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VI. Buildings Integral to the Former Life and/or Persecution of Jews in Harburg.3. No. 15 Eißendorferstraße
The synagogue was approved by the building committee on the 2nd April 1862 and was inaugurated on the 19th May 1863. In 1889 an area with seating for a choir was created. In 1910 the women's gallery was enlarged by 24 places and the gallery stairs repositioned. In 1930 an extension was built, which filled the vacant site between the main gable and no. 17 Eißendorferstraße, enlarging the teaching space.
The following account of the fate of the synagogue on the night of the 9th/10th November 1938,
the so-called "Reichskristallnacht" pogrom, was related during the trail of the
head of the Harburg NSDAP in 1949: The synagogue was located in a heavily built-up residential area at the blind road junction Bennigsenstraße/Albersstraße (today Knoopstraße) and Eißendorferstraße, opposite the local administration building and the forestry office. ... The iron railings that crowned the low wall had been removed the day before the assault on the synagogue in the scrap metal campaign by the 2/9 Pioniersturm. The synagogue, built of yellow brick, was around 17 metres long and 10 metres wide. The main entrance was on the narrower eastern side, in Eißendorferstraße. There was a second entrance in Albersstraße. Both entrances led into the vestibule. Steps led down from both entrances to the enclosed forecourt with linden trees. ... The large conference room of the representatives of the Jewish community was located right of the main entrance. From here was access to an extension built on the Eißendorferstraße side which was used for the religious instruction of youths. Left of the main entrance lay a small room for the cantor. The northern section of the building and the extension possessed a basement. The rooms in the basement housed the janitor's accommodation and toilets. The heavy roof beams carried a dark-grey slate roof. ... Somtime between 18.30 and 19.00 hr ... a crowd of people approached the synagogue from the direction of Neustraße. They were carrying heavy tools such as axes, pickaxes, etc. They paused at the administration building. At the same time a crowd approached along Bennigenstraße. ... In the meantime the number of people having gathered at the synagogue had increased. A further group of people, also carrying tools, approached along Albersstraße and joined the group at the administration building and, despite the police presence, used a 2 metre long rammer to forcibly open the main entrance of the synagogue and the other entrance with axes and sledge-hammers. Part of this crowd stormed into the synagogue through the two entrances. They immediately began a savage devastation: Furniture, prayer books and ritual objects were thrown out of the upper floor windows, which had been smashed with stones thrown from the outside and with chair legs from the inside, to the forecourt below. The seating was smashed and other destruction carried out with axes and hammers. The result was a chaos of destruction. Suddenly from the turmoil a cry rang out to "bring petrol". Now the police began to clear the building. The police used the same cry as the crowd had used: "out to the demonstration". ... The crowd stormed out of the looted synagogue taking prayer-books, talliths, kippas and other ritual objects with them, and formed a large and several smaller groups which moved off in a grotesque procession along Albersstraße and Eißendorferstraße towards the town centre. A large part of the gawping, provocative crowd moved off with them making room for a new influx of people. The police succeeded in closing off a space around the synagogue but demonstrators were not prevented access. The destruction continued. The crowd carrying the ritual objects headed for the Harburg marketplace in Sand. Here their loot was thrown onto a heap and burnt, accommpanied by buffoonery and masquerade. ... Later in the synagogue, a policeman noticed a fire at the rear window of the basement. The curtains were in flames. The police immediately extinguished the fire. The furnishings had been totally destroyed and most of the ritual objects pillaged. The windows and entrance doors were boarded up a few days later."
Fire was not an issue at the trial although some witnesses claimed to have seen the glow
of a fire inside the symnagogue and the defendant himself having seen burning curtains. It was
postulated that these observations could be explained by "people carrying flaming torches in
front of and inside the synagogue". In contrast the fire brigade's report had the following entry:
On the 10th November 1938 SS Gruppenführer Heydrich sent a teleprinter order from Munich regarding
actions taken against Jews and in particular synagogues:
In a letter dated the 20th
October 1938 to the councillor's office the Harburg NSDAP leader wrote: The position of the tramlines is determined by the uneven junction of Benningsenstraße and Albersstraße. I have requested the Hamburg Hochbahn AG to comment on this matter and have formulated a plan to relocate the track to solve these traffic problems and meet the demands of traffic flow. It is necessary to set back the buildings facing onto Albersstraße and remove the synagogue in the interest of road safety. After the acquisition of the property has been arranged by the finance department the civil engineering department will carry out the straightening of the road junction at Eißendorferstraße." It is not possible to reconstruct the fate of the Harburg synagogue from the planning files. Following a request from the building control department 7 in Harburg, the Hamburg-Harburg building inspection department reported on the 18th April 1938: "The synagogue in Eißendorferstraße is structurally safe. Only the windows are broken. The window frames have been boarded up. The current condition of the building cannot be characterized as a ruin." In a letter to the Compensation Office dated the 14th June 1958 the Harburg administration, district planning department, building inspection office presumed that the synagogue had been completely destroyed in the Second World War as the degee of damage was not recorded in the itemized list of damaged buildings. The Jewish community were no longer owners having had to compulsorily sell the property to a private individual in a contract dated the 22nd August 1939. In 1954/55 a housing society built residential buildings on the site of the ruins.
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