Uchte-Warmsen

General information: Following
Summary: First Jewish presence: 18th century (Warmsen), 1812 (Uchte— five Jewish families); peak Jewish population: 18 in 1905 (Warmsen), 24 in 1848 (Uchte); Jewish population in 1933: 13 (Warmsen), 12 (Uchte)

By the 1830s, this community had built a prayer room in Uchte. Burials were conducted in nearby Hamme until 1855, when a cemetery was established in Uchte (the cemetery was used until 1933). We also know that in 1863, a teacher from Diepenau was hired to instruct six Uchte children in religion. The Jews of Uchte, Warmsen, Meierhof and Stueriede formed an official synagogue association in 1882, after which the provincial rabbinate in Hanover provided funds for the religious instruction of the association’s schoolchildren. From the 1920s onwards, if not earlier, the prayer room was located on Brinkstrasse, in Uchte. In 1928, 29 Jews belonged to the Uchte-Warmsen synagogue association; by 1938, seven Uchte Jews had moved to other locations. On Pogrom Night (November 1938), several Jewish men were arrested and sent to the Buchenau concentration camp; they were released from the camp only after their wives, who had been imprisoned in Hanover, declared their intention to leave Germany. Two Jewish residences were ransacked that night. One family managed to immigrate to the United States, another immigrated to Venezuela and a Jewish youth made it to England on a children’s transport. We also know that one family was deported to Riga in 1941, that a Jewish girl was sent to Stutthof on an unspecified date, and that a married couple was deported to Minsk; records are silent about their fate. A local Jewish couple, sent to Warsaw on March 31, 1942, was declared dead after the Shoah, as was a couple who had been sent to Theresienstadt on July 23, 1942. According to Yad Vashem, five Uchte-Warmsen Jews perished in the Shoah. The synagogue was later used for residential purposes. In 1977, the Jewish cemetery contained 32 Jewish and 14 Russian graves.
Author / Sources: Esther Sarah Evans
Sources: HU, JGNB1, YV
Located in: lower-saxony