Literature | Journalism

Ernest Landau, a Viennese journalist liberated from one of the Death Marches near Tutzing on Lake Starnberg, founded what was then the only German-language Jewish weekly newspaper, the “Neue Welt. Eine Wochenschrift der befreiten Juden” (New World: A Weekly of the Liberated Jews) in fall 1947. With a circulation of around 4,000, the paper was aimed to be a news and information bulletin for Jewish communities in Bavaria. After just one year, the Neue Welt had to cease publication due to a lack of a German readership.

The newspaper Nizoz (Heb. the Spark) was an underground newspaper founded in Kaunas (Lithuania) by the Zionist youth organization Brit Zion (Heb. Zions’ Covenant). After the liquidation of the ghetto, the protagonists were deported to Kaufering concentration camp where they produced another seven issues under life-endangering conditions before the camp was liberated. After the Shoah, the newspaper was then able to be puhlished as a legal Hebrew newspaper in Munich from July 1945 until April 1948.

The Jidisze Sport Cajtung (JSC), an organ of the Central Committee and the Association of Jewish Gymnastics and Sports Clubs was printed by the Munich printer’s H. Lindner at Herzogstrasse 7. The newspaper reported on all Jewish DP sporting activities, especially football, between May 1947 and June 1948. In addition to the First League, which was divided into a southern and northern group, there were five regional leagues in Franconia, Frankfurt, Kassel, Regensburg, and Upper Bavaria. A total of about 80 teams were included in the league.

At the initiative of the Yiddish writer David Volpe and the historian Israel Kaplan, a writers’ association was founded in Munich in summer 1946. By the end of October the association had 31 members; a year later 71. In addition to the 43 journalists and 18 writers, it also included ten representatives of the visual arts. Although the group saw itself as an association of Hebrew and Yiddish-speaking writers, only three members described themselves as Hebrew speakers. The writers’ association presumably dissolved in early 1949.

Although the Zionist organizations favored Yiddish or Hebrew, a few DP newspapers also appeared in other languages such as Polish, Romanian or, as in the case of Utunk (Our Way), Hungarian.

Pechach is a Hebrew acronym for Partisanim—Chayalim—Chaluzim, meaning partisans—soldiers—pioneers. The newspaper Pechach was published for the movement of the same name in Munich from June 1946 until December 1948.

The newspaper was published as an organ of the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews from October 1945 to January 1950, with a circulation of up to 30,000. From the first issue, the paper was printed in Yiddish with Hebrew letters. As there was not enough typeset, most of the Yiddish DP newspapers had to use the Roman alphabet. The transcription was based on Polish phonetics.

In the 1920s, Jella Lepman, née Lehmann, worked as the first female editor of the liberal Stuttgarter Neues Tagblatt. She wrote articles on social policy and established the supplement „Die Frau in Haus, Beruf und Gesellschaft“ in 1927. A special edition of the newspaper was published for the opening of the Tagblatt Tower on November 5, 1928. For this, Jella Lepman wrote the article "Die Stuttgarterin von heute".

Together with other Jewish bibliophiles, the law student Herrmann Meyer founded the Soncino Society of Friends of the Jewish Book in 1924 in order to cultivate the exchange of information about Jewish books and, according to the statutes, to publish "rare texts and valuable prints. Soon the society had over 500 members from Germany and abroad. The most ambitious project was the development of a new Hebrew typeface. At the beginning of 1933, the printing of the Torah was finally completed, without any further Hebraica to follow.

The first post-medieval synagogue was built by the emancipated Jewish community in 1847 under the influence of the legislation of the Prussian King in a building in the backyard of the hotel „es Roß“ at Obermarkt 17. On 20.9.1853 the house of worship was occupied. The entrance was made üvia Langenstraße 23, through the school garden of the Bürgerschule built in 1846. The rebuilt rear building at Obermarkt 17 had previously been a society theater.