May 10, 2006

Ingo Dierck - Tour Guide of the Jewish Palatinate

Ingo Reports:

Here is another picture to explain something about rural Jewish life in the Palatinate.

It is a map of all the synagogues that have been found to have existed at any time here in this region. Many of these buildings were given up or left before 1933 as Jews left the small villages and followed the new good prospects offered by the industrialization and the development of the civil society in the big cities like Ludwigshafen, Mannheim or Frankfurt, if you understand what I try to say in poor words. ;-)

But there were also many buildings, of course, destroyed, "aryanized" or sold under pressure between 1933 and about 1939, especially after those shameful and criminal pogroms of November 9th, 1938.

The two examples you have seen are quite typical examples for most of the synagogue buildings here which served for several villages when the number of ten was not reached by the Jewish families of one village. We saw graves in Fußgönheim that belonged to families of Fußgönheim, of course, but also of Ruchheim, Ellerstadt or Schauernheim, some of the villages in the neighborhood.

You will find the synagogue at Fußgönheim (the "Kartoffelmuseum") as no. 7 on the map.

The building in Deidesheim,

which we saw a bit later (the cultural centre), as no. 4. The latter number is a bit hard to find on the map. The dot belonging to no. 4 is just below the dot of no. 22.

As I told you the Jews here were often wine merchants. Knowing this I don't find it astonishing that we find most of the dots just in the vinicultural zone on the east side of the Haardt mountains. Perhaps Google Earth might a bit more instructive.

I took the map from a booklet called "Dorfsynagogen in der Pfalz" by Bernhard Kukatzki, edited by the regional branch of the Green Party in 1985. I added some translation and information in Photoshop.

Voilà, here we are! now this is all that I have for you to accomplish your story of a journey into history. I would be glad if I have been helpful for one of "our elder brothers".


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© Mark Hurvitz
Posted on Nathan Hurvitz's 20th Yahrtzeit, (Iyyar 29) May 27, 2006