Thursday, July 06, 2023
Construction workers uncover remains of Munich’s main synagogue, destroyed by Nazis
Remnants of Munich's main synagogue, which was demolished by the Nazis in June 1938, have resurfaced – much to the amazement of the city's Jewish community.
Construction workers in the southern German city made the discovery while working on the renovation of a weir on the Isar river.
It was on June 28, while carrying out maintenance work on the weir, a small-scale dam, that the team came across columns from the former synagogue, together with a stone tablet inscribed with the Ten Commandments.
Bernhard Purin, head of Munich's Jewish museum, told CNN that he was surprised to hear the news the following day.
"I never thought we would find anything from the old synagogue," he said. "I felt happy and sad at the same time about this extraordinary find."
On the one hand, the stones represent "happy times" for Germany's Jewish community, he said, "when it was possible to build such a big and great synagogue." He added: "But it also represents a monument to the destruction of the Jewish life starting in 1933."
In November 1938, five months after the synagogue was destroyed, the Nazis unleashed Kristallnacht, a rampage of state-sponsored violence against Jewish businesses, synagogues and homes across Germany and Austria.
Some of the recovered masonry is "artistically decorated," according to Purin, who explained that the tablet with the Hebrew inscription of the Ten Commandments would have been positioned above the Jewish holy book, the Torah.
After the synagogue was leveled on Hitler's orders, the demolition firm, Leonhard Moll, stored the rubble at a site in the west of the city. A department store now stands on the plot once occupied by the synagogue.
It has now come to light that Leonhard Moll used the rubble for work to the weir in 1956. About 150 tonnes of the debris, from the synagogue as well as other buildings wrecked in the war, were dumped in the river as part of the project, Purin told CNN.
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