Koeln, Germany

Jewish settlement in Cologne during Roman Times is first indicated by two decrees of Constantine from 321 and 331. For the next 700 years there is no evidence of a Jewish presence in Cologne. A prosperous Jewish community re-emerged in the High Middle Ages, with the growing importance of Cologne as a major trading center. There was a Jewish quarter in 1075, and by the 1090s, the community numbered some 1,000 members. After suffering death and destruction at the time of the First Crusade (1096), the community was re-established and continued uninterruptedly for some 250 years. Several well-known rabbis were associated with the Cologne community. The archbishops of Cologne and the town council granted the Jews the right to bear arms, and they were entrusted with the defense of one of the city’s gates, the so-called Porta Judaeorum (the Gate of the Jews). In the Black Death persecutions of 1348-49, the community was destroyed. Although the community was re-established in 1372, by 1424 all Jews had to leave. Their buildings were confiscated and the synagogue was turned into a chapel. Jews were not allowed to settle in Cologne for the next 400 years, or even permitted to stay overnight. Following the French occupation of the Rhineland in 1794, residence restrictions were removed, and in 1798, the first Jewish family settled in Cologne. The community, founded officially in 1801, grew steadily in spite of the reactionary backlash following annexation to Prussia in 1815. The Jewish population grew from 211 in 1815 to 615 in 1840, reaching 2,322 in 1861. Already by 1850, Cologne was the fifth largest Jewish community in Germany, and a relatively affluent one. Particularly noteworthy is the presence of the Oppenheim family in Cologne, a family of Jewish bankers who supported the liberal paper Rheinische Zeitung, which was edited by Moses Hess (1812-75). Despite its apparent size and wealth, the community developed in the first decades only the most basic communal institutions. The first rabbi, Dr. Israel Schwarz, was only appointed in 1857. In 1861, the community dedicated a magnificent synagogue at the site of the old building in Glockengasse. In the next decades, the number of Jews more than quadrupled, reaching 9,745 in 1900; 16,093 in 1925; and a peak of 19,250 in 1931. About one-fourth of the Jewish population in the 1920s were immigrants from Eastern Europe. Religious life developed from the early 1860s in different directions. A wide majority accepted the moderate reforms introduced by Rabbi Schwarz, and in 1899 a second synagogue was dedicated in the Roonstrasse in the New City, which came to be identified with the reform movement. In 1908, the Orthodox congregation, Adass Jeshurun, founded in 1876, formally seceded from the community. The community had a highly developed welfare system, which included a hospital, an orphanage, a children’s hospital, a children’s home, several kindergartens, and day schools. Despite relatively low activity by the local Zionists until the early Weimar years, Cologne became an early center of the World Zionist Organization, which had its offices there from 1904 to 1911. I n the late Weimar years, Jewish institutions were the targets of anti-Semitic attacks. On Boycott Day, 1 April 1933, Jewish shopkeepers were marched through the streets; Jewish lawyers were driven through the city on garbage trucks; and many Jews were severely maltreated. In the following weeks, the dismissal of Jewish physicians, university lectures, teachers, and artists started. Already in 1933, Jews were no longer allowed to use public facilities. Several Jews were arrested and tortured. By June, the Jewish population of Cologne, standing at 14,816, had already shrunk below the 1925 level. The children’s hospital closed in 1933. The community responded to the deteriorating economic situation by offering support to the needy (2,535 persons at the end of 1936). Those preparing for emigration were offered language courses and vocational training. The Cologne branch of the Jewish Cultural Association (Jüdischer Kulturbund), founded in 1933, had by summer 1935 no fewer than 5,000 members. It staged numerous theater productions, both in Cologne and in the Rhineland as a whole. On Kristallnacht (9-10 Nov. 1938), four synagogues were burned down, and two were desecrated. Stones were thrown at the children’s home and Jewish stores and houses were wrecked and looted. Many Jews were maltreated and an elderly person died from the injuries he suffered. About 400 persons were arrested and deported to Dachau concentration camp. Emigration rates now rose quickly. By May 1939, there were about 8,406 Jews (about 60% of the 1933 population), and 2,360 Mischlinge (persons of mixed Jewish origin) in Cologne. Over the course of the next years, more and more Jewish institutions ceased operating. By September 1941, there were 5,931 Jews living in Cologne. As a last step before deportation, the remaining Jews had to move to “Jewish houses”. At the end of the year, the Jews were interned in a camp in the suburb of Müngersdorf with the exception of those who did forced labor in the arms industry and patients at the Jewish hospital. The latter were moved to Müngersdorf on 31 May 1942, many of them committing suicide. The first transport to the Lodz ghetto left on 21 October 1941. The transports continued until November 1943 and were directed to ghettos in Lodz, Riga, the Lublin district of Poland, Theresienstadt, and Auschwitz. The deportation of 20 July 1942 to the Minsk ghetto included the children and most of their teachers. The last to be deported were the community administration workers. The only Jews left in Cologne were those married to non-Jews and their children. Many from this group were deported in September and October 1944. About 40 to 50 Jews survived in hiding. After the war, a new community was established; whose members were mostly refugees from Eastern Europe. In the 1990s, Jews from the former Soviet Union began to arrive.