Jewish community Karlsruhe

The antecedents of the Jewish community of Karlsruhe date back to the Middle Ages. The community has existed since about 1717, interrupted in the years 1940 to 1945. It is part of the Israelite Religious Community of Baden.

The Jewish community in Karlsruhe established places for religious Jewish life at an early stage: a synagogue, a mikvah and outside the city gates, south of the Landgraben near the Rüppurrer Tor (today near Mendelssohn-Platz), a cemetery, which was occupied since 1725. Jews from the surrounding area of Karlsruhe could also be buried there against payment of a fee. 

By the mid-1920s, the Karlsruhe community numbered over 3,400 members (2.5% of the city's population), reaching its peak in terms of numbers. The community was very heterogeneous: there was a small group of wealthy members, but most members of the community, however, came from the bourgeois middle class or came from poor immigrant families from Eastern Europe. The Jews of Karlsruhe worked mainly in industrial trades or in commerce. In these fields almost 80% of the members earned their living. 

During the Nazi regime more than 2,100 Jews from Karlsruhe emigrated. The majority of them found protection in the USA or Palestine. About 60 to 80 children were sent from Karlsruhe to Great Britain with the Kindertransports. 

950 Jewish men, women and children from Karlsruhe were deported to Gurs (southern France) on October 22, 1940 

After the war, a prayer room was reestablished in Herrenstrasse at the end of 1945. The room was located in the former house of the Orthodox Jewish community, which had been used after the November pogrom in 1938 until 1940.

In 1971, the inauguration of the new Jewish community center took place in Knielinger Allee. The roof of the hexagonal building, which houses the synagogue, has the shape of a Star of David.