On the eve of the Nazis' rise to power 2,000 Jews lived in Würzburg, the capital of Lower Franconia about 120km South-East of Frankfurt on the banks of the River Main. It was a community of tradesmen and professionals. It was a rabbinic center and home to many Jewish communal organisations and the Jewish Teachers Seminary.
In November 1941, the first Jews from Würzburg were sent to the East. The final transport departed in June 1943. Few survived.
This is the story of the community of Würzburg
The Jewish Community of Würzburg before the World War II
Jews started to settle in Würzburg at the end of the 11th century. In the last third of the 19th century the number of Jews in Würzburg reached 2,567 Jews, who amounted to a total three percent of the city’s population. Some two thirds of the city’s Jews worked in commerce, and many others were employed in the free professions. Consequently, the Jewish community enjoyed an economic and cultural boom.
Jews of Würzburg during the Holocaust
Between 1933, when the Nazi party came to power, and 1942, some 2,300 Jews left Würzburg, among them Jews who had immigrated to the city or been deported to it from other communities in Germany. According to a Gestapo report from Würzburg, between November 1941 and June 1943, 2,063 Jews were deported. From Lower Franconia in six transports, among them the Jews of Würzburg.
Remembering the Jewish community of Würzburg
Every family represents a world unto themselves - linked forever through their shared history and their memories. The Sachs and the Hanovers are two of the many Jewish families who came from Würzburg - we see their faces, we learn their names, we discover their stories... We remember.
