Memorial plaque on Synagogenstraße
Integration, exclusion & murder of the Jewish population
Information point:
- Memorial plaque on Synagogenstraße
Gradual integration in the 19th century
Jews have settled in the Rhineland since Roman times. In the 13th century, traces of Jewish settlement can also be found in the northern and western Sauerland are detectable. After the Thirty Years' War, there was a stronger Jewish settlement in the Duchy Westfalen; Jews are first mentioned in documents in Schmallenberg - Two Jewish families are documented here in 1738 and three by 1803.
After 1808, the Jews of Schmallenberg also adopted German surnames (due to a law passed by the Hessian sovereign at the time). Their legal situation did not initially improve after 1815: they needed special permits to settle and marry. Under Prussian rule, they were granted civil (not yet civic) rights in 1841. In the Westphalian Parliament, Judaism was still considered incompatible with the principles of a Christian state.
The Prussian constitution of 31 January 1850 finally granted all Prussians civil and civic rights, regardless of their religious denomination. However, they were not allowed to hold state offices that were associated with the practice of religion (education, judiciary). In 1869, the political and legal equality of all citizens was established regardless of religious denomination and adopted as imperial law with the founding of the German Empire.
In Schmallenberg the numerical ratio of Jews and Christians did not change significantly from 1800 to 1933: in 1818, there were Schmallenberg 23 Jews out of a total population of 863 (2.6%). In 1855 there were 27 out of 1,032 (2.7%), in 1900 45 out of 1,690 (2.6%), in 1932 52 out of 2,334 (2.2%). The Protestant population of Schmallenberg was also a minority throughout this period, almost always smaller than that of the Jews.
Excluded from practicing guild trades, Jews were mainly engaged in trade and - due to their religious slaughtering regulations - often worked as butchers and cattle dealers. At the beginning of the Prussian era, the Jews of Schmallenberg worked exclusively as butchers and in trade. According to a directory from 1843, Moses Stern and Emanuel Bamberger traded in textiles and hardware. In 1867, the brothers Michael and Simon Stern founded a wool yarn spinning mill and expanded it into a knitwear factory. This remained in family ownership until 1938. Several members of the Stern family emigrated to England. One of them became the "stocking king" there; Alfred Stern secured orders for the company FALKE after 1910. The Jews had been well integrated into society since around 1860. Schmallenberg In 1910, Max Frankenthal was the first Jewish citizen to become vice king of the marksmen's club.
Persecution and murder by the National Socialists
When the National Socialists seized power in 1933, persecution and harassment began. The approximately 60 Jewish fellow citizens were increasingly ostracized and persecuted. Police officers spied on the synagogue, the adults were excluded from political rights, the children from official celebrations and, from 1938, from school lessons. The synagogue was set on fire in the November pogrom. Some of the homes of Jewish residents were vandalized and destroyed, all Jewish men were arrested and in some cases mistreated.
By the end of September 1938, the cattle dealers and sales representatives had already lost their business licenses. After the pogrom, the Stern family had to sell or liquidate their textile businesses in Germany. Some family members managed to flee to England. After negotiations with several interested parties, the factory with around 120 employees was transferred to Arthur Stern's school friend Franz FALKE. From 1939, the Jewish men who had become unemployed as a result of the "Aryanization" were obliged to perform forced labour. The Jewish inhabitants of Schmallenberg had to give up their homes and move into the "Jewish houses" Weststraße 1, where the Jewish school was also housed until 1941, and Weststraße 30. The first deportation of Jews from Schmallenberg took place on December 11, 1941 from Duisburg and Düsseldorf to the ghetto in Riga (Latvia). On April 28, 1942, the deportations of Schmallenberg Jews began to Dortmund and from there to ghettos and extermination camps, where the majority were murdered. 1943 was Schmallenberg "free of Jews".
Commemoration
After the war, a few Jewish concentration camp prisoners returned, including Hans Frankenthal, who wrote down his story in his autobiography "Verweigerte Rückkehr" (Refused Return) in 1990. In 1988, on the initiative of Hans Frankenthal, a memorial plaque was erected on the site of the former synagogue for the 36 Jews murdered by the National Socialists in the concentration camps. As a testimony to history, the Jewish cemetery was entered in the city's list of monuments in October 2004. Schmallenberg list of monuments.
36 Stolpersteine also commemorate the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
Use the following link to discover the Stolpersteine throughout NRW and find out the life stories behind the stones.
(Also available for download as an app)
Hans Frankenthal was born 15.6.1926 in Schmallenberg the younger son of Adele Meyer and Max Frankenthal. His father Max (1883-1943) ran a cattle business with his brothers Julius, Sally and Josef, while his fifth brother Emil worked in the associated butcher's shop. Max was responsible for bookkeeping and accounting and was regarded as the "head" of the business. In 1910, he became the first Jewish vice-king of Schmallenberg. Parents Max and Adele married in 1924; their eldest son, Ernst, was born in the same year. In 1927, the family moved into their own house at Obringhauser Straße 10 (now 14).
During the pogrom on November 10, 1938, the father Max was arrested and taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp; the 15-year-old brother Ernst was taken into "protective custody" for five days on November 11, 1938. As the synagogue had been destroyed during the progrom night in Schmallenberg had been destroyed, Adele and Max Frankenstein initially made their house available for the service; Hans celebrated his bar mitzvah there in June 1939. Shortly afterwards, the town Schmallenberg took possession of the Frankenthal house in the course of "Aryanization"; the family had to move to the "Jews' house" Weststraße 30. Hans had already been expelled from the Catholic school in 1938. His father sent Hans and Ernst to Dortmund to train as locksmiths in preparation for their emigration to Palestine; however, they were quickly conscripted into forced labor and the emigration did not take place.
On February 28, 1943, Max and Adele and their sons Ernst and Hans were arrested by the Gestapo. A deportation train took them from Dortmund to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. There, Max and Adele were selected as "unfit for work" and immediately sent to the gas chamber and murdered. Ernst and Hans were sent to the Auschwitz III - Monowitz labor camp (IG Farben's Buna works). Both brothers survived the terrible years in various concentration camps as forced laborers under unimaginable conditions. Medical experiments were carried out on Hans' teeth. On January 18, 1945, the prisoners from Auschwitz-Monowitz were sent on a death march to the west. They were sent to the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp and were used in the production of V2 rockets. In April, he and his brother were transported to Theresienstadt, where the brothers were liberated by the Red Army on May 2. In July 1945 they returned to Schmallenberg in July 1945. They both lived in their parents' house in Obringhauser Straße again. The brothers initially only received their parents' house back for use and not as property: among other things, the city initially wanted to be reimbursed for the ridiculously low price at which it had bought the house from the Frankenthals in 1939. It was not until 1950 that the brothers became half owners of their parents' house.
Hans married Anni Labe from Berlar, Kreis Meschede (+22.09.1926, Catholic). They had three children: Adelheid (*19.02.1950), Hans-Dieter (15.12.1952) and Anita (*19.02.1954). The children were brought up as Catholics. Hans ran a livestock business again and ran a butcher's shop until the 1970s. He was supported by his wife. In 1976, Hans and Anni decided to divorce.
The two brothers reacted very differently to the Schmallenbergers' behavior after their return. While Ernst remained silent for decades, Hans spoke about the injustice he had suffered, the almost daily deaths and the unjust system, but was met with a great deal of incomprehension and disbelief from his fellow citizens. Like many Germans after 1945, many people in Schmallenberg repressed the persecution and extermination of the Jews from their consciousness: in the face of the Holocaust, there was a mixture of not wanting to admit it, ignorance, obtuseness and looking away, in which old anti-Semitism also flashed up at times.
At the age of 19, Hans returned to the city he considered his hometown and found the alleged ignorance of his old neighbors and acquaintances alienating and dishonest; he felt that not wanting to acknowledge his reports was another injustice. He quickly reacted aggressively and dismissively to the authorities and their representatives, often the same as before 1945. He also became increasingly silent and adapted: in 1958, he became vice king of the shooting club.
It was not until the 1980s that he began to talk about his terrible experiences again and now also began to publish. He became involved in the regional association of Jewish communities in Westphalia, as a representative of the Jewish cemeteries in Westfalen and on the board of the German Auschwitz Committee. In the 1990s, he also appeared several times at shareholders' meetings of the I.G. Farben liquidation company, where he described his experiences and demanded compensation for former forced laborers. In 1999, his autobiography was published under the title "Verweigerte Rückkehr. Experiences after the murder of the Jews".
Hans Frankenthal died on December 22, 1999 in Dortmund and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Eilpe.