Germany's biggest synagogue reopens as symbol of Jewish rebirth
Pastor Dale Morgan
Germany's biggest synagogue reopens as symbol of Jewish rebirth*
AFP - Friday, August 31
BERLIN (AFP) - - Germany's biggest synagogue reopened Friday after a
major restoration, in a defiant symbol of the rebirth of Jewish life in
the city where the Nazis planned the Holocaust.
A special ceremony was held at the century-old, red-brick building in
east Berlin which narrowly avoided being destroyed on Kristallnacht --
the night in 1938 when Adolf Hitler's followers torched Jewish homes,
businesses and places of worship.
More than 1,000 guests including elderly Holocaust survivors confined to
wheelchairs entered the synagogue past airport-style metal detectors and
dozens of police officers, some armed with automatic weapons.
A few gasped as they saw the refurbished main sanctuary, pointing to
lovingly repainted frescoes, new stained glass windows and gleaming
chandeliers.
Leading the service was Rabbi Chaim Rozwaski, a native of Belarus who
came to Berlin in 2000 as part of an influx of Jews from the former
Soviet Union that has made Germany one of the fastest growing Jewish
communities in the world.
He dedicated the reopening to the members of the Rykestrasse synagogue
congregation who were murdered in the Holocaust.
"As we remember the past, we must not forget all those from Rykestrasse
who were killed in concentration camps, work camps, who died of hunger,
gas or were shot," he said.
"They are here today in our minds and our souls."
Berlin had a thriving Jewish community that counted 173,000 members in
the 1920s. After World War II, the population numbered just 6,500.
Rabbi Leo Trepp, 94, who had preached at the synagogue in the 1930s
after the Nazis came to power and later fled the country, received a
standing ovation for a moving sermon.
"It is a miracle that there are Jews in Germany again," Trepp told AFP.
"And the synagogue on Rykestrasse, which survived two different regimes,
is the symbol of that miracle."
Rita Rubinstein, an 85-year-old who worshipped at the synagogue as a
teenager, returned to Berlin for the first time in more than 70 years to
light the candles at the Sabbath service Friday evening. Christians and
Muslims have also been invited to participate.
Erhard Koerting, Berlin's top official for interior affairs, pledged at
the ceremony that the authorities would ensure that Jewish life in the
city was never "threatened or marginalised again."
Hermann Simon, director of the Centrum Judaicum -- a foundation for
Jewish history and culture -- acknowledged tensions between
Russian-speaking immigrants and native German members of the community
and called for greater acceptance of newcomers.
"You are always welcome here," Simon, the scion of a centuries-old
family of Berlin Jews, said in German and then Russian in a gesture that
drew cheers and applause.
Built in 1904, the neo-Classical synagogue was closed for more than
three years for the 4.5-million-euro (six-million-dollar) refit, paid
for by the city and with lottery proceeds.
Architects Ruth Golan and Kay Zareh used three surviving black-and-white
photographs of the original building to recreate its remarkable elegance.
The 1,200-capacity synagogue was one of the few Jewish institutions in
Berlin to survive the Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) pogrom of
November 9, 1938.
It was spared because it was located between "Aryan" apartment buildings
which might have caught fire had the synagogue been burned down.
But its precious Torah rolls were damaged and rabbis as well as
congregation members were seized and deported to the Sachsenhausen
concentration camp.
The last prayer service at the synagogue took place in April 1940.
After the war, when the synagogue found itself in communist East
Germany, it reopened in 1953 and became the central gathering place of
East Berlin's tiny Jewish community.
With national unification in 1990, Germany began welcoming tens of
thousands of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet states. The
country now has some 120,000 Jews, 10 percent of whom live in Berlin.
On Sunday, the first privately funded Jewish cultural centre in postwar
Germany will open in Berlin, in the western district of Wilmersdorf.