Hoy

General information: First Jewish presence: 1713; peak Jewish population: 101 in 1848; Jewish population in 1933: 31
Summary: In 1833, the Jewish community of Hoya began construction on a synagogue which also accommodated a school. The Jewish school was recognized as an elementary school on May 1, 1865; by 1875, however, only seven students were enrolled there, and the institution no longer existed by the early 1920s. Although the community belonged to the provincial rabbinate in Hanover, it maintained its own cemetery in Hoyerhagen. In 1933, 31 Jews were still members of the Hoya community, to which the communities of Asendorf, Eystrup, Martfeld, Schweringen and Buecken had been affiliated. On Pogrom Night, SA men set the synagogue on fire and arrested the two community leaders and several others. Of the arrested men, seven were finally sent to Buchenwald, from where they were released several weeks (possibly two months) later. Only one local Jew had emigrated before Pogrom Night—he went to the United States, in 1937— but many left after the pogrom; one family immigrated to Bolivia. By May 17, 1939, only 24 Jews lived in Hoya. Deportations, carried out by the Nienburg Gestapo, began in 1942: in March 1942, ten Jews were deported, via Hanover, to the Warsaw ghetto; and in July 1942, nine others were sent to Theresienstadt. One Jewish woman was spared after her family doctor convinced the authorities that she could not be deported. According to a document dated November 18, 1968, 22 of the 31 Jews who had lived in Hoya in 1933 perished in the Shoah; according to a newspaper article from November 11, 2008, almost 40 Jews from Hoya and the surrounding area were deported to their deaths. The Hoyerhagen cemetery was destroyed during the Nazi period. Repairs were carried out after the Shoah and, in 1950, there were 318 gravestones in the older section and 94 in the new; by 1990, however, only 180 remained. Reported acts of vandalism took place in the cemetery in 1947, 1956-57, 1959, 1993 and 1994. A memorial was unveiled at the former synagogue site in 1996.
Author / Sources: Esther Sarah Evans
Sources: HH, PK
Located in: lower-saxony