Germany: Multiple Memorials for Berlin's Munchener Strasse Synagogue

Berlin, Germany. Image of the former Münchener Straße 37 on view in the Bayerischer Platz U-Bahn station. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016

Germany: Multiple Memorials for Berlin's Munchener Strasse Synagogue
by Samuel D. Gruber

In November 2016, I was in Berlin for a few days and had the chance to visit more Jewish and Holocaust-related historical and commemorative sites than usual. I've already posted about the Jewish cemetery on Grosse Hamburger Strasse and the monument and burial section at the Weissensee Cemetery for Jewish soldiers who died in World War I. Here's information on a lesser known commemorative site.

The domed synagogue at Münchener Straße 37 in the Schöneberg section of Berlin, designed by Jewish architect Max Fraenkel (1856-1926), was dedicated in 1910 and was at the center of a heavily Jewish neighborhood around Bayerischer Platz.  It was looted but not burned on Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938), but was subsequently damaged by aerial bombing during the war years, and  torn down in 1956. The synagogue, which was a transitional structure between historicism and modernism, was notable for its large dome, and as one of the more architecturally distinctive buildings in the largely residential neighborhood. The composer Kurt Weill had a job as the synagogue choir conductor for a few months in 1921. 

Today, there is a part of a school building on the synagogue site, but the synagogue is remembered in the neighborhood in various ways. Each memorial corresponds to a particular phase of Berlin's facing the past and acknowledge the Shoah. There is an official abstract street level monument (1960s), a student-built collaborative memorial (1990s) and recently an extensive photo exhibit underground in the nearby U-Bahn station.

At the school, the original synagogue outline is remembered through garden design and in 1994-95 students erected a memorial brick wall on the school grounds to remember local Jews who lived in Berlin-Schöneberg. According to school officials,"the idea was based on the artist Horst Hoheisel from Kassel who gave stimulus on his "memorial from down below" in the framework of the 6th grade teaching lesson "National Socialism".

Berlin, Germany. Löcknitz Primary School on site of the synagogue at Münchener Straße 37. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016.

In front of the school and near the street is a more traditional monument, designed in a cubist style by Gerson Fehrenbach in 1963. It declares: "Hier stand der 1909 erbauten synagoge der jüdischen Gemeinde" (Here stood the Synagogue of the Jewish Community built in 1909).

Berlin, Germany. Monument to destroyed at synagogue at Münchener Straße 37. Gerson Fehrenbach, arch., 1963. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016.

Berlin, Germany. Monument to destroyed at synagogue at Münchener Straße 37. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016.

A plaque beneath gives further information about the fate of the building.  

Hier stand von 1909-1956 eine Synagoge. Sie wurde während der Reichspogromnacht
am 9. Nov. 1938 wegen ihrer Lage in einem
Wohnhaus nicht zerstört.
Nach der Vertreibung und Vernichtung
der jüdischen Mitbürgerinnen und Mitbürger
durch die Nationalsozialisten verlor sie
ihre Funktion und wurde 1956 abgerissen.”

In the nearby U-Bahn station there is a extensive photo exhibition on the history of the neighborhood. Since it was a heavily Jewish district in the interwar period, there is are many images of the synagogue and of prominent Jews who lived nearby. When I visited the station in November 2016, the former synagogue - already destroyed once - was suffering the indignity of having a temporary construction barrier interrupting the view of its full facade.
 

Berlin, Germany. images of the former Münchener Straße 37 on view in the Bayerischer Platz U-Bahn station, with a construction barrier further "destroying" the synagogue today. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016

Berlin, Germany. Image of the memorial wall constricted by local students on the site the former Münchener Straße 37. Photo on view in the Bayerischer Platz U-Bahn station. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016

Berlin, Germany. Image of the memorial wall constricted by local students on the site the former Münchener Straße 37. Photo on view in the Bayerischer Platz U-Bahn station. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016.

Bayerischer Platz neighborhood, including Münchener Straße, is also the location of the noteworthy "Places of Remembrance," (Orte des Erinnerns) project designed by artists Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock and installed in 1993.  The memorial, which consists of 80 signs which flatly state the dates and essence of laws promulgated by the Nazis in the 1930s to curb the rights of Jews.  This project remains one of the most thought provoking Holocaust commemorative installations anywhere - if one takes the time to look.

Berlin, Germany. Bayerischer Platz and "Places of Remembrance," (Orte des Erinnerns) project designed by Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016.

ABerlin, Germany. Bayerischer Platz and "Places of Remembrance," (Orte des Erinnerns) project designed by Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016.

Berlin, Germany. Bayerischer Platz and "Places of Remembrance," (Orte des Erinnerns) project designed by Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016.

USA: Orthodox Synagogue Restored in Portsmouth, Virginia as Museum and Cultural Center

Portsmouth, Virginia. Former Chevra T'helim, now Jewish Museum and Cultural Center.
Photos: Samuel D. Gruber 2009

USA: Orthodox Synagogue Restored in Portsmouth, Virginia as Museum and Cultural Center
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) Earlier this month I had the pleasure of lecturing at the Jewish Museum and Cultural Center in Portsmouth, Virginia, housed in the newly restored former Chevra T’helim (House of Psalms) synagogue.

Chevra T’helim was founded in 1917. IN the following year, the new Orthodox congregation purchased its property at 607 Effingham Street, where it began to build a new synagogue. The result is a building that combines Old World and New. The brick exterior is fronted by a Colonial style columnar façade. Inside, the architecture and furnishings maintain a traditional Eastern European synagogue arrangement with galleries for women in three sides and a central bimah. The brick exterior is fronted by a colonial style columnar façade. Or so it seems at first but it's not as simple as that. The façade columns are much taller than one expects in a traditional Georgian/ Colonial Building, and above, in the pediment, is a Magen David. The columns are sheathed in metal; something strange to me, but that I was told was not uncommon in the South- apparently wood in this climate is susceptible to rot and insect infestation. The Magen David, however, is decorated with light bulbs, and that is something I know is uncommon everywhere.

Inside, the classical Ark breaks tradition, too; it has decorative lightbulbs along the intrados of the arch. Crowning the Ark, as in many Eastern European and American immigrant synagogues of the time, is a pair of carved lions flanking a Decalogue. But these lions are special, too. They have red eyes, lit by colored lights that flash on and off. Chrevra T’helim isn’t the only example of this love of (electric) lights. In Baltimore, the immigrant Orthodox Congregation that took over the 1876 B’nai Israel Synagogue on Lloyd Street in 1895 installed festive electric lighting on its ark, probably around 1910. Similar lights decorate the Ark at New York’s Eldridge Street Synagogue. Murray Zimiles exhibited several examples of red-eyed lions in his "Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses" exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum. One pair of lions originally from Scranton, Pennsylvania also has light bulbs for eyes. I don’t know if they flashed!

Portsmouth, Virginia. Former Chevra T'helim, interior. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber 2009

The timing may have been coincidental that the region’s oldest congregation, Temple Ohef Shalom – originally Orthodox but Reform since the mid-19th century – also laid the cornerstone for their new Temple in 1917. Temple Ohef Sholom (of which I hope to write more later) is a massive Neo-Classical building designed in tandem with an imposing Methodist Church across the street. At the time Norfolk and Portsmouth were only connected by ferry. The cultural divide between Cheva T’helim and Ohef Shalom was even greater than the geographic distance. Still, both Reform and Orthodox congregation used columnar facades – no doubt to emphasis their American spirit.

Norfolk, Virginia. Temple Ohef Sholom. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2009

Restoration of Portsmouths’s unused and deteriorating synagogue began in 2001 after intense and sometimes acrimonious negotiations among several groups seeking the site. As in Boston in the early 1990s, where at the Vilna Shul a small Orthodox congregation aged and died, leaving the future of its building unplanned, so too, in Portsmouth, where only one surviving trustee remained committed to the building. Eventually, the courts ceded control over the congregation’s cemetery to a Conservative Synagogue that has its cemetery immediately adjacent, but the independent not-for-profit Friends of Chevra T’helim was able to secure the building, with the promise to protect and preserve it. The fact that this not-for-profit citizens' group had already been formed gave it the standing to receive the building without further litigation.

The goal of the restoration project is now partially achieved: the 1918 building itself is secure, intact and restored. It can now host visitors and small events, including the lecture series to which I contributed this year. To do more, however, The Museum and Cultural Center needs more space, and the next phase of the project is to build a modest structure at the north side of the synagogue (where there is now an empty lot). This building will house an archive and exhibition space with memorabilia and historical material from Jewish families of the Tidewater Region. The new building will also house the necessary restrooms, service areas, elevator, and conservation work spaces.

At present, despite the fact that a new $50 million Jewish Community Campus has been erected on the edge of Norfolk on the way to Virginia Beach, there is no active Jewish historical center or archive for the region. The Friends of Chevra T’helim look north to what has been achieved at the Jewish Museum of Maryland in Baltimore, and also the successful state-of-the-art Jewish archive at Beth Ahabah in Richmond, Virginia, and they have high hopes.

I was tremendously impressed by the talent and energetic dedication of Minette Cooper and Zelma Riven, two of my hosts for the weekend and two of the movers and shakers in this project. It seems possible – even likely – that they can and will achieve what they set out to accomplish. Considering the cost (and the luxury of some the materials used) of the JCC Campus, the budget for the new museum and archive building is quite modest – about $1.5 million dollars. The organization has been developing creative ways to raise this money. The building has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and one option being explored is the establishment of an LLC (limited Liability Company) to actually own the building, and thus as a for-profit entity, benefit from available historic preservation tax credits.

Effingham Street is in downtown Portsmouth, an area essential to the long term cultural and economic revival of the city. Civic leaders have recognized this and have gotten behind the synagogue restoration project. Indeed, it was a secular local foundation that provided the first funds needed to restore the building’s roof when the project was just starting. Since then, the building has been included as part of Portsmouth’s “Path of History” that celebrates historic sites in the city with signage and public events.

Portsmouth, Virginia. Path of History Signage for Cheva T'helim.

Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2009

As with many urban synagogue restoration projects in the United States, Jewish organizations have been slow to get involved. As in Boston, Hartford, Tucson and Phoenix and elsewhere, some see these efforts not sufficiently Jewish, or not sufficiently Orthodox, or not sufficiently something this or something that. Federations and established synagogues see historic projects as at best irrelevant and as worst as competitive for resources, for audience and for publicity. Not surprisingly, however, once grassroots and sweat-equality restoration projects are successful, the establishment is often eager – sometimes insistently – to claim them for their own. Things are not as bad as they were twenty years ago. The success of many Jewish historical projects in more than a dozen states has proven their relevance and their popularity. But in Portsmouth, it remains to be seen whether the former Chevra T’helim synagogue will be a thorn in the side of the Tidewater Jewish Community or a jewel in its crown.

USA: Monuments to Francis Salvador, (Jewish) Hero of the American Revolution

USA: Monuments to Francis Salvador, (Jewish) Hero of the American Revolution
by Samuel D. Gruber



(ISJM) One of the thoughts that crossed my mind last Friday night as I listened to my rabbi speak about the meaning of July 4th, was the "Jewish contribution," or better, "the contribution of Jews" to the struggle. This allowed me to pull from memory some work I did when I was Research Director of the US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad.

Seven years ago, on July 4 (2002), the Commission published a report I wrote, Preliminary Survey of Sites Associated with the Lives and Deeds of Foreign-born Heroes of the American Revolution. At the time the Commission was deep in the organization of countrywide surveys of Jewish and other minority cultural sites in Central and Eastern Europe, doing a lot of very important work on a tiny budget. But someone on Capitol Hill saw the name of the Commission and thought that The Revolutionary War was an essential part of American heritage abroad, too (even if it wasn't what the legislative creators of the Commission had in mind), and asked that a list overseas sites associated with Foreign-born Heroes of the American Revolution be compiled. Though unexpected, this turned out to be an interesting task.

No such list existed, but since there was no extra funding and not much time for the work, it was very-much desk chair research - there was certainly no time or money to visit sites. We had to define some essential terms (such as "hero"), and after compiling some longs lists, we settled on a selection of individuals who contributed to the Revolution, and also collectively represented something of the diverse nation America became.

One of the people on the list was Francis Salvador (born in England, 1747), of whom at the time I had never heard. Unlike Lafayette and Kosciusko, who were heroes in their own countries as well in America, we found no markers or monuments to Salvador in the country of birth, and few in the country he adopted - except two in his home state of South Carolina. In belated celebration of July 4th (2009), I post these here (since 2002, I've made it a point when traveling to visit all the sites I can that honor the foreign-born heroes of '76).

Salvador came from a prominent Sephardi Jewish family in England. He was already a fourth generation English-Jew. His great-grandfather Joseph was the first Jewish Director of the East India Company. Francis Salvador came to America as a young man to improve his fortunes, but he became caught up in the revolutionary fervor of the time, becoming the only Jew in the colonies to serve in a revolutionary congress, and then having the dubious (but now "heroic") status of being the first Jew to be killed in the War of Independence.

As I wrote in the Commission report "Francis Salvador was an early casualty of the Revolution – slain in August 1776 in an Indian attack fomented by the British. Born in London in 1747, he moved to South Carolina where he was actively involved in the independence movement. Within a year of his arrival, at the age of 27, Salvador was elected to the General Assembly of South Carolina. In 1774, Salvador was elected as a delegate to South Carolina's revolutionary Provincial Congress, which assembled in Charleston in January 1775 to frame a bill of rights that set forth grievances against the British government. Salvador played important roles in both the first and second Provincial Congress, gaining appointments on several select commissions. One such commission was established to preserve the peace in the interior parts of South Carolina, where the English Superintendent of Indian Affairs was busily negotiating treaties with the Cherokees to induce the tribe to attack the colonists."

There is one historical marker commemorating Salvador set in Washington Park in Charleston. One has to make an effort to find it, where it is set among many memorials of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

Charleston, South Carolina. Francis Salvador Commemorative marker.
Photos: Samuel D. Gruber 2003.

The inscription on the plaque reads:

Commemorating
Francis Salvador
1747 – 1776
First Jew in South Carolina to hold public office
And
To Die for American Independence

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He came to Charles Town from his native London in 1773 to develop extensive family landholdings in the frontier district of ninety six. As a deputy to the provincial congresses of South Carolina, 1775 and 1776, he served with distinction in the creation of this state and nation, participating as a volunteer in an expedition against Indians and Tories, he was killed from ambush near the Keowee river, August 1, 1776.

Born an aristocrat, he became a democrat, an Englishman, he cast his lot with America.
True to his ancient faith, he gave his life for new hopes of human liberty and understanding.

Erected at the time of the Bicentennial celebration of the Jewish community of Charleston.

Approved by the historical commission of Charleston SC

A second marker commemorating Salvador was erected in 1960 in Greenwood, South Carolina, by members of the Jewish Community. That roadside marker can be seen here.

The inscription reads:

Francis Salvador, 1747-1776.

This young English Jew settled near Coronaca in 1774, representing Ninety Six District in the provincial congresses of 1775-1776, and died in defense of his adopted home on Aug. 1, 1776. He was the first South Carolinian of his faith to hold an elective public office and the first to die for American independence.

The marker is at the intersection of Christian Road (Old South Carolina Route 72) and Laurens Highway (U.S. 221), on the right when traveling south on Christian Road. For a map and more detail see the Waymarking website.

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