Wuppertal Elberfeld, Germany

Although Jews were present by the 15th century, the agitation of the guilds prevented them from residing there permanently until the French conquest in 1806. In the mid-1840s, Moses Hess (1812-75), one of the future founders of Zionism, was active in the city together with Frederick Engels trying to further the Communist idea. When the Jewish population reached 92 in 1846, a united congregation was formed with neighboring Barmen. This sparked the rapid growth of the Jewish population, which reached 450 in 1866, 1,249 in 1895, and a peak of 2,335 in 1925. A new synagogue was consecrated in 1865 and a new and larger cemetery was opened in 1867. With the growth of the Jewish population, Jews became active in local life. They prospered economically, primarily from the textile trade. From the founding of the Second Reich in 1871, the Jews formed a class of well-to-do businessmen, including Leonard Tietz, who set up the second of the department stores in his chain in the city, and the Heimann and Alsberg brothers with their textile establishments. In 1903, the first Jew was elected to the municipal council. In the early 20th century, Orthodox Jews arrived from the east, forming their own congregations (the Ahdut congregation in 1906 and Mahzikei ha-Dat in 1913). Following WWI, the East European Jewish population grew significantly, altering the power structure of the community, which had heretofore been dominated by organizations like the Central Union (CV.) and the Jewish War Veterans Association with their German-Jewish orientation. The East European Jews were mostly Orthodox with a deep-rooted Jewish ethnic identity, reflected both in the maintenance of their religious Orthodoxy within a community of Liberal character and in the rise of local Zionism. In June 1933, the combined Jewish population of Wuppertal (Elberfeld and Barmen) was 2,471. Persecution of Jewish political activists commenced almost immediately after the Nazis came to power in 1933. A Jewish Social-Democrat was shot to death in the street in March 1933. On Kristallnacht (9-10 November 1938), the Liberal synagogue (erected in 1865) was burned down and the Orthodox synagogue was vandalized. The funeral parlor at the Jewish cemetery was also vandalized and burned and 125 Jewish men and women were taken into "protective" custody, the men being sent to the Dachau concentration camp after the women were released. In May 1939, the combined Jewish population of Wuppertal was 1,129 according to the Nuremberg definitions (1,111 by actual religion). Of these, 766 were deported (202 to the Lodz ghetto on 26 October 1941, 233 to the Minsk ghetto on 11 November, 22 to the Riga ghetto on 11 December, 61 to lzbica in the Lublin district (Poland) on 22 April 1942, and 248 to the Theresienstadt ghetto on 20 July 1942). Others were trapped in occupied Europe after emigration. At least 1,000 Jews were deported during the Holocaust.