Photoessay #1889 - Furth

My research this morning takes a dark mysterious turn. I was very excited to receive some books I had requested through Interlibrary Losn. Especially "The History of the Jews in Furth", a slim tourist oriented walking tour sent by the University of California, San Diego (thank you UCSD). Furth was a center of Jewish culture throughout the 17th-19th centuries.

Maier Zunder (my great great grandfather who I'm writing about) emigrated from Furth in 1848. He subsequently made a very successful life for himself in New Haven, prospered and was very active in many communities. But where did he come from? What motivated him to emigrate? And what would it have been like if he'd stayed?

I believe he emigrated with his three brothers, and in 1854 had enough money to bring over his mother and two sisters. His experiences are consistent with the description of the migration of German Jews in "A Time for Gathering; the second migration 1820-1880" by Hasia Diner.

But what if he had stayed? I often find that German descriptions of things Jewish always have an odd twist. This small book (in translation) does not use the word "Nazi", instead uses "National Socialist period". The author doesn't duck the wholesale destruction because she needs to explain why a lot of the important sites she mentions aren't there or greatly transformed.

So from that book, I feature some pictures of some major synagogues in Schulhof (synagogue area) with at least two large synagogues Altschul (Old Schul) and Neuschol (New Schul) in 1935.

And what those same sites (you can pick out the arch and the sides of Altschul) after Kristalnacht 1938.

I learneed about Jakob Wasserman and his novel "The Jews from Zirndorf" and the influence on the emancipated Jews coming into the twentieth century. But these images are enough for now.