Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

Not surprisingly, the social element arising from religious events was also of
much importance to congregants and the synagogue’s importance only increased
as the years progressed, due to the disappearance of Jewish public space. Gisela
Kent recalled this factor. She recollected her Bat Mitzvah in 1935:
In Magdeburg girls had to be aged fifteen. There were about five or six girls
together. It was held in the synagogue and a new dress was purchased; and a
small party was held afterward. No one came from out of town as my family
was very small. Only the family in Magdeburg attended. 162 We didn’t have
much money for big events; it was a family celebration. 163
Importantly, all these events were celebrated with vigour, yet in all of the oral
history there exists an underlying sadness at the reality of what was happening
outside the synagogue and of the somewhat artificial, yet necessary world, that
they had been forced to create. Even inside the synagogue the reality could not be
escaped, commented Hemmi Freeman:
The time came even when ladies were sitting down below; they had a
beautiful gallery. One by one people had already left. So, to make it more
homely, the ladies were sitting downstairs in a separate block or something
like that. 164
Oral history concurs that all life-cycle events continued as the synagogue
attempted to fulfil the needs of its congregants. For teenagers at that time, the
synagogue was of great significance to them, both physically and psychologically,
regardless of their attitude to religion. It came to form the basis of their emerging
identity as Jews and not as Germans of the Jewish faith.
Other than the confirmation of the physical existence of the two Shtiblech, the
Betverein ‘Ahawas Reim’ and the Jüdische Vereinigung ‘Achduth’ and the
possibility of the existence of a third Shtibl, 165 little more is known about them.
162 Kent, op. cit., 5 January 1998.
163 Kent, op. cit., 12 January 1998.
164 H. Freeman, op. cit., 3 June 1998.
165 Kent, op. cit., 5 January 1998.
62