Wesermuende, Germany

Wesermuende, Hanover, Germany The roots of the Jewish community of Wesermünde are to be found in the Lehe community. Having established a cemetery in 1804 and numbering 63 members in 1816, the Lehe community included in the following decades those Jews who settled in the newly founded towns of Bremerhaven (around 1830) and Geestemünde (1845). Since most community members were soon living in Geestemünde, the community's synagogue was built there in 1878. When the amalgamation of Lehe and Geestemünde created the town of Wesermünde in the 1920s, the Jewish community became the community of Wesermünde. Since the Jews of Bremerhaven were citizens of Bremen, they did not share equally in the community's leadership. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the number of Jews in the Wesermünde community was 346, 99 of them living in Bremerhaven. By 1935, there were 226. On Kristallnacht (9-10 November 1938), the synagogue was set on fire and Jewish businesses – particularly the department stores owned by the Schocken family— and apartments were looted and wrecked. A number of Jews were maltreated and the men were arrested and taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Most of the remaining Jews were billeted in "Jewish houses" and deported in November 1941 to the Minsk ghetto or in July 1942 to the Theresienstadt ghetto. As a result of Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union, a community was reestablished in Bremerhaven in 1991.