What is it like to visit Nuremberg as a Jewish Israeli today? Do the ghosts of the past still haunt the city?
By Rachel Avraham
For Jewish people around the world, the city of Nuremberg is synonymous with the Nazi Nuremberg Laws, which led up to the Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials, where Nazi war criminals faced justice for the Holocaust following the conclusion of World War II. As a Jewish person, I saw Nuremberg through this lens primarily as well, until I actually came to the city.
Upon arrival in Nuremberg, I saw a beautiful walled European city, with a historic castle and a thousand years of history. In fact, most Israelis and Jewish people would be surprised to discover that Nuremberg today is actually a beautiful place to visit. Following the Second World War, the Germans decided to transform all of the former Nazi sites into either car parks, Burgher kings, stadiums or even toilets. One of the former Nazi sites is now being constructed into a museum speaking out against Nazism, yet for most of the sites, the Germans have done everything to bury this history underground. In fact, if you try and dig up the rubble that remains of one Nazi site, you can get arrested in Germany.
Most Germans today would prefer it if people when they thought about Germany would think about the Guttenberg Printing Press, Beethoven, the Grimm Brother’s fairy tales, the over 2,000 historic castles that are spread across Germany, and of course, Octoberfest, where everyone drinks the world-renowned German beer. They would also be delighted to introduce Israelis to the delicious German pumpkin soup, German pasta with mountain cheese, forest cake Nuremberg gingerbread cookies, and other German dishes, all very scrumptious, and let that be the image of Germany. In fact, while in Germany, some of my tour guides, who were Christians from Germany, boasted about how they went to Israel on pilgrimages and loved the Christian holy sites in Israel. Out of everyone I met in Germany, only two people made me feel uncomfortable as an Israeli. Most Germans went out of their way for their country to be a positive experience for me.
The fact that Germans have moved beyond the Holocaust is very much represented in Nuremberg’s Train Museum, where much more space is provided discussing the historic trains the Kaiser used to use and modern German trains than the trains that the Nazis used to bring Jews to death camps. In fact, the museum even noted that the German Railway Industry was initially opposed to Nazism because they lost a lot of money by the Nazis using up valuable train space to send Jews to concentration camps, when the train tracks could have been used for business purposes.
Historically prior to the Holocaust, there were a couple of thousand of Jewish people who lived in Nuremberg. These Jews did face persecution prior to the Holocaust. In the Middle Ages, Nuremberg was the site of a Jewish massacre on August 1, 1298, during the Rintfleisch massacres, which took place during the First Crusade. A mob led by Rintfleisch, who convinced the masses that the Jews poisoned the waters, massacred Jews in 146 communities. In Nuremberg, the Jews sought refuge in a fortress, but the attackers broke in and butchered them. This event was part of a larger wave of persecution across the Holy Roman Empire that resulted in the deaths of 20,000 to 100,000 Jews. This was one of the gravest and most extensive pogroms against Jews in medieval Europe.
Among the Jewish victims was one of the leading rabbis of the day, Rabbi Mordechai ben Hillel. He was murdered in Nuremberg at the age of 48 together with his wife and five children on August 1, 1298, the 22nd of the Hebrew month of Av. They were among 628 Jews in the city who were brutally massacred that day after refusing to abandon their faith.
in 1349, Karl IV, the king ruling Germany at that time, around the time of the Black Death in Europe, ordered the annihilation of the Jewish quarter in the center of the city of Nuremberg, so that the city could build a new market square. As an excuse in order to pursue this aim, he blamed the Jews for the Black Death. A bloody action of ‘resettlement’ turned into a massacre with 562 people brutally captured and burned alive, on the very spot which today is a lively marketplace in Nuremberg, resting on top of what the Jewish Quarter used to be.
What was left of the Jewish community in Nuremberg was expelled in 1499, but Jews returned to the city in 1850. By the time of the Holocaust, Nuremberg had a thriving Jewish community of around 2,000 people with two synagogues, one Orthodox and one Reform, and two mikvah baths. Unfortunately, the two historic synagogues in the city were destroyed by the Nazis and all that remains of them today is a monument, recognizing that they used to exist in the area.
However, today, around 2,000 Jews still live in Nuremberg and they have built a synagogue in another area of the city. One of the mikva baths was destroyed during World War II, when the Allies bombed and destroyed between 91 and 92 percent of Nuremberg, but one of the mikva baths survived the war and is now somebody’s private property. Coordination is required to visit it.
Today’s Nuremberg also invited Israeli artist Dani Karavan to build “The Way of Human Rights.” The walkable path, featuring 27 white pillars and an arch, is a memorial to the crimes committed by the Nazis and is a reminder of the importance of human rights worldwide. Each of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is inscribed in German and another language on one of the pillars. Hebrew inscriptions are also included.
Courtroom 600, where the Nuremberg Trials took place, is also a prominent museum today in the city of Nuremberg, where people can view the courtroom where the Nazi war criminals were tried and learn about the Nuremberg Trials. By preserving Courtroom 600 and building “the Way of Human Rights,” and soon another museum and having a section on Nazism in the Train Museum, the Germans today are respecting their history, yet they have also moved on from the past. In fact, at one of the pubs, you can even see that today a Star of David is a historic symbol of beer in Nuremberg, not a badge of shame.
Thus, just as what happens in Gaza does not define what is Israel, I do not think it is fair to say that the Holocaust defines what is Germany today. Nuremberg has a thousand years of history and the Nazis only ruled for 12 years of German history. Furthermore, the locals in Nuremberg voted against Nazism and were known not to like Hitler. The fact that Hitler used Nuremberg in order to stage his propaganda shows was an act that went against the desires of most of the city’s inhabitants, who were businessmen who relied on the import of goods from England and other places, who would cut off Nuremberg if antagonized. In this manner, Nazism was a self-destructive movement for the German people and most Germans realize this today.
Therefore, Jews like my mother who insist on continuing to boycott Germany because of the Holocaust are misguided. While we should remember the legacy of the Holocaust and the history of what happened in Nuremberg, we should not boycott an entire nation today over what happened close to 100 years ago, as today’s Germany is a good place for Israelis to visit. In fact, the El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Munich for Sukkot this year was full, with no available seats, as most Israelis have come to realize that Germany today is a desirable tourist destination.
