Since 1987, the Ahlem Memorial on the premises of the former Israelite School of Horticulture at Ahlem commemorates the Jews from the region of Hanover who were deported from the school grounds between 1941 and 1944. Moreover, it also commemorates the prisoners of the substitute police prison, which was established on the site by the Gestapo in 1943.
The Jewish banker Alexander Moritz Simon founded the »Israelite School at Ahlem near Hanover« with the aim of giving Jewish apprentices the opportunity to learn a trade or receive vocational training in horticulture or agriculture. After centuries during which Jews had been forbidden to practice many trades, this vocational school presented an opportunity for economic integration outside of the sphere of commerce. Eastern European Jews were the school's target group, as at the time, a majority of them lived as impoverished merchants. In 1919, the school war renamed the »Israelite School of Horticulture at Ahlem«. After 1933, the school focused its teaching on preparing Jews for emigration; between 1935 and 1939, many of its graduates left for Palestine, the US, Latin America, Australia, or Africa. In 1941, the Hanover Gestapo designated the school premises as a collecting point for Jews from the administrative district of Hanover. From there they were deported to concentration and extermination camps. One of the school buildings served as a »Jewish house« in which the detainees were placed. The school was shut down in 1942; in 1943, the Gestapo established an outpost and a substitute prison on the school premises, primarily meant for non-German forced labourers. Shortly before the end of the war, the school's former Sukkah was used as an execution site: The Gestapo murdered at least 59 prisoners there. On April 8, 1945, members of the Gestapo set the Sukkah on fire and erased their traces. Two days later, American troops liberated the remaining 27 inmates from the substitute prison.
Between December 1941 and January 1944, about 2,000 Jews from southern Lower Saxony were deported from the premises of the Israelite School of Horticulture to ghettos, extermination and concentration camps. From 1943 on, the Hanover Gestapo held non-German forced labourers captive on the school premises. In March 1945, the Gestapo shot or hanged at least 59 of them in the school's former Sukkah.
After the war, refugee housing and a preparation camp for emigration to Palestine, and later Israel, were set up on the premises of the former horticultural school. Since 1958, the Teaching and Research Institute for Horticulture at Ahlem has been located here; since the 1970s, a professional school for horticulture and floristry, the Justus-von-Liebig School, has been situated here. In 1987, the Ahlem Memorial was opened on this site as the central place of remembrance for the Hanover region. In 1993, a memorial was set up on the site of the former Sukkah: Standing in a semi-circle are twelve granite steles, symbolising the twelve tribes of Israel as well as the twelve destroyed Jewish communities from the area of Hanover.
- Name
- Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ahlem der Region Hannover
- Address
-
Heisterbergallee 8
30453 Hannover - Phone
- +49 (0)511 616 237 45
- Fax
- +49 (0)511 616 232 29
- Web
- http://www.gedenkstaette-ahlem.de/
- gedenkstaette@region-hannover.de
- Open
- Tuesday and Wednesday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Thursday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Friday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Closed on Monday, Saturday and on holidays - Possibilities
- Permanent exhibition, workshops and guided tours