Synagogue in Voehl

The inside of the main room on the occasion of a memorial ceremony on the “Reichspogromnacht” on November 9^th 1938.

In 1827 the Jews from Vöhl, Marienhagen, Basdorf, and Oberwerba built a synagogue which at the time served as a school for Jewish children until 1881. The building was hidden between the surrounding houses since it wasn´t different in its appearance. From the outside the main room which extends over three floors right next to entrance on the right side and which was used for services was not visible.

Until 1881, the left part of the building was used by the teacher and his family as living quarters. This man was Salomon Bär who had a good pedagogical education and was considered honorable in the village.

In 1938 (August) probably under pressure from the state the 13 remaining Jews sold the synagogue to a Christian family which is why the building survived the “Reichspogromnacht” on November 9^th 1938, Hitler´s rule and the Second World War. The main room was used as a building material store until 1974 after which it served as a drying room for laundry. Thanks to that it remained mostly untouched with its starry blue sky and the women´s gallery which goes almost all around the building.

The Jewish cemetery

Three years after the construction of the synagogue its members sought the permission to have a Jewish cemetery at the village´s border which got granted by the community council. Before that, they were probably buried at the cemetery in Frankenau, back then about 3 hours´ walk away.

During Hitler´s rule the cemetery was vandalized twice. In 1941 the head of government in Kassel ordered the closure of all Jewish cemeteries in the then district of Frankenberg. In some places the order was not followed as promptly as in Vöhl where the cemetery was completely leveled. Gravestones where used by citizens to build their houses and by the end of the war only 45 stones were left. Those had to be put back on the cemetery by orders of the Occupying Powers.

Home of Ascher Rothschild

Rich traders – poor guys

Several big houses of today’s Vöhl were built and inhabited by Jews. One of the wealthiest ones was merchant, trader, and moneylender Ascher Rothschild who in the 1830´s built a noticeable house in the center of the village. In the building was a mikvah which was probably also available for other families. After 1881 it also housed the Jewish school. He even financed the construction of the ship that was built by the protestant church and which had to be torn down around 1840 due to poor condition.

Other wealthy families were the Salbergs, the Kaisers, and the Sterns; Blumes and Katzenstein were also quite successful. Among the Jewish community, however, there was also poverty; this applied to parts of the Kugelmann and Liebmann families but especially to the Lazarus family who made their living as ragpickers.

Other names of larger families in Vöhl, Basdorf, and Marienhagen are: Bär, Frankenthal, Kratzenstein, Külsheimer, Laser, Löwenstern, Meyer, Mildenberg, Schaumburg, Schönhof, and Schönthal.

The most common occupations were being a butcher, work at the spinning mill, as well as being merchants for different goods like fruits, cattle, and leather. Most of the Jews had just like the Christian families an agriculture on the side. In the middle of the 18^th century Simon Mildenberg started to train Apprentice so that they would become carpenters.

Was there an integration?

For the longest time Jews and Christians used to live side by side but not in a combined community. That was until the beginning of the 19^th century where their relationship started to improve slowly by steady. Numerous Jews were members of the villages council, some of them for 20 years, David Stern for 40 years. Many of them were also (co-) founders of multiple society’s and groups that were part of Vöhl´s community. Max Mildenberg who’s family was part of the singing society was an active sportsman and took part in the first soccer team as well as being known as a great track and field athlete. After Hitler became chancellor everything changed since they dissolved those clubs and got rid of their Jewish members, sometimes in a very unpleasant way.

Victims of the genocide

In 1933, 45 Jews still lived in Vöhl and Marienhagen. Gradually they moved away into bigger cities like Kassel and Frankfurt and emigrated into different counties. In August 1938 only 13 Jews remained: 3 men, 9 women and a 6-year-old boy. Some moved to Frankfurt others got deported to Riga, Sobibor, Majdanek and Theresienstadt in December 1941, June and as well in September 1942. 45 women, children, and men who have lived in Vöhl and its neighboring villages were killed in the extermination and concentration camps. On November 9^th at the annual commemoration ceremony more than 70 names are being read out to remember not only Vöhler Jews but also their spouses and children.

Förderkreis Synagoge in Vöhl

On November 9^th, 1999, more than 70 citizens of the district of Vöhl founded the “Förderkreis Synagoge in Vöhl e.V.” and bought the old building to renovate it.

From the beginning and at every stage of construction events took place there: concerts, cabaret events, lectures, art exhibitions, and much more which the “Förderkreis” plans each and every year in a different yet unique way. In addition to cultural programs and its work at monument preservation it also researches about Jews in Vöhl and its region.

Visits by former Jewish residents

For this reason, it was important to them to invite former Jews from Vöhl, as far as they were still alive. 15 of them visited in September 2000 and told stories about their childhood in Vöhl, the horrors they went through and the suffering they and their families experienced. They gathered in front of the synagogue´s Torah wall for a group photo.

Museum in the synagogue

The main room has since been completed. In the former living quarters, pictures, documents, and cultural objects remind us of the time when Jews also shaped the image of our village and contributed to its development.

Memorial to all deportees of the Nazi era

A memorial in the garden of the synagogue, created by the Frankfurt artist E. R. Nele, is an impressive reminder of all those that got deported during the Nazi regime. It is dedicated partly to the more that 700 Jews from Waldeck-Frankenberg that either got tortured and killed at home or that got deported to extermination camps and got gassed, shot, or killed between 1933 and 1945. But it also talks about Communists and Social Democrats, Sinti and Roma, Jehovah’s witnesses, homosexuals, prisoners and of cause all the Jews from other districts and counties.

However, the information contained in this directory may also be of interest to all citizens of Vöhl and of the North Hessian region who would like to know how people used to live and how Jews and Christians lived side by side and sometimes also together.

Due to the abundance of available information, the data can only be put online bit by bit. It is intended to do this in alphabetical order. Furthermore, where possible, the information will be supplemented by photos and documents.

Furthermore, family trees will be compiled where it seems reasonable. They are interactive. By clicking on the individual names, you can also access further information about the person in question from the family tree.

Preliminary remarks

This directory of Vöhl Jews is "in progress". That means above all: it is not complete and cannot become so.

For several years the author has collected data and facts from various sources (State Archives of Marburg, Municipal Archives of Vöhl, various reference books from the region, conversations with contemporary witnesses, etc.) and compiled them according to persons.

Initially, there was the assumption that there was only little information altogether, because it was said that shortly before the arrival of the American occupation troops in April 1945, the Vöhl baker's ovens had not gone out for a few days. In fact, there are not many records in the Vöhl archives from the twelve years of the Thousand Year Reich.

But citizens of Vöhl still knew a few things to report from memory. And then there are also those Jewish fellow citizens who survived the Holocaust, with whom there is active contact, not only since we had many of them as guests in Vöhl.

Incidentally, those twelve years of National Socialist rule are a relatively short period of time compared to those 260 years from 1682 to 1942 during which Jews were verifiably living in Vöhl.

The directory is not free of errors. There are several reasons for this:

Until the 20th century Jews had not only their civil, but in addition a religiously motivated first name. The latter was not used publicly, but sometimes it was; and therefore it cannot be excluded that persons appear who are identical with others.

Also sometimes cose forms (e.g. Malchen for Amalie, Rickchen for Friederike, Jettchen for Henriette and Johannette) were used or names were modified almost arbitrarily. That a "Moses" was sometimes only called Mose, that there was the "Isaak" also as "Isai", "Isak" or Isack", may still be comprehensible; if a "Feist" appears however also as "Veit" or even "Uri", then the assignment is already more difficult. In Korbach there was a family Kugelmann, where almost every female person was called "Rickchen"; one of them, who was actually called "Helene", married to Vöhl, where there were also several families Kugelmann.

In addition, persons with the same first name and surname often lived at the same time. So it cannot be excluded that information was assigned to the wrong person. In at least one case the author suspects that there were such two persons of the same name at the same time; but the source situation is still too vague to assert the existence of the second person. So, possibly, information that actually refers to two persons is assigned to only one.

Also, officials of the municipal or district authorities were by all means not always as conscientious as they are said to be today. For example, a name was spelled one way and another another; sometimes there are several birth or marriage dates for the same person in the files; tax data were sometimes carried over to the next year without exact verification.

And, despite all the care taken, there may well be errors due to negligence or error on the part of the author of this compilation.

All these possible sources of error are the reason why this directory has been described in the introductory sentence as being "in progress". Even after it has been "put online," it will continue to be researched, changed, and added to.

In one point the information is intentionally incomplete: For the period of persecution of Jews in the Third Reich, so-called perpetrators - i.e. persons who were actively involved in acts against Jews in the region - are not named. They are no longer alive, their descendants are not responsible and should therefore not be incriminated by public mention of their names.

Legal involvements of Jews from Vöhl, on the other hand, have been presented. They provide valuable information about the position of the Jews in society, but also generally give important insights into life in Vöhl in the 19th century.

Conclusions from this information should be drawn with all caution, because the conditions at that time cannot be compared with those of today. For example, for several decades there were a great many seizures, both with and without the participation of Jews. Often there were administrative fines for violation of the Sunday rest, of course exclusively against Jews. In cases of fraud due to false weights, Jews were more often affected than Christian merchants, but this imbalance corresponded approximately to the different share of members of the two religions in the trading business. During one of these official inspections of weights, five merchants were found to have tampered with weights on the same day and were punished. Two traders were Christians, three were Jews. In the 1920s, there were also punishments for price gouging. Here, resentment as a result of growing anti-Semitism may also have played a role in legislation.

Information was provided by Christiane Kupski and Jürgen Evers. Especially with regard to the Frankenthal family, research by Carol Davidson-Baird, a descendant of Jews from Vöhl living in the USA, could be used.

Tour in Vöhl

Start at the synagogue. Go down the “Mittelgasse”, then turn right into “Basdorfer Staße”. Turn right into “Schulberg”, then left at “Auf der Höhe”. Pass the church and head back to Basdorfer Straße down “Kirchweg”. Turn right again. Behind the pizzeria, turn right into Arolser Straße or if you want you can take a short detour to the house at “Henkelstraße 7”. Walk up “Arolser Staße” to the footpath in direction of the Protestant parish office “Günter Sternberg Weg”. Turn right on “Gartenstraße” and walk up “Zum Köppel”. There is the entrance of the Jewish cemetery (entry is forbidden on Shabbat (= Saturday) and on Jewish holidays). Leave the cemetery through the same gate and walk down the street “Zum Köppel” to “Arolser Straße”. At the crossing of “Arolser Straße” and “Nordstraße” is a memorial stone honoring the Jews from Vöhl. Cross “Arolser Straße” into town and turn left into “Mittelgasse” to get to the starting point.

Basdorf

Brunnenstraße 6
Lewi Kaiser bought the house in 1850 from the Heine-Müller families. In 1911 he sold the property to the Daude family from Asel.
Mühlenstraße 15
Inscription on beam: In the name of God, Feist Keiser and his wife built this house on May 29^th 1859.
Mühlenstrasse 6
House of the merchant Bendix Külsheimer. Mentioned as a house owner around 1880.

Marienhagen

Schulweg 10
Selig Kratzenberg family. Originally the restaurant and manufactory store “Zum Grünen Kranze”. After the death of the owner Selig Kratzenberg in 1919 his son-in-law Max Winter took over the store and restaurant. In 1935 the whole Winter family emigrated to the Netherlands. Afterwards Christian Stevens who was from Holland took over the building and established the hotel “Germania” there. Today, the diagnostic company Biocon is located in its place.

Hauptstaße 11
House of Luis Schönthal, built in 1928. The family home burned down in 1928 due to a lightning strike. In 1925 the family emigrated and sold the house.

Pictures of the individual graves can be found under 2 and 3.

1. Introduction

The Jewish cemetery in Vöhl exists since the thirties of the 19th century. Before that the Jews of Vöhl used the Jewish cemetery in Frankenau/Eder [1] .

46 gravestones still exist - in February 1967 there are said to have been 60 to 70 [2]. Partly they are no longer decipherable. In one type of gravestone a marble or metal plate was inserted into local stone. These slabs have all disappeared. Since there are these gravestones also at the Marienhagen cemetery, they can be dated to the twenties of this century.

The stones are sometimes partly stuck in the ground, so that not the whole text can be read. One stone (1.1) is upside down.

The stones are numbered as follows: The first number indicates the row, the second the number in the row.

2. Overview of the cemetery (not to scale)

For details about the graves: Please click on the picture!

3. Alphabetical index of graves

Names and gravestones are linked!

The German text on the tombstones is hardly distinguishable from those of the Christians. In the Hebrew text the date of death is found in Jewish time calculation.

The Jews count the years since the creation [3]. According to this we are in the year 5751. On the gravestones the year is always given in "small count". That means that the thousand number 5 is omitted. After that we are now in the year 751.

While we arrange our months according to the sun, the Jews have a moon calendar. Every few years, leap months are inserted to bring the year back in line with the sun. That's why the months always correspond only approximately with the ones we are used to.

The following is noticeable at the Jewish cemetery in Vöhl, but also applies to other cemeteries:
1. the symbol of the Jewish star appears from about 1900 on.
2. the later people were born, the more German names they received. While Jewish children were still called Selig and Rahel around 1800, names like Hermann and Ludwig were more fashionable from about 1850. However, they also received a Hebrew name.
3. on the earlier stones one side is written in German, the other in Hebrew. Later both were written on one side, the second side remained blank.
4. on the older stones there are sometimes quite interesting things written in Hebrew text. The newer the stones are, the more stereotyped the Hebrew text becomes.

[1] Cf. Arnsberg, Paul; Die jüdischen Gemeinden in Hessen. Anfang - Untergang - Neubeginn, vol. 2, Frankfurt 1971, p. 329.
[2] Ibid.
[3] When this counting of time was introduced, it was at least thought that this was the age of the earth.

The history and Jewish funeral rites are described in the essay

B. The history and Jewish funeral rites are described in the essay

C. Jewish Cemetery in Voehl on the Website „findagrave“

Camille Calman, whose ancestors from the Rothschild family left Vöhl for the USA as early as the mid-19th century, photographed the gravestones in 2019 and published them on the findagrave website.

„Vohl, Landkreis Waldeck Frankenberg, Hessen, Germany“

This is the largest collection of burial data in the world and is based in the Utah, USA.