German city of Fulda purchases old shul buildings

This post was very difficult to write. I never thought I would be interested in, or care about, actions by Germans meant to "do right" by the Jews, or to somehow make up for what was done during the Holocaust.

This past year I had an opportunity to go to Fulda, the city in Germany where my grandfather grew up. The City of Fulda, led by Oberburgermeister, the Lord Mayor, Dr Heiko Wigenfeld, sponsored a trip to Fulda for many descendants of Holocaust victims from Fulda. While I do not quite know who exactly is responsible for what, I must mention my friend Anja Listman who is a driving force behind much of what happens in Fulda to memorialize the local Jewish community from the Holocaust period. Anja is neither Jewish nor does she hold any formal position in the local government of Fulda, yet she works non-stop on behalf of the Jewish community, current but mostly former. Anja does it all (in addition to her regular work as a teacher and her other projects she is involved in) just because she feels it is right and necessary, and is behind many of the initiatives that take place.

The local government brought a group of us in to Fulda from around the world, put us up and took us around Fulda and the environs, showed us and explained all the Jewish historical places, opened up the archives to us, showed us our ancestors homes, when possible, and were, in general very hospitable.

I must add that one thing that made an impression on me was that Dr Wigenfeld, Anja, and a number of others are not Jewish, do not have a sizable Jewish community they are trying to placate (the Jewish community in Fulda today is tiny and politically insignificant), and seemingly have no outside pressure to be doing anything so proactively favorable to the memory of the Jews of Fulda and are doing it simply because they feel it is the right thing to do and they believe there is a need for the city to come to terms with what it did and what happened to its people and memorialize it so nothing like it will happen again.

Back to today.

When we were in Fulda 8 or 9 months ago, they showed us the site of the old shul (there is a memorial along the edge with names of local Holocaust victims, includes my great grandparents). Across the street from it was the school and yeshiva. Next door to the shul is a building that was also once the weekday shul and the Jewish community center. Below the weekday shul, in the basement, was the mikva. They told us that they discovered that the mikva had been sealed off by the Jewish community back then in the 1940s and was now rediscovered to be fully intact. It is beneath a building that houses residential apartments and a lower level of stores. The mikva remains beneath all that, intact.

They told us then that they were trying to find ways to open it up again.

They just sent a message letting us know that the city, led by Lord Mayor Dr Wigenfeld, has successfully purchased the entire complex - the building with the weekday shul and community center, the parking lot where the old shul used to stand (part of where the shul was is homes now and part is a parking lot). With the mikva intact, they expect to be able to open it - though I do not know if that means just for viewing or if also for use. I also do not know if it is kosher in its current state or would need renovations and if necessary would they be done. Also, there really aren't too many people there who would use it, if any. But that's not the point. They bought the property of the shuls and community center and mikva and are preserving it to memorialize the Jewish sites.

the building and parking lot right in front, and extending down out of view, is the site of the old shul. The building at the right edge of the picture is the former community center and weekday shul with the mikva beneath. That black wall is a memorial for the local Holocaust victims - in that gray strip near the top of it is engraved all the names of local victims.

Dr. Wingenfeld spoke at the announcement of this purchase and spoke about the importance of dignified memory. He said: "Our goal should now be, together with the Jewish community, to preserve the dignity of this memorial." Dr. Wingenfeld announced that city building councilor Daniel Schreiner will work out some suggestions in the coming months in close coordination with the Jewish community on what a design could look like. Silvia Brünnel from the Green Party proposed an architecture competition and Jonathan Wulff from the SPD suggested that the descendants of the Jewish families should also be spoken to. ALL parties in the Fulda parliament, from left to right, support this purchase with very great approval!!!!

Besides for the above article in the image, The Osthessen news site wrote about it, and you can use Google Translate to get it in English.

Nothing can make up for what was done to the Jews of Europe, not my grandparents, nor your grandparents nor anybody else's. I was once in touch with a person who was a descendant of a German soldier (she claimed he was not a Nazi and due to some illness I do not recall he was released from the German army early in World War II) who helped me gratis with some genealogy research because she "wanted to make up" for what her people had done.

The people today in Fulda, Dr Wigenfeld, Anja and the others, are not doing this to make up for anything, nor due to political or social pressures. They are doing it because they feel it is important that the residents of Fulda today know what once was and what happened there and to prevent, through knowledge, anything similar from possibly happening again.

I think I was always ambivalent about the need for memorials, especially in Germany. Maybe for them, so they can learn from it, but I always thought I don't need it. And I don't. If nothing would have ever happened, I would never have thought about it and would not think it necessary or important. Now that they are doing it, without pressure from anyone, I think it is notable and significant, and even meaningful. It somewhat surprised me that this is what it turned into. On their own initiative they turned something I was ambivalent about into something that is meaningful.

(By the way, I speak for nobody else but me. Perhaps other people who are descendants of Fulda victims, or victims of other places, always felt memorials are important, or maybe some feel even now they are still not. I speak only for myself)

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