The Jewish cemetery of Murska Sobota no longer exists; it was demolished in the 1990s. The site features, however, a small monument erected in memory of the city’s Jews murdered during the war. A city that has existed since at least the Roman period and destroyed in the conflict with the Ottoman Empire, Murska Sobota was home to the largest Jewish community of the interwar period. The ...
Plus d'infosContenus associés au mot-clé “holocaust”
Maribor
The Jewish settlement in the medieval fortress of Maribor, near the Austrian border, dates back at least to the thirteenth century. This Jewish community must have been rather prosperous, for in the fifteen century several Catholic families asked to convert to Judaism, a rare event certainly in Europe at the time. After their expulsion by Austrian emperor Maximilian I, Maribor’s Jews ...
Plus d'infosLjubljana
The only remaining traces of a prior Jewish presence in Ljubljana are the names of two narrow streets in the city center, Street of the Jews (Zidovska ulica) and Passage of the Jews (Zidovska steza), the place of the medieval ghetto until the 1515 expulsion. The remains of a neighborhood of about thirty houses have apparently been found beneath the Baroque buildings here, constructed in the ...
Plus d'infosMauthausen
Twenty countries have participated in events commemorating the murder of 150000 people here during the Second World War, one-third of whom were Jewish. Mauthausen was classified by the SS administration as a “Category 3” camp; this category of camp corresponded to the harshest possible treatment. The prisoners sent here were designated “return undesirable” and destined ...
Plus d'infosTrieste
A rich and influential Jewish community lived in Trieste, a large port city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that became Italian only after the First World War. During the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, this community had a profound impact of the economic and cultural life of the city. Enclosed in the ghetto in 1696, the Jews enjoyed a de facto emancipation ...
Plus d'infosBologna
Bologna is famous for having been one of Europe’s leading cities in the Middle Ages. Thanks to its large population living within its walls, the wealth of local agriculture, the development of trade with the other cities of Emilia-Romagna, but also and perhaps above all to the dynamism provided by its university, the oldest in Europe. History of the Jews of Bologna The first traces of a ...
Plus d'infosLa Chaux-de-Fonds
Founded in 1833, the Jewish community of La Chaux-de-Fonds met in a flat on rue Jaquet-Droz. Then, in 1853, a private house was used as a synagogue. From 1872, a was used in the commune of Les Eplatures. La Chaux-de-Fonds’s Jewish community opened its first synagogue in 1896. Architect Kuder was inspired by the synagogue in Strasbourg, which was later destroyed by the Nazis. In ...
Plus d'infosFrankfurt am Main
The independent city of Frankfurt has welcomed Jews since 1150. However, from 1460 until their emancipation at the end of the seventeenth century, the Jews were confined to Judengasse (alley of the Jews), a ghetto that became quickly overcrowded. In 1720, moneylender Meyer Amschel Rothschild, his wife, Gütele, and their eighteen children moved into one of the houses in the area. Meyer’s ...
Plus d'infosFriedberg
The small city of Friedberg possesses the deepest mikvah in Germany: seventy-two steps carved into the basalt lead the visitor to a natural spring situated eighty-two feet below the surface. At the bottom of the staircase, a stone tablet dedicated to the builder of this bath displays the date of its origin in 1260. An octogonal opening in the dome above is the sole source of light and gives ...
Plus d'infosThe Rhineland and Bavaria
The oldest vestiges of a Jewish presence in Germany are found in the Rhineland. For a long time the river constituted the western border of the Roman Empire. In the fortified cities of the frontier such as Colonia Agrippina (Cologne), the Diaspora Jews found favorable conditions in which to exercice their industrial and commercial talents. Development of Rhenish judaism Later, in the Middle ...
Plus d'infosBerlin
Once again the capital of a unified Germany, Berlin today has the largest Jewish community in the country (11000 people). This is nonetheless far fewer than the some 170000 Jews who lived here just before Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. One can well imagine that the ghosts of history will wander in Berlin for a long time to come, a city that, like Vienna, was a major economic, ...
Plus d'infosLiège
Liege is a city known, like Ghent, for its large university population, but also for its cathedral, its waffles and its film makers, the Dardenne brothers. The Jewish presence in Liege seems to date back to the Middle Ages. Documents from the 11th century attest to a local religious conflict between a bishop and a Jewish doctor. The case of a priest healed by a Jewish doctor is mentioned in ...
Plus d'infosCharleroi
Charleroi is a city known for having been a very important coal basin, but also as an industrial centre. Since the decline of these industries, the city has invested heavily in cultural development and is particularly appreciated as a historical centre of comics, with the Marcinellois printer Jean Dupuis creating the magazine Spirou in 1938. The Jewish presence in the city is relatively ...
Plus d'infosAntwerp
The last real shtetl in western Europe, Antwerp is known for its Orthodox Jews and its diamonds industry. Barely twenty years ago, approximately 80% of Antwerp’s Jewish population used to make a living from the diamond industry. More than half of the world production of diamonds passed through these few streets near Centraal Station. The diamond centers, which can be visited, also ...
Plus d'infosDrente-Westerbork
A memorial was erected in 1983 in the former transit and deportation camp in the northeastern Netherlands. It depicts two broken railway tracks, a symbol of the dead trains. The monument was designed by the Jewish artist Ralph Prins, who was deported from this camp as an infant. In addition to the monument, the Dutch government added in 1992 a paving of 104000 bricks (corresponding to the ...
Plus d'infosBordeaux
For three centuries, the cellars of tumbledown houses in the old town were home to a hidden Jewish community, that of the conversos who came here from Spain after 1474. Used to hiding their faith in Spain, these “new Christians” continued to practice their old religion in secret when they came to France. Bordeaux’s Jewish community began to emerge from the shadows only in ...
Plus d'infosBayonne
On the day of tishah b’ab -the commemoration of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem- the old synagogue resounds to these words in Spanish: “Hemos perdido Sion pero tambien hemos perdido. España tierra de consolacion” (We have lost Zion, but we have also lost Spain, land of consolation”). was built in 1837, but its Holy Ark, kept from the earlier place of ...
Plus d'infosNouvelle-Aquitaine
After many years of English domination, the southwest was returned to France in the fifteenth century, at the end of the Hundred Years War. In an effort to stimulate growth in this ravaged region, Louis XI offered special privileges to foreigners wishing to settle there. This largesse attracted Portuguese and Spanish Jews oppressed by the Inquisition and religious intolerance in their home ...
Plus d'infosNarbonne
The (Musée d’Art et d’Histoire) in Narbonne has the oldest known inscription relating to the Jewish presence in France. It is an epitaph for the three children of Paragorus: Justus, aged thirty; Matrona, twenty; and Dulciorella, nine. Absolute proof of the Jewishness of the inscription is given by a seven-branch candelabrum and a short text in Hebrew: “Peace on ...
Plus d'infosOccitanie
Occitanie is a very rich region geographically, thanks to its proximity to the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean, but it is also culturally rich. It brings together territories with very different histories and experiences. You’ll find prehistoric remains in its caves, and monuments from the Roman era such as the Pont du Gard and the Nîmes Arena. While Jewish presence in the region has ...
Plus d'infosPézenas
It was around 1298 that the Jews settled in Pézenas, coming from Spain, Portugal and Italy. In the trade of clothes and cattle, they added the activity of the sale of wool and sheets. In 1332, a law imposed on the Jews crossing Pézenas or coming to sell there, a right of “leude” (a grant, or a toll). Jewish families disappeared from the city in 1394, during the expulsion of the ...
Plus d'infosMontpellier
The traveler Benjamin of Tudela visited Montpellier in 1165. In his travel diaries, he noted the existence of Batey midrashot kevouot le-Talmud in the city. In addition to these intellectual activities cited in a Hebrew source, Latin documents relate the presence of Jews in trade between Agde, Narbonne and Montpellier. They have a monopoly on silks and fabrics. Representatives of the Mosaic ...
Plus d'infosAntibes
The Picasso Museum (Musée Picasso) has the mold and a cast of an original inscription, now lost, in Greek characters (in ancient times, Antibes was called Antipolis): “Justus son of Sials, he lived seventy-two …”
Plus d'infosTrets
An important village in the Middle Ages -it has a studium papale– Trets had a Jewish community that lived in the present-day rue Paul Bert, known in those days as the carriera judaica or judea. The Jewish quarter in Trets is not unlike that in Gerona, Catalonia. Sadly, there has been no restoration so far. The medieval facade on rue Paul Bert could be a vestige of the synagogue. ...
Plus d'infosAix-en-Provence
The census ordered in 1341 by Robert, count of Provence, gave the Jewish population of Aix at the times as 1205, representing the 203 families grouped together in the Jewish quarter. In her book Provincia Judaica: Dictionary of historical geography of the Jews in medieval Provence, Danièle Iancu-Agou recalls a text quoted by JS Pitton from Archbishop Peter IV which authorizes the Jews to ...
Plus d'infosMarseille
The Jewish presence in Marseille dates back at least to the 6th century as is attested by Grégoire de Tours, but probably dates back to the Roman Empire. One of their main commercial activities was to act as an intermediary between Gaul and the Levant. In 576, the Jews of Clermont, victims of the intolerance of Bishop Avitus, took refuge in Marseille, enlarging the Phocaean community. In the ...
Plus d'infosArles
The medieval rue des Juifs is the present-day . As in Aix-en-Provence, the Jewish quarter was totally transformed and integrated into the town after the expulsion of the Jews from Arles in 1493. This prefigured the expulsion of all the Provençal Jews in 1500-1501. (Musée de l’Arles Antique) holds two funerary inscriptions. On the first we read: “This is the burial place of Juda, ...
Plus d'infosNîmes
The Archaeological Museum (Musée Archéologique) possesses a funerary inscription stating “This is the sepulcher of the venerated sage Isaac”. The Museum is sadly closed until further notice. (Bibliothèque Municipale) has copies of three funerary inscriptions (the originals have been lost):”this is the sepulcher of Dame Dolcena, daughter of …”; “This is the ...
Plus d'infosTarascon
The only remaining trace of Tarascon’s Jewish community, which was large in the Middle Ages, is with its gray-fronted houses. Some of the houses have been restored. Not far from the town, near Fontvieille, there is a fine Romanesque chapel, Saint Gabriel, sheltered by a ruined tower with graffiti in Hebrew characters: T(av) T(av) Q(of) N(un) V(av) [4]956, which corresponds to the date ...
Plus d'infosSaint Rémy de Provence
The Jewish cemetery is not far from the Saint Paul de Mausol monastery. Most of the tombstones date from the nineteenth century, although this was also the site of the medieval cemetery. The Jewish presence in Saint-Rémy-de Provence dates from at least the 14th century. A document from 1339 signed by the judge of Tarascon concerning a Jewish butcher’s shop attests to this. Texts ...
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