Location
Izieu
During the Nazi occupation, this village in the department of Ain was the scene of a raid ordered by Klaus Barbie on 6 April 1944. Forty-four Jewish refugee children and their seven teachers were ...
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Lyon
The Jewish community in the historical capital of the Gauls and, for historians, capital of the French Resistance, has now regained an undeniable dynamism. There are many notable sites ...
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Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
Jews lived in Roman Lugdunum but disappeared from Lyon because of the expulsions. It was only under the reign of Louis XV that a community was re-created with immigrants from Comtat Venaissin and ...
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Hegenheim
The Jewish presence in Hégenheim seems to date back at least to the 17th century. 14 Jewish families were counted in 1689. Jewish life developed there, the community growing to more than 400 ...
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Colmar
The Jewish presence in Colmar probably dates from the 13th century. Administrative documents confirm this presence. A synagogue was destroyed in 1279. The community grew, in particular thanks to ...
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Obernai
Traces of the old Jewish community can still be seen in this charming tourist town. On ruelle des Juifs, an arched doorway with an engraving in Hebrew signals the entrance to the old synagogue, ...
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Rosenwiller
The Jewish presence in Rosenwiller dates back at least to the 14th century, a writing by Charles IV, mentioning the Jewish cemetery. A letter dealing with a dispute with a certain Haym de ...
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Bischheim
In this suburb of Strasbourg, one can see a fine eighteenth-century mikvah. A room dedicated to Davis Sintzheim (the first Grand Rabbi of France and director of the Talmudic school ...
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Strasbourg
Strasbourg, the regional capital, is also home to the European Parliament, as witnessed by the European flags welcoming you at the train station. This magnificent city, at the heart of many ...
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Marmoutier
This small town lying in the shadow of an old abbey once had a very active community. You can still see the birthplaces of its two famous Jewish sons: the painter , who was born here in ...
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Bouxwiller
The Jewish presence in Bouxwiller seems to date from the 14th century. The princes of Hanau-Lichtenberg adopted Protestantism and were open-minded towards Judaism and its presence during the ...
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Pfaffenhoffen
The Jewish presence in Pfaffenhoffen probably dates from the beginning of the 14th century. In 1683, the first synagogue in Pfaffenhoffen was built. However, it was destroyed shortly afterwards. ...
Location
Alsace
Alsace is rich in Jewish history. In the village of Schirrhoffen, for example, in around 1850, the population of 650 included some 450 Jews. Today, there are over 200 specific sites (synagogues, ...
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Caen and the rest of the region
Traveling rabbis served the small local communities, made up of several or more families (some ten at Evreux and Lisieux, around two hundred at Le Havre). The only sizable community structure, a ...
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Rouen
In medieval times, there was an intense intellectual life around the synagogue’s Talmudic school in what was called “Le Clos aux Juifs” (the Jews’ Enclosure). Contrary to ...
Location
Normandy
Jewish life in Normandy was focused around Caen and Rouen. The Jewish community lives in the region since the Roman empire until their expulsion in 1182. During the Middle Ages, Normandy was the ...
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Latvia
The Jewish community of Latvia traces its origins to the middle of the fourteenth century. Numbering today some 15000 persons, it developed in the principalities of Kurland and Livonia, ...
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Lithuania
The Jewish community of Lithuania numbers only some 6000. People It is no more than a shadow of what it once was: until the Shoah, it was a center of the Yiddish-speaking lands. In a sense, ...
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Belarus
The Republic of Belarus is a state formed of the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It has retained, however, close ties to Moscow. Historically, Belarus belonged to Lithuania in the fourteenth ...
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Yiddishland
The visitor to Eastern Europe hoping to discover a rich Jewish architectural heritage must remember that what was once the center of Judaic cultural and religious life in Europe -principally in ...
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Serbia
Serbia and Voivodina form, along with Montenegro, a nation that had been called The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia until 4 February 2003, when it was renamed Serbia and Montenegro. The Serbian ...
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Bulgaria
In a medieval miniature, Bulgarian Czarina Sara figures beside her husband, Czar Alexander, a two children, Shishman and Tamara. A Jewish queen, Sara of Turvono was obliged to convert to ...
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Romania
There is little evidence of a Jewish presence on the coats of the Black Sea before the arrival of Roman legions in the early second century C.E. Vestiges, coins, and inscriptions preserved in a ...
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Czech Republic
Below the bell tower of Prague's Jewish city hall, there are two clock faces. One displays Roman numerals, and the other Hebrew letters. The hands of the first clock revolve in the normal ...
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Slovakia
The history of Jews in Slovakia -dating from the sixteenth century under the protection of the Hapsburg- intersects that of their fellow believers in Hungary and the Czech Republic. Jews in these ...
Location
Hungary
At the Jewish Museum of Budapest, a replica of a tombstone dating from the third century bears the image of a menorah. This relic attests to nearly 1700 years of Jewish presence in the Carpathian ...
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Croatia
Jewish settlers had to wait until the death of Austria's Catholic and very anti-Semitic Archduchess Maria Theresa and the ascension of her her tolerant son, Joseph II, to gain the right to ...
Location
Slovenia
A Slavic land under Germanic rule for many centuries, Slovenia finally gained independence in 1991. The fate of the Jewish population here depended largely over the years on the good will of its ...
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Austria
Austria present borders cover only a small part of the former Empire, once a major continental power of Central Europe and heir to the Holy Roman Empire. The empire was formed through an alliance ...
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Switzerland
Jewish craftsmen and merchants settled in Switzerland's Roman cities between the third and fourth centuries, but the first documents that mention them date only from the thirteenth century. ...