Street & Locale Names

Auschwitz - A small place near Krakow.-Synonymous with the greatest mass murder and shame of the "civilized" world. 

לעולם אל תשכח

A Jewish alley was first mentioned in documents at the beginning of the 14th century; there is also said to have been a Jewish bathhouse (mikvah) and a Jewish churchyard in front of the city wall on the outer side. Under King Johann von Böhmen, the Jews living here obtained protection in 1329; since 1344 there is documentary evidence of a Jewish school (prayer room) in Görlitz. As in many German cities, the Jews living in Görlitz were expelled from the city at the time of the plague, but years later they returned.

In some of the houses in the marketplace, Jewish businessmen sold the most diverse goods until 1938.

Last sold Adolf Meyer (No. 8) shoes as well as leather goods and the department store Josef Bodenheimer (No. 1 u. 3 / corner Rosenstraße) textiles. Siegmund Schaumburger (No. 7 / corner Werkes) offered men's clothing too.

Isaak Hess was born in Lauchheim on May 26, 1789. He attended a rabbinical school in Fürth and then worked for several years as a tutor and bookkeeper. In 1817 he founded his own antiquarian bookshop in Lauchheim. In 1838, he moved his antiquarian bookshop to Ellwangen and expanded it with an assortment bookstore. The emancipation efforts of the Württemberg Jews were of particular concern to him. He was a member of a government commission that prepared a law on the political and civil rights of Jews in Württemberg.

Among the known villages and smaller towns in Baden Württemberg, where Jewish settlements existed for shorter or longer periods in the 16th or 17th century, was the village of Röttingen.

Excerpt from the "Description of the Oberamts Neresheim" from the year 1872, last line in the place description "Röttingen": "Jews were once also in Röttingen, still a village street is called the Judengasse."