Jewish life in Wuppertal- Past, Present, Future

							                               Jewish life in Wuppertal

Encouraged by their history teacher Ulrich Grote, a group of Wuppertal school students
started working with the meeting place “Alte Synagoge”. The students wanted to point out
that Jewish life in Wuppertal existed in the past and still exists or, put it in that way, exists
again.
In 1999 the students opened an exhibition in the “Alte Synagoge” on “Arisierung”
(arianising?) and boycott of Jewish life and possessions n Wuppertal. For the opening
ceremony Dr. Hilde Rohlen-Wohlgemuth, whose father was the owner of one of the largest
department stores in Wuppertal, was the guest of honor.
In 2000 the group opened an exhibition on the topic “Kindertransporte”. These transports
allowed children of Jewish families to leave Germany. For this second exhibition “Kinder”
who had been able to escape the Nazi-Regime with the so-called “Kindertransporte” spent
some days in their native town . Out of these visits and interviews plus personal photographs
and documents the exhibition could be created.
In addition to the exhibitions an essay appeared on the tragic event of the so-called
“Reichskristallnacht” in Wuppertal in a school’s periodical.




Arisierung in Wuppertal- an example
   1) Foundation and Career of the enterprise “Gebrüder Kaufmann”
When the brothers Moritz and Bernhard Heimann decided to build up their own department
store, Elberfeld (a borough of Wuppertal) was said to be a growing and living commercial
centre. Those reasons were the base on which the brothers decided to found their company.
The Jewish brothers travelled from 1871 onwards throughout the country to go round other
department stores. On one of their journeys they met the brothers Kaufmann, who had an
department store in Bochum. But they wanted to move to Hannover. The money from selling
their store sank into the Heimann’s department store. Therefore they named it after the
Kaufmann brothers. All four of them signed a start up contract in October 1894.
On march 7th of 1895 the department store “Gebrüder Kaufmann” opened for the public.
Soon, the store expanded and the Heimanns started to buy the houses and plots of land around
their store. Around 1900, the third Heimann brother joined the company. In 1914 the store
reached its peak.
After World War I, and the scarcity of goods that came along with this war, the trade in the
department store started to flourish again. There were days when the staff was not able to
serve the mass of customers that poured into the store. But by the time of the great inflation
new problems occurred: although the clients wanted to invest their money into goods, the
store was an “open” corporation and the Heimanns were held responsible for the financial
debts (of the business. In 1931 they had reached their all-time low .


   2) Service and advertising
For making good sales it is not enough to sell goods of good quality on an average price level,
further one needs good personnel that is faithful and has good skills. This goes for the
Heimanns even more than for any other store owner. They wanted to give the customers a
feeling of being served by a skilled staff with love and passion. Most of the personnel worked
from first to last for the Heimanns. Those faithful employees where the fundament on which
the whole company was based.
Around 1900 the Heimann brothers had more than 100 employees. Only a small part was
Jewish.
The Heimanns had a special service for their best customers. Because the customers were
used to their personal salesmen (or women) they insisted on waiting for them. For this reason
some chairs were placed in a part of the store where the clients could take a rest to wait for
their salesman while Hermann Heimann entertained them.
The comfort of the staff was a big topic for the brothers. So they erected bathrooms where the
employees could take baths and showers which was, due to the fact that not everybody had
private bathrooms at home these days, a big opportunity. In their spare time the Heimanns and
their families gave parties for the employees and from the 20s on, a “Gebrüder Heimann”
sports club was founded. The employees were aware of the good working conditions and
replied with loyalty.
The Heimanns also knew that an important part to start up an successful company was to
invest in advertising. Therefore they used every opportunity to represent their department
store in ads. They had special sales for every occasion. Soon, their advertisings in the
Wuppertal newspapers became a instance . While in their early days ads were only in written
form, the Heimanns soon started using pictures of the store for representation. Even the
company’s car carried an illuminating sign on its roof. In these days a sensation! Together
with other leading Wuppertal companies, events like fashion shows were mounted. Leading
the enterprise in this modern way was one of the reasons for the big success of the Heimann
brothers.
   3) The Nazi-Regime and the company’s liquidation
On April 1st 1933 was the first official boycott day. Two SA men were placed in front of the
main entrance of the “Gebrüder Kaufmann” building to prevent people from shopping in the
Jewish store. On this day a part of the customers came to the store to show their loyalty and
faithfulness towards the Heimann brothers and their staff. But the store stayed closed this day.
The next day the occupation ended. But the whole procedure should to be repeated later in an
even more intense way.
In the following time the state of the company deteriorated. A lot of the government officials
could not take the risk to be seen in the Jewish store. It could have cost them their jobs. And
no one could afford that in a time where the unemployment rates increased to its peak. Often
customers, who had already bought something in the store got caught by the Nazis and had to
give their goods back. The following losses stroke the company very hard and the Heimanns
had only two possibilities: firing some employees or diminishing the personnel’s salary. The
employees accepted the diminishing without hesitating.
Although his daughter Hilde Rohlen-Wohlgemuth begged her father Bernhard to sell the store
and leave Germany he insisted on keeping the company. Even local newspapers discussed the
company’s problems and the banks agreed to waive the debts. Nobody seemed to be
interested in the loss of the department store “Gebrüder Kaufmann”. Nobody - but the Nazis.
Finally happened what already had been predicted: the company’s liquidation. Moritz and
Bernhard (Hermann died in 1933) sold parts of their property to neighbours. By the end of
summer in 1935 the sale-out took place.
On January 18th the company’s liquidation was made official.
Bernhard started sell goods from door to door. But in 1938 even this last possibility to earn
his and his wife’s living was taken away from Bernhard. Due to the implementation of the
“Nürnberger Rassengesetze” Jews were not allowed to work anymore. But fate was on his
side and allowed Bernhard to die in his own bed in fall 1941. His wife, Claire, was deported
to Izbica, a concentration camp, in April 1942 where she died.


Kindertransporte
The story behind the so called “Kindertransporte” is almost unbelievable. Ten thousands
children were allowed to leave Germany to England, the States and Australia where they were
welcomed in helpful families.
After World war II some of the children could re-unite with their parents, who they had to
leave behind in Germany. But after the farewell on the railway station many of them should
never see their parents again– like Eva Wolfson. Before World War II her name was Eva
Goldmann and she used to live in the Adolf-Hitler-Street in Wuppertal. But she had to leave
her home for a new and strange country that she did not know, where a language was spoken
she did not speak.
In July 1939 14-year-old Eva took the train to the Netherlands with thousands of other Jewish
children. On the station an unforgettable scene took place. Crying children, crying parents -
and nobody knew that it could be the last time they would see each other.
Eva’s parents wanted to escape to the States and let Eva follow when they would have found a
flat. But on the day they escaped to the Netherlands, the Nazis occupied it and they were
deported to the concentration camp Westerborg where they died one month before the allied
troops set the camp free.
Eva, in the meantime, lived in England in a boarding school which took care for the refugee
children. But the children were badly treated there and so Eva was glad when she could stay
the summer with the Grigsby family in London. She became friends with the family for a long
time. But by the end of summer she had to return to her boarding school. Soon, she dropped
out of school, without her parent’s knowledge, and when, by the end of World War II, she
finally told them in a letter that she had left school to become a maid to earn her own money,
the letter came back – unanswered.
After the war Eva went to New York. There she met her future husband Conrad Wolfson, a
famous broadway-actor.
When Eva Wolfson and her husband visited Wuppertal in 2000, it was Eva’s second return to
her old hometown. Still, she was moved to see that it is necessary to protect Jewish buildings
by the police to avoid attacks. To her, this is a sign that Jews still are not as accepted in
German culture as they are in other parts of the world, for example the States.
During her visit she spoke to a class of the Wuppertal Carl-Fuhlrott-Gymnasium. The last
thing she told the students was this:
“The thing why I really enjoy talking to you is this: you are not guilty for things your parents
or grandparents did. And now your task is to let something like the Holocaust never happen
again. Because if it happened again we would not have learned a single thing from the past.”


November 9th 1938 – The so-called “Reichskristallnacht” in Wuppertal
The days and nights around November 9th 1938 still belong of the gloomiest events of
German history. On November 7th the Jewish Pole Herschel Grynszpan assassinated the
German ambassador von Rath in the German embassy in Paris. With his deed he delivered the
NSDAP a reason to take revenge. A reason they just have been waiting for. Within a short
time they were able to organize themselves in order to attack Jewish stores, houses and
synagogues around the 9th and 10th of November.
In Wuppertal similar scenes could been observed. A group of NSDAP party members
gathered in the early hours of November 10th in front of one of the Wuppertal synagogues.
They started to hit the non-Jewish sexton and his wife and pulled them out of their house. The
sexton’s injuries were so severe that he died from them several years later. His wife remained
deaf. With gasoline, that was given to the NSDAP members by their party, the men set the
synagogue on fire. At 4.06 h in the morning the fire was reported to the fire department. The
fire fighting operations went on until late afternoon. At 18.08 h in the evening the fire
department was called again. The synagogue had been set on fire - again.
At 7.51 h the next morning the fire department was called to a fire in the other Wuppertal
synagogue. Also the Jewish chapels and cemeteries were burning. One of the chapel’s fire
was only put out after a non-Jewish neighbour had called the fire department four times until
they would come to do their duty. Later some SS men came to remove the David sign from
the rooftop.
Stirred up by the members of the NSDAP the German non-Jewish citizens anticipated the
Jew-baiting. There even existed an order how they had to behave: Destruction but no lootings.
And synagogues only were supposed to be set on fire if the houses of “Arians” were not in
danger. But these orders could not get through.
Systematically Jewish stores were damaged and looted. In Wuppertal, the amount of
destroyed stores was at 270! And it happened to Jewish private homes as well.
Most of the Jewish citizen were in their houses during the violent clashes. Those, who were
not too afraid to go out, had to endure aside to the “normal” insults to get bashed. Some of
them even died from their injuries because the cowardly Nazis only hit in a group of many.
Elder Jewish men were taken into preventive detention in order to force them to work and
torture them. Mostly those prisoners were deported to the Dachau concentration camp. 125
Wuppertal Jews were taken there on November 13th. They were allowed to return to their
homes after they would have proofed that they would leave Germany with their families
immediately. But at that time emigration was almost impossible for Jews. When the men
finally returned to their families they often had changed their character drastically because of
the physical and mental torment they had to endure.
After the “German” folk had calmed down again, the clearing work for the victims began. But
even then the terror went on. The victims were forced to pay for all the damages on
themselves. Most of them were not able to afford it, since working was not allowed to them
due to the “Nürnberger Rassengesetze”, but payment by instalment was “permitted”.
The synagogues had completely burned down and there was not a lot that could have been
saved. A non-Jewish company wanted to help and did so. One of the workers saw a man
stealing a typing machine out of the synagogue and reported it to the Police. From then on the
company’s gas allowance was cut off.
The members of the Jewish congregation stood stunned in front of their synagogues. Where
should they held their services, where should they celebrate their son’s Bar-Mizwa, or
Hanukka which would come up soon!?
By the end of World War II 2000 Wuppertal Jews could be saved through emigration.
Nevertheless one thousand were deported to concentration camps. Only 36 returned to their
home town.
Today the Jewish congregation has already so many new members (more than 3000) that it
was necessary to errect a new synagogue which is placed in the east centre of Wuppertal.
In the west centre of Wuppertal the meeting place “Alte Synagoge” opened for the public in
1994. It is a memorial for the victims of the Nazi regime.