Meudt

First Jewish presence: 1780; peak Jewish population: 113 in 1885 (13.4% of the total population); Jewish population in 1933: 43

In 1879, the community’s synagogue—it had been inaugurated in 1845—burned down. A new synagogue was inaugurated at 26 Kirchstrasse (formerly Hauptstrasse) in 1881; according to records, a prayer room had once been located at 15 Kirchstrasse. At the cemetery, the oldest gravestone is dated 1795. We also know that, beginning in 1845, the community employed a teacher of religion. In 1933, 43 Jews lived in Meudt; four schoolchildren received religious instruction that year. Later, on the afternoon before Pogrom Night, rioters vandalized and burned down the synagogue, but not before two community members managed to save the Torah scrolls. Local Jews were detained in the council building, after which the men were sent to a concentration camp. The community was forced to sell the synagogue ruins for a mere 95 Reichmarks on November 23, 1938. Eighteen Jews, of whom four perished in the Shoah, left the village between 1933 and 1941. Of the remaining 21 Jews, nine were deported to Theresienstadt in June 1942, and 12 to the East in September 1942. At least 25 Meudt Jews perished in the Shoah. The synagogue ruins were later demolished. A memorial monument was unveiled the cemetery in February 1991.

Esther Sarah Evans

Copyright: Pogrom Night 1938 - A Memorial to the Destroyed Synagogues of Germany/ germansynagogues.bh.org.il

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