Online Archive of Jewish Communities

The Alsberg department store, today called Kaufhaus Kortum, is built in the years 1913-1921 by the Cologne department store company of the Jewish Alsberg brothers. The department store opened in 1921 and was at that time the first department store in Bochum with 31 shop windows and 64 sales departments.
. In the course of the Aryanization in 1933 the name Alsberg disappeared from the public. The department store was now named after the doctor and poet Karl Arnold Kortum. The house remained in the ownership of the Alsberg family until 1938.

The "Knabenpensionat" had been founded by the preacher Hermann Hirsch in 1917, when Hirsch had returned from his deployment in the First World War. Just two years after the founding of the boarding school, the villa at Hohe Straße 30 was owned by Hermann Hirsch. The boys' boarding school was to provide a home for boys who were attending secondary school in Coburg. Hermann Hirsch worked at the boarding school as a religion teacher.

After the end of the war, a new Jewish community was founded in Bayreuth by survivors of concentration camps who were taken in as "displaced persons" in the American zone. In November 1945, 184 Jewish persons were counted in Bayreuth, in July 1946 there were 400, a year later over 500 persons. The centers of the "Jewish DP Community" in Bayreuth were at Heinrich-Schütz-Strasse 6 and Lisztstrasse 12. The chairmen of the Jewish DP community were Abraham Brillant and Felix Kugelmann.

The Israelite Hospital was opened in 1904 and offered 40 beds with another 15 beds in an attached old people's home. After 1933, regular work was no longer possible here. Many elderly Jews found shelter here during the National Socialist era. In 1942, they were all deported along with the doctors and staff.

After the end of the war, the building served as accommodation for Mainz citizens*. In the early 1970s, it was demolished.

The community belonged to the rabbinical district Kaiserslautern. Beginnings of first organized Jewish life can be found in 1808 with a room that was used for religious services. 

In 1740 there were meanwhile eight Jewish families living in the village. Together with the four Jewish families living in Gabsheim, you managed to get permission from the local government to establish a "Judenschule". In this building, which became Jewish community center after the construction of the synagogue in 1836, there were probably a prayer room and the schoolroom for teaching the children (possibly the rooms were identical). 
  

To take care of religious duties of the community, a teacher was employed from time to time, who also acted as a prayer leader and shochet. The children were taught Hebrew and religion. In the 19th century they were integrated into the general school system.

In Heppenheim an der Wiese Jews could settle probably since the beginning of the 18th century  1722 two Jewish families were in the place, 1743 one family.