The Dome of the New Synagogue on Oranienburger Straße, the main synagogue of the Jewish community in Berlin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
Patrick Comerford
The apartment where I am staying on Tucholskystraße is just around the corner from the Neue Synagoge or ‘New Synagogue’ on Oranienburger Straße, the main synagogue of the Jewish community in Berlin.
After a day-long visit to concentration camp at Sachsenhausen in Oranienburg yesterday [12 September 2018], I spent a few hours in New Synagogue. With its domes, exotic and eastern Moorish style, and its resemblance to the Alhambra, it is an important work of architecture from the mid-19th century in Berlin.
Jews have been living in Berlin since the end of the 13th century. They were expelled in 1573, but they returned to the city over the next 100 years, and in 1671 the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm granted two Jewish refugees from Austria and their families the right to settle in Berlin.
The Jewish population in Berlin continued to grow in the 17th and 18th centuries, despite efforts by the Kings of Prussia to limit their number, and Jews in Berlin were prominent in various aspects of the city’s economic, intellectual and cultural life.
The first synagogue in Berlin opened in 1712. At first, it was known as the ‘Great Synagogue,’ but later it was known as the ‘Old Synagogue.’
Berlin became the first centre of Haskalah, the Jewish cultural enlightenment movement, and its most renowned exponent, Moses Mendlessohn, lived in this city. The Judische Freischule, established in Berlin in 1778, was the first Jewish institution of learning that taught the German language, and the curriculum included general subjects.
In the 19th and early 20th century, the Jewish population of Berlin increased greatly – from 3,300 in 1812, to 28,000 in 1866, to 142,000 in 1910. The rapid rise was the result of a mass influx of Jews from provincial towns and from the eastern provinces of Imperial Germany, especially from Posen (today Poznan, Poland) and from Eastern Europe.
A high percentage of Berlin’s Jewish population, therefore, was made up of Ostjuden or Jews from the East, and this situation had considerable impact on both the Jewish and the non-Jewish population of Berlin.
The New Synagogue on Oranienburger Straße was built in 1859-1866 as the main synagogue of the Berlin’s Jewish community. It was designed by the architect Eduard Knoblauch (1801-1865) in a splendid eastern Moorish style, inspired by the Alhambra,. When Knoblauch died in 1865, the project was taken over by Friedrich August Stüler, who took responsibility for completing the building and for its interior arrangement, design and decoration.
The synagogue opened in 1866 in the presence of Count Otto von Bismarck, then the Minister President of Prussia.
Tucholskystraße is on the corner of Oranienburger Straßefrom, close to the Neue Synagoge or ‘New Synagogue’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
The front of the building, facing Oranienburger Straße, is richly ornamented with shaped bricks and terracotta, accented by coloured glazed bricks. Beyond the entrance, the building’s alignment changes to merge with pre-existing structures.
The synagogue’s main dome with its gilded ribs is an eye-catching sight. The central dome is flanked by two smaller pavilion-like domes on the two side-wings. Beyond the façade was the front hall and the main hall with 3,000 seats. Due to the unfavourable alignment of the property, the building’s design required adjustment along a slightly turned axis.
The Neue Synagoge is also an early example of the use of iron in construction. Iron was a new building material and the iron used in building was visible in the outside columns, as well and in the construction of the dome. Iron was also a core component for the now-lost floor structure of the main hall.
The New Synagogue was the largest synagogue in Germany at the time, seating 3,000 people. The building housed public concerts, including a violin concert with Albert Einstein in 1930. With an organ and a choir, the religious services reflected the liberal developments in the Jewish worship at the time.
The New Synagogue was one of the few synagogues in Germany to survive Kristallnacht in 1938 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
This was one of the few synagogues in Germany to survive Kristallnacht or the November Pogrom 80 years ago on the night of 8 and 9 November 1938, when Nazi mobs broke into the Neue Synagoge, desecrated Torah scrolls, smashed furniture and furnishings, piled them up and set them on fire.
Wilhelm Krützfeld, head of the local police precinct, was on duty that night. He ordered the Nazi mob to disperse. He told them the building was a protected historical landmark and drew his pistol, warning he would use it to uphold the law for its protection. This gave time for the fire brigade to arrive and put out the fire before it spread to the main building, and the synagogue was saved from destruction.
The New Synagogue remained standing, and was repaired by the congregation, which continued to use it as synagogue until 1940. Besides being used for prayers, the main hall was also used for concerts and lectures since other venues were blocked for Jews.
The main prayer hall was last used by the congregation on Sunday 31 March 1940, this time for the final concert in a series of benefit concerts for the Jüdisches Winterhilfswerk or Jewish Winter Aid Fund, helping poor Jews who were denied government benefits.
On 5 April 1940, the Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt was forced to announce that services in the New Synagogue had been cancelled until further notice. Members of the congregation were told to remove their belongings from their shelves in the prayer hall by Monday 8 April 1940.
The uniform department of the German army seized the building and used the main hall for the storage of army uniforms.
I was surprised to learn yesterday that the Jewish Community continued to use the office rooms in the front section of New Synagogue, including the Repräsentantensaal or hall of the assembly of elected community representatives below the golden dome. Some members of the congregation even held occasional prayers in this hall until September 1942, when they were forced to abandon the front section too.
The New Synagogue was severely burned during Allied bombing in the Battle of Berlin, between 18 November 1943 and 25 March 1944, when the New Synagogue was hit on the night of 22–23 November 1943.
The building to the left from the New Synagogue and the second one to the right at Oranienburger Straße 28 survived World War II intact, and the Jewish community returned to the building in 1946.
The rebuilding of the front section began after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
In 1958, the Jewish Community of East Berlin decided to demolish the ruined rear sections of the building, including the soot-blackened ruin of the main prayer hall, leaving only the less-destroyed front section.
The damaged, but mostly preserved, central dome on top of the front section was also torn down in the 1950s. At the time, East Berlin’s Jewish Community, impoverished and diminished after the Holocaust, could not foresee any future opportunities to restore the New Synagogue.
But with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, rebuilding of the front section began. From 1988 to 1993, the structurally intact parts of the building close to the street, including the façade, the dome and some rooms behind, were restored as the Centrum Judaicum or Jewish Centre.
Once again, the façade of the New Synagogue displays in gold Hebrew lettering the inscription ‘Open the gates to let a righteous nation in, a nations that keeps faith’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
The crown of the main dome was put in place on 5 June 1991. Since 5 September 1991, the restored gate of the New Synagogue – once the largest and most beautiful synagogue in Berlin – displays in gold Hebrew lettering the inscription it bore when it was first dedicated: ‘Open the gates to let a righteous nation in, a nations that keeps faith’ (Isaiah 26: 2).
By 1994, the Grand Staircase had been restored; and the new foundation stone was unveiled on 9 November 1998, 50 years after Kristallnacht.
Although the main sanctuary was not restored, a small synagogue congregation was re-established in May 1995, using the former women’s wardrobe room.
I also climbed to the top of the dome yesterday afternoon. The present building on the site is a reconstruction of the ruined street frontage with its entrance, dome and towers, with only a few rooms that have survived behind it. It is truncated before the point where the main hall of the synagogue began.
The congregation is the Berlin community’s only Masorti synagogue. Most of the building, however, houses offices and a museum.
In 1935, Regina Jonas (1902-1944), who born in Berlin, became the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi. She died in Auschwitz in 1944.
Gesa Ederberg became the first female pulpit rabbi in Berlin in 2007 when she became the rabbi of the New Synagogue. Jewish services are now held again in the New Synagogue. As the first woman rabbi to serve in Berlin since the Holocaust, she has helped her reinvigorate the German community that once represented the cutting edge of liberal Judaism.
Born a Lutheran, she first visited Israel at the age of 13 and slowly fell in love with Judaism. She studied religion in Germany and Israel before converting to Judaism at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York in 1995. After returning to Berlin, she entered the rabbinical school at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, and she was ordained in 2003.
She was a founding member of the General Rabbinic Conference of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and in 2006 she helped found the European Rabbinical Assembly of Masorti/Conservative Rabbis. She returned to the Oranienburger Strasse Synagogue as the new rabbi in 2007.
The new cornerstone of the New Synagogue was laid symbolically on 9 November 1998, 50 years after Kristallnacht (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
13 September 2018
A day at the concentration
camp in Sachsenhausen
Arbeit Macht Frei … the gate at Sachsenhausen (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
Patrick Comerford
During these few days in Berlin, I am staying in an apartment on Tucholskystraße in Berlin, around the corner from Oranienburger Straße and the Neue Synagoge or New Synagogue.
It seemed more than coincidental that I took the train from here to the town of Oranienburg, north of Berlin, and spent most of the day at Sachsenhausen, or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg, the Nazi concentration camp that was used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to 1945.
Oranienburg was the first detention centre and concentration camp established by the Nazis when they gained power in 1933. It held the political opponents of German Nazism from the Berlin region, mostly members of the Communist Party of Germany and social-democrats, as well as a number of homosexual men and scores of the so-called ‘undesirables.’
The camp was in the centre of Oranienburg on the main road to Berlin, and was set up with the Brown Shirts took over a disused factory. The first prisoners, held in ‘protective custody,’ were marched through the town to perform forced labour on behalf of the local council.
The prison was taken over by the SS on 4 July 1934, and was replaced by Sachsenhausen in 1936.
On the front gates into Sachsenhausen is the infamous slogan Arbeit Macht Frei (‘Work Makes (you) Free’). About 200,000 people passed through Sachsenhausen, planned to set the standard for other concentration camps, both in its design and in the treatment of prisoners.
The perimeter fence and the gravel death strip (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
The main gate or Guard Tower ‘A’ houses the camp offices and was mounted with an 8 mm Maxim machine gun that had the entire, triangular-shaped, 1,000-acre camp site in its range.
In the large, central Appellplatz, tens of thousands of prisoners lined up each morning and evening for the roll call. Barrack huts lie beyond the roll call area, radiating from the gate, and additional watchtowers were built along the perimeter.
The camp was extended in 1938 with the addition of the ‘small camp’ north-east of the entrance gate. From 1941, prisoners were kept in isolation in Sonderlager, an area outside the main camp.
Martin Niemöller’s cell in Sachsenhausen (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
It is sometimes said that the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was hanged at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, but he was executed in Flossenburg, near the Bavarian border with Czechoslovakia, on 9 April 1945.
The prisoners held in isolation in Sachsenhausen included the Lutheran pastor and theologian, Martin Niemöller (1892-1984). He is known for his widely quoted statement, found in different versions, that begins ‘First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out –because I was not a Communist,’ and that concludes, ‘Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.’
Other prisoners held here included Bonhoeffer’s brother-in-law Hans von Dohnányi (1902-1945), who is now remembered in the name of the street leading from the centre of Oranienburg into Sachsenhausen.
Between 30,000 and 70,000 prisoners died in Sachsenhausen from exhaustion, disease, malnutrition, pneumonia, and the poor living conditions. Many were executed or died in brutal medical experimentation, and many Russian prisoners of war were executed.
Hans von Dohnányi Straße leads from Oranienburg to the camp at Sachsenhausen (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
Few people ever escaped alive from Sachsenhausen. The 3-metre-high stone wall, topped by a lethal electric fence, was patrolled by guards and dogs and was bounded by a gravel ‘death strip.’
Prisoners were forced to work in SS workshops in an industrial area outside the camp perimeter. Heinkel, the aircraft manufacturer, was a major exploiter of Sachsenhausen labour, with 6,000 to 8,000 prisoners working on their He 177 bomber. Other firms involved included AEG and Siemens, and a brick factory.
In some cases, prisoners of war were made to run up to 40 km a day with heavy packs, sometimes with performance-boosting drugs including cocaine, to trial military boots in tests commissioned by shoe factories.
Wolfgang Wirth carried out experiments in the camp with a lethal poison gas, Sulfur mustard.
Near the end of World War II, 13,000 Soviet POWs were brought to Sachsenhausen. Over 10,000 were executed by being shot in the back of the neck and their bodies were incinerated in a crematorium.
As the Red Army advanced in the spring of 1945, the Nazis prepared to evacuate Sachsenhausen. On 20-21 April, the SS ordered 33,000 prisoners to begin a forced march. Most of the prisoners were physically exhausted and thousands did not survive the death march, and those who collapsed on the way were shot by the SS.
The march ended near Raben Steinfeld on 2 May, when 18,000 remaining prisoners were liberated by Belorussian troops. The camp’s remaining 3,000 prisoners, including 1,400 women, were liberated on 22 April 1945 by Soviet and Polish troops.
In August 1945 the Soviet Special Camp No 7 was moved to the area of the former concentration camp. Nazi functionaries were held in the camp, along with political prisoners and inmates sentenced by Soviet Military Tribunals. By 1948, Sachsenhausen had been renamed Special Camp No 1, and was the largest of three special camps in the Soviet Zone.
One of the camp officers was Roman Rudenko, the Soviet chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. The camp closed in 1950.
Planning began in 1956 to make Sachsenhausen a national memorial, and this was inaugurated on 23 April 1961.
The memorial obelisk displays 18 red triangles, the symbol the Nazis forced political prisoners to wear. A plaque in memory of the Death March shows malnourished male prisoners marching, all wearing the red triangle. Homosexual men were forced to wear pink triangle, and Roma or Gyspsy prisoners and others were forced to wear black triangles.
The site at Sachsenhausen is now a museum and a memorial. Several buildings survive or have been rebuilt, including guard towers, the camp entrance, the crematorium ovens and the camp barracks.
The museum includes artwork by former prisoners and a 30 cm high pile of gold extracted by the SS from the prisoners’ teeth.
During excavations in 1990, the bodies of 12,500 people were found at Sachsenhausen, including children, adolescents and elderly people.
The site has been vandalised by neo-Nazis on several occasions. In September 1992, barracks 38 and 39 of the Jewish Museum were severely damaged in an arson attack. The perpetrators were arrested, and the barracks were rebuilt by 1997.
Of course, there are all too many lessons for today. The far-right is on the rise again, not just in German, racism is being expressed openly on the streets of European cities, and Hitler’s rise to power came on the backs of a promise to ‘Make Germany Great Again,’ and this was helped by his attacks on a free press.
But perhaps I should wait for another day to write about this.
Roses at the memorial in memory of the victims of Sachsenhausen (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
Patrick Comerford
During these few days in Berlin, I am staying in an apartment on Tucholskystraße in Berlin, around the corner from Oranienburger Straße and the Neue Synagoge or New Synagogue.
It seemed more than coincidental that I took the train from here to the town of Oranienburg, north of Berlin, and spent most of the day at Sachsenhausen, or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg, the Nazi concentration camp that was used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to 1945.
Oranienburg was the first detention centre and concentration camp established by the Nazis when they gained power in 1933. It held the political opponents of German Nazism from the Berlin region, mostly members of the Communist Party of Germany and social-democrats, as well as a number of homosexual men and scores of the so-called ‘undesirables.’
The camp was in the centre of Oranienburg on the main road to Berlin, and was set up with the Brown Shirts took over a disused factory. The first prisoners, held in ‘protective custody,’ were marched through the town to perform forced labour on behalf of the local council.
The prison was taken over by the SS on 4 July 1934, and was replaced by Sachsenhausen in 1936.
On the front gates into Sachsenhausen is the infamous slogan Arbeit Macht Frei (‘Work Makes (you) Free’). About 200,000 people passed through Sachsenhausen, planned to set the standard for other concentration camps, both in its design and in the treatment of prisoners.
The perimeter fence and the gravel death strip (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
The main gate or Guard Tower ‘A’ houses the camp offices and was mounted with an 8 mm Maxim machine gun that had the entire, triangular-shaped, 1,000-acre camp site in its range.
In the large, central Appellplatz, tens of thousands of prisoners lined up each morning and evening for the roll call. Barrack huts lie beyond the roll call area, radiating from the gate, and additional watchtowers were built along the perimeter.
The camp was extended in 1938 with the addition of the ‘small camp’ north-east of the entrance gate. From 1941, prisoners were kept in isolation in Sonderlager, an area outside the main camp.
Martin Niemöller’s cell in Sachsenhausen (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
It is sometimes said that the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was hanged at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, but he was executed in Flossenburg, near the Bavarian border with Czechoslovakia, on 9 April 1945.
The prisoners held in isolation in Sachsenhausen included the Lutheran pastor and theologian, Martin Niemöller (1892-1984). He is known for his widely quoted statement, found in different versions, that begins ‘First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out –because I was not a Communist,’ and that concludes, ‘Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.’
Other prisoners held here included Bonhoeffer’s brother-in-law Hans von Dohnányi (1902-1945), who is now remembered in the name of the street leading from the centre of Oranienburg into Sachsenhausen.
Between 30,000 and 70,000 prisoners died in Sachsenhausen from exhaustion, disease, malnutrition, pneumonia, and the poor living conditions. Many were executed or died in brutal medical experimentation, and many Russian prisoners of war were executed.
Hans von Dohnányi Straße leads from Oranienburg to the camp at Sachsenhausen (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
Few people ever escaped alive from Sachsenhausen. The 3-metre-high stone wall, topped by a lethal electric fence, was patrolled by guards and dogs and was bounded by a gravel ‘death strip.’
Prisoners were forced to work in SS workshops in an industrial area outside the camp perimeter. Heinkel, the aircraft manufacturer, was a major exploiter of Sachsenhausen labour, with 6,000 to 8,000 prisoners working on their He 177 bomber. Other firms involved included AEG and Siemens, and a brick factory.
In some cases, prisoners of war were made to run up to 40 km a day with heavy packs, sometimes with performance-boosting drugs including cocaine, to trial military boots in tests commissioned by shoe factories.
Wolfgang Wirth carried out experiments in the camp with a lethal poison gas, Sulfur mustard.
Near the end of World War II, 13,000 Soviet POWs were brought to Sachsenhausen. Over 10,000 were executed by being shot in the back of the neck and their bodies were incinerated in a crematorium.
As the Red Army advanced in the spring of 1945, the Nazis prepared to evacuate Sachsenhausen. On 20-21 April, the SS ordered 33,000 prisoners to begin a forced march. Most of the prisoners were physically exhausted and thousands did not survive the death march, and those who collapsed on the way were shot by the SS.
The march ended near Raben Steinfeld on 2 May, when 18,000 remaining prisoners were liberated by Belorussian troops. The camp’s remaining 3,000 prisoners, including 1,400 women, were liberated on 22 April 1945 by Soviet and Polish troops.
In August 1945 the Soviet Special Camp No 7 was moved to the area of the former concentration camp. Nazi functionaries were held in the camp, along with political prisoners and inmates sentenced by Soviet Military Tribunals. By 1948, Sachsenhausen had been renamed Special Camp No 1, and was the largest of three special camps in the Soviet Zone.
One of the camp officers was Roman Rudenko, the Soviet chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. The camp closed in 1950.
Planning began in 1956 to make Sachsenhausen a national memorial, and this was inaugurated on 23 April 1961.
The memorial obelisk displays 18 red triangles, the symbol the Nazis forced political prisoners to wear. A plaque in memory of the Death March shows malnourished male prisoners marching, all wearing the red triangle. Homosexual men were forced to wear pink triangle, and Roma or Gyspsy prisoners and others were forced to wear black triangles.
The site at Sachsenhausen is now a museum and a memorial. Several buildings survive or have been rebuilt, including guard towers, the camp entrance, the crematorium ovens and the camp barracks.
The museum includes artwork by former prisoners and a 30 cm high pile of gold extracted by the SS from the prisoners’ teeth.
During excavations in 1990, the bodies of 12,500 people were found at Sachsenhausen, including children, adolescents and elderly people.
The site has been vandalised by neo-Nazis on several occasions. In September 1992, barracks 38 and 39 of the Jewish Museum were severely damaged in an arson attack. The perpetrators were arrested, and the barracks were rebuilt by 1997.
Of course, there are all too many lessons for today. The far-right is on the rise again, not just in German, racism is being expressed openly on the streets of European cities, and Hitler’s rise to power came on the backs of a promise to ‘Make Germany Great Again,’ and this was helped by his attacks on a free press.
But perhaps I should wait for another day to write about this.
Roses at the memorial in memory of the victims of Sachsenhausen (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
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