New Synagogue Berlin – Centrum Judaicum Foundation

Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin – Centrum Judaicum

Until its destruction during World War II, Oranienburger Straße was home to Germany's largest synagogue. Following extensive reconstruction, the Centrum Judaicum could be opened in 1995. The New Synagogue Berlin – Centrum Judaicum Foundation seeks to uphold Jewish tradition and commemorate the victims of the Holocaust.

History

In the second half of the 19th century, the number of Jews living in Berlin doubled. Many new buildings were erected, and others remodelled: Jewish cemeteries, schools and hospitals were built as well as numerous synagogues. Until 1866, there had only been one synagogue in Berlin, in the Heidereutergasse. The New Synagogue in the Oranienburger Straße was built in Moorish style between 1859 and 1866 according to the design by architect Eduard Knoblauch. With a fifty-metre high golden cupola, an elaborate and lavish interior and room to seat over 3,000 people, this became the largest and most magnificent synagogue in Germany, situated in the heart of Berlin. It soon became a centre for Reform Judaism; services were also held in German and accompanied by organ music.
The opening of the New Synagogue was also met by anti-Jewish sentiments surfacing in Berlin. In the eyes of some, the size of the synagogue, its pompous interior and oriental architectural style bore witness to the supposed wealthiness and foreignness of the city's Jewish residents.
During the »Kristallnacht« in November 1938, National Socialists conducted an arson attack on the synagogue. Thanks to the actions of the responsible police officer at the local precinct, the synagogue could be saved from serious harm: he ordered the fire brigade to put out the fires in the synagogue. Until the National Socialist state expropriated the building the Jewish community could continue to use it for services. In January 1943, the Wehrmacht set up storage for army attire on the synagogue premises. A few months later, in November 1943, the New Synagogue was severely damaged during an air raid.

Berlin, undated, The New Synagogue before World War II, Yad Vashem

Berlin, undated, Exhibition room in the New Synagogue, Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin – Centrum Judaicum, Margit Billeb

Victims

The National Socialists deported over 50,000 Jews from Berlin alone to ghettos and extermination camps in the east, thus for a large part annihilating the pre-war Jewish community.

The entry to power of the National Socialists in 1933 heralded the state persecution of opponents of the regime, Jews, Roma – who were classed as »gypsies« -, the sick and many other groups. For the first time, anti-semitism became part of the government policy of a modern state and the persecution of all groups was progressively heightened. The process was characterised by the interplay between state regulation, violence from supporters of the regime and rabble-rousing propaganda from the press. The acts of terror against the Jews in November 1938 (»The Night of the Broken Glass«), culminating in around one hundred deaths, marked the prelude to the complete exclusion and murder of the Jewish minority. With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, large parts of Europe fell under German control. In Eastern Europe in particular a multi-tiered system of camps and extermination sites was established, in which the SS murdered up to six million Jews, among them around 165,000 German Jews. It is estimated that around seven million Germans lost their lives in the war, including almost 3.5 million civilians. Around 28 million residents of the occupied Soviet Union (both soldiers and civilians) and three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death. These groups are still barely commemorated in Germany. Germany came under Allied occupation in 1945 and 1949 saw the foundation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), who had very different cultures of remembrance. The GDR profiled itself as an »antifascist« state. The former concentration camps at Buchenwald, Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen became »National Memorials« and primarily documented the communist resistance during the war. In the Federal Republic, the dominant memory was initially of the victims of Allied bombing raids and those who had fled or been expelled from their homes in the former territory of the Third Reich. It was left to specific groups to remember Nazi persecution, the Holocaust or the resistance. With the exception of the war crimes trials, there was no public discussion of perpetrators or involvement in crimes. However, the situation was to change in the mid-1960s, when the statute of limitations for murder was lifted following a lengthy debate. Also during this period, memorial sites were established at former concentration camps (1965: Dachau and Neuengamme; 1966: Bergen-Belsen) and the German Resistance Memorial Centre was opened in 1968 in West Berlin. However, it was not until the 1980s that a diverse and often small-scale landscape of memory developed as the result of local initiatives. Following German unification in 1990, a national memorial site concept was developed and there was a major review of German sites of memory. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin was inaugurated in 2005. The Topography of Terror, a comprehensive documentation of National Socialist crimes and perpetrators, has opened with a new centre in May 2010; the documentation centre »Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation« followed suit in 2021. In the meantime, central memorials in Berlin have been erected to commemorate further groups of Nazi victims as well: the murdered Sinti and Roma, the patients murdered in the context of the Nazi’s »Euthanasia« killings and the persecuted homosexuals. The German victims of National Socialist terror in the former Eastern territories of the Third Reich were forgotten by both German states after the end of the war. For decades, memory of these victims was only preserved by West German associations for Germans born in these territories and it mainly excluded the period from 1933 to 1945.

Remembrance

The building of the New Synagogue remained badly damaged after the war. In 1958, the GDR government had the main room and dome of the synagogue demolished as they were in danger of collapsing.
For many years, the small Jewish community in East Berlin fought for the preservation of the ruins of the New Synagogue and the establishment of a memorial site. Only in 1988, fifty years after the »Kristallnacht«, did the GDR government give permission to reconstruct the synagogue. In order to implement this plan, which was also intended as a strategic foreign policy move, the New Synagogue Berlin – Centrum Judaicum Foundation was established.
Most of the reconstruction work was completed after Germany's reunification. On the street side the original façade was reconstructed, beyond that, however, significant changes were made. The main hall where services were once held was not reconstructed. The rear side of the building is glassed in, with the site of the prayer room which could once seat over 3,000 people made visible. Markings on the floor can help visitors imagine the size of the former synagogue. The ruins were integrated into the new building and remain on display. The former site of the Torah ark is marked with columns.
In May 1995, the building was reopened as the Centrum Judaicum with a permanent exhibition entitled »Open ye the Gates«. Located in Oranienburger Straße 28 to 30 are a small prayer room, an archive, a documentation centre and the Jewish community college. The Jewish community and the Jewish cultural association also have rooms in this complex. A new building is home to the offices and archive rooms of the Centrum Judaicum. Its main task is to keep the memory of the Jewish community Berlin once had alive and to preserve its traditions and culture.
A new permanent exhibition opened in 2018.

Berlin, June 1988, The ruins of the New Synagogue, Neues Deutschland

Berlin, undated, Reconstructed façade of the New Synagogue, Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin – Centrum Judaicum, Margit Billeb

Possibilities

Permanent exhibition, temporary exhibition, guided tours, archive, photo archive, library, miscellaneous events

Open

April to September: Sunday to Friday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m. to 7
October to March: Sunday to Thursday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., closed on Saturdays and Jewish holidays

Contact

https://centrumjudaicum.de/

office@centrumjudaicum.de

+49(0)30 880 283 00

Oranienburger Straße 28/30
10117 Berlin

Berlin, 2018, View of the new permanent exhibition, Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin – Centrum Judaicum, Henry Lucke

Berlin, 2019, Memorial event in the Centrum Judaicum, Stiftung Denkmal, Marko Priske

Berlin, 2018, Part of the permanent exhibition under the cupola, Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin – Centrum Judaicum, Anna Fischer

Berlin, 2018, Display cabinet in the permanent exhibition, Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin – Centrum Judaicum, Henry Lucke

Berlin, 2018, Model of the New Synagogue, Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin – Centrum Judaicum, Henry Lucke

Berlin, undated, The reconstructed domes of the New Synagogue, Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin – Centrum Judaicum, Margit Billeb

Wittstock

The Death March Museum

The Death March Museum in the Below Forest is situated in the north of Brandenburg close to Wittstock. Its exhibition commemorates the death march of the prisoners from Sachsenhausen concentration cam...

Berlin

»Köpenick Week of Blood June 1933« Memorial

The exhibition at the »Köpenick Week of Blood June 1933« Memorial commemorates the political opponents of the National Socialist regime who were tortured and murdered by the SA in June 1933.

Schwalmstadt-Trutzhain

Trutzhain Memorial and Museum

Between 1939 and 1945, located in what is today the township of Trutzhain was a prisoner of war camp, the Stalag IX A Ziegenhain. The Wehrmacht incarcerated POWs from all European countries at war wit...