Zwickau
General information: First Jewish presence: 14th century; peak Jewish population: 496 in 1925; Jewish population in 1933: 460
Summary: After 1330, Jews lived on Zwickau’s Judengasse, or “Jews’
alley” (present-day Heinrichstrasse). A prayer room, thought
to have been established a street called the Judenstrasse (Jews’
street”) in, at the latest, 1450, was destroyed in 1504. In
1543, after a series of brief periods of expulsion, Jews were
banned from living in the town for 300 years. It was only
between the years 1870 and 1875 that a Jewish presence was
re-established in Zwickau.
The modern Jewish community, founded in 1904,
inaugurated a large prayer room on June 15, 1905; the prayer
room, located in the annex of a house at 8, Bahnhofstrasse,
seated 130 worshipers. The community maintained a mikveh
and a Jewish cemetery, the latter of which was opened at
the corner of Thurmer Strasse and Schneppendorfer Strasse
in 1905.
At the beginning of the 1920s, newly arrived
Orthodox Jews from Eastern Europe founded the Adass
Jisroel congregation, whose prayer room was located at
10 Burgstrasse.
By 1925, the Jewish community had grown to almost
500 members (approximately 0.5% of the total population),
many of whom were owners of small shops, salesmen and
peddlers. Several charitable and social organizations—
including a branch of the Central Association of German
Citizens of Jewish Faith and, after 1912, a branch of the
German Zionist Organization—were active in Zwickau. The
well-known publisher and philanthropist Salman Schocken
(1877-1959) lived in Zwickau; an active Zionist, he worked
tirelessly during the Nazi period in helping Jews immigrate
to Palestine.
In October 1938, 68 Zwickau Jews of Polish origin were
deported to Poland. Later that year, on Pogrom Night, SA
men vandalized Jewish homes and shops; one hundred Jewish
men were arrested and sent to Buchenwald. The prayer room
was spared that night, but would be destroyed by the Nazis
three years later.
Sixty-four Jews lived in Zwickau in 1939. In October
1941, all but 15 of the town’s remaining Jews (they were,
presumably, protected by their marriages to Christians) were
deported to the East. The Burgstrasse prayer room and the
cemetery hall were burned down, and the inscriptions on
Jewish tombstones were removed. At least 79 Zwickau Jews
perished in the Shoah.
At the Jewish cemetery—several Russian-Jewish POWs
from World War I are buried there—one will find 64 intact
tombstones and a memorial to Zwickau’s murdered Jews.
Severely vandalized in 2003, the cemetery was later restored.
In memory of the Orthodox prayer room, a memorial plaque
has been affixed to the sidewalk on Katharinenstrasse.
In 2002, Torah scrolls were discovered in Zwickau’s
Ratschul Library.
Author / Sources: Beate Grosz-Wenker
Sources: AJ, EJL, LJG, W-G, YV
Sources: AJ, EJL, LJG, W-G, YV
Located in: saxony