Breslau, Germany

BRESLAU (Polish Wroclaw) Lower Silesia, Germany, today Poland. Between the 12th and the mid-15th centuries, there were three medieval Jewish communities. Each was destroyed in its turn. Starting in 1630, Jewish fam¬ilies, granted privileges by Emperor Ferdinand II, set¬tled on the city outskirts. After Breslau was captured by the Prussians in 1741, King Frederick II of Prussia authorized the official establishment of a Jewish community. Haskala, Jewish Enlightenment, began to promulgate towards the end of the 18th century among the wealthier Jewish families. These families were allowed to set up in 1791 a Jewish state school, emphasizing humanistic studies. Two of its teachers edited the Haskalah periodical “Ha-Me 'assef in” 1794-97. In 1812, when Prussian law emancipating the Jews went into force in Silesia was passed, Jews began arriving from Silesia, Galicia, and Russian Poland. This influx made Breslau, with a population of 7,384 in 1850, one of the three largest Jewish communities in Germany. This was just the beginning of its growth. Thirty years later, in 1880, the Jewish population had grown to 17,500. From the latter part of the 19th century, a new element entered Jewish life in Breslau: immigrants from Eastern Europe. Breslau was an important stopover point for thousands of East European Jews on their way west, and thousands of them stayed in the city for a short period. In 1905, it was 20,356 and in 1925 - 23,240. This growth was accompanied by impressive economic and political gains. The first Jew was elected to the municipal council in the early 1840s. Another area where Jews left their mark was intellectual life: at the turn of the 19th cent, the University of Breslau had the second highest percentage of Jewish students after Berlin. There were many Jews among the lecturers at the local university, especially in the natural sciences, and a few served as rectors. Two Breslau Jews won Nobel Prizes: the chemist Fritz Haber (1868-1934) in 1918 and the physicist Max Born (1882-1970) in 1954. Jews owned a number of publishing houses and three newspapers. Tensions between Orthodox and Reformed were eventually eased with the establishment of the “united community”. The stability of this religious compromise was fortified by the Jewish Theological Seminary, founded in 1854. The Seminary became the first modem Jewish theological seminary for rabbinical training and a model for others. The most famous of the Seminary’s teachers was the great historian Heinrich Graetz (1817-91). The journal “Monatsschrift fuer Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums” was also identified with the Seminary and it became the leading forum for Jewish studies. In 1901, the first Zionist newspaper in Germany, “Der Zonist”, was founded in the city. Alongside the Zionist organizations many organizations with a Liberal character also existed in the community: the Lehr- and Leseverein, the Central Union (C.V.), the RjF (the Jewish War Veterans Association), the Verband nationaldeutscher Juden, and B’nai B’rith. The national-racist antisemitism that proliferated in Germany in the last third of the 19th century did not bypass Breslau. After WWI, antisemitism intensified against the backdrop of German-Polish border disputes. The antisemitic atmosphere in the city even produced a blood libel following the brutal murder of two children in 1926. After January 1933, the Jewish population in Breslau was subjected to intensifying antisemitic assaults and boycott measures even before Boycott Day on 1 April 1933. In February, Nazi hooligans stabbed a Jewish student to death. In March, SA troops posted themselves in front of Jewish business establishments. Jewish judges and lawyers were forcibly removed from courtrooms and forbidden to work in their profession. In April, as in all of Germany, a wave of dismissals commenced among Jewish professors, jurists, doctors, and teachers in the public service. At any time Jews were liable to be attacked in the streets. Jewish unemployment increased and in 1936 about 20-25% of the Jewish population was on welfare. In response to the increasing isolation of Jews from the city’s social and cultural life, a flourishing branch of the Jewish Cultural Association (Juedischer Kulturbund) was opened in 1934, reaching a membership of 4,000 in 1937. The expulsion of the Jews who were Polish subjects from Germany in late October 1938 included nearly 3,000 Jews from Breslau. A few days later, on 9-10 November, the infrastructure of the entire community was destroyed in the Kristallnacht riots. The Liberal synagogue was put to the torch along with its Torah scrolls. The Polish Altglogauer Schule was destroyed and the Orthodox Storch synagogue was damaged, the Seminary was also vandalized. Jewish business establishments were destroyed and looted. Many Jewish men were arrested. Most were sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp, and several died during the detention process. After the disturbances, the community still tried to salvage something of its life. The damages to the Storch synagogue were repaired and prayer services renewed there. According to the census of 17 May 1939, there were 10,309 Jews in the Breslau urban district, about half the number in 1933. About 8,200 were in need of assistance. To make matters worse, they were seized for forced labor and subjected to additional restrictions. Buildings belonging to the community and to individual Jews were systematically expropriated. Emigration continued after May 1939 and even in the first two years after the outbreak of WWII over 600 Jews managed to leave the country. On the eve of mass deportations, the number of Jews in Breslau totaled 8,129. In the last stage before deportation to the east, most were forced to move to “Jewish houses” in Breslau itself, starting in September 1941. About 1,500 were transferred to three transit camps outside the city: Tormersdorf (Predocice), Riebnig (Rybna) and Gruessau (Kreszow). Deportation to the death camps subsequently commenced together with the rest of the Jews of Lower Silesia. The first transport was to Kovno on 25 November 1941. The following transports were destined for the Lublin district in Poland, Auschwitz, and the Theresienstadt ghetto. Most of the remaining Jews were deported during 1944 and through early 1945, leaving just 150 when the Nazi regime collapsed. After the war, about 10,000 Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe arrived in Breslau, which was now a Polish city. By the end of the 1960s, their number had dwindled to a small remnant, most having left for Israel. In 1990, the Jewish population was about 70.