Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

The Mizrachi movement also operated a group in Magdeburg and may have
possessed its own Minyan. 166 The advertised times of the religious services of the
Jüdische Vereinigung ‘Achduth’ indicate that it was an Orthodox congregation
providing all of the mandatory religious services for Orthodox Jews over the
Sabbath and festivals, in addition to daily morning services. 167 This same
congregation also informed the community in its notices of the operating times for
men and women for use of the community’s Mikvah. According to the
interviewees, these congregations were not led by rabbis but by laymen.
The majority of the interviewees could not provide details of any aspect of the
Shtiblech. One interviewee recalled that he had visited two Shtiblech and that he
remembered them in 1937 and 1938. He recalled attending one Shtibl at Purim
‘because there you could make a noise and they didn’t make much of a noise in
the Synagogen-Gemeinde!’ 168 Finally, in a vivid recollection of an incident on a
Sabbath involving a young congregant from a Shtibl, Inge-Ruth Herrmann
provides confirmation of the strict level of Orthodoxy observed by this
community, whilst simultaneously highlighting the mutual prejudice of both
groups of the Jewish community:
I had friends which were Polish and religious people. My parents had the shop
open on Saturday and on the way home from synagogue my mother had
asked me to buy some fruit. I was walking with these couple of boys and girls
and I bought the fruit and I said to one of the boys: “You know, you
should carry that for me!” And he said: “You expect me to carry anything on
Shabbes [the Sabbath]! How can you carry anything on Shabbes!” When my
parents came home on Saturday afternoon from the shop, I said to my father:
“It’s terrible that you got your shop open on Saturday. After all, we are
Jewish!” And he listened to it, and then he said: “Sit down my dear child!
Now you listen to me. Who told you that?” And I said so-and-so. And he said:
“Look, I don’t cheat anybody the whole week through. I don’t have to go
166
Jüdisches Wochenblatt für Magdeburg und Umgegend, 30. Dezember 1932, Nr.
53, 7. Jahrgang, ASGM, op. cit., p. 342.
167
Ibid.
168
M. F., op. cit., 27 June 1999.
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