Essen Synagogue Highlights Revival of Jewish life in Germany

©DPA Essen Synagogue

The renaissance of Jewish culture in Germany is being given a boost with an extensive makeover of the Old Synagogue in the industrial Ruhr region city of Essen.

More than 7 million euros (10 million dollars) are being pumped into the refurbishment of the 95-year-old building so it can be ready by 2010 when Essen becomes Europe's capital of culture.

"We hope the conversion will send out a new impulse for the political discourse about German-Jewish life," according to Edna Brocke, the synagogue's director.

The building was gutted by fire during the pogroms of November 9, 1938 known as the "Kristallnacht", when the Nazis looted and destroyed Jewish property and assaulted Jewish citizens across Germany, resulting in at least 91 deaths.

The city of Essen purchased the synagogue in the late 1950s and turned into into a memorial in 1980.

More restoration work has just been announced for another synagogue destroyed during the November 9 pogrom in Darmstadt, not far from the banking center of Frankfurt.

A memorial is to be erected amid the ruins of the former Liberal Synagogue, after liturgical artifacts and parts of its walls were uncovered during excavation work for a new city clinic.

Work was halted after the discovery in 2003 while a new concept was worked out to integrate the remains of the old walls in the new building in the form of a memorial.

"No other contemporary material in the city possesses so much symbolic power or describes so intensely the crimes of the Nazis," Darmstadt Mayor Walter Hoffmann said of the synagogue.

The new Place of Recollection and Remembrance is expected to open on November 7, two days before the 70th anniversary of the 1938 attacks, following the approval of funds this week.

Today, Jewish communities in Germany have over 100,000 members, which makes Germany home to one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe and the fastest-growing Jewish population in the world.

Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Munich's new Jewish center on Thursday, praising the way Jewish immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe were integrating into the country's Jewish community.

"We are very happy that we once again have Jewish life in Germany after the terrible history of National Socialism (Nazis)," the chancellor said, speaking Russian.

Source : dpa