Boys' home Beith Neorim (Beth Nearim)

The buildings in Hölderlinstraße, which included house number 10, were erected in 1903; the architect Carl Runkwitz was responsible for the plans and the construction company commissioned was Cohn & Kreh. From around 1906/07, the building housed an auxiliary school. From the 1930s at the latest, the address was linked to the history of the neighboring Samson-Raphael-Hirsch-Realschule. Due to increasing persecution in the Frankfurt area and far beyond, many families now sought shelter there for their children. From around 1934, the school offered remedial courses in Hebrew so that these pupils could follow the lessons. In addition, with the help of the ultra-Orthodox organization Agudas Yisroel, the Beith Neorim residential home at Hölderlinstraße 10 was set up for young Jews - a boarding school attached to the Samson-Raphael-Hirsch-Realschule. The common hope was to emigrate to Palestine - "Erez Israel". The Frankfurt stockbroker Joseph Mayer (1893-1974), who was banned from his profession, and his wife Edith Mayer, née Loeb (1896-1969), were the initiators and directors of the residential home in their own house. In the course of the "Polish Action" in October 1938, the Secret State Police arrested some of the Polish residents at night; separated from their parents, they were brutally deported across the border to Poland. During the November pogrom of 1938, Joseph Mayer and his eldest son were deported to the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps. The pupils were sent back home or placed in other welfare institutions. The Beith Neorim boys' home had to be closed. In the four years of its existence, 70 to 100 young people lived here on a temporary basis. The Mayer family managed to escape to Palestine.