Templin

Summary: Although we know that Jews lived in Templin in 1309, records are silent about a Jewish presence there during the centuries that followed. In 1860, Templin’s few Jewish families established a synagogue on the plot of a halftimbered, rustic house on Berlinerstrasse. The small Jewish cemetery on Bahnhofstrasse, just within the city’s limits, was probably consecrated during the 18th century. Even though the community never exceeded 30 members, the congregation conducted services until the 1920s, at which point the community—battered by the upheavals of World War I, by the ensuing economic depression, and by the decision of many local Jews to leave for Berlin—discontinued synagogue services. In 1928, the community rented out the synagogue building to an Adventist congregation. The fact that the synagogue was no longer used by the community did not save it from of the wrath of local ant- Semites on Pogrom Night, when the building was vandalized and burned down. At the cemetery, tombstones were smashed into pieces; today, a memorial plaque marks its centurieslong existence. A commemorative plaque was affixed to the building on whose grounds the synagogue once stood, but it has since disappeared.

Author / Sources: Harold Slutzkin
Sources: LJG, SIA