Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on February 24, 2015

The middle-aged man, his face contorted with anger, gestured to the white, plastered church a few steps behind him, its steeple gleaming as the sun broke through the dark gray clouds hanging ominously low over the eastern German city of Cottbus on Monday afternoon.

"We don't need more scum here", he spat: Cottbus certainly didn't need a synagogue, "not here." He shook his head and wandered off, muttering to himself as he headed down Cottbus' busy main shopping street.

He was referring to the fact that the former Lutheran Church, which dates back to 1714, was recently handed over to the city's small Jewish community, exclusively made up of Russian immigrants. The decision to turn the building into a synagogue just made sense, Ulrike Menzel, the Lutheran Churches' regional leader, said:

"The Jewish community needed a synagogue and, faced with an ever dwindling number of worshippers, the city's Schlosskirche, or Castle Church, "simply didn't have its own congregation any more." And, she added, given its plain, austere architecture, there was no need to make major changes to the building.

Solomonik: "Cottbus is my home."

Church leader: "We welcome Jewish life"

But, more importantly, the city wanted to send a powerful message, Menzel, a petite, vivacious pastor said: "We wanted to make clear that we welcome Jewish life in our community and that it's not being marginalized."

After the Church made its decision public back in 2011, Menzel received hate mail, she said, some of it so vitriolic she didn't want to repeat any of the abuse. But, she said, shrugging away the xenophobia and anti-Semitism, the majority of people in Cottbus definitely supported the transformation, and, maybe contrary to its reputation, Cottbus was "definitely a liberal, open-minded city."

An elderly man, out to buy a shirt, agreed: He was happy, he said, that Cottbus finally had a new synagogue. "It's time we got used to the fact that there are people with other religions." His family, he added, were refugees, who fled from what is now Poland after the end of the Second World War. He was five at the time. He smiled: "So I know what it's like moving to a new country and how important it is to feel welcome."

In the city's serene graveyard, its tombs hidden away under bushes and leafy trees, an employee in a black suit relaxing outside the mortuary only grudgingly gave directions to the small Jewish cemetery, tucked away in a corner behind a plain fence. Two brown deer wandered around the mossy graves which spoke of a small, but thriving Jewish community that was all but annihilated during the Holocaust: The city's imposing synagogue was burnt to the ground in 1938 - and only 12 Jews survived the Nazi's reign of terror.

Read more:

In Cottbus, a church turned synagogue

Category: Synagogue
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