Germany's biggest synagogue reopens as symbol of Jewish rebirth

[Arthur Gordon Pym]

Germany's biggest synagogue reopens as symbol of Jewish rebirth

August 31, 2007

Germany's biggest synagogue, which survived the horrors of the Nazi holocaust and the oppression of communist rule, reopened on Friday as a symbol of the rebirth of the Jewish community.


A special ceremony was held at the century old red-brick building in East Berlin which narrowly avoided being destroyed in the Kristallnacht -- the night in 1938 when Adolf Hitlers followers torched Jewish homes, businesses and places of worship.

Ninety-four year-old rabbi Leo Trepp, who had preached at the synagogue in the 1930s, calls the reopening a "miracle".

Trepp was among the guests at the inauguration ceremony in the restored building with political leaders and Holocaust survivors from around the world.

"It is a miracle that there are Jews in Germany again," Trepp told AFP this week. "And the synagogue on Rykestrasse, which survived two different regimes, is the symbol of that miracle," he said.

Originally built in 1904, the neo-Classical construction was closed for more than three years for the 4.5 million euro (six million dollar) refit.

Architects Ruth Golan and Kay Zareh have used three surviving black-and-white photographs of the original building to recreate its remarkable elegance.

"It is now the most beautiful synagogue in Germany," the cultural affairs director of the Berlin's Jewish community, Peter Sauerbaum, said.

The 1,200 capacity synagogue was one of the few Jewish institutions in Berlin to survive Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) pogrom of November 9, 1938.

It was spared because it was located between "Aryan" apartment buildings which might have caught fire had the synagogue been torched.
But its precious Torah rolls were damaged and rabbis as well as congregation members were seized and deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Trepp, who at that point was serving as a rabbi in the northern city of Oldenburg, was among the rabbis taken to Sachsenhausen.

He was released three weeks later, and with the help of a British rabbi friend he got the necessary visa to escape almost certain death in Nazi Germany.

The last prayer service at the Berlin synagogue took place in April 1940.
After the war, when the Prenzlauer Berg district became part of communist East Germany, the synagogue reopened in 1953 and became the central gathering place of the remaining Jewish community in East Berlin.

With German unification in 1990, the synagogue served an influx of Jewish immigrants from Russia which continues to make Germany's 120,000-strong Jewish community one of the fastest-growing in the world.
The inauguration service featured Jewish liturgical songs originating from German synagogues in the 19th century.
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