Leer
General information: First Jewish presence: 1611; peak Jewish population: 306 in 1885; Jewish population in 1933: unknown
Summary: In 1925, 289 Jews lived in Leer, making the community the
third-largest in East Friesland. Leer was home to a Jewish
cemetery by the middle of the 17th century. The last burial
conducted there before the Shoah took place on June 11, 1939.
A Jewish school was established on Kirchstrasse at
some point between 1840 and 1850; later, during the first
decade of the 20th century, the community opened a new
school—the building housed an apartment for a teacher—on
Deichstrasse (present-day 14 Ubbo-Emmius-Strasse). The
synagogue on Heisfelder Strasse was inaugurated in 1885.
On Pogrom Night, SA men set the synagogue on fire.
Jews from Leer and the surrounding areas
were assembled at the fairgrounds; the
women and children were later released,
but the men were sent (via Oldenburg) to
Sachsenhausen, where they were interned
until the end of December 1938 (possibly
January 1939).
In late January 1940, local Jews were
ordered to leave East Friesland by April
1, 1940. By then, Jewish properties had
been confiscated, and Jews had been
forcibly moved into the ghetto located at
the corner of Groninger and Kampstrasse.
The Jewish school was closed on February
23, 1940, and the ghetto was liquidated on October 23, 1941. In March 1943, the municipality bought the Jewish
cemetery, after which, in May of that same year, Dutch slave
laborers were forced to remove the gravestones from the
oldest section of the Jewish cemetery.
Approximately 20 to 30 Leer Jews survived the war.
Miriam Hermann, one of the survivors, was deported to
Theresienstadt on February 10, 1945. Almost 90% of the
community perished in the Shoah.
After the war, a stone tablet bearing the ten commandments—
it had once stood above the synagogue door—was found in a
neighboring vegetable garden; in 1984, the tablet was transferred
to the Ichud-Shviat-Tzion synagogue on Ben Yehuda Street
in Tel Aviv.
During the years 1946 to 1985, six Jews were buried in
the oldest part of the Jewish cemetery, which was returned
to the Jewish community in 1953. Memorial plaques were
unveiled at the former synagogue site (on September 12,
1961) and at the cemetery.
Photo: The synagogue of Leer. Courtesy of: Yad Vashem Photo Archive, 1663/70.
Author / Sources: Esther Sarah Evans
Sources: HH, PK, GELKB
Sources: HH, PK, GELKB
Located in: lower-saxony