Former ´Landsynagoge in Roth´ - memorial and place of encounter

Amnon Orbach at the Kabbalat Shabbat celebration in the Roth synagogue, 2018, Photo: Friedel Schultheis

A special person has passed away.

We mourn the loss of our dear friend and member, the Honorary Chairman of the Jewish Community of Marburg.

In memory of Amnon Orbach

who died at the age of 94 on August 18, 2024.

He has accompanied us from the very beginning, built the all-important bridge to living Judaism for us, always helped to organize our commemorations, participated in interfaith dialogue and enjoyed attending our events. He received our Jewish guests in the Marburg synagogue and also celebrated Kabbalat Shabbat with them in the Roth synagogue. But this list hardly does justice to the human dimension. We will always remember his open-mindedness, warm-heartedness and kindness with great gratitude. Our heartfelt sympathy goes out to his wife Hannelore and his family.

Once again, the people of Israel are hit by rockets and terror on a Jewish holiday. Once again they have to fear that the only halfway safe place to live in the world is being pulled out from under their feet. Jews have been persecuted and killed for millennia in every conceivable corner of the globe. Our hearts bleed when we realize that they find no peace even in Israel. From the cowardly attack of Hamas on Israeli civilians, from the kidnappings and exposures of the victims, an unmasked anti-Semitism looks at us – a fanaticism to want to destroy the state of Israel and all Jews.
We condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms and show our solidarity with the people of Israel and the Jews all over the world – but also with all Palestinians who suffer under Hamas' reign of terror. At the same time, we condemn the Iranian regime's gloating reaction to the attacks. Our solidarity is also with the courageous Iranians who are fighting their own oppressive regime and do not see Israel as an enemy.
Our thoughts and prayers are with all - in Israel, in Palestine, in Iran and elsewhere – who must fear and fight for their freedom and their lives these days. We will continue to do everything in our power to uphold the memory of the Shoah in Germany and especially in our region, to stand by the weak and the attacked in our country as well – and to resolutely fight anti-Semitism as well as anti-Muslim racism and every other form of racism and violence.

Arbeitskreis Landsynagoge Roth e.V.

In accordance with the declaration of: Judaica Meimbressen e.V., Verein der Freundinnen und Freunde jüdischen Lebens im Werra-Meißner-Kreis, Arbeitskreis Rückblende - Gegen das Vergessen e.V., Förderkreises Synagoge in Vöhl e.V. and many private individuals.

©ArchitecturaVirtualis GmbH; screenshot, reconstruction in the 20´s

©ArchitecturaVirtualis GmbH; screenshot: reconstruction around 1900.

Since our anniversary in 2023, they can experience the original interior of the synagogue with the help of virtual reality glasses. Here is a film about the reconstruction.

The video is on our YouTube channel.

Dr. -Ing. Marc Grellert of ArchitecturaVirtualis GmbH (cooperation partner of the Technical University of Darmstadt) has created this work. It is part of an overall project in Germany that reconstructs synagogues destroyed during the Nazi era.

Funded by

The video about the anniversary event is on our YouTube channel.

Ceremony in cooperation with the district of Marburg-Biedenkopf (by invitation)

Start:

10:30 a.m. Ceremony (for invited guests)

13:00 Public street party

We are celebrating 25 years of restoration of the synagogue in Roth and cordially invite you to join us!
When: Sun., June 18, 2023, from 1:00 p.m.
Where: in and in front of the synagogue, Lahnstraße 28 in Weimar-Roth

Program:
▪ Virtual reconstruction of the synagogue -
can be experienced with VR glasses
▪ Documentation of the mikvah in the backyard
▪ Dance performance by the dance group of the Jewish community 
community of Marburg, also to join in, approx. 
15:00 hrs
▪ Social get-together with food and drinks 
drinks

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

In the spring of 2023, we opened an Instagram channel. Take a look!

In memory of Trude Meyer

The Roth Rural Synagogue Working Group mourns the loss of its dear friend Trude Meyer, née Löwenstein from Fronhausen, who passed away in San Francisco on 22 December 2022 at the age of 98. Trude had to endure inhuman conditions in the Nazi camps and factories and found the strength to share her experiences with us. For this we are deeply grateful to her. We will miss her warmth and her lively participation in all our activities. Our sympathy goes to her sons and all her relatives.

The Arbeitskreis Landsynagoge Roth mourns the loss of its dear friend Trude Meyer née Löwenstein from Fronhausen, who passed away in San Francisco on 22 December 2022 at the age of 98. Trude had to endure inhuman conditions in the Nazi camps and factories and found the strength to share her experiences with us. For this we are deeply grateful to her. We will miss her warmth and her lively participation in all our activities. Our sympathy goes to her sons and all her relatives.

We publish below the translation of an obituary written by the Meyer family:

Read more …

 "Liebe deinen Nächsten ... 25 Jahre Gedenk-, Kultur- und Bildungsarbeit in der Landsynagoge Roth" 

Under the title: “Love your neighbor ... 25 years of commemorative, cultural and educational work in the Roth country synagogue”, we have published a somewhat different commemorative publication to mark the anniversary. We invited cooperation partners and friends, survivors and descendants of the Shoah as well as members and board members to describe their very personal view of our (joint) work and their relationship to our working group in short contributions. In this way, we were able to collect around 50 contributions, which were illustrated with meaningful photos. The aim of this collage of texts and images was to create a multifaceted picture of an association that was founded in a specific historical situation, asked certain questions and developed a type of commemorative, educational and cultural work that was probably typical of the time. Successors will ask different questions and choose different approaches. In this respect, this book may also be seen as a contemporary document. It has also been published in two languages, English and German. If you are interested, you can order it for 19.00 euros from our treasurer Werner Schlag: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

With a festive event on July 10, 2021 at 3:00 p.m. at the synagogue in Roth, the Arbeitskreis Landsynagoge Roth celebrates its 25th anniversary (due to pandemic reasons, unfortunately, only for invited guests). This anniversary is also a meeting with descendants of Jews from Roth.

25 years a place of encounter

Deliberately founded on the first nationwide Holocaust Memorial Day, January 27, 1996, the seven founding members Renate Blöcher, Gerhard Fischer, Harald Händler, Barbara Händler-Lachmann, Dietmar Haubfleisch, Gabriele C. Schmitt and Annegret Wenz-Haubfleisch formulated as the purpose of the association "the preservation of the former synagogue in Weimar/Lahn, village of Roth, and its use as a memorial, museum, place of learning and site of cultural encounters". In 1998, after the building had been restored and could be put to public use, the association concluded a contract of use with the district of Marburg-Biedenkopf as owner and has since been solely responsible for the cultural work in the building.

The video is on our YouTube channel.

In memory of Walter Roth

On January 19, 2019, Walter Roth passed away in Chicago at the age of 89. The Arbeitskreis Landsynagoge Roth mourns the loss of a friend who accompanied its work with great interest, promoted it and was a good friend to it. With Walter Roth, the last Jewish contemporary witness who was born in Roth has passed away. Walter Roth was born on April 18, 1929, the youngest of three siblings. He was born into an old-established, well-off Jewish family. In 1934, at the tender age of barely five, he already lost his mother Selma to an infection. Soon after, his father found it increasingly difficult to support his family, because as a seed and fertilizer dealer who depended on business with farmers, he was massively persecuted as early as 1935. So he recognized the signs of the times early on, obtained a guarantee from relatives in the U.S. and was able to escape Nazi Germany in 1938 with his second wife Toni and their three children. The family began a new life in Chicago. Here, the former businessman Markus Roth supported his family laboriously as a wage laborer in a slaughterhouse. Over this life hovered the fear for the family members left behind in Germany, all of whom did not survive the Holocaust. The younger generation found it easier to gain a foothold in this country; Walter seized the opportunity to study and became a successful lawyer.

In honour of Herbert Roth

During the ceremony, at the request of the working group, a square near the synagogue will be named in honour of Herbert Roth.

Herbert Roth was a long-time friend of the working group and a bridge builder. Born in Roth in 1923 to Selma and Markus, he emigrated from Nazi Germany to Chicago in 1938 with his parents and younger siblings Irene and Walter. Herbert Roth returned to Roth for the first time in the early 1950s, later with his wife and growing daughters. From the 1980s onwards, he was a frequent and regular visitor.

In 1984, he and his brother Walter donated a memorial stone for the victims of the Shoa in the Jewish cemetery. He cultivated former school friendships, and soon he also made contact with the later founders of the working group. He followed the restoration of the synagogue with great and constant interest, made valuable documents available to the working group and shared his memories with them.

Herbert Roth also established connections with the families of other Rother survivors and thus became a key figure in the long-standing, friendly relationships that the working group has today with the family of his brother Walter and his sister Helen, the Höchster-Wetmore, Höchster-Solovei and Stern families and their descendants.

The Herbert Roth Square commemorates his exemplary work for understanding and peace.