This is the site of the former synagogue in Memmingen, with the footprint partly marked out on the ground.
This is what it looked like, the area marked out on the floor is the little section at the rear of the synagogue building (not the large building at the rear), jutting out to the right.
There’s a memorial here now with some information about the former synagogue. There was a Jewish population in the medieval period, but they were forced out and persecuted, with many being burned to death. The first Jew to receive citizenship in Memmingen was in 1862 and a small community developed which was around 100 people by the mid 1870s and then it reached 230 by the end of the nineteenth century. A synagogue was opened in 1909, although the Jewish population had already started to fall by them, it was 161 in 1933.
The Jewish community was badly hit by the anti-Semitic laws introduced by the Nazis and that caused real economic pain for what was a population largely involved in textile production in the city. The Nazis destroyed the synagogue in 1938 and looted the properties of numerous Jewish residents, but more on that later in this post.
The number of Jews had fallen to 100 by 1939, with the community being liquidated in 1942 and the residents sent to concentration camps in Germany and Poland. The post-war population of Jews was around 125 of nearly entirely those who returned from the concentrations camps, but this community nearly entirely all left with the Jewish population being a grand total of two in the late 1960s.
A plan of the synagogue. I mentioned that the synagogue was destroyed and that took place on Kristallnacht (the 8 to 9 October 1938) which was part of a wave of national hatred and violence towards Jews. The whole thing was made even worse by the involvement of local schoolchildren and their teachers in the destruction of the building and numerous residents had joyous photos taken in the ruins of the synagogue after its destruction. The demolition crew took a week to remove the demolition rubble after TNT was used to destroy what remained, with numerous of these workers wearing hats they had found inside the synagogue. 23 Jewish homes were also damaged in the night’s violence, there was almost no limit to the hate that was shown to the community.
Most of the site of the former synagogue is now built on, but at least a corner section is kept as a memorial to not just the building, but to the destruction of a community. At the time of the 1933 census the city’s Jewish population was just 1% of the 15,000 people who lived in Memmingen. The political leaders were able to ensure that so many people focused so much hate on this 1% that they were not just forced out, but were mostly murdered and treated in such a way that nearly none of them felt that their post-war home was in Germany.
