Nijmegen
During the first half of the fourteenth century, the Jewish
community at Nijmegen was the most important in all of what is
today the Netherlands. At the time, the Jews of Nijmegen were
mostly involved in money-lending. Local Jews had a cemetery of
their own, located to the southeast of the town. The community was
destroyed in 1349 during the widespread persecution of Jews
committed by Christians during the plague epidemic of the
time.
Jews settled anew in Nijmegen not longer after the destruction of
the first community. Like their predecesors, the new arrivals were
also mostly involved in money-lending. By 1386, several of them had
been awarded citizenship in the town. Mentions of the revived
community's cemetery, located outside of the Wijmelpoort (Wijmel
Gate) not far from the Kronenburgertoren (Kronenburger Tower), date
to as far back as 1382. The cemetery was sold two centuries
later.
Early in the fifteenth century, the community purchased four
buildings located in an alleyway running between the Stikke
Hezelstraat and the Beneden Houtstraat; thereafter, the alleyway
was known as the Jodengasch (Jews' Alley). One of the four
buildings was converted to a synagogue and is referred to in
archival materials as schola judeorum (the college of the Jews). In
1430, the community was granted permission to construct a ritual
bath. In 1452, a church synod held at Cologne decreed that Jews be
required to wear a distinctive badge or article of clothing; the
decree also applied to the Jews of Nijmegen. From then on, the
Jewish population of Nijmegen declined; by close of the fifteenth
century the community ceased to exist. In 1544, a new generation of
Jews attempted unsuccessfully to settle in Nijmegen.
A small number
of Jews are reported to have been living in Nijmegen and
surroundings at outset of the seventeenth century; a proper Jewish
community, however, did not arise again in Nijmegen until the
1660's. In 1683, the Jews of Nijmegen established a cemetery near
the town walls behind the Mariënburg; the cemetery subsequently was
enlarged twice during the eighteenth century. During the same
period, graves were twice reported to have been desecrated.
Religious services were held in private homes during the early days
of the reestablished community,. The first of these domestic
synagogues, located in a house on the Vleeschhouwerstraat, was
closed by municipal authorities in 1697 following complaints about
noise emanating from the building during religious services. In
1713, a wealthy leader of the community purchased the former inn De
Sleutel (The Key) in the Groote Straat from the municipal
authorities and had it converted into a synagogue. The former inn
served the community as its house of prayer until 1755. In 1756,
the community consecrated a new synagogue, located in the
Nonnenstraat - a building that still stands today. During the
1760's, the community purchased two additional buildings, and also
constructed a ritual bath, all in the Nonnenstraat. Throughout the
eighteenth century, Jewish education in Nijmegen was limited to
private lessons from religious teachers.
As in other cities and towns in the Netherlands at the time, the
economic activities of Jews during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries was limited by their being barred from guild membership.
Jews faced numerous other restrictions. Initially, they were barred
from full citizenship in the town. Beginning in 1721, Jews were
allowed to purchase limited rights of citizenship for large sums of
money. Such sales of rights were made only to those Jews whose
presence, activities, or wealth was deemed advantageous to Nijmegen
by the town fathers. Due to this provision, Jewish lending bank
leaseholders, doctors, merchants, craftsmen, and manufacturers
eventually came to play an important role in the economic and
social development of Nijmegen.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, most Jews in Nijmegen
were poverty stricken. Many worked as street vendors or as sellers
of secondhand goods. Their economic situation improved somewhat by
the end of the century.
In 1804, Nijmegen was selected as the seat of the chief rabbinate
for the province of Gelderland. The provincial chief rabbinate
remained based in Nijmegen until 1881, when it was moved to Arnhem.
A Jewish school was established in Nijmegen in 1827; its students
received instruction in secular as well as Jewish subjects. The
school was moved to a new building located near the Nonnenstraat
synagogue in 1873. A Jewish craft school for sewing and knitting
existed in Nijmegen for a short time at mid-century.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the Jewish community of
Nijmegen was governed by a council four members of which also
comprised the community's directorate. Other official positions
included two treasurers for the collection and disbursement of
contributions to the Jewish community in Eretz Israel. Jewish
voluntary organizations in Nijmegen included burial societies as
well as societies for maintaining the synagogue and for providing
assistance to the poor and the sick.
By 1891, the old Jewish cemetery founded in 1683 had run out of
space. As a result, the community established a new cemetery on the
Broerdijk in Groesbeek, along the present-day Kwakkenbergweg.
Between 1806 and 1811, the community had also made use of a
separate section of Nijmegen's public cemetery.
By the decades of the twentieth century, the Jewish population of
Nijmegen still comprised what was a mid-sized community by the
standards of Dutch Jewry. In 1913, the community consecrated a new
synagogue on the Gerard Noodtstraat. At the time, most Jews in
Nijmegen worked in the textile industry or as shopkeepers, vendors,
or slaughterers. Several Jews came to serve as members of
Nijmegen's city council. A Jewish recreational society and a
theater society were founded and a Zionist youth movement arose
late in the 1930's. Nijmegen's location near the Dutch-German
border attracted a large number of German-Jewish refugees to the
town following the rise of Hitler. This caused the local Jewish
population to grow to its highest level in a century; on the eve of
the German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940 approximately
530 Jews resided in Nijmegen.
In November 1940, in Nijmegen as throughout the Netherlands, all
Jews were expelled from the civil service. Jewish children were
banned from public education at the start of the school year in
1941 and a Jewish elementary school was established for younger
Jews to attend. Deportations of Jews from Nijmegen commenced in the
autumn of 1942 and were completed in April, 1943. Almost all the
Jews of Nijmegen were murdered by the Germans during; of the
approximately 50 Nijmegen Jews who came through the war alive, most
survived in hiding, only a handful came back from the camps.
During the war, the synagogue on the Gerard Noodtstraat was
confiscated by the Germans and used as a warehouse. Germans and
Dutch members of the collaborationist NSB party destroyed its
contents; its torah scrolls and other ceremonial objects were never
recovered.
Jewish life in Nijmegen commenced anew after the war. The former
Jewish school was reopened as a synagogue; it was repaired in the
late-1960's and since the 1980's has been open for religious
services on the high holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as
well as monthly throughout the rest of the year. The synagogue on
the Gerard Noodtstraat was sold after the war and since the 1980's
has housed Nijmegen's natural history museum. The former synagogue
on the Nonnenstraat for a time housed part of the Het Valkhof
Museum (formerly the Commanderie van Sint-Jan Museum). In 1999, the
building was sold back to the Jewish community of Nijmegen for the
symbolic sum of one Dutch Guilder; it was consecrated anew as a
synagogue in 2000. The old Jewish cemetery behind the Mariënburg
was cleared away in 1962. A monument in memory of the Jews of
Nijmegen murdered during the Second World War was installed on the
Kitty De Wijzeplaats in 2000.
Jewish population of Nijmegen and surroundings:
| 1784 | ca. 270 |
| 1809 | 359 |
| 1840 | 506 |
| 1869 | 355 |
| 1899 | 460 |
| 1930 | 450 |
| 1951 | 52 |
| 1971 | 88 |
| 1998 | 30 |
Collectie en mediatheek
[Jaartijdkalender voor Marianne Hartog-van den Bergh]
1923
De op 1 februari 1922 overleden Marianne Hartog-vd Bergh kan jaarlijks door haar
kind worden herdacht op de daartoe ingevulde kalender van 1923 tot 1970.
Collectie > Museumstukken > 01144
meer treffers in Collectie > Museumstukken
Dossier
Dossiers (158) van de Commissie voor Oorlogsschade mbt 155 joodse
gemeentes (Amsterdam en mediene), 1945-1950.
Collectie > Documenten > B0005954
meer treffers in Collectie > Documenten
Overzichtsfoto
1941-09
Synagoge van Nijmegen, in de Gerard Noodtstraat, beklad
met antisemitische leuzen, augustus 1941.
Collectie > Fotos > 40000864
meer treffers in Collectie > Fotos
[Binnenland] : Amsterdam
Vermelding van benoemingen met betrekking tot de Ned. Isr. schoolbesturen.
Collectie > Joodse pers > 20031385
meer treffers in Collectie > Joodse pers
Joodse oorlogsmonumenten in de provincie Gelderland : alsmede algemene...
2005
Joodse oorlogsmonumenten in de provincie Gelderland : alsmede algemene
oorlogsmonumenten waarop joodse namen voorkomen.
Collectie > Literatuur > 12013463
meer treffers in Collectie > Literatuur
Tekens aan de wand
Over de schilder Felix Nussbaum ; een gesprek met typografisch kunstenaar Josua
Reichert nav een tentoonstelling van zijn werk in het Joods Historisch Museum en ...
Collectie > Audiovisueel > 40001273
