in Frankfurt prior to this period as well, but never as official
residents – Frankfurt had long been a market town, and Jews visited to trade
there as early as the tenth century. The prosperity of the Frankfurt Jews,
however, was short lived. The year 1241 marked the first of what would be many
massacres and expulsions of the small community. In this first attack, which was
sparked by the refusal of a Jew to convert to Christianity, more than
three-quarters of the city's 200 residents were killed. The remainder quickly
fled the city, but returned by about 1270, when Emperor Frederick II, upset at
the loss in tax-revenue from the wealthy Jewish community, ordered strict
penalties against anyone who attacked Jews. The community once again grew
rapidly, and although forced to pay crippling taxes, was protected against any
physical persecution.
The
outbreak of the Black Plague in 1349, however, changed the Jews' protected
status. Jews were killed and expelled throughout
Germany and Europe,
and Frankfurt was no exception. The community was completely
massacred, and many Jews chose to burn down their own houses while still inside
rather than face death from the angry mob.
Because of
their important economic role, Jews were invited back into
Frankfurt once again in 1360. Their lives in the city however,
were regulated more strictly than ever, culminating in the forcible relocation
of all the Jews of Frankfurt to a ghetto (Juddengasse) in 1462.
Originally containing just 110 inhabitants, the community developed quickly, and
consisted of 3,000 by 1610. Because the area of the ghetto was never expanded,
Jews subdivided their houses and built extra stories to accommodate the
exponential growth. The community soon became a center of Ashkenazi Jewry – the
yeshivas in the city attracted students from all over Europe,
and the community grew very wealthy. In 1616, another pogrom came through the
community. Indeed, affluence was a necessity, for the only way the Jewish
community continued to exist in the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries was
by paying enormous tributes in exchange for protection.
In 1624,
the two centuries of peace came to a crashing halt as the ghetto was raided and
plundered by a mob of artisans and petty merchants, led by Vincent Fettmilch. The group was unhappy with the prominent position
of the Jews, and many also owed money to the Jewish moneylenders. Unlike the
previous expulsions, however, this one ended happily for the Jewish residents of
Frankfurt. The emperor outlawed the rioters, put their leaders to
death, and ceremoniously returned the Jew to the ghetto on the twentieth day of
the month of Adar, which has been celebrated in Frankfurt ever since as "Purim Winz"
("the Purim of Vincent").
In 1711,
the ghetto burned to the ground after an accidental fire spread out of control,
but the homes and businesses were quickly rebuilt, and the Jews returned to
their isolation. The traditional unity of the Jewish population, however, soon
began to decline, as controversy over the Enlightenment spread throughout
Europe. The rich families that had long controlled the
community saw their influence begin to decline; these families, identifiable by
the crests hanging outside their homes, lost their influence to the maskilim, who advocated secular education and
emancipation. The only exception was the Red Shield, or Rothschild family, which
maintained its importance, and became even more prominent in later
years.
When, in
1806, Frankfurt was incorporated into Napoleon's Confederation of the
Rhine, the Jews' lot improved, at least in the eyes of the advocates of
emancipation. The spread of the ideals of the French Revolution led to the
abolition of the ghetto in 1811. Despite setbacks in 1819 due to the "Hep Hep riots," Jews received
rights equal to those of non-Jews in1824. Frankfurt had by now become a center of the Reform movement, the
ascendance of which led to a widening rift between the Orthodox and Reform
communities. The latter was led during much of the nineteenth century by
philosopher Abraham Geiger; the former, which accounted for only ten percent of
Frankfurt's Jewish population in 1842, was revived by Rabbi Samson Raphael
Hirsch, who founded the Orthodox "Israelitische Religionsgesellschaft" ("Israelite Church Society") in
1851. The community continued to grow and become wealthy; members of the
Rothschild family in particular became known for their philanthropy. Several
orthodox yeshivas were established, as was a Reform Institute for Jewish
Studies, which featured lectures by the scholar Martin Buber.
By the
1900s, Jews in Frankfurt were extremely prosperous and influential. They became
active both in business and politics. Many of the Jews fought for
Germany in World War I.
Frankfurt and the Holocaust
In 1933, a
boycott was targeted at the Jews, and in the subsequent years, more and more
restrictions were placed on the Jewish community. On November 10,
1938, the biggest Orthodox and
Reform synagogues were burned to the ground. Many Jews emigrated from
Frankfurt, and most of those who did not were sent to the
Lodz ghetto, and eventually to the
Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. In 1933, 30,000 Jews lived in
Frankfurt; in 1945, only 602 remained.
After the
war, a new community was established, consisting of Holocaust survivors and
displaced persons. In 1989, immigrants from the recently disbanded
Soviet
Union increased the size of the
community to about 7,000. Today, most of the Jews live in the
West End, and are self-employed, particularly as shop-keepers
and real-estate brokers. Anti-Semitism is negligible; instead, assimilation is
the community's dominant social problem. All the city's synagogues, only one of
which dates to before 1938, are Orthodox.
There are
few remnants of Frankfurt's Jewish community left today. The ghetto has been gone
for more than a century, but the spot on which it stood is still accessible. Not
far from the Zeil – the pedestrian mall running
through the city's center – on Bornestrasse, is the
stretch of land on which the Frankfurt Jews lived for more than 400 years. The
Bornestrasse synagogue and the Rothschild home were
both destroyed, but plaques mark the spots where they
stood.
The Westend synagogue, on
Freiherr-vom-Stein-Strasse, is the only Jewish
building in the city with a history. The large grey building was built early in
the 1900s, and was the only synagogue to survive Kristallnacht. The main
sanctuary features vaulting stone arches, a massive cupola and blue-and-white
Star-of-David stained-glass windows. Though a Liberal synagogue before the World
War II, it -like all Frankfurt synagogues
today has separate sections for men and women.
Near the synagogue is Frankfurt's Jewish
community center, opened in
1986, a huge building adorned with large
iron menorahs and stone tablets. The building features concerts,
lectures, a
youth center and the offices of the community administration and
Rabbinate.
The Jewish
museum on Untermainkai is located in a house that once
belonged to the Rothschild family, and features high-tech resources as well as
priceless artifacts, including Moritz Oppenheimer's famous portrait of Mendelsohn and Lessing. But the
most famous part of the museum is the scale-model of the Frankfurt Juddengasse,
reconstructed using the blueprints made in 1711 after it was destroyed by fire.
The intricate model includes 194 buildings. Abutting the MUSEUM JUDENGASSE AM
BÖRNEPLATZ is Frankfurt's OLDEST JEWISH CEMETERY, most of whose
tombstones were vandalized during World War II.
A painstaking restoration project seeks to
register and match the broken stones. The cemetery is surrounded by a high stone
wall into which some 11,000 plaques have been inserted…each details the name,birth-date and place of death of the 11,000 Frankfurt
Jews murdered in the
Holocaust, and creates a starkly moving
testament to the destroyed community. To the rear of the cemetery a checkered
arrangement of trees is the MEMORIAL TO THE BÖRNEPLATZ SYNAGOGUE,
destroyed on Kristallnacht.
Just opposite
the Römer, Frankfurt's l5th-century
city hall, is a HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL, adjacent to
the Paulskirche church where, in 1848, the Frankfurt
National Assembly made an abortive attempt to unify
Germany and to
guarantee human rights and emancipation. (The cited historical
information was found at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/).
Very close to the
museum is the Old Jewish cemetery, the most of its tombstones were destroyed by
the Nazis in their crazy war against the Jews, live and dead. The fragments of
the tombstones are
laid in small piles and one big pile, the evidences of the 20th century barbarity.
The big part of the survived tombstones are situated
along the cemetery's wall or in the group at its far part, opposite from the
gate. A small number of
tombstones are organized into a special group – these are the matzevot of prominent residents of
Frankfurt. Matzeva of R., the
author of "Pnei Yehoshua" is
there as well as he tombstones of the Rotschild Family members. Here are also the tombstones of R.
Pinchas and his son R. Zvi
Hirsh, for them I actually came to Frankfurt.
The
Old Jewish Cemetery in Frankfurt
Slowly I was
coming to the dear graves. There were many candles, notes, just like at the
Western Wall in Jerusalem. The
inscriptions on the tombstones were partly faded, but nevertheless I managed to
read the words of sorrow and gratitude of the Jews whom they taught and led.
Rabbi Pinchas Horowitz
Rabbi Zvi Hisrsh
Horowitz
The hands of my watch were
unmercifully moving ahead, the museum's closing hour was getting nearer and
nearer. Trembling, I locked the
heavy iron gate and gave the last glance to the Cube, tolling between young
maple trees, assembled with the fragments of the ruined
synagogue, and turned to the train station.
Frankfurt: in the memory of Judengasse
Cologne
The Mikveh site in
Cologne is frequented by numerous
groups of tourists from all over the world: Germans, Americans, omnipresent
Japans, etc. Sticking to the transparent roof, they peep intently at the
stairway of the medieval mikva descending deep into
the dark. According to the historians, it was constructed as early as in 12th
century.
COLOGNE first
became home to Jews who arrived with the Romans, perhaps as early as 7 0.Colonia
Jews are mentioned in two edicts by Byzantine Emperor Constantine in the years
32 1 and 331.By the 11th century, there was a Jewish substantial community.
Cologne has had many
illustrious Jewish citizens, including composer Jacques Offenbach and Zionist
philosopher Moses Hess. In 1904, after the death of Theodor Herzl, the headquarters of
the World Zionist Organization was moved from Vienna to Cologne when the
Cologne Zionist leader, David Wolffsohn, succeeded to
its presidency. The Cologne-based Solomon Oppenheim
Bank is one of the few major businesses in
Germany again under
its pre-war Jewish ownership. The medieval Jewish quarter that existed until
Jews were expelled from Cologne in 1424 was
situated in front of the RATHAUS, the Gothic city hall. The lane that runs in
front of the building is the JUDENGASSE. Near the small space next to the
RA THAUS (near today's flagpoles) stood the medieval main synagogue, women's
synagogue, hospital ,bakery and community center. All
that remains of medieval Cologne Jewry is the MIKVEH, reached by
descending fifty feet down a Romanesque stairwell of hewn sandstone. The pool is
fed by the Rhine and dates from
1170; it was sealed after the l5th-century expulsion and rediscovered only
during rebuilding after the allies' World War II bombing . Renovated and reopened in
1979,it is topped by a glass pyramid,
Cologne's modern opera
house stands on the site of the 19th-century GLOCKENGASSE SYNAGOGUE destroyed on
Kristallnacht. The plaza that fronts the opera house
has been named OFFENBACHPLATZ, for the composer Jacques Offenbach,son of a
Cologne cantor. The
center of contemporary Cologne Jewry --the community now numbers about 5,000
--is the GREAT ROONSTRASSE SYNAGOGUE, the oonly
Cologne synagogue to
survive the Nazis
Getting the key
from the Old Town
hall upon depositing of my passport, me and my
cousin Arkady descended the stairs. The walls covered
with mold were good
evidences of the centuries that passed. The mikveh was filled with water, it seemed to be ready for ritual immersion. The once
built here synagogue was ruined, the Jewish Quarter, Judengasse does not exist, but the mikveh, this material evidence of our residence in this part of Diaspora
is still alive and attracts everybody's attention!
Cologne: the Old Mikveh
An intercity
express was rushing at 250 km/h to
Munich, the last point of my trip.
The car I was sitting in was full of Turks, Asians, Arabs. It was new
Germany,
multinational and open. "But will it be so in the long run", I was asking
myself, "or it will be only a short period of tolerance which in a period
of economical or political strife
will be wiped will a wave of hatred and xenophobia, as it just happened there
many times in the Past?".
