Humanities and Social Sciences Library > Collections & Reading Rooms > Dorot Jewish Division > Yizkor Books

About Yizkor (Memorial) Books

Nürnberg
Postcard [Germany, before 1908]
Dorot Jewish Division, NYPL

The facade of the new synagogue shared Spitalplatz with Nuremberg's statue of its
favorite son, Germany's great bard, the shoemaker-mastersinger himself, Hans Sachs.
Nuremberg was a special place for Richard Wagner as it had been for Martin
Luther. Such resonances made it natural that the Nazis should adopt it as their
spiritual capital and that the synagogue should be demolished in August, 1938, in what
amounts to a dress rehearsal exactly three months ahead of Kristallnacht, when the two
remaining synagogues in Nuremberg were burned to the ground, along with 265 others
fired or demolished across Germany and Austria.

image 1 2 3

< Back