Sixty Years on, a synagogue once more

In May 2004 my wife Cynthia and I, together with our friends Rita and Ricardo Dos Santos, visited my hometown of Hechingen in south Germany from which my father and I fled in May 1939. The synagogue was ransacked on Kristallnacht and by 1942 no Jews remained alive in Hechingen. The synagogue was used as an electrical stock room right up to the early 1980s, when a number of local nonJews led by Dr Adolf Vees, a dentist, decided that it should be restored exactly as it was prior to Kristallnacht. The work was completed at a cost of over DM5 million and in 1986 it was renamed the Alte Synagoge, henceforth to be used as a meeting/concert hall, with the upstairs ladies’ gallery now a museum about the Jews of Hechingen and my family. Speaking at the opening ceremony, Harry Jacobi, a friend who was at the time a rabbi in Zurich, declared it was a credit to everyone that people could now say ‘Here is the old synagogue!’ rather than there being a plaque noting that on the site had stood the Hechingen synagogue. This May, after visiting the graves of my mother and numerous other members of my family in the jewish cemetery, we went again to the synagogue, where Ricardo and This May, after visiting the graves of my mother and numerous other members of my family in the jewish cemetery, we went again to the synagogue, where Ricardo and I attached mezuzot to the doors. We saw there was now an ark and that with about 60 Jews (mainly Russian) living in Hechingen, services were again being held there. Rita, an outstanding pianist, was so impressed that she offered to play a piano recital to benefit the synagogue and she duly did so to a rapturous reception. On Saturday morning the four of us prayed in the synagogue. Unfortunately there was no minyan so we could not open the ark or say kaddish. For all of us it was a deeply emotional experience. The synagogue is kept going by one man, a Russian widower by the name of Yfraim Yakubov, who takes the services and provided us with a kiddush that brought tears to our eyes. When we tried to thank him, he thanked us for giving him the mitzvah of having us in his home. We left sobbing with emotion but also with pride. Despite Hitler, 60 years on, the Jews are back and the synagogue is a synagogue once more.