Norden
General information: First Jewish presence: 1255; peak Jewish population: 329 in 1861; Jewish population in 1933: 204
Summary: In 1804, the Jewish community of Norden established a new synagogue on present-day 1 Synagogenweg (“synagogue road”); another building housed a school and a mikveh, the latter of which was located in the basement. After 1858, at the latest, Norden was home to a public Jewish school. The provincial rabbinate was in nearby Emden.
By 1933, the Jewish communities of Hage, Marienhafe, Norderney and Upgant-Schott had been affiliated with Norden. Seventy Jews had left the town by November 1938.
On Pogrom Night, SA men set the synagogue on fire, after which they accused the teacher and synagogue caretaker of the crime; together with many other local Jews, both were arrested. The damage was estimated at 150,000 Reichsmarks.
Sixty-six Jews immigrated to safe locations. At least 94 of those who had been included in the community’s
The synagogue of Nordhausen, probably in the 1920s. Courtesy of: Town Archive of Nordhausen.
membership figure for 1933 perished in the ghettos and concentration camps of Eastern Europe, among them some who had fled to the Netherlands. Three Norden Jews committed suicide.
Three Jewish survivors (two women and one man) returned to Norden after the war, at which point the synagogue was being used as a garage. A memorial was erected on the site in 1987. The cemetery—it was enlarged after the Shoah—was desecrated in 1978 and again in 1981.
Author / Sources: Esther Sarah Evans
Sources: HH
www.hagalil.com/lexikon/index.php?title=Geschichte_der_Juden_ in_Ostfriesland
Sources: HH
www.hagalil.com/lexikon/index.php?title=Geschichte_der_Juden_ in_Ostfriesland
Located in: lower-saxony