Koenigsberg, Germany

KÖNIGSBERG (Russian Kaliningrad) East Prussia, Germany, today Russia. Despite opposition from local merchants, Jewish settlement, backed by the government of the principality, began in the Middle of the 17th century. In 1756, the community dedicated its first synagogue and by the end of the century the Jewish population was 856. The growing fame of the city's university, the Albertina the university of Immanuel Kant—had a significant impact on Haskala. The Jewish disciples of Kant became passionate adherents of Moses Mendelssohn, who himself stayed in Königsberg in 1777. From 1784, Isaac Euchel (1756-1804) edited the Hebrew-language journal Ha-Me’asef. The community's Orthodox rabbis, such as the renowned rabbinical scholar Levin Marcus Epstein, who taught in Königsberg between 1744 and 1775, or the kabbalist Zwi Mecklenburg, who was active between 1830 and 1865, championed the traditional way. Until the 1870s, the Orthodox dominated religious life. In 1896, the community dedicated a new Reform-style synagogue. The older synagogue established in 1815 was given to the Orthodox, who reinstituted the traditional religious service. A Jewish religious school was only established in the wake of the Prussian Law of 1847, which introduced compulsory religious education. In the course of the 19th century, the Jewish population of Königsberg rose from 956 (2% of the total) in 1816 to 3,836 in 1871 and a peak of 5,324 (4%) in 1880. The growth of the Jewish community was fostered by the improved economic opportunities afforded in part by the Edict of Emancipation (1812) and in part by the flourishing commerce with Russia, signaled by the construction of the Eastern Railway in 1853. Although it practiced discriminatory employment policy, the Albertina university opened its gates to Jewish students from Eastern Europe, who flocked to it in the hundreds. The East European students were the core of a large East European Jewish community. On the eve of WWI, Jewish students at the Albertina constituted up to 10% of the student body while in the medical faculty they made up 40%. At the same time, as in other German cities, the student associations were a hotbed of virulent antisemitism, prompting the Königsberg Jewish students to establish their own Zionist and non-Zionist associations. One prominent student Zionist activist was Shmarya Levin (1867-1935), a future Zionist leader. The occupational pattern of the Jewish population was based on trade, the free professions, and public service. Jewish participation in local politics had a long tradition in Königsberg, going back to 1809, when Samuel Wulff Friedlaender was elected— for the first time in Prussia—city councilor. Jews also played a vital role in the social and cultural life of the city. Of the German Jewish organizations, a branch of the Central Union (C.V.) was opened in Königsberg in 1903 and the Union for Liberal Judaism in 1908. Zionism found its first supporters in Königsberg among the emigrants from Russia. The shift to rabid nationalism after WW1 was a death blow to the spirit of tolerance which had characterized the city in the past. The liberal camp lost ground to the German People's Party and to the national-racist antisemitic parties. From 1924, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was the only party which had Jewish representatives on the city council. The situation of the Jews in the town became even worse because of the chronic economic crisis, which had severe repercussions on the well-being of less affluent Jews. In the latter years of the Weimar Republic, physical assaults on community institutions and Jewish citizens became frequent. The expulsion of foreign Jews was a major factor in reducing the size of the Jewish population. From 4,049 in 1925 to 3,170 in 1933. By October 1938 it had declined by 35% to 2,036. Nazi terror made itself felt almost immediately. The old synagogue and several Jewish shops were the target of arson attacks, while a Jewish Communist and member of the Reichstag was brutally murdered. Other Jewish left-wing political activists were placed under "protective" custody, one dying later in a concentration camp. The discriminatory boycott legislation after 1 April 1933 hit the Jewish community in Königsberg hard because so many of its members were educated professionals. At least 161 university lecturers were forced into early retirement in April 1933 and the number of Jewish students was restricted by a countrywide numerus clausus. Jewish inner life intensified under Nazi pressure. Jewish schoolchildren enrolled at the new Jewish school, which opened in 1935. There was a revival of interest in all facets of Jewish religious education and the Jewish Cultural Association (Jüdischer Kulturbund) organized musical performances and cultural programs. The Zionist branch doubled its membership by December 1933. On Kristallnacht (9-10 November 1938), SS troops burned down the new synagogue. The buildings adjacent to the synagogue, occupied by the Jewish orphanage, the improvised Jewish school, and apartments of community officials were likewise demolished, together with the mortuary at the Jewish cemetery. Jewish shops and private homes were wrecked and looted. In the morning hours, 450 Jews were rounded up and brought to police headquarters, where they were maltreated. By May 1939, 500 more Jews had left Königsberg, reducing the Jewish population to 1,586. As of 1939, the remaining Jews were forced to move into a few, inhumanly crowded "Jewish houses." Deportations from Königsberg started in June 1942, to the Minsk ghetto in Belorussia, to the Theresienstadt ghetto and to the Riga ghetto. Only about 45 families in mixed marriages remained in Königsberg in the wake of the mass deportations of 1942. In all, probably over 1,100 Jews from Königsberg were deported to the death camps and ghettoes in Eastern Europe. From 1943, numerous Polish Jews were moved to Königsberg from the Stutthof and Soldau concentration camps to do forced labor in the town and in other parts of East Prussia. At the end of January 1945, about 3,700 took part in the horrendous death march from Königsberg to Palmnicken, near the Baltic. Few survived.