Parchment Burning

Nemirov 14 June, 1648 The first major massacre during the Chmielnicki uprising took place in the city of Nemirov. Jews from the countryside had fled to Nemirov, as the town was fortified. However, Chmielnicki dispatched 600 Cossacks, who dressed up as Polish soldiers. (At least, according to legend.) The town opened its gates and the Cossacks rushed in. Once inside, the Cossacks demanded that the Jews in town convert to Christianity. When they refused, 6,000 Jews were slaughtered. "In the synagogue, before the Holy Ark, they slaughtered with butcher knives the choirs and cantors and beedles, there they sacrificed the children of Israel as burnt offerings, offering themselves up as sacrifices like rams and sheep and goats...after which they destroyed the synagogue and took out all the Torah books, old and new, and they tore them to bits and they laid them out for men and animals to trample on." ( Megilat Afa ) In the following years, the Council of the Four Lands decree

Sierpc, Poland September, 1939 The German army entered the town o Sierpc in September, 1939. On the night of the 29th of September, the second night of Sukkot, they set fire to the largest synagogue in town. ( Virtual Shtetl )  Hela Lipstapad-Izakowicz relates that some Jews, her father included, tried to put out the fire but could not do so. One was killed by the Germans during the attempt:  "A certain yeshiva student, the son of Farber, who forced his way into the synagogue with self-sacrifice, was shot by the Germans." ( Yizkor Book ) Another townsperson, Beila Rabinowicz, recalled the awful night:  "I will never forget the great fire that spread through the Jewish streets when the Germans set the synagogue on fire. We ran to a neighbor. From there, we looked out the window. Suddenly, my father shouted, 'Children, look. The Holy Ark is tumbling down.' We heard a shot. Victims who ran to save the Torah scrolls fell."  ( Yizkor Book ) This eve

Weinheim, Germany 20 September, 1298 According the entry in the Nuremberg Memorbuch, the Jews of Weinheim were burnt to death in their synagogue on Shabbat, two days before the start of Sukkot. 78 people were killed in the flames.  The attack was led by a Franconian knight named Rintfleisch, who claimed that the Jews had desecrated the host (eucharist wafers). Rindleisch led similar massacres in 146 Jewish communities across southern and central Germany that year and lasting for several years. ( Encylopedia.com ) Several kinot were written about the event, describing the horrible destruction, but none mention the town of Weinheim by name.  The community managed to go on, only to be attacked again, fifty years later, at part of the persecutions surrounding the Black Death. ( Juden in Weinheim )

Jelgava, Latvia July 1941 The Germans occupied the town of Jelgava at the end of June, 1941. In the following month they began to wipe out the town's Jewish community. At one point, one of the synagogues was burned to the ground with Jews inside: "Many of them were forced into the synagogue and burned alive in it." ( Churban Lettland by Max Kaufmann, 111)  As the synagogue burned, the rabbi refused to leave the building. Other Jewish townsmen were forced to stand by outside and witness the it burn. Abram Leiser was one of those killed. He was the butcher and a friend of the rabbi. ( Latvian Jews )

Frysztak, Poland Rosh Hashana, 1939 Frysztak was occupied by German troops on 8 September, 1939. A week later, on the second day of Rosh Hashana, the Germans surrounded the synagogue, killed some of the worshipers, and burned the Torahs. ( Kehilalinks , Virtual Shtetl ) "They burst into the worship places and killed a few congregants, set on fire the holy books and took with them four or five Jews." ( Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities ) Leon Gersten, who grew up in Frysztak, recalls the event: "We all laid down on the floor and started praying Shema Yisrael. After killing a few Jews, they let us out - that was our first introduction to the Germans." ( matzav.com ) Although none of the sources I have seen mention the names of the victims, I did discover one on the Yad Vashem Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names: Leibush Arie Pantzer, who was 16 at the time. His parents were Mordechai Pantzer and Chana Klotz. On the witness sheet his brother submitte

York, England 16 March, 1190 Sometimes in the telling of history, certain elements become such a standard that they are added to the story even though there is no evidence. We sometimes find descriptions of a massacre set in synagogue, even though it took place elsewhere. In March, 1190, 150 Jews were massacred in York, England. When riots began, the Jews of York were given royal protection and invited into the local castle for defense. The keep was surrounded by rioters and as the incensed rabble called for Jewish blood, the Jews inside decided that their best option was suicide. With the blessing of their spiritual leader, Rabbi Yom Tov, the men slew the women and children and then set fire to the wooden keep, thus ending their lives. This event is reported by local non-Jewish sources, including William of Newburgh, the Chronicles of the Abbey of Meaux in East Yorkshire, and Roger of Howden. ( History of York ) The location of the massacre is not disputed. Nonetheless, in a

15 September 1939 Dynow, Poland Like many towns in the region, Dynow was occupied by the German army on 11 September, 1939. On the first day hundreds of Jews were rounded up and killed. That year the prayers on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur were especially harried. After the first round of killing, the Germans continued to torture and execute local Jews. They decided to burn one of the synagogues as well. "They then took all the holy books from the study center and the other synagogue and spread them out on the floor. They then threw an incendiary bomb and shortly thereafter the entire synagogue was on fire. The flames reached the sky and lit the entire hamlet and the horizon with a red light that terrified everybody." While the synagogue was burning, the Germans threw three or four Jews inside, where they perished. "The screams of the old men were heard along the entire street of the synagogue. ( Destruction of Dynow, Sanko, Dubiecko , ed. David Moritz) According t

117 CE Alexandria, Egypt During the holiday of Chanuka, Jews light candles to celebrate the holiday and, according to the Talmud Bavli, to commemorate a miracle in which a small jar of pure oil lasted for eight days. We light candles in a visible location to publicize the miracles of the holiday and as a symbol of our joy. However, due to the often precarious situation of Jews in the world, the law states that "in a time of danger, when one cannot keep this mitzva [of lighting in a public place], one can place it on their table and this is enough." (Shulchan Aruch, 671:5, based on Talmud Bavli Shabbat 21b) This, unfortunately, was not an idle concern and recalls a story about Alexandria. The Jewish community in Alexandria was one of the strongest and oldest in the diaspora. It's not surprising that it was also one of the earliest locations of anti-Jewish riots and synagogue violence. Riots took place in 38 CE, 40, and 66, but the biggest one occurred in 117, known

19 December, 1939 Przemysl, Poland On September 14, 1939, the town of Przemysl was occupied by the German army. The town was home to 24,000 Jews. ( Yad Vashem ) Although control of the city was later transferred to the Soviets, the Germans made sure to first attack the Jews of the community. They burnt down the Old Synagogue, the Klois, the Hassidic prayer house, the Tempel Synagogue and parts of the Jewish quarter. ( Holocaust Research Project ) According to a  JTA  report, a few months later the Nazis locked 30 Jews into their synagogue and burnt it to the ground. This was reported on the basis of "Polish sources." However, neither Yad Vashem nor the Przemysl Yizkor Book make any mention of Jews being killed in the synagogue. They instead mention only the burning of the synagogues in September 1939. It could be that the report in December actually refers to the events of September, or perhaps the Polish papers were trying to rally support against the Nazis but repor

Mainz 1096 Mainz was one of the three major European Jewish communities that was destroyed during the First Crusade. The community's fate was chronicled by Shlomo ben Shimon a generation after it occurred. Among the many accounts, he tells of Yitzchak the Hassid, who survived the initial wave of attacks by converting, but then had remorse. He decided that in order to atone he had to give himself up and die sanctifying the name of God. Yitzchak tells his mother "I have decided to bring a sin offering to God." He takes his son and daughter to the synagogue, stands before the Ark and cuts their throats. As he watches their blood spurt onto the ark he cries out "Let there blood be an atonement for my sins!" He returns home, burns his house down (with his mother inside), then returns to the synagogue and does the same, beseeching God from within the flames. Another Jew, Ori, decides to join him in the flames, and the two perish. The synagogue is saved from

To be analytical about a very emotional subject, the different cases of synagogue massacres can be groups into several categories: Jews are attacked in a synagogue during a regular service. This  is (thankfully?) the only situation that still takes place post-Holocaust.  Jews are forced to gather in the synagogue and then executed Jews flee to the synagogue for refuge and are nonetheless overrun. Group 3 seems the most curious situation. Despite generations of stories, despite the chance to chose a low-key hiding spot, Jews have persisted in running to the synagogue for protection. Why is this so? I have a few suggestions: The synagogue truly provided a good refuge The synagogue was generally a better-constructed building than most residential hovels, and could be better defended.  The synagogues of some towns were made of stone and were thus more fire-resistant.  The synagogue was a convenient place of congregation Jews could potentially organize a resistance if they

Acre 28 May 1291 During the 12th and 13th centuries, control of Israel passed from the Crusaders to Saladin back to the Crusaders and to the Mamluks. Saladin conquered Acre in 1187. It was retaken by Christian knights of the Third Crusade in 1191  The city was attacked but not conquered in 1263. In 1291 the Mamluks besieged Acre. The siege lasted a month and a half. On May 18, 1291 the Mamluk troops broke through and captured the city. They pillaged and destroyed the city, saving only Muslim holy shrines. During this attack the city's small Jewish community was destroyed. At the time, the Acre was a regional center of Jewish learning. People from other communities would send halachic questions to the sages of the city. (Jonathan Rubin, Intellectual Activity and Intercultural Exchanges in Frankish Acre, 1191-1291 , p37-43) A Beit Midrash was set up by R. Yechiel of Paris, known as the Great Academy of Paris , and the Jewish community thrived. All this ended when the Mamluks

Zelechow, Poland 13 September 1939 The Nazis entered Zelechow on September 12, 1939. They immediately set fire to a number of buildings. The following day, the synagogue was torched and a member of the town council, Hayyim Palhendler, was trapped inside. ( Pinkas Hakehillot ) Godl Nachtajler recalls that the rest of the Jews were evacuated from the synagogue first: "The Germans cast out everyone from the synagogue, leaving only one old Jew, in order to burn him later together with the synagogue." Mendel Korcarz recalled that the fire took place on the second day of Rosh Hashana: "On the second day of Rosh Hashana they set our big and beautiful synagogue on fire. A black smoke rose from the burning Torah scrolls straight to heaven. In the town of Zelechow there was darkness." Once the synagogue was destroyed, the Jews had nowhere to pray on Yom Kippur. Again, Nachtajler recalls: "On Yom Kippur they made minyanim in different houses and prayer quiet

12 April 1266 Sinzig, Germany Previously  I wrote about the Nuremberg Memorbuch, which was used to record Jewish tragedies and loss of life. Names of the dead recorded in the book were read in the synagogue at various points during the year. Most entries in the book have a very  brief, one line introduction, giving the place, date and possibly the time of year when the names of the dead should be read in synagogue. The introduction is followed be a list of those killed. So for example, one entry reads: "The dead of Erfurt, 25 Sivan 4981 [1221], including...." Occasionally, the entry will be slightly more descriptive. In all, there are two cases in which the entry specifically mentions that the people were killed in a synagogue. The Jewish community of Sinzig was attacked on Shabbat, April 12 1266. The synagogue was set on fire and 64 Jews are listed by name as having been killed in the flames. This included some of the leaders of the community. The pogrom was in pa

Paris, France 3 October 1980 At the beginning of Shabbat, which coincided with the holiday of Simchat Torah, the Copernic Street synagogue was filled with Jews who had come for the prayer service. There were many guests present for three bar mitzvas and two bat mitzvas that were taking place that weekend. Outside, a motorcycle packed with 10 kg of explosives was parked. At 6:38 pm, the bomb detonated. The front door of the building was blown inward. The synagogue had a glass roof, which collapsed on the people inside causing many injuries. However, the four people who were killed in the attack were all outside the synagogue. "One of the dead was identified as Aliza Shagrir, 42, an Israeli film editor who was in Paris for a two-week holiday with her 17-year-old son. She was walking to the home of a friend to meet her husband when the bomb exploded. She died on the way to the hospital. A 14-year-old girl driving a moped had the skin of her face peeled off. An elderly woman h

1648 Pogrebishche, Poland Jewish history is full of massacres. During some periods, dozens of communities were attacked in quick succession, often wiping them out. The stories of these communities, especially the small ones, are often untold; we don't know the details of how the Jews were killed. For this reason, it is very likely that there are many, many more instances of synagogue massacres that are unknown and unreported. This can be demonstrated with the case of Pogrebishche (then in Poland, now in Ukraine) during the Chmielnicki massacres that started in 1648 and wiped out a good number of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. My grandfather was born in Pogrebishche and I have done a lot of research about the town's Jewish history; that is the only reason why I happened across the following obscure story, passed down orally for generations and recorded on paper in the early 20th century by an immigrant to Israel, H.M. Lieberman-Weiner: "Behind the synagogue t

Toledo, Spain 1391 In 1391, a Dominican priest named Vincente Ferrer incited the people of Toledo against the Jews. On the 17th of Tamuz, a mob swept through the city and slaughtered almost all the Jews. The main leaders of the community were killed, while some of the people were forced to convert in order to save their lives. Of the fourteen synagogues in the city, many were destroyed while others were turned into churches. (Cecil Roth,   A Hebrew Elegy on the Martyrs of Toledo, 1391 ) In a summary of the events, Hasdai Crescas wrote that "Here they slew in the sanctuary of the Lord [i.e. in the Synagogue] priest and prophet." ( Letter reprinted in Shevet Yehuda, 128, and available in manuscript form ) Up to that point, the non-Jewish leaders of Toledo had mostly helped to protect the Jews of the community. In these riots, "they were found among the most violent in the onslaught." ( Jewish Encyclopedia ) In the aftermath, several kinot were written that

Rome, Italy 9 October, 1982 Shmini Atzeret At the end of Shabbat and Shmini Atzeret services in the Great Synagogue of Rome, members of the community were existing the synagogue. Five Palestinian mean calmly walked up to the back door of the synagogue. When a security guard stopped them, they tossed three hand grenades inside. They then open-fired on the crowd with semi-automatic weapons. Fortuitously, the hand grenades bounced off the steps of the building and ricocheted outside. The attackers escaped in cars and although one was eventually captured, were never brought to justice. The attack may have been perpetrated by the same group who later bombed a synagogue in Istanbul . 37 people were injured an one, a toddler named Stefano Gaj Tache, was killed in the attack. Stefano's older brother was shot in the head and chest but survived. "'The scene outside the synagogue was terrible. Seven or eight people were lying on the ground, some in serious condition.' (Dr

1096 Monieux, France In 1931, a letter was published from the Cairo Geniza which described a medieval pogrom in the French commune of Monieux. In the letter, Yehoshua ben Ovadia testifies about the righteousness of a local convert to Judaism who had a married a Jewish man and resettled in Monieux to avoid detection by her family. During the first crusade the village was on the route of Raymond of St-Gilles' Provencal army through the Alps. (Norman Golb, The Jews in Medieval Normandy , 127) When the French crusaders entered the town they attacked the Jews. The letter relates that the woman's husband was killed in the synagogue, while two of her children were kidnapped. The impoverished Jewish community could not support her in her plight, so writer was asking that another Jewish community take her in. As it was discovered in Cairo, the assumption is that she had to travel extensively to find a new home. (See also a later article by Norman Golb , in which he considers altern

Vishnevo, Poland 30 August 1942 The town of Vishneva was occupied by the USSR in 1939. Jewish institutions were closed and Jewish books were removed from the local library. However, when the Germans broke their truce with the Soviet Union in 1941 and occupied the town, things went from bad to worse. Jewish men were given forced labor, and some were murdered in the streets. The number of Jews in town was reduced to about 1,000 and they were forced into a small ghetto around the synagogue. These conditions lasted over a year. On August 30, 1942, German soldiers moved into position around the ghetto. The Jews were gathered in the courtyard of the synagogue. Shimon Peres , the former Prime Minister and President of Israel, who was born in Vishnevo, tells the story of how the congregation was murdered: "The rest arrived at the synagogue that was made of wood. Its doors were locked. They were all burned alive. That was also the last day of Rabbi Zvi Meltzer, my grandfather, my m

The title of this blog, Parchment Burning,  comes from the story about the martyring of Rabbi Chanina ben Teradion, who was one of the Ten Martyrs killed by the Romans in the time of the Mishna. Despite Roman decrees against the teaching of Torah in public, Chanina continued to do so: "He would sit and learn Torah and gather groups around him, with a Torah scroll on his lap." (Babylonian Talmud, Avoda Zara 18a)  In one version, he is sitting in a Beit Ulam , and I think the expression and the setting must have been akin to a synagogue or house of study. The Romans barged into this gathering, grabbed the Torah and wrapped it around Chanina. They stuffed in tufts of damp wool stuffed between to keep the fire from consuming him immediately. Chanina took comfort in being burned together with a Torah scroll. As the flames consumed him, his students asked him what he saw, and he replied: "Parchment burning and letters flitting in the air."  The story of the deat

Kfar Chabad, Israel 8 May, 1956 At eight pm, the 28 students of the Kfar Chabad Trade School were in the middle of the evening prayer service. Suddenly the lights went out. The sound of gunfire split the air. Some children struggled to flee through a window while others dropped to the floor. One 13 year old tried to evacuate some of his wounded friends, asking them to stop yelling in case the terrorists were still nearby. They did their best to comply, despite the terrible pain from their wounds. ( COL ) Three Palestinian terrorists had crossed the border into Israel from Egypt. While one waited in the car, another cut the power to the building and a third open-fired on the children in the synagogue. When the lights turned back on, dead students lay in puddles of their own blood. Four students and one counselor were killed. A sixth later died from his wounds.

Yesterday, Stan Lee died at age 95. He was a major force in the comic book superhero world, creating Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, and many other characters. In addition to fantastic stories, comic books have been used to address historic events. Many of the major creative forces in comics were Jewish , and some have speculated that the volatile and powerless position of the Jews was part of the driving force behind creating superheroes who could right wrongs. This year, a book on comics about the Holocaust was published, called We Spoke Out: Comic Books and the Holocaust . One of the comics featured was called "Thou Shalt Not Kill", from Weird War Tales #8, drawn by Steve Harper. It tells the story of German soldiers attacking Jews in Prague and the Jews pleading with the Golem for help. The story features three panels depicting the Germans forcing Jews into a synagogue and then setting it on fire. "Drive them in and lock the doors behind them!" yells th

Seville, Spain 6 June, 1391 Archdeacon Ferrand Martinez took advantage of an unstable political situation to raise a mob of Christians against the Jews of Seville in the year 1391. Although the local authorities ordered the public whipping of two of the leaders of the mob, this only further provoked the populace. On June 6, the mob attacked the Jewish quarter, calling out "death to the Jews." True to their word, they proceeded to kill 4,000 Jews. The mob rushed the Jewish quarter simultaneously from both gates, trapping the people inside. Some were killed at home, others in the three synagogues. The survivors only escaped by agreeing to be baptized. ( Jewish Encyclopedia ) "Men, women and children had their throats slit without mercy, in their own homes and in the synagogues. The massacres lasted an entire day and cost the lives of a huge number of people, 4000 souls." ( oocities.org , referencingModesto Lafuente's History of Spain and Joaquin Guichot'

El Ghriba Synagogue Djerba, Tunisia 7 October, 1985 On Simchat Torah, the community on the island of Djerba hired a local policeman to guard the synagogue during services. The locals were concerned that an Israeli raid on a local PLO headquarters, part of Operation Wooden Leg, might provoke violence. Rather than protect the worshipers, the security guard waited until services were underway and then open-fired on the Jews inside. Three people were killed. ( UPI ) One of those killed was Yehudit Bucharis, whose nephew Yoav Hattab was murdered thirty years later in the attack on the Hyper Cacher supermarket in Paris. ( ynet ) Yehudit's remains were brought for burial in Israel in 2014. In 2002, the s ynagogue was attacked again , when an Al-Qaeda terrorist drove a truck full of explosives into the building, killing 21 tourists.

Berlin, Germany 10 November, 1938 Kristallnacht This week marked 80 years since Kristallnacht. While hundreds of synagogues were defiled or burned and some Jews were killed during the two days of rioting, it is hard to confirm whether anyone was killed inside the many synagogues that were destroyed. In Berlin, the Prinzregentenstrasse synagogue was one of the many to be torched. It had been built only 8 years earlier, the only one constructed in Berlin during the brief rule of the Weimar Republic. On Kristallnacht it was burned to the ground and never rebuilt. The synagogue rabbi, Manfred Swarsensky, recalls rushing to the site at 2 am. "Then, I got up, ran to the synagogue, pushed my hat way down in my face so as not to be recognized by anyone, and there I saw German SS troopers pour gasoline into the interior of the building and over the walls, and also German firemen stand on adjoining buildings so as to prevent that they be burnt down and so they poured water over

5 August, 1949 El Menasha Synagogue Damascus, Syria The El Menasha Synagogue was one of the oldest congregations in Damascus. The security situation for Jewish communities in the Arab world had deteriorated in the 1940s and synagogues were a target. On Friday night, a group of young students had gathered in the synagogue for the Kabbalat Shabbat service. It was Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat immediately following Tisha B'av. A Syrian veteran of the Israeli War of Independence threw several hand grenades into the El Menasha Synagogue in Damascus, shaking the walls of the building. Parents rushed to carry their blood-soaked children to the nearby Italian Hospital, but many were dead by the time they arrived. The attack killed twelve and wounded sixty, mostly children.

23 August, 1349 Cologne With the Black Death spreading across Europe, Jewish communities were scapegoated and attacked, starting in 1348. Over 500 Jewish communities were annihilated during this period. The city council of Cologne saw how the Jewish community in Strasbourg had been trapped in the Jewish cemetery and burned to death. At first they made efforts to protect their Jewish community. When it became clear that the people of Cologne were going to attack the Jews regardless of what the city elders did, the town council switched gears and planned how to use a massacre in Cologne to their benefit. On St. Bartholomew's Night in 1349, the Jewish quarter of Cologne was attacked. Many Jews fled to the synagogue where, determined to die as martyrs, they themselves set fire the synagogue and perished in the flames. All the Jews of the community were killed. The authorities in Cologne mostly concerned themselves with how to fairly divide the property of the dead Jews. (Norman

8 October, 1977 Brith Sholom Kneseth Israel (BSKI) Richmond Heights, MO Joseph Paul Franklin , a serial killer who believed it was his duty to kill Jews, randomly picked the address of the BSKI synagogue out of a phonebook from among the different synagogues in the St. Louis area. On Shabbat morning, he hid in some tall grass across for the parking lot and waited for several hours until a bar mitzva at the synagogue was finishing up. As guests left the building, Franklin fired five shots and then fled the scene. One guest, Gerry Gordon, was killed, and two others were wounded. "Gerry was something of a jokester so when I heard the shots, I saw him grab his stomach. At first I thought he was joking because that's what he did. But then his wife came running over to me in tears saying Gerry's been shot, help me. She had blood all over her dress." ( St. Louis Jewish Light )   Franklin confessed to the crime in 1994. He was convicted of murder and executed. He was

27 June, 1941 Bialystok, Poland Great Synagogue In my introduction to this blog I wrote that  "As long as there have been synagogues, there have been Jews who were rounded up and slaughtered while inside." This is actually inaccurate. Jews were rarely rounded up and put in synagogues. Almost always, they either fled to the synagogue on their own, or were already present in the synagogue when attacked. The Great Synagogue in Bialystok was different. It was the unadulterated nightmare. The synagogue was built in the early 20th century. It was impressive, with three domes flanking the entrance and naves.  On 27 June, 1941, Nazi troops moved into position around the plaza adjacent to the Great Synagogue. They gathered the Jews from the neighborhood, herding them - two thousand people - into the building.  "Groups of poor sods were brought from all directions and pushed towards the Great Synagogue which was burning with great flames, with ear-piercing sc

20 June, 1768 Uman, Ukraine Uman was where my great-grandparents, Isaac Wexelman and Libby Gerber, were married, before coming to Canada. On the heals of the 17th century Chmielnicki Massacres, a series of pogroms took place in Eastern Europe, known as the Haidamak rebellions. Disenfranchised cossacks and peasants attacked Jewish communities (as well as Poles), killing hundreds of thousands . The Ukrainian commanders, Maksym Zalizniak, openly encouraged the slaughter of Jews and Poles in the open countryside, so people from all around crowded into the fortified city of Uman. Zalizniak's army set up a siege, but after only three days the city fell when the city commander, Ivan Gonta, switched sides. The Jews fled to the synagogues and attempted to defend themselves. However, the Ukrainians were armed with cannons and obliterated the defenses and then killed those inside. "During the carnage, many Jews fled to the main synagogue. There, they armed themselves and put up

Istanbul, Turkey 6 September, 1986 This relates to the attack on the Neve Shalom synagogue which took place in 1986, not to be confused with the one in 1992 which did not cause casualties, or the attack in 2003, which did. On Shabbat morning, 29 Jews were gathered at the Neve Shalom synagogue in Istanbul for prayers. During Torah reading, two strangers entered the synagogue and barricaded the doors from the inside using an iron bar. They then open-fired with submachine guns, poured gasoline on the bodies and ignited them, and finally blew themselves up with hand grenades. Twenty-two of the Jewish worshipers were killed. ( Washington Post ) The attack "turned the elegant Neve Shalom Synagogue into a charred and blood-stained slaughterhouse." ( New York Times ) The JTA called it the "Bloodiest Synagogue Massacre Since [the] Nazi Era." The bodies were so disfigured that they were buried in a common grave. This was a high-coordinated terrorist attack, carried ou

Buda, Hungary 2 September, 1686 The Buda synagogue was constructed in 1461. Buda was a hotspot for the confrontation between Christians and the Ottoman Empire. The city was captured by the Ottomans in 1526 (who banished and then re-welcomed the Jews) and retaken by the Christians in 1686. When the Christians entered the city in 1686, they began a widespread slaughter of all the residents. The Jews of the town ran into the synagogue for protection, but the Hapsburg troops battered their way in and killed everyone inside. Only Rabbi Isaac Schulhof was released and he eventually wrote a first-hand account of the attack, Megilat Ofen . The building was torched, with the bodies left inside to rot. Hundred of Jews from the town were captured and held for ransom, including Schulhof. Eventually Samuel Oppenheimer, the Hapsburg Emperor's banker, redeemed them. ( The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation , 269) In was three hundred years later, in 1964, when the ruins

12 October, 1285 Munich, Bavaria Jews had been living in Munich for only a generation when, in a classic blood libel, they were accused of purchasing a Christian child and murdering him. According to the rumors, the Jews had taken a young, Christian boy into the basement of the synagogue and pricked him with pins in order to bleed him. As the rioting Christians stormed the Jewish quarter, the Jews fled to the wooden synagogue for sanctuary. The rioters set fire to the building, killing 180 inside and wiping out the community. The Nuremberg Memorbuch  (memory book) records the names of 67 of the dead. In the Ashkenazi world, Memorbuchs were used to record the names of Jews killed over generations. They help keep alive the stories of past persecutions. Names listed were recited during the year as part of prayers for the dead. These books were responsible for making sure that the stories stayed alive and fresh in the Jewish conscience. When the incident was investigated by King R

Antioch, Syria 486 CE The Jewish community in Antioch dated back to at least the time of the Hasmoneans. Jews felt very secure in the community, even after Christianity because the religion of the Roman Empire. In 486, the streets of Antioch were rocked by pitched battles between two political factions/supporters of rival sports clubs, the Greens and the Blues. While these groups were partially socioeconomic, they also were divided on the issue of whether Jesus was both divine and human, or only one ( Monophysitism ). The Jews sides with the Blues and, in revenge, the Greens set fire to a number of synagogues and murdered Jews. (Avner Falk,  A Psychoanalytic History of the Jews , 351) This story presents a strange twist on the normal killing-Jews-in-a-synagogue story. During one of these attacks on the Jews of Antioch, the Greens exhumed Jewish bodies from a nearby cemetery and tossed them into burning synagogues. "The Greens attacked the synagogue and burned it, and dug

Tetiev, Ukraine 26 March, 1920 My great-grandmother's family, the Spivaks, were from the shtetl of Tetiev. Hardly any Jews from Tetiev were killed in the Holocaust for the simple reason that the community had been wiped out twenty years earlier, during the pogroms of 1919-1920. While hundreds of communities in Ukraine were affected by the pogroms of 1919-1920, no place was hit harder than Tetiev. An estimated 4,000 Jews were killed, about 2/3 of the overall community. Survivors left to join neighboring towns like Pogrebishche. Of the 4,000 Jews slaughtered, a large number met their end inside the Tetiev synagogue: "In one synagogue, 2,000 persons sought safety. The bandits set fire to it and nearly all perished, a very few only escaped death...whenever anybody jumped out of the window, he was instantly shot at." ( The Massacres of Tetiev in Pogroms in the Ukraine Under the Ukrainian Government, 1917-1920 ) The rabbi of the synagogue, Simon Rabinovitch, hid in the

14 January 1951 Baghdad, Iraq After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Jews living in the Arab world were increasingly persecuted and the overwhelming majority were forced to flee. On January 14, 1951, several hundred Iraqi Jews crowded into the courtyard of the Mas'uda Shemtov synagogue. They had come to make arrangements for a flight to Israel, which was becoming urgent. Suddenly, someone threw a hand grenade toward this crowd. The grenade hit a high-tension wire above and exploded. Five people were killed and twenty were injured. (Moshe Gat, The Jewish Exodus from Iraq, 1948-1951  p.134) In wake of the bombing, the government claimed that Zionist agents had carried out the bombing to encourage emigration to Israel. Two Zionist activists were arrested and executed. However, Israeli papers reported that a Christian Iraqi officer had been arrested on suspicion of carrying out this crime, and similar bombs were uncovered in his house. In 2006, a former Mossad

9 September, 1939 Bedzin, Poland Ruins of Bedzin Synagogue My grandmother was born in Bedzin, Poland in 1921. Her family was fortunate enough to immigrate to Canada before the outbreak of World War II, but many Jews remained in Bedzin when the Nazis marched into town on September 4, 1939. The Nazis quickly went to work rounding up notable residents for interrogation, plundering goods and humiliating Jews by shaving their beards. Others were shot and had their bodies mutilated. However, the Jews of Bedzin were not yet sure what to expect from the occupiers. By the end of the week, they knew. That Shabbat, as Jews gathered to pray in the Great Synagogue of Bedzin, the Nazis broke into the buildings adjacent to the synagogue, threw in hand grenades and order the Jews out. About 200 Jews ran to the synagogue for refuge, but the Nazis barred the doors,  set fire to the building and burned it to the ground . Jews who managed to escape the flames were shot by German soldiers. A f