Doetinchem Synagogue (Waterstraat)

Еврейская община

In about 1783 nine Jewish families lived in Doetinchem; in 1811 there were 62 Jews in 12 families, and between 1811 and 1817 the congregation also served Bergh and Zevenaar. The JCK encyclopedia counts 151 Jews in Doetinchem and its surroundings in 1809, 186 in 1840, 187 in 1869 and 255 in 1899, falling to 161 in 1930. Most heads of household were traders, Jews also ran the local pawnbank, and many members were poor. In the second half of the nineteenth century the Van Perlstein family founded a liqueur distillery, Ph. van Perlstein & Zoon, that became important to the town's economy, and Heiman Levij van Perlstein was appointed the community's superintendent in 1840. Early in the twentieth century several Jews sat on the town council. Around the same time an internal conflict split the congregation, and a breakaway group held services in a private house in the Nieuwstad. In 1903 the main congregation had about 190 members and 34 pupils at its school. On 1 October 1941, 166 Jews lived in Doetinchem, 11 of them without Dutch citizenship.

Архитектура и дизайн

The only known view is a photograph reproduced on a postcard captioned 'Doetinchem. Synagoge', which the Jewish Cultural Quarter dates to 1934. It shows a tall, rendered street front squeezed between ordinary brick houses. The facade is divided into three bays by flat pilasters rising through two storeys. At ground level a round-arched doorway with panelled double doors sits in the centre bay, flanked by recessed panels, and a projecting cornice runs across the whole front above the ground floor. The upper storey has a large round-arched window with patterned leaded glazing in the centre, set under a moulded arch, and tall, narrow round-headed windows in the side bays. Above a second cornice rises a stepped attic with a small rectangular window, crowned by a curved pediment and decorated with ball or urn finials at the corners and summit. Dutch Jewry describes the building as a beautiful Neoclassical synagogue. The architect, builder, cost, seating capacity and the arrangement of the interior are unknown, and no interior photograph was found.

Жизнь в синагоге

The synagogue was consecrated on 1 March 1878 with a speech by Chief Rabbi Samuel Berenstein. Its classroom housed the congregation's school, where Meier Schaap taught from 1886 to 1891 and Joseph Frank taught religion from 1911 to 1940; in the early nineteenth century children had also been taught in Yiddish. The congregation marked the building's anniversaries: the fifteenth in 1893, with a speech by Chief Rabbi Tobias Tal and a service led by the cantor Frederik Hoogstraal; the fortieth in 1918 without celebrations because of the First World War; the fiftieth in 1928, with a choir conducted by M. Bolle; and the sixtieth in 1938. The 1938 festivities opened on 26 February with a service and an address by the chazzan Nieweg, who in 1936 had led a boys' choir; a guide was published with introductions by Chief Rabbi J. Vredenburg and Mayor Duval Slothouwer. In 1933 the community, led by parnas M. Wolf and secretary A. Schloesser, opened a new school and meeting building designed by the architect Stap, but prayer remained in the Waterstraat synagogue.

Разрушение

During the occupation the Nazi German authorities took over the empty synagogue and used it as a warehouse for wooden blocks used as fuel for wood-gas generators, which were sent to Berlin every week; equipment of the Organisation Todt, the Nazi construction organisation, was also stored there. In March 1945 Doetinchem was bombed three times, on 19, 21 and 23 March, by British aircraft; the reason has never been satisfactorily explained, and the raid of 21 March may have been meant for the German town of Isselburg across the border. According to Dutch Jewry, the synagogue was hit in the bombardment of 21 March 1945 at five in the afternoon. The raids killed 143 people according to Liberation Route Europe, destroyed about 120 buildings and left the town hall, St Catherine's Church and the synagogue in flames. On 2 April 1945, during the fighting in which Canadian troops liberated the town, Canadian soldiers used flamethrowers to break German resistance and the remaining parts of the synagogue burned. The ruin was not rebuilt.

Судьба общины

After the occupation began, the persecution of Doetinchem's Jews followed the national pattern. In November 1940 pupils of the municipal lyceum went on strike in protest at the dismissal of its Jewish teachers. Raids from 1941 onwards took mainly Jewish men, most of whom were murdered in Mauthausen. When Jewish children were excluded from public schools in late 1941, a regional Jewish school was opened in Doetinchem. Between October 1941 and April 1943 most of the Jews of Doetinchem were deported in several stages and murdered in concentration and extermination camps, among them Mauthausen and Auschwitz. Jews who had been members of the Dutch Nazi party NSB were held in a special camp near Doetinchem before being sent to Theresienstadt, and six of them were deported to Mauthausen. Several dozen people survived in hiding. In total 124 Jews from Doetinchem were killed. After the liberation a few families returned: there were 24 Jews in 1947 and 34 in 1951, 28 in 1971 and 43 in 1998. The community's school building burned down in 1976.

Место сегодня

The synagogue was not rebuilt after 1945, when much of Doetinchem's centre was cleared and replanned. According to Dutch Jewry, the street where it had stood was afterwards renamed Synagogestraat, a short link between the Plantsoenstraat and the Boliestraat; the present Waterstraat lies a short distance to the west. No source consulted describes what now occupies the exact plot, and no remains of the building are recorded. A monument on the Boliestraat, unveiled in 2007, commemorates the 124 Jews of Doetinchem who died in the war. The Jewish cemetery on the IJkenweg, in use since about 1770, survives.

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