Once upon a time there was a synagogue. It was the largest in Northern Europe. Up to 1,200 faithful could pray there. It was located in Hamburg, in Grindel Viertel, a neighborhood where Jewish life was so vibrant that it was known as little Jerusalem. Then came the Nazis, with their legacy of death and destruction. On the night of the pogrom of 1938 the temple was attacked and set on fire by Hitler’s henchmen, a year later the surviving Jews had to have the last remains removed.
Eighty-three years later, the Hamburg Jewish community wants to rebuild how it was and where was the Great Synagogue on the former Bornplatz, now renamed Joseph Carlebach square in memory of a rabbi deported and killed by the Nazis together with his family. But what was wanted as a qualitative leap in the reconstruction of the Jewish identity and in the reconciliation of the city with its history, has become an explosive and lacerating theme, which splits the Israelite community within itself. a debate that touches on Jewish life and the fight against anti-Semitism, the memory of the Shoah and the future, the power of symbols and, last but not least, the function of architecture.
It all started in October 2019, a few weeks after the attack at the synagogue in Halle, when a young neo-Nazi killed two people, but luckily he was unable to enter the temple, at that moment full of faithful. Chance alone avoided a mass slaughter. The shock was enormous in the whole country, where for years attacks and violence against Jews have continued to increase, to the point that even the federal authority in charge of combating anti-Semitism has advised the Israelites not to walk around with the kippah.
The idea of rebuilding the building was launched by the Chief Rabbi of the Land of Hamburg, Shlomo Bistritzky. A signal must be given. We must restore Jewish life to its normalcy and its place in the life of the city, explains the rabbi, who together with the head of the community Philipp Stricharz proposed to revive a certified copy of the ancient synagogue, built in 1906, on the same space, now empty, where a mosaic of stones recalls the plant. The project went ahead, supported by a unanimous vote of the Hamburg City Council and supported by the commitment of the Bundestag to co-finance it with 65 million euros if the Hamburg Senate also undertakes to allocate the same amount. In addition, the federal government has already made € 600,000 available for a feasibility study, which is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
But not the whole Jewish community, both in Hamburg and abroad, welcomed the project of the new synagogue. Leading the dissent front above all Miriam Rrup, today director of the Moses Mendelssohn Center for Euro-Jewish Studies in Potsdam, after having led the Institute for the History of German Jews in Hamburg until last year. Rrup dubbed the reconstruction plans as historical revisionism. He fears that redoing the old temple as it was, in addition to erasing the place of remembrance that today has become the square, will be interpreted as the end word on the memory of the Holocaust, a farewell to the culture of remembrance and not least a renunciation of the critical front with the history that also belongs to architecture.
a position also shared by a legendary figure of the Jewish community Hamburger like Esther Bjarano, 96, the woman who survived Auschwitz because she played the accordion and who still carries her memory rap around the schools of Europe today: I don’t need a new synagogue to feel comfortable at Hamburg. History is not forgotten. If they rebuilt the temple as it was, it would seem that nothing has happened, that everything is fine. That would be the wrong signal, he tells me on the phone from his home in Hamburg.
Last December Rrup, together with other historians and experts, has published a document with eleven critical points of the project of the new synagogue, asking to open a new and wider debate on its opportunity: The reconstruction would be particularly problematic since it would make the result of the criminal actions invisible and thus more difficult to remember. The document cites other examples of new synagogues built in the last twenty years, such as those of Munich and Dresden, where contemporary buildings demonstrate how it is possible to translate the needs of the Jewish community into an architecture in step with the times.
In December the controversy also acquired an international dimension, with the signing by 45 Israeli academics and personalities of a protest petition, asking to leave the current mosaic of stones intact as a place of remembrance: Instead of spending so much money on a showcase of Judaism, it would be better to allocate the sum to targeted projects for the development and promotion of Jewish culture and traditions. Among the signatories, the former Israeli ambassador to Germany, Avi Primor and the artist Micha Ullman.
Strong with the support of the majority of the Jewish community and of the German authorities, Bistritzky and Stricharz go on. But the criticisms do not seem to have left them indifferent. At the point where we are – says the latter – no longer if, but how the synagogue will be rebuilt. Some attacks are over the top, like wanting to erase the past. Of course, a reconstruction cannot make us forget what has been done to us. This is very clear to us. The head of the community hopes that in five, at most eight years, the golden dome of Bornplatzsynagoge will shine again: There will also be a school, cafes, a documentation center on Jewish culture. Our aim is to show that the Jews did not fall like a UFO in Germany, but that our historic home here and we belong to this place.
Esther Bejarano remains skeptical. We all live together in Hamburg, many people of different religions. Instead of a big new synagogue I would like to have a place to get everyone together and talk. This would be a great contribution to the fight against anti-Semitism.
April 23, 2021 (change April 23, 2021 | 21:15)
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