Community center of the Jewish community in Dresden 1937

So-called ‚Judenhaus‘ Bautzner Straße 20

The residential building at Bautzner Straße 20 was acquired by the Jewish Religious Community of Dresden from the Jewish Schrimmer family in 1937. In 1940, like around 40 other houses in the city, it was designated a so-called Jews' house. Jews who had been expelled from their homes or houses were allocated living space there. The law on tenancy agreements with Jews, which came into force on April 30, 1939, abolished tenant protection for Jews and obliged Jews with their own housing to take in homeless Jews, was followed from autumn 1939 by the concentration of Jews in so-called Jewish houses. The Decree on the Use of Jewish Property of December 3, 1938 obliged Jewish homeowners to sell their properties. Jewish tenants could be instructed to take in other Jews as subtenants in their apartments. The municipal authorities could decide on the rental agreement and the amount of rent

From the fall of 1939 and increasingly until the deportations, Jews were assigned to so-called Jewish houses by the Reich Association of Jews in Germany on the instructions of the Gestapo and housed there in very cramped conditions. The houses were marked and were under the control of the Gestapo. The victims selected for deportation to Theresienstadt were usually placed in a collection camp two days before their deportation. Victor Klemperer wrote several times in his diaries about house search pogroms that he had experienced himself, in which the residents were insulted, spat at, slapped, kicked, beaten and robbed by Gestapo officers. According to the Eleventh Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Act of November 25, 1941, Jews who left the territory of the Reich lost their German citizenship and their property was forfeited to the German Reich.