Cronenbourg / Strasbourg is capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and official seat of the European Parliament, Strasbourg is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. Historically German-speaking also see ROSENWILLER and Cronenbourg and Barr
This industrial and cultural center has a population of 250,000. La Petite France, Strasbourg's historic neighborhood, is a serene collection of cobblestone roads and 16th-century buildings. A few 12th to 14th century tombstones preserved in the courtyard of Museum d l'Oeuvre de Notre-Dame in Strasbourg are all that remain of the medieval cemetery in Strasbourg. After 1349, land unfit for agriculture was used for cemeteries, shared by a large number of communities. Musée Alsacien: Across the river in the Alsatian Museum is an exhibit of Alsatian Jewish ritual objects and a model shtiebel (prayer room).Open daily (except Tuesdays) 12 P.M. - 6 P.M. Open Sunday, bank holidays and daily in January, February, March, July and August. 10 A.M. - 6 P.M. 23-25, Quai St-Nicholas, tel. 03.88.52.50.01, www.musees-strasbourg.org Strasbourg's old Jewish quarter, on Rue des Juifs (one of the city's oldest streets), includes the site of a 12th-century synagogue (number 30), the site of a Jewish bakery (number 17), and a 13th-century mikvah (ritual bath) at 20, rue des Charpentiers (the corner of Rue des Juifs). Number 15, constructed in 1290, is the only remaining building from this period that was inhabited by Jews. The mikvah is open only for group tours. Reservations can be made at the tourist office. [January 2008]
This eastern French city is home to one of France's largest and oldest communities of Ashkenazi Jews (about 70% of the Jewish population of 12,000, plus 3,000 in surrounding town.) A cemetery was established at the beginning of the thirteenth century with the oldest remaining epitaph is from 1213. The area around the Place de la Republique once held a Jewish cemetery. The synagogue is not mentioned until 1292, according to a May 2003 Hadassah Magazinearticle by Ben G. Frank. [January 2008]
Up to French Revolution, Jews were forbidden in villages dependent on the Evêché of Strasbourg: Barr, Bernardvillé, Blienschwiller, Goxwiller, Heiligenstein, Hohwald, Mittelbergheim, Nothalten, Reichsfeld, Saint-Pierre. Even after the Revolution, Jews never became established in these hostile villages, except Barr and one family to Saint-Pierre. They were tolerated on the condition of paying specific taxes in the belongings of the lords of Andlau. In 1784, they found about 800 Jews in these seven villages: 29 in Stotzheim, 68 in Epfig, 94 in Valff, 108 in Itterswiller, 129 in Dambach, 157 in Zellwiller, 185 in Ottrott. In 1808, their number was 930 and in 1851 of 1200, but none lived in Barr. In 1920, no more than 385 Jews remained in the countryside of Barr and Bernstein, of which 125 were in Barr, about a third of the community restarted in 1850. The census of Strasbourg went from 68 Jews in 1784 to 8000 in 1851, the villages having emptied in favor of Strasbourg. Synagogue de la Paix and Community Center at 1a rue du Grand-Rabbin-Rene Hirschler at Avenue de la Pix; Telephone 333-88-14-46-50; Web sites:contact information for the Chevrah Kaddisha; a great deal of information in French and photos;. information. [January 2008]
This strategic river port and capital of the province of Alsace is famous for pate de foie gras, in mid-eighteenth century for its fine porcelain and earthenware, and during French Revolution for the French national anthem, "La Marseillaise," composed there. The earliest evidence of Jewish presence is in 1188 with anti-Jewish persecutions connected with Third Crusade. Strasbourg paid the highest tax of all Jewish communities of the empire. Until about 1260, Jews were subject to authority of the bishop and massacred after being accused of propagating the Black Death. Isolated cases of murder also occurred at Strasburg such as in 1337 when a Jew accused of killing a little girl was burned; and the child was buried with great pomp and honored by the crowd as a martyr (Grandidier, "Nouvelles Œuvres Inédites," v. 344). Still Strasburg practically remained the city of refuge for the Jews of Alsace up to about the middle of the fourteenth century. As its commerce and industry developed, the imperial free city adjusted its relations with the Jews in a manner that, though onerous, was at least endurable. In accordance with an agreement made in 1325, the Jews occupied a quarter of their own in the city of Strasburg and had their own cemetery ("Urkundenb." ii. 394). If they could not acquire real estate, they were not compelled to submit their actions at law to any judges other than the mayor-a privilege that assured them a measure of protection, though it was doubtless costly. A certificate of protection (Schutzbrief) issued in 1338 to sixteen persons, and valid for five years cost 1,072 marks of which 1,000 were payable to the city, 60 to the king, and 12 to the bishop. As compensation for this, the Jews were permitted to engage in money-lending; the rate on loans being fixed for them at 5 or 6 percent a week, or at 43 percent per annum ("Chronique de Kœnigshoven," ed. Hegel, append. iv. 977). The degree of culture among these Jews is shown, at least relatively, by the fragments of their grave-stones that were unearthed around 1900 and by the fact that Jews of other cities attended the lectures of the rabbis of Strasburg. In a still extant a letter of the mayor of Schlettstadt to the mayor of Strasburg the latter asks to allow some of the Jews of the former place to sojourn in Strasburg, in order that they might take advantage of the teaching of the rabbis there ("Urkundenb." v. 1029). Then came that horrible "year of terro," that descended upon all Alsace and swept away most of its Jewish communities. A letter of Rudolph of Oron, bailiff of Lausanne (Nov. 15, 1348), announced to the mayor of Strasburg that certain Jews of Lausanne had confessed, under torture, that by order of and in collusion with their coreligionists of Italy, they had poisoned all the wells in the Rhine valley. It was, they said, to avenge the cruelties of King Leather-Arm that the Jews spread around this poison, which would not kill them, but would kill the Christians ("Urkundenb." v. 164-210). In December 1348, the city council of Obernai (Enheim) notified that of Strasburg that they had tortured five Jews, arrested at the last large fair at Speyer, and that these had admitted their participation in this crime("Urkundenb." v. 177). On Dec. 29, the council of Colmar also announced that a certain Hegmann, one of the Jews under its protection, under torture, had accused Jacob, the cantor of the synagogue of Strasburg, of having sent him the poison which he put in the wells of Colmar: one of his cousins, a woman named Bela, had similarly poisoned the wells of Ammerschweier. Notwithstanding these accusations, the chief magistrates, influenced no doubt as much by self-interest as by humanity, continued to protect the Jewish community of their city. But a general uprising, instigated by the civic magnates and the neighboring nobles-possibly also by the clergy itself-broke out at Strasburg in February, 1349. On February 14, 1349 two thousand Jews were burned en masse in their own cemetery; others escaped by accepting baptism. September 12, 1349, the town pardoned the massacre and plundering possessions. Until the French Revolution, two calls upon a horn, played nightly, perpetuated memory of supposed treason of Jews. The town decides to prohibit Jews from settling there for 100 years, although some managed to get permission with heavily levied fees. At this time barely 2,000 Jews had settled dwelling-places in the city that contained, at most, 15,000 or 20,000 inhabitants all told. A small number who had abjured their faith, together with some children, were saved, the latter being snatched from the flames. In 1369 Jews were again admitted to Strasburg ("Urkundenb." v. 715). An ordinance (Judenordnung) concerning them, dated May 14, 1375, refers to the presence of a dozen families ("Urkundenb." v. 880); another, issued in 1383, directs that they be treated and protected as other citizens ("Urkundenb." vi. 89); and a short time afterward, on the recommendation of the Count of Öttinger, sixteen families were admitted from Ulm, Bretten, Breisach, Wesel, and Mosheim ("Urkundenb." vi. 95). In 1384 the mayor appointed a Jew, Maître Gutleben, as physician, with a salary of three hundred crowns (about $360 nominal) per annum. Although the community was not large, it must have been rich, as in 1385 the Count Palatine Robert alone owed the Jews of Strasburg the sum of 15,400 fl. ($7,700 nominal; see "Urkundenb." vi. 143). Undoubtedly their wealth was a constant source of menace to them; for King Wenceslaus of Germany (Feb. 6, 1386) ordered the municipality to enforce against the Jews sumptuary laws in matters of dress, and to require them to resume the yellow shoes and sugar-loaf hats formerly worn by them ("Urkundenb." vi. 162; see Badge). The same year the mayor fined them 20,000 fl. ($10,000). In 1387, delegates from the Rhenish cities assembled at Speyer (where in 1385 they had considered the Jewish question) and adopted resolutions inimical to the Jews. On the demand of the delegates from Strasburg it was resolved that neither male nor female Christians be allowed to act as domestic servants or wet-nurses in Jewish families, under penalty of being branded on the forehead ("Urkundenb." vi. 204). During this year King Wenceslaus placed under the ban all Jews of Colmar, Schlettstadt, and Hagenau who refused to pay the taxes he demanded for their protection, and even included three imperial cities that had retained for themselves such Jewish contributions ("Urkundenb." vi. 194). In the month of June a Jew of Italian or French origin (Mamelot der Morschele, der Walch) chanced to enter the cathedral of Strasburg; and though he had done nothing objectionable, he was beaten by the verger, expelled, and threatened with drowning if he should reenter the city ("Urkundenb." vi. 198). The Jews were a source of considerable revenue to the city treasury. They numbered at that time about twenty families, who paid an annual tax of 727 fl. ($365.50 nominal); and the richest one among them, called in the records "der ryche Sigmund," paid 203 fl. ($101.59; see "Urkundenb." vi. 211). In the autumn a new and much graver peril threatened the Alsatian Jews. A weaver of Bischheim, named Lauwelin, was accused of having offered his own child to the Jews of Strasburg for a ritual sacrifice, and-doubtless under torture-was convicted of the crime; and as a punishment his eyes were put out ("Urkundenb." vi. 207). By the beginning of the year 1388 the entire Jewish community was expelled and their real estate confiscated-a condition which was maintained until the French Revolution of 1793. Another expulsion occurred in 1388 "forever" but, they manage to come back paying expensive tolls. After a while, each Jew was dogged by a municipal servant to see everything they did. A Jew staying the night had to pay double tax. Jews stopped at gates of town were interrogated and searched. In 1392 the scrolls and the tables of the Law belonging to the synagogue were still preserved in Strasburg ("Chronique de Kœnigshoven," pp. 975-986). Colmar was also the scene of acts of violence which did not end so brutally. Wenceslaus annulled all the claims of the Jews of that city against their Christian debtors in 1392 (Mossmann, "Juifs de Colmar," p. 8). In 1397 another story of poisoned wells was circulated in Upper Alsace through a certain Jew of Ribeauville, whose confessions implicated fresh victims (Schreiber, "Freiburger Urkundenb." ii. 108). The fifteenth century was a period of comparativecalm for the Jews of Alsace. During that period they were the victims of incessant chicanery rather than actual persecution, except in the later decades of the century when acts of violence were renewed (1476-77), at the commencement of the general agitation produced by the Burgundian wars between Louis XI. and Charles the Bold. The opening of the sixteenth century marked a revival of economic and religious antipathy toward the Jews of Alsace. Driven from the city, the Jews dwelt in the villages surrounding Colmar and continued to do business with its citizens: they were then prohibited from depositing their wares with Christians. In order to rid himself of his neighbors, the mayor obtained permission from Charles V. to forbid their entrance into the city (April 25, 1541). This did not hinder the imperial chancellery from renewing, on May 24, 1541, at the request of R. Josel of Rosheim, all the privileges enjoyed by the Colmar Jews. R. Josel exercised, though unofficially, the functions of collector of the customs and protector of the Jews of Alsace. These latter were far from being as numerous then as they were one or two centuries later. A detailed census ordered by the regency of Ensisheim showed only 52 families in the whole of Austrian Alsace; and in 1574 they were expelled from the country. Then there began between the city of Colmar and its Jewish inhabitants a struggle for the favor of the imperial chancellery-a struggle marked for its corrupt influence, and which, after continuing for several years, ended in 1549 disadvantageously for the Jews. From that time until its union with France, Colmar became the most important and the most anti-Semitic city of Upper Alsace. So strong was this sentiment in 1622 that the mayor positively refused the bishop of Strasburg, and through him the archduke Leopold of Austria, permission for one of his subjects, a Jewish horse-dealer named Kossmann of Wettolsheim, to enter the city; and it was only in 1691 that Jews were again allowed to set foot in Colmar ("Kaufhauschronik," ed. Waltz, p. 58). In the other cities similar conditions prevailed. In 1517 the mayor of Landau consented to admit ten Jewish families to the city on the payment of 400 fl. ($200) annually; but in 1525 he decided to expel them, and finally did so, although opposed by the Elector Palatine. At Obernai the chief bailiff, Jacques de Morimont, forbade Jews to enter the city except on market-days ("Alsatia Illustrata," v. 270). At Weissenburg an imperial edict declared void the agreements which the city had entered into with the Jews (ib. v. 247); while at Schlettstadt, after having greatly restricted the business of the Jews, under an imperial edict issued Feb. 24, 1521, the mayor availed himself of a suit for the recovery of a debt, brought by the Jews against some of the citizens, as a pretext for their total expulsion in 1529 (Güny, op. cit. p. 207). In the seventeenth century a noteworthy immigration of Jews into Alsace began, caused mainly by the Thirty Years' War. They came from the right bank of the Rhine, where the authorities were powerless to control or impede them. At that time military rule superseded civil authority everywhere; and both the chiefs of the various factions and those of the army availed themselves of the keen commercial instinct of the Jews to equip their cavalry and to replenish their commissariats. To the soldiers they were indispensable as agents for the disposal of pillage. From the beginning of the Thirty Years' War Jews settled on the lands of the bishopric of Strasburg, in the county of Hanau-Lichtenberg, on the estate of the lords of Ribeaupierre, and in other cities, especially at Hagenau. Desiring to augment their revenues, the nobles of the vicinity of Lower Alsace sold to the Jews the right to settle in the villages; for there they preferred to dwell. Denizens of the cities in the Middle Ages, the Jews of Alsace, driven by irresistible force to the country districts in the seventeenth century, became a rural class with no taste for agricultural pursuits, and remained such even in the eighteenth century. By the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Austria ceded her possessions in Alsace to France, and in 1681 Louis XIV took possession of Strasburg. In the first general census of the "Jewish nation" of Alsace, taken in 1689 by order of Intendant Jacques de la Grange, a total for the whole province of 525 Jewish families is given. These, allowing at least five persons to each family, would represent about 2,600 souls. Of this number, 391 families belonged to Lower Alsace, 134 to Upper Alsace and to the Sundgau. The urban Jewish population was insignificant. The entire Jewish population was evacuated to southwest France when World War II broke out (September 1939). In Strasbourg proper, Nazis set fire to the synagogue erected in 1898 and systematically destroyed and scattered all traces of the structure. Strasbourg Jews played major role in education, welfare, sanitation, and every type of resistance. The Jewish population was about 10,000 in Strasbourg on the eve of World War II. Eight thousand returned after liberation, 1,000 died in concentration camps, and another 1,000 settled elsewhere. Strasbourg Jewry was one of most active communities on continent of Europe after World War II. University of Strasbourg had a chair of Jewish Studies. Synagogue of Peace inaugurated in 1958 includes a large community center, which has often been site of national and international Jewish congresses. Anti-Semitism of the population expressed by establishing organizations to prevent return of Jewish property (confiscated in 1940) to the owners and later to prevent erection of a synagogue on city land. A cemetery exists. In 2004, an attack at the Brumath cemetery, ten miles north of Strasbourg in Alsace, saw racist slogans daubed and over one hundred gravestones defaced on 31 October. [January 2008]
JEWISH CEMETERY:
The Jewish cemetery in Cronenbourg is the central cemetery of the Jewish community of Strasbourg to the present. After the 1801 landscaped cemetery in Koenigshoffen Anfang at the beginning of the 20th century with about 4,000 graves was fully occupied, so land was acquired for the installation of a new cemetery in Cronenbourg. See Article in the "Frankfurter Israelitisches Familienblatt" by February 1, 1907: "Strasbourg in Alsace. By sovereign Decree the establishment of a Jewish cemetery in the spell of the city of Strasbourg, as in the public benefit lying under municipal Königshofen - Crown Castle, next to the main cemetery, an urgent need has been declared".
The new cemetery was inaugurated in October 1910 . About the dedication of the cemetery , two reports are available:
| The "Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums" reported in its issue of October 21, 1910: "Strasbourg u.E., October 14." The local Jewish community has inaugurated its new cemetery in Crown Castle. Rabbi URY gave the dedication speech, in which he came to speak on the history of the cemetery. After him, Rabbi Dr. Marx was again serious words to the numerous assembled audience as they are appropriate to the ceremonial site of death. The plants are very spacious. There is room for 3,200 adults and 300 children. The fenced part covers only the half of the whole complex and will be enough from about 30 to 40 years.The entrance hall is very practical and simple. The Leichenwaschhalle reside in the Hall of the page the morgue. As well, the great Hall is spacious enough to accommodate 400 people. There is an apartment for the cemetery administrator. The entire worthy investment, a real cemetery art power the architects Wolf and Falk, all honor the builders." |
| Report in the "Frankfurter Israelitisches Familienblatt" by October 14, 1910: "Strasbourg. 250 People had for the inauguration of the new cemetery, which is located in the Kronenburger area, found. It said Chief Rabbi Dr. URY and Rabbi Dr. Marx. A visit took place after the opening act. A new feature is the establishment of that as a replacement for the Leichenwärter rings on the fingers are inserted the Dürrenmatt corpses, which are used with a Bell in connection, so that at the slightest movement of any apparent dead the watchman is alerted immediately. An innovation is made of marble, rotating on cranks washing stretcher." |
1911 occupation of this new cemetery. On April 12, 2002, the cemetery was desecrated, where numerous tombstones with swastikas were sprayed. 3 route d ' oberhausbergen
The cemetery of the community Adath Israel: In the 19th century, an Orthodox cemetery, Adath Israel was created on today's Rue Jean-Pierre Clause at the -Cronenbourg,, 5 rue Jean-Pierre Clause (the Adath Israel cemetery) Link to the Google maps (the green arrow marks the location of the cemetery)
photos. [October 2013]