The Jewish Community of Lille
Lille
Capital city of the Hauts-de-France region in the Nord department, France.
21ST CENTURY
As of 2006, the Jewish community of Lille and its region numbered about 3,000. The Lille community maintained a number of institutions, including a synagogue erected in 1874, a number of small prayer halls, youth groups, a kosher butcher, and a community center. It also published a community bulletin.
In 2007, 53 tombs in the Jewish section of the Lille Sud cemetery were defaced, and two years later, a swastika was painted near the door of the synagogue.
HISTORY
The Jewish community of Lille was formed in the 19th century. From 1872, Lille was the seat of a chief rabbinate and the regional Jewish consistory. Benjamin Lippmann, the first chief rabbi, had been chief rabbi at Colmar, but refused to remain in Alsace after it was annexed by Germany.
HOLOCAUST
According to the census of the Jewish population in occupied France carried out at the beginning of 1942, there were 1,259 Jews then living in Lille, only 247 of whom were born there. The Commissariat Generale aux Questions Juives (CGQJ) had an office there.
The Germans executed five Jews in lille in March-April 1942, as a reprisal for an Underground raid. Of the 461 Jews (French and foreign ) deported from the whole of the Nord department, 336 disappeared. Leon Berman (1892-1943), son of a Chasidic rabbi (Reb Chayyim), was rabbi of Lille from 1936 to 1939. In 1937, he published his Histoire des Juifs de France. He was arrested along with his wife and son in October 1943, interned at the Drancy camp, and then deported to a death camp.
POST-WAR
Emmanuel Chouchena held the post of chief rabbi of Lille and of the region from 1950-54.