Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on November 5, 2014

The "castle church" in Cottbus, Brandenburg, Germany. Image via the church.

A former church will become Germanys newest synagogue and the first in thestate of Brandenburg since 1938.

In ceremonies on Sunday, Ulrike Menzel, who has led the Evangelicalparish in Cottbus since 2009, handed a key for the Schlolsskirche, orcastle church, to the Jewish Association of the State ofBrandenburg.

The actual dedication of the synagogue is planned for HolocaustRemembrance Day, Jan. 27.

Its wonderful to see this house of worship returned to its intendeduse, Menzel said at the ceremony, according to the Nordkurieronline newspaper. For decades, the building has been used for socialand communal events.

Sundays ceremony comes almost 76 years after Kristallnacht, or the Night ofBroken Glass, a Germany-wide pogrom in which Jewish property andsynagogues including the one in Cottbus were destroyed. A department storestands on the site today.

The state ofBrandenburg contributed the full purchase cost for the decommissionedchurch, $730,700, and will contribute about $62,400 per year for maintenance, according to a statement on the communitys website. The city of Cottbus oversaw theremoval of the cross and church bell from the steeple. All other costsof renovation were to be borne by the state Jewish association.

The Cottbus Jewish community has pledged to use the structure as asynagogue for at least 25 years.

Cottbus traces the first mention of Jewish residents to 1448. Itsfirst Jewish house of prayer was established in 1811 in the innercourtyard of a cloth maker. At the time, there were 17 Jews in Cottbus.In 1902, a larger synagogue was dedicated. Nazi hooligans set it afire on the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938.

The Jewish community was not formally reestablished in Cottbus until 1998. Today it has some 350 members, all from the former SovietUnion.

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Church to become first synagogue in German state since Kristallnacht

Category: Synagogue
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