The Jewish Community of Burgau

Buttenwiesen

A village in the district of Dillingen in Bavaria, Germany.

Jews settled in Buttenwiesen at the end of the 16th century. An organized Jewish community existed there since the middle of the 17th century. The local Jewish cemetery was opened in 1633. In the 1640's the community received Jews who were expelled from the Neuburg-Pfalz pricipality. The Buttenwiesen Rabbinate was recognized in 1789. Till then it was subordinated to the Burgau Rabbinate in Pfersee.

In 1833 a Catholic priest incited the local population against the Jews, but the village organized a civil guard against possible riots.

In the middle of the 19th century a new synagogue was inaugurated; it replaced the old one, which had burned down some years earlier. In 1900 there were 192 Jews in Buttenwiesen, that is some 25.5% of the total population. The community had a Jewish elementary school. Later a handicraft school for girls was founded, which functioned until 1932.

The community had welfare services, a "chevra kadisha", a "dover tov" charity association and a branch of the C.V. (Central Verein Deutscher Staatsbuerger Juedischen Glaubens).

In 1933 there were 73 Jews in Buttenwiesen.

The Holocaust Period

On Pogrom Night (November 9, 1938) the synagogue was desecrated and heavy damage done to the ritual objects and furniture. Jewish shops were pillaged and the Jewish cemetery desecrated. Between the years 1941-1943 some 27 Jews left the village, going abroad or to other places in Germanty. 37 Jews were deported on April 3, 1942, via Munich to Piaski, near Lublin.

Not a single Jew returned to Buttenwiesen after the war. The Jewish cemetery is under the supervision of the village council.

Binswangen

A village in the municipality of Wertingen in the district of Dillingen, Bavaria, Germany. 

A Jewish settlement in Binswangen was known already from the second half of the 16th century. At the beginning of the 17th century the Jewish population increased with the arrival of displaced Jews from other places. In 1663 a Jewish cemetery was consecrated in the village. Prior to this date their dead were buried in the cemeteries of Burgau and Tannhausen. A local synagogue was inaugurated in the mid-17th century.

During the 17th and 18th centuries the Jewish community of Binswangen was subordinated to the state rabbinate in Pfersee. In 1806 this institute was abolished and a district rabbinate was opened in Binswangen. In the first quarter of the 19th century the community of Buttenwiesen too was subordinated to Binswangen. The Jewish children of Binswangen received Bible lessons and there was also a yeshiva headed by the district rabbi. At the end of the 1860's the district rabbinate was abolished, and the local community joined the district rabbinate of Augsburg. The Jews of the community of Dillingen am der Donau were subordinated to the community of Binswangen.

In the 18th century the Jews of Binswangen were small traders, cattle traders and money lenders.

At the beginning of the 20th century "Chevra Kaddisha" was active, as well as the charity society "Dover Tov". The community operated a Mazzoth bakery.

At the beginning of the 20th century the Jews of Binswangen numbered 109 persons, some 11.6% of the total population.

In 1903 a local branch of the Defence Organisation against Antisemitism was founded.

The first anti-Semitic outbreaks occurred already in the 1920's. Youngsters of the Nazi party, who operated a training camp nearby, desecrated the Jewish cemetery, attacked Jews in the streets and tried to enter Jewish homes. At that time they were brought to justice and received short jail sentences.

In 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, the Jewish community of Binswangen numbered 36 persons, 4.1% of the total population.

The Holocaust Period

In July 1938 the Jewish cemetery of Binswangen was once more desecrated and many tombstones destroyed. During the Pogrom Night (November 9, 1938) the synagogue was vandalized, its holy vessels and its furniture totally destroyed. The windows of Jewish shops and houses were smashed, and valuables and property stolen. Several Jewish men were arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp.

Between November 1938 and the end of 1940 eleven Jews left the village, some emigrating (two to Eretz Israel) the others moving to different places in Germany. One Jew died in the village.

At the beginning of 1942 there were still seven Jews left. Five were deported on April 3,1942, via Muenchen to Piaski near Lublin (Poland). An elderly couple left in the village was deported in July 1942 to the Theresienstadt ghetto.

Not a single Jew returned to Binswangen after the war. The local Jewish cemetery is under the care of the Augsburg Jewish community and the gentile village council.

Bavaria

In German: Bayern

Lauingen

A town in the district of Dillingen in Bavaria, Germany.

The earliest documentary evidence for the presence of Jews in Lauingen  dates from 1293. The Jewish settlement suffered during the Rindfleisch persecutions (1298). A Jewish community is again recorded in 1324, but it was probably annihilated during the black death persecutions of 1348/49. In 1367 the town received the privilege of accepting Jews and the subsequent community had strong commercial ties with Augsburg. The municipal hospital mortuary was a synagogue before 1417 and bore a Hebrew inscription. In the 16th and 17th centuries numerous regulations against Jewish merchants were formulated. Although the estates resolved on the expulsion of the Jews in 1553, the measure was not enacted until 1577. Thereafter Jews were allowed into the town only to trade in the markets and for this they received special permits. By 1630, however, a community had again been formed. Expulsion of the 55-member community (including a doctor, rabbi, and teacher) was narrowly averted in 1635, due to
the protection of the duke of Palatinate-Neuburg, Wolfgang Wilhelm. On his death (1653) they were expelled by popular demand, and the community was never reestablished, though some Jews continued to reside in the duchy (in spite of the general expulsion of 1671).

Münsterhausen 

A village in the district of Günzburg in Bavaria, Germany.

A Jewish community existed there from medieval times till 1570, when the place passed from the possession of archduke Ferdinand of Austria to the abbot Georg Lecheler of Ursberg. It is believed, that the community had its own synagogue or praying room.

There is very little information about this early community at Mutensterhausen, which apparently ceased to exist before the twentieth century.

Ulm

A city in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany

21^ST CENTURY

A new synagogue was dedicated in Ulm in 2012, near the site of the original synagogue that was destroyed on Kristallnacht. The dedication ceremony was attended by Germany’s then-president, Joachim Gauck. The synagogue building also housed a community center, offices, a school, and a mikvah.

In 2004 Ulm’s Jewish population was 450. Most were Jews from the former Soviet Union who had immigrated to Germany after 1990.

 

HISTORY

The first documentary evidence of a Jewish community in Ulm dates from tax records from 1241; tombstones in the cemetery dating from 1243 to 1491 indicate that the community existed continuously for hundreds of years.

The community grew during the 13^th and early 14^th centuries. A Judengasse (Jewish Street) is mentioned in records from 1331, but the growing community was not restricted to a particular area. Most of the city’s Jews worked as moneylenders.

Relations between Ulm’s Jewish and non-Jewish communities tended to be good, violence could break out. In spite of measures taken by the municipal council to protect the city’s Jews, anti-Jewish riots broke out in Ulm on January 30, 1349, during the Black Death persecutions that took place in Europe in the wake of the epidemic.

Though the riots temporarily destroyed the community, it was rapidly renewed. The synagogue, cemetery, and dance hall that had been appropriated by the town were given back to the Jewish community in 1354 and 1357. Shortly thereafter, in 1366, a number of Jews were granted partial citizenship.

Notable members of the community included Jud Jacklin, a very successful moneylender who lent the town funds, and supported the municipality in its struggle against the emperor. This proved to be a prudent move, as the municipality gradually replaced the emperor as the protector of the Jews and recipient of their taxes.

During the 15^th century the city of Ulm grew in economic and political importance, while the Jewish community, burdened by heavy taxation, as well as regulations restricting their financial activities, declined. In 1457 Jewish noncitizens were expelled from the city. Then, in 1499, all of the city’s Jews were given five months to leave the town.

The expulsions were carried out under a policy known as Judenfreiheit (Freedom from Jewish Settlement), which was enforced for two centuries. It was only in 1712 that Jews allowed back in Ulm just to trade at the cattle market. In 1786 a single Jewish man is known to have obtained the right to reside in Ulm.

Civic equality was granted to the Jews in Wuerttemberg in 1827, at which point Jews were able to reside in Ulm and reestablish a community. From 13 in 1824, the community grew to a peak of 667 in 1886. A synagogue was consecrated in 1873, and a cemetery was dedicated in 1885. Ulm’s Jewish community was prosperous, and most of its members worked as merchants and manufacturers.

Notable members of Ulm’s Jewish community include Albert Mayer, a lawyer. Mayer was the first Jew elected to the Wuerttemberg Parliament, and served from 1906 to 1909. The museum director Julius Baum and the artist L. Moos were two well-known residents of the community.

Perhaps the most famous Jewish person from Ulm was Albert Einstein, who was born in the city.

 

THE HOLOCAUST

During the Nazi period, Ulm’s Jewish population declined from 530 in 1933 to 162 in August 1939. Jews living in the city were subject to boycotts, harassment, and other forms of persecution and violence. In 1936 the Jewish cemetery was desecrated; that year Jewish children were forbidden from attending public schools, so a Jewish school was established.

During the November pogrom (November 9-10, 1938) the synagogue was burned down. Many of Ulm’s Jews were beaten and arrested.

45 Jews were deported from Ulm to Theresienstadt on August 22, 1942. In total, 116 Jews were deported from Ulm during World War II (1939-1945).

 

POSTWAR

Approximately 25 Jews were living in Ulm in 1968.

Fischach

Town in the district of Augsburg, Svabia (Schwabia), Bavaria, Germany.

Jews began to live in Fischach at the end of the 16th century. The local Jewish population grew in the early 17th century, following the influx of Jews expelled from other places in the Markgrafentum Burgau. The Jewish community opened its own cemetery only towards the end of the 18th century. Till then its dead were buried in the cemetery of Burgau, and later in Kriegshaber.
A synagogue was built in Fischach in 1739. It had Torah plates, a "Haskarath Neshamoth" chronicle and a "Hotam Kahal" (Public Seal) made of silver. In the first half of the 19th century the old synagogue was replaced by a new one.
The community had two "Chevroth Kaddisha" a "Zdaka" (Charity) organization to help the needy and a "Mikveh" (ritual bath). Inside the community building there was a school room.
Between 1856-1882 Rabbi Shimon Simcha Bamberger officiated as the community rabbi. He wrote religious books, among them "Sha'arei Simcha" and "Avodath Halevyim", and contributed to religious periodicals, such as "Shomrei Zion", "Torah Mizion" and "Tel Talpioth". Most of the community members were orthodox. In 1882 the local rabbinate was abolished in Fischach, and the community joined the district rabbinate of Ichenhausen.

The Jews of Fischach earned their living from commerce and agriculture. The town had a Jewish horn factory.

In 1784 the "Landjudenschaft" of Svabia-Burgau held an assembly in Fischach, in which the Fischach Jewish community played a prominent role. The town had branches of the Zionist movement and the "Keren Hakayemetyh", "Agudat Israel", "Ezra", the central organization of German citizens of the Jewish faith, as well as of the "Juedischer Jugendverein".
In June 1936 a "Beith Hechalutz" opened in town to prepare youngsters for emigration to Eretz Israel; before that time there was no great enthusiasm to emigrate to Eretz Israel and Jews preferred to emigrate to the U.S.A. and South America.

In 1933 there were 127 Jews in Fischach, comprising 14.8% of the total population.

The Holocaust Period

Open anti-semitism started in Fischach in 1935 with a call to boycott local Jewish shops and the desecration of the Jewish cemetery. The authorities increased their control in 1936 over the community and representatives of the police were present at all public events. In the same year the branches of the "Agudat Israel" and "Ezra" organizations were shut down, and all pleas to reopen them were rejected.

In September 1938 a local Jew was arrested and accused of "harassing the authorities". At the same period the Jewish horn factory was transferred into Arian hand.
Between 1933-1939 13 Jews left Fischach, of whom 4 emigrated to Eretz Israel and 7 to other countries.

During the Pogrom Night (Nov. 9, 1938) rioters broke into Jewish homes and stole gold and silver ware. About 30 of the "Beith Hechalutz" inmates were arrested, taken to the Augsburg prison and from there to the Dachau concentration camp. 50% of them were released a month later. Thanks to the intervention of the town's mayor the synagogue was not tampered with S.A. hooligans came to the town on November 15, to interrogate its mayor for disregarding the order to destroy and set fire to the synagogue. That day Torah Scrolls, expensive curtains and holy vessels were transferred to the Augsburg gestapo office. By order of the authorities the synagogue became a sport-hall. The holy articles were returned to the synagogue six weeks later, but were lost during the war.

By November 1939 the community council was without any public standing whatsoever. Until the beginning of 1942 68 Jews lived in Fischach, about half of the Jewish population of 1933, and this thanks to good relations with the local population. By May of the same year three Jews had died of natural causes and the other 65 were deported. 56 of them were part of the great transport of April 3, 1942, from Munich to Piaski, near Lublin in German occupied Poland. The last ten Jews in Fischach were deported on August 10 to the Theresienstadt Ghetto. Some days later Fischach was declared "Judenrein".

Not a single Jew returned to Fischach after the war. The cemetery is looked after by the association of Jewish communities in Bavaria.