Jews rebuild in Munich
Published 9:00 pm Thursday, November 9, 2006
MUNICH, Germany – Jews were welcomed back into the heart of Munich on Thursday with a procession of Torah scrolls and the dedication of a new downtown synagogue – replacing one Adolf Hitler personally ordered destroyed as an “eyesore” in the center of his power base.
Jewish leaders said the ceremony – on the 68th anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass – was a sign they were back to stay.
“Today we can show the entire world that Hitler did not succeed in annihilating us,” said Charlotte Knobloch, Germany’s top Jewish leader who was a young girl in Munich the night the Nazis attacked synagogues and Jewish businesses nationwide.
She fought back tears as Munich’s mayor handed her the large, gleaming key to the stone-and-glass synagogue in the Jackobsplatz square, only blocks from where Joseph Goebbels ordered the destruction of Kristallnacht.
The synagogue, part of a complex that will house a Jewish community center, a cafe, schools and a museum to Jewish history, is a milestone for this burgeoning Jewish community of 9,200 members.
Not only does it give Munich’s Jews a new synagogue, it returns them to the city’s center for the first time since World War II. Until now, worshippers have crammed into a small temple in a far-flung neighborhood.
Since the German government relaxed immigration laws for Jews following reunification in 1990, thousands have come here, mostly from the former Soviet Union. According to the World Jewish Congress, Germany now has the world’s fastest-growing Jewish community, conservatively estimated at more than 100,000.
