הסיפור של Gennep Synagogue
Gennep is a small town in the far north of Limburg, on the Niers close to where it joins the Maas and a few kilometres from the German border. A handful of Jewish families lived there from the seventeenth century, but for a long time they were counted with the distant community of Sittard. An independent congregation took shape around the middle of the nineteenth century: the Dutch page of the Jewish Cultural Quarter (JCK) dates it to about 1845, the English version to the 1850s. Its numbers never exceeded a few dozen, peaking at 31 in 1869.
In 1864 the congregation bought an existing building on the Kerkstraat, the street beside the parish church of St Martin that is now called the Torenstraat, and after ten years of fitting it out consecrated it as a synagogue in 1874. A photograph of about 1930 shows it as a modest hall set back in a cobbled courtyard. The building served the community until the Second World War, when Gennep lay on the front line for months. It was damaged by a bomb, set on fire, never restored and later cleared. Its site was taken into the grounds of the neighbouring convent of the Sisters of Charity, and the present town hall now stands there. The congregation was dissolved in 1947.
Where it stood for nearly 75 years
Historic: Kerkstraat, Gennep (street now named Torenstraat); house number unknown. Today: site of the town hall 'Poort van Gennep', Ellen Hoffmannplein 1, 6591 CP Gennep, beside the Torenstraat (approximate).
פתיחת מפה גדולה ←הקהילה היהודית
According to the JCK community encyclopedia, a few Jews lived in Gennep in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but they were so few that until the mid-nineteenth century they belonged to the Jewish community of Sittard, far to the south. The Jewish cemetery on the present Davidlaan was officially opened in 1842, although burials had taken place earlier; its oldest gravestone dates from 1794. The independent congregation was founded around 1845 according to the Dutch page and in the 1850s according to the English one. It stayed very small: 15 Jews lived in Gennep and its surroundings in 1809, 26 in 1840, 31 in 1869, 28 in 1899 and 20 in 1930. In the late 1930s refugees from Nazi Germany, only a few kilometres away, noticeably increased the number of Jews in the town. One of them was Ellen Hoffmann from Goch, who in 1939 married the Gennep cattle dealer Arthur van Leeuwen and settled in the town.
אדריכלות ועיצוב
The only image found is a photograph of about 1930, reproduced on the JCK page and credited to the RDMZ, the former Dutch monuments service. Its printed caption, from a magazine or newspaper, reads 'Ook een Israëlitische kerk is er te Gennep', with the synagogue identified as the building to the left of the pump in the background. It shows a small single-storey hall standing back from a cobbled courtyard, between a taller brick building on the left and a low whitewashed house with large windows on the right. The long wall facing the yard has scored render or ashlar facing, a moulded cornice and a steep tiled roof. It has three tall pointed-arch windows with tracery glazing, a pointed-arch doorway reached by a low step, and a small round-headed window beside the door. Because the congregation bought an existing building in 1864 and consecrated it only in 1874, the pointed windows may date from a conversion, but no source says so. The architect, builder, original use of the building, seating capacity and interior arrangement are unknown.
החיים בבית הכנסת
The JCK encyclopedia gives a short picture of how this tiny congregation worked. Its board had only two members. It had no rabbi of its own, and Jewish children were taught religion by a teacher who came from Cuijk, across the Maas in North Brabant. Two societies supported communal life. One raised money for the synagogue, which a congregation of a few dozen people could not otherwise easily keep up. The other was a women's society that cared for the sick and the dying and looked after the synagogue's embroidered textiles, such as curtains and Torah mantles. The synagogue owned valuables that its members considered worth protecting: when the war came, these were moved to safety in time, according to a letter written by the mayor of Gennep in May 1946 and cited by the historian Herman van Rens. Who led services, whether there was a regular minyan in the twentieth century, and how the arrival of German refugees in the 1930s changed the life of the synagogue are unknown.
הרס
Gennep was hit hard in the last phase of the war. From the end of September 1944 the town lay in the front zone and was under increasingly heavy shelling for months; Nazi German troops dug in, built defences throughout the town and forced the inhabitants to leave. British troops took Gennep on 12 February 1945 after heavy fighting, by which time it was largely destroyed and plundered. The synagogue had stood without a functioning congregation since the deportations. According to Herman van Rens, citing a letter from the mayor of Gennep to the Nationale Documentatiedienst dated 9 May 1946, the synagogue was first heavily damaged by a bomb strike and then set on fire by Dutch people. The mayor presented the burning as an attempt to withdraw the building and its furniture from desecration. Neither source says whose bomb hit the building or when, and the people who set the fire are not named. The JCK records that the synagogue was never restored and was later razed. When the ruin was cleared is unknown.
גורל הקהילה
After the Nazi German invasion of May 1940 the Jews of Gennep, including the refugees from Germany who had arrived in the late 1930s, were subjected to the anti-Jewish measures of the occupation. The JCK encyclopedia states that half of the Jews of Gennep are known to have been deported to Poland and murdered in the Nazi death camps, and that the fate of the others is not known with certainty. Ellen Hoffmann went into hiding with her sister in Berlin in 1943, was betrayed and arrested by the Gestapo, survived several camps and was probably shot on a death march near the end of the war; her husband and their daughter Anneke survived. Van Rens writes that only four members of the Gennep community survived. When the Van Leeuwen family came back, they found their house looted and their business premises totally destroyed, and the Jewish cemetery had been badly damaged in the fighting. The Venlo congregation took an interest in the remnant, and in 1947 the Gennep community was formally dissolved and placed under Venlo.
האתר כיום
The synagogue stood on the Kerkstraat, now the Torenstraat, close to the tower of the former St Martin's church in the centre of Gennep. The municipality's history page says the grounds of the St Norbertus convent of the Sisters of Charity, who came to Gennep in 1862, also held the synagogue of 1874. After the war only the convent with its home for the elderly was rebuilt there; it later served for a time as the town hall and was then demolished. The present town hall, designed by Alberts and Van Huut, now occupies the site. The JCK page, written earlier, still says that a convent stands on the site. The square in front of the town hall is named after Ellen Hoffmann. No trace of the synagogue survives.
יש לכם משהו לתרום?
תמונות, מסמכים, סיפורי משפחה וזיכרונות מבית הכנסת ומהקהילה שלו עוזרים לשמור על ההיסטוריה שלו בחיים.
- Gennep (Joodse gemeenten)
- Gennep (Jewish communities)
- De vervolging van joden en Sinti tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog in de Nederlandse provincie Limburg (chapter 7)
- St. Norbertus Monastery - 1862-1976
- Gennep and the price of freedom (themed route)
- Ellen Hoffmann Square
- Poort van Gennep, Ellen Hoffmannplein 1 (OpenStreetMap node 2796645619)
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