Lemfoerde
General information: First Jewish presence: 1690; peak Jewish population: 67 in 1852 (total population: 892); Jewish population in 1933: unknown
Summary: The earliest record of a Jewish presence in Lemfoerde, dated
1690, mentions one Levi Heidemann. Jews conducted
services in a prayer room until 1817, when the community
purchased a building on Hauptstrasse and converted the
structure into a synagogue and school; behind the synagogue,
in a separate building, the community built a mikveh. The
cemetery, located on land purchased in 1731 (at Quernheim)
was used until 1934. We also know that the community, with
which, beginning in 1875, the Jews of Deibergen, Holden,
Hunteberg and Wehdem were affiliated, maintained an
elementary school between 1853 and 1912.
On Pogrom Night, SA men ransacked the synagogue
and burned its contents in the marketplace; the synagogue’s
inscription, “My house is a house of prayer for all peoples,”
was also destroyed. A former resident of Lemfoerde, then
living in Bassum, committed suicide after Nazis destroyed
her home and arrested her husband,
In all, 12 Lemfoerde Jews perished in Auschwitz, eight
in Warsaw, seven in Theresienstadt, three in Riga, two in
Trostinec Maly, one in Sobibor and three in combat. We also
know that one local Jew died on the transport to Auschwitz,
and that another was murdered in Minsk in July 1942.
After the Shoah, silver ritual objects from the synagogue—
the synagogue is now privately owned—were discovered
in the attic of the Martin Luther Church. The cemetery,
which contains a mass grave (marked by a memorial stone)
of Russian slave laborers, also houses graves that were moved
there from Diepholz in 1942.
Author / Sources: Esther Sarah Evans
Sources: JGNB1, PK, YV
www.juedische-geschichte-diepholz.de/07lemfoerde.htm
Sources: JGNB1, PK, YV
www.juedische-geschichte-diepholz.de/07lemfoerde.htm
Located in: lower-saxony