Christian Germans retrieve remnants of Jewish past

by Leonard Fein
January 28, 2011

It is cold, unreasonably cold, and the fact that the news from around the world is mostly terrible doesn’t help. Having in mind the welfare of my readers – as well as my own desire for an uplifting thaw – here is news to warm the freezing heart.

For the eleventh year in a row, the Obermayer Foundation of Newton has given awards to five non-Jewish Germans who have made extraordinary contributions to preserving Jewish history, culture, cemeteries and synagogues in their own local communities. The awards are cosponsored by the Berlin Parliament and given in its elegant plenary chamber. You can access the full report on all 55 winners (so far) of the award at www.obermayer.us/award, and that is the only way to begin to comprehend the extent of their efforts, the richness of their deserts.

Take, for example, Brigitta Stammer, whose devotion was largely responsible for moving a synagogue that had survived Kristallnacht from a town called Bodenfelde, where there are no longer any Jews, to her own Gottingen, 25 miles away. Göttingen has a small Jewish community (immigrants from the former Soviet Union), but no synagogue. Stammer won support for moving the synagogue from the Protestant church central administration, then raised 500,000 Euros from congregations of the Protestant, Catholic and Protestant Reformed churches as well as from individual citizens, and then watched as workers individually removed and labeled each board, and then transported the building in pieces to Göttingen, where the structure was meticulously reconstructed and refurbished according to its original design. After an effort that continued for 12 years, this small gem of a synagogue, with its painted decorations, was rededicated in November 2008, 70 years after the Kristallnacht destruction of the large synagogue of Göttingen. Or consider Dr. Heinrich Schreiner, who was president of the Central Bank of the state of Rheinland-Pfalz at the time of his retirement. That retirement represented the beginning of a new career in which he dedicated his time and skills to reconstructing the dilapidated synagogue of Mainz, the only synagogue remaining in a city that had been the leading German center of Jewish study beginning more than 1,000 years ago and then throughout the Middle Ages. Schreiner, a leader in the Catholic Church, raised the funds (about $2 million); encouraged community leaders to participate; engaged the architects; handled the complex legal, business and political issues; and oversaw the physical restoration of the synagogue.

The structure itself, built in 1737, had been damaged in 1793 during the French siege of Mainz and rededicated in 1819. It was vandalized during Kristallnacht, but never completely burned down because of its proximity to many houses. After World War II, the site was used as a hen-coop, a lumber storage facility and finally a dump. The decayed building was rediscovered in 1977 during the preparation of an exhibit about the Jews of Mainz. The building, beautifully reconstructed in its original baroque style, was consecrated on May 27, 1996, marking the 900th anniversary of the massacre of the Jews of Mainz during the first crusade of 1096. Now it is a center of Jewish learning for the entire community. On the Sabbath and on Jewish holy days the synagogue is used exclusively for Jewish religious services. At all other times, it is the site of free lectures, concerts and exhibitions on Jewish subjects.

Many of the other awardees began their work by reviving dead cemeteries – neglected places with broken and toppled tombstones, overgrown with vegetation. Work on clearing the debris and refurbishing the stones and their legends led many to search records and develop elaborate genealogical histories. In some instances, their research recovered names and histories that had been long forgotten.

And there’s more: The Germans reached out to Jews around the world whose roots lay in the towns and cities where they lived, and invited them to visit; many have.

Many of the awardees are or were teachers. The others include a psychoanalyst, a mailman, social workers, a farmer, journalists, lawyers, a mechanic, medical doctors, Protestant ministers and a stone mason.

The awards are given on or about Jan. 27 each year, commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz; the date is both the German Holocaust Memorial Day and the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Of course, this is all about the Holocaust, the recipients’ actions often prompted by guilt, more often by curiosity: Who were these people, our neighbors? Why did my parents have nothing to say about those times? Can we do more than discover and remember – can we in any way revive? Can there be a future for our past? Museums, yes – but also community centers.

And it is all about Judith and Arthur Obermayer, whose eclectic interests include not only their own family history (see “The Obermayers: A History of a Jewish Family in Germany and America”), but also social justice work both in the United States and in Israel. Not for nothing was Arthur Obermayer, in 2007, honored with the Bundesverdienstkreuz award, the highest honor bestowed by the German Federal Republic. No, for something both modest and immense, for encouraging and acknowledging the ongoing repair of a rent fabric.