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Nazis destroyed Munich’s main synagogue in 1938. Parts of it were just found in the city’s river.
BERLIN (JTA) — Alongside Munich’s river, construction workers made a sensational discovery last week: Stone tablets carved with the Ten Commandments from the city’s former main synagogue, which was torn down in the summer of 1938 on Adolf Hitler’s orders.
The find was announced almost exactly 85 years after the building was destroyed.
The object — along with 150 tons of rubble from the synagogue, including parts of columns — had likely lain on the banks of the Isar River since the 1950s, when the company hired to carry out the demolition used the material to shore up a dam.
Workers discovered the material while extending the same river at an artificial lake.
“Last Wednesday, the Munich water works department found stones with some decorations under the water,” Bernhard Purin, director of the Jewish Museum in Munich, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Thursday. “They started their own research, and via Google they found out that the same company that had destroyed the synagogue in 1938 did the renovation work in 1956.”
The city department contacted state landmarks officials, who then called Purin.
“I went with them to the site on Thursday, and it became immediately clear that the broken stones were part of the Great Synagogue,” Purin said. “The first thing I saw was the Tablet of Laws. They saw it as an important piece, so they separated from the rest.”
The city is arranging to transport the stones to a storage area and will continue searching the area for more segments of the synagogue. It will be a hard task: The Ten Commandments alone weigh more than half a ton.
Purin said the museum has many historical photos of the synagogue which will aid the identification of the architectural fragments. “I am hopeful that in a few months we will see that more parts of the Torah Ark are among the stones.”
The find is “quite important to me for two reasons,” he added. “On one hand, the main synagogue was one of the biggest in Germany. And on the other hand, it was a document of the positive Jewish life in Germany in the 1870s to 1933. The broken stones are also a monument for the Holocaust.”
According to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, the Great Synagogue in Munich was the first synagogue that the Nazis destroyed in Germany. On July 8, 1938, Jewish community members were given a few hours’ notice, and volunteers spent that night removing the Torah scrolls and ritual objects.
Charlotte Knobloch, head of the Jewish community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, has said she is delighted at the idea of a fragment being housed inside Munich’s new synagogue, on Jakobsplatz, near the museum. Meanwhile, the city’s Reform community would also like to display part of the historical synagogue, which also was a Reform congregation.
Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter said he was very moved by the discovery and that the city plans to secure the objects and return them to the Jewish community.
Also in Munich this week, the Reichenbachstrasse synagogue marked a milestone in its restoration with a ceremony. Built in 1931 and severely vandalized during Kristallnacht in November 1938, the synagogue was restored for use by Holocaust survivors in 1947. In recent years, it had fallen into disrepair, particularly since the opening of Munich’s new synagogue in 2006. The current restoration is an initiative of Jewish community members Rachel Salamander and Ron Jakubowicz.
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The post Nazis destroyed Munich’s main synagogue in 1938. Parts of it were just found in the city’s river. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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