Kiel, Germany

KIEL, Schleswig Holstein, Germany Numbering 37 in 1766, this Baltic port's Jewish community did not attain importance until Prussia annexed Schleswig-Holstein 100 years later. After dedicating a synagogue in 1869, the community affiliated itself with Altona's chief rabbinate and grew from 192 to 430 in three decades (1875-1905). A religious school with 64 pupils was headed by the first rabbi, Moritz Stern (1891-98), and a mixed choir was introduced in 1907. By the time of Emil Cohn (1908-12), one of the few strong-minded Zionists in Germany's Liberal rabbinate, the community was the second largest in Schleswig-Holstein, with its new synagogue built in 1910. A Jewish historical and cultural society as well as branches of the German Zionist Organization, Agudat Israel, and the Central Union (CV.), were established before 1914. Zionism gained support after WW1. Two Zionist youth movements, Habonim and Torah va-Avodah, were likewise active, along with Mizrachi. After the Nazis came to power, two Jewish lawyers were murdered and the university dismissed most of its "non-Aryan" teachers. In response to Nazi boycott measures, the community organized relief work and promoted Jewish cultural and social life (1934-37). Members attended Hebrew courses and 95% of the younger generation belonged to a Zionist youth movement. An urban pioneer training facility provided vocational training. All children were removed from "Jewish classes" in public schools and taught at a school founded by the community in 1938. Most of the 200 Jews from the east (Ostjuden) were deported from Kiel on 29 October 1938. On Kristallnuchl (9-10 November 1938), SA and SS units destroyed the synagogue and communal archives, looted Jewish property, and dispatched 29 Jewish men to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. A total of 586 Jews left during the Nazi era: 305 emigrated and 281 moved or were transported to other German cities. Of those who remained, 12 committed suicide and 85 were deported; 112 Jews from Kiel perished in Nazi camps and ghettoes. Fewer than a dozen Holocaust survivors returned after WW2.