January 2019, Mourning for our dear friend and supporter Walter Roth

Welcome! Shalom!

Aerial view of the synagogue between half-timbered houses.

Drohnenaufnahme, © Julian Kriesche

The Arbeitskreis Landsynagoge Roth, a project circle dedicated to preserving the synagogue in the village of Roth near Marburg in Hesse, Germany, welcomes you to our website. We would like to introduce you to our goals and inform you about our projects and activities.

We provide guided tours of the memorial site, the synagogue in Roth, and of the Jewish Cemetery, as well as a variety of cultural activities. Join us in solemn remembrance of the displacement, persecution, and murder of our Jewish neighbors during the Nazi Regime. Perhaps you’ll find our work so interesting that you yourself would like to become a member of our group.

We would also like to introduce you to the history of the Jewish Community that shaped and influenced life in Roth over the centuries before being violently eradicated within less than ten years of Nazi reign. The physical witnesses of this lost culture: the synagogue, the place of the mikveh, the Jewish cemetery, are here for you to see and experience. We also include valuable information about the neighbouring village Fronhausen’s Jewish past and remaining artifacts on our website.

Yours truly,

The Managing Board of the Arbeitskreis Landsynagoge Roth

Portrait of an elderly man

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.